A Budget PC Under Rs 25,000

Though the market for dual-core processors has seen some rapid development this year with regard to price drops and VFM status, this trend has not reflected in budget dual-core processors. Since the last time we featured this roundup, prices have not dropped much – the only things to change were the processor and a couple of accessories. Keeping this in mind, we shall unveil the latest avatar of our sub-Rs 25,000 machine. As usual, wherever prices/specs have remained unchanged, we have simply carried the products forward.

CPU:Intel E2180

The E2180 is similar to the E2140 that we used in our earlier roundup. The only difference is the clock speed – it runs at 2GHz. Other specifications are similar to the previous model: it’s based on a 65nm process, offers 1MB L2 cache and runs at a FSB of 800MHz. Like all its previous predecessors, this processor is also 64-bit capable, and at its cost is the perfect base of our budget system.

Motherboard: Zotac NF610i

Our first choice had been to retain the board we had used previously – the Biostar. However, on checking up, we found that most retailers were no longer stocking the board. Hence began the search for a replacement. Luckily we didn’t need to look far. The answer lay in Zotac’s NF610i board. For those who have not heard the name, Zotac is a long-time PC-based OEM company that has recently entered India. Since their entry they have introduced a bunch of Nvidia-based products, in both GPUs and motherboards.

We at Tech2 have been using their products and found them to be top-notch, easily rivaling products from other manufacturers – and at competitive price points. The NF610i is based on Nvidia’s GeForce 7050 / nForce 610i chipset, offers full support for Intel’s C2D processors, and comes with a single PCIe 16x slot, 1 PCIe x1 slot, 8 USB slots, 2 PCI slots, and 4 SATA 2 (3.0 GB) slots along with a single IDE connector.

RAM: Kingston DDR2 (2x1GB)

Kingston is a well-known brand, offering significant value for money products. We have chosen one of their budget RAM sticks in a 2GB package. This way if your budget permits, its possible to upgrade to 4 GB of system memory at a later date and extend the life of your PC.