After I wrote my previous post, the complaints I got were mostly along the lines of “well, a $2500 computer is a nerd computer.” So I decided to do a much more reasonable comparison. I will now see what I can get for $999. This will be a comparison of desktop computers again, since trying to get a laptop for $999 would leave certain companies out in the cold.

Note that a monitor will not be included in the $999, as a good monitor can cost upwards of $200.

So up first, as usual, is the custom-built PC. I knew that an i7 box with a good SLi or crossfire setup for less than a thousand was possible, so I went for it. I went through the usual system-building routine, and after looking at some benchmarks, found that the best graphical setup I could get while staying under-budget was a GTX260 with 896MB GDDR3.

Now onto Dell. I decided to check out the “for home” section first. The “Studio XPS desktop” was $750, so that would leave some room for upgrades. The initial $750 included an i7, which would give the machine good performance. Unfortunately, it made me order the machine with Vista preinstalled, and make me take some bloatware along with it. The included RAM was only 3GB, but taking an upgrade to 6GB would leave me with only $100 left, so I decided to move on for now. They really tried to gouge me on HDD upgrades, wanting $150 for a 1TB drive. I took the upgrade to a 4850 for $150, which is a total ripoff, but I needed something to fill the budget. I had a hundred dollars left, so I had to go back for more. An upgrade to a 750GB HDD filled the gap perfectly.

As for HP, I went for the Pavilion Elite d5200t ATX series. HP offered me a free RAM upgrade from 4GB to 6GB, however, since this was a Core 2 Quad, not an i7, the RAM was still DDR2. They also had a free upgrade to a 640GB HDD. The GeForce 9500GS was not going to work, so I took a GTS250 upgrade. After selecting everything, I had $50 left, so I went back and got a 750GB HDD.

Now onto Apple. Right now, I am expecting the exact same thing to happen. I am expecting to not be able to get anything decent for a thousand dollars. Turns out that the Mac Mini is the only apple desktop for under $1000. I started with the $799 model, which had only had a Core 2 Duo, clocked at only 2.0GHz. I upgraded to 4GB DDR3 RAM. Getting a keyboard and mouse put me up to $999.

So, looking at the table below, we see that the custom system is tied for best CPU, has the best RAM and HDD, and has a GTX260 blasts all the other systems. The Dell was close in some areas, since it had an i7, triple-channel RAM, a 4850, and a 750GB HDD. The HP wasn’t far behind, having decent graphics, a 750GB hard drive, and 6GB DDR3. However, Core i7 CPUs blow away everything else in terms of raw power, so the HP still can’t compare. As for the apple, well, it did much worse than last time. In the $2500 system comparison, the Mac managed to hold it’s ground in some areas. This time, however, it falls short. With a horrible CPU, which has about 20% of the processing power of the 2.66 ghz i7 (which overclocks nicely, bringing that figure down to about 13%). So overall, I would still say that custom-built PCs are the best value, with manufacturers such as Dell and HP not fat behind.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:51 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.