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Amazingly the guts of our Ultimate Budget Gaming System cost just $336 US, and this includes the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition processor, ASUS Extreme AH4770 graphics card, ASUS M3A78-EM motherboard, and OCZ Blade Series 4GB memory kit. Really, to think that all we need now is a case/power supply and a hard drive is incredible. Of course a keyboard/mouse and monitor will also be required, but some may already have these components. This means if you were to buy a 320GB SATA hard drive for example, and a budget ATX case with power supply, the entire system could cost well under $500 US and deliver the kind of performance that we demonstrated here today. In total we spent $650 US, excluding keyboard/mouse and monitor. This got us the components mentioned above along with a Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB hard drive, OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w power supply, and the little Silverstone SG04 case. At this price we got one hell of an impressive gaming system that’s low on power, quiet, and ultra portable. Given that most games are GPU limited, particularly when talking about mid-range performance cards, the processor should not impact the gaming experience too much. While older much slower processors can cause problems, something as powerful as a dual-core Phenom II processor running at 3.10GHz is going to present few problems. For this reason the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition processor is an incredible buy at $110 US, and it really is the ultimate budget processor for gamers. Furthermore, when paired with the Radeon HD 4770 it makes for an award winning combination. The ASUS M3A78-EM also impressed us with its outstanding feature set and unexpected overclocking performance. Overall those looking to build a well balanced affordable gaming system should certainly consider the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition/Radeon HD 4770 combination, as at $200 US it’s an unbeatable combo. Furthermore, for gamers on the go, this hardware combination allows users to build very compact, highly mobile gaming systems. Reviewed By Steven Walton |
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