With the holidays bringing discounts on PC components, a causal rig for browsing the web and consuming content can be built for around $375. Here are our recommendations for such a build.
The holiday period brings with it a few deals on computer components and the leisure to enjoy building a PC for those who like to assemble a rig manually. In this series, we are helping you do just that. After putting together our guides for a budget gaming PC for around $1,000 and a budget productivity machine for around $550, here are our recommendations for an ultra-budget machine for around $375. We’ve put together a guide to help you choose the components for an ultra-budget PC that can be used for casual web browsing and light productivity – something that can replace your parents’ aging computer or serve to be a new year gift. It must be noted, however, that discounts change constantly, and components could run out of stock at any time. Additionally, the guide lists the components for the PC alone and does not include peripherals such as a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. For this build, we’re going with Intel’s current-gen components owing to the current availability – especially with AMD’s offerings being sold out in many e-commerce stores – and some deals around that help further reduce overall costs. Here are our recommendations: The MSI B460M-A PRO motherboard packs a decent selection of features and quality for its $75 price, including one M.2 slot for the addition of an NVMe M.2 SSD, decent I/O,2.5G LAN, and more. Though the board features just two DIMM slots, it is adequate for the use case and any further upgrades. What’s more? The LGA 1200 socket will be compatible with 11th-gen Rocket Lake-S chips, meaning any plans to slightly beef up the build sometime in the future will not require a change in the board.
