The preceding selections round out our low-end system, but we've come up with a couple of suggested alternatives, should you wish to tweak the formula a little bit. These alternatives will allow you to step up to better performance for a little bit more money or save a little without too much pain.
| Component | Item | Price |
| Processor | Intel Pentium E2160 | $96.99 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 | $114.99 |
| Storage | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB | $79.99 |
| Audio | Chaintech AV-710 | $22.99 |
Processor
Don't let the word "Pentium" fool you. The Pentium E2160 is in fact a Core 2 Duo with 1MB of shared L2 cache instead of 2MB or 4MB. That makes it one of the cheapest Core-based processors on the market today, and it's actually the cheapest we could find either on Newegg or through our price search engine. Based on the few benchmarks we've seen, this chip is comparable in performance to the Core 2 Duo E4300, and it should also have a reasonable amount of overclocking potential. That makes it a solid alternative for our Econobox, should you not mind paying a few extra bucks to go with Intel instead of AMD.
Motherboard
Folks who buy the Pentium E2160 will most likely be interested in overclocking, so we've selected Gigabyte's GA-965P-S3 motherboard to go with it. This board costs just $114.99, but it packs an Intel P965 Express core logic chipset and has a fairly solid reputation as far as overclocking goes. The board's only real downside is a lack of chipset RAID support, but that's forgivable considering its price tag.
Storage
Seagate's Barracuda 7200.10 320GB hard drive is back in our alternatives list. If you're prepared to spend slightly more for five years of warranty coverage and don't mind having slower performance and higher noise levels than with our primary recommendation, this is the drive for you.
Sound card
The trusty Chaintech AV-710 is back once again, since we reckon some users might want better sound quality than what onboard audio tends to provide. The AV-710 won't give you perfect surround sound or 3D audio acceleration in games, but it does combine a low price tag with the ability to route stereo output through a high-quality Wolfson DAC. This last feat translates into stereo sound quality that's worthy of much more expensive cards and far superior to most onboard audio—perfect for users with decent headphones or stereo speakers.
