I just built a new computer to use as a Viewing Station

Two weeks ago I assembled a new PC to use as my front room viewing computer.  I assembled this out of some new parts and some parts that I had laying around.  What excites me most in this new computer is how powerful and inexpensive the processor is.  I used an Intel Celeron G530 processor for this build, this is the first Intel chip I have purchased in many years, all of my other systems run AMD processors.
  The Celeron G530 is the younger sibling to  the i3 and the Pentium G600 series processors.  It has 2MB of cache versus 3 on it's bigger siblings, it is also clocked lower at 2.4GHz.  With dual cores and on chip video this processor easily powers my video station.


Here is a list of the parts that I purchased and also the parts I reused from previous systems.  If you don't have parts laying around you would need to purchase these so I'll put a value on the used parts to give you an idea of cost.

parts purchased
~$51                    Intel G530 CPU 2.40 GHZ 2M CACHE 2.4 2 LGA 1155 Processor

~59 - $30 rebate  ECS H61H2-M2 Socket 1155/ Intel H61 Motherboard

~$50                    Patriot Memory Sector5 G Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800

~$21                    Lite-On 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Drive

sub total = $181 - 30 rebate = $151

used parts found and reused

$50                     XION ATX Mid Tower Computer Case w/500 Watt Power Supply

$60                     Western Digital 160 GB Caviar SATA Hard Drive

$120                   Microsoft WINDOWS 7


sub total of re-used parts $230

Total of $381

For around the same price you could buy an off the shelf system that is equivalent or better than this system, an example is this G620 system at Amazon, HP Pavilion Slimline s5-1110 Desktop Computer - Black for $440. The advantage to building your own is that upgrading later to different processors, motherboards, video etc is much easier than in a branded computer.

This post was not meant as a guide to how to build your own system, there are many good guides available on the web.  My main point to this post is how good and how inexpensive the new Celeron G530 processor is.  If you want to build your own system and have some questions leave me a comment and I'll do my best to answer.