The Top Five Processors for Home Computers on a Budget

With the economy the way it is, many people are looking to stretch their dollars as far as they will reach. Computers, however, have become such an important part of lives that they are more of a necessity for most people than a luxury.

Building a home computer often starts with the processor (CPU). The CPU is the most important part of the computer because it dictates so much of what you will be able to do with your computer. This is especially true if you use any CPU-intensive programs such as modern games and some kinds of video editing.

Presented below are five of the best budget CPUs that you should consider for your new computer. These processors were chosen on the basis of price, features, and power for your dollar. Granted, these processors will not break any speed records, but they will let you do your basic computing without choking.

The Celeron family of processors by Intel has garnered bad press from critics and home users mainly because they contain far less cache than their Pentium big brothers do. It is true that less cache memory does slow the processor down but after all, Celeron processors are supposed to be budget CPUs.

The Intel Celeron D 430 is about as budget as it gets. With a street price of US$39.99 retail, this is certainly one processor that won’t break the bank. For the money, you get 1.8GHz of power, enough to get you through daily tasks such as e-mail, Internet shopping, and home finance.

With just 512KB of cache, don’t expect to use this processor for any serious gaming or video-intensive applications. Still with an 800MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) it is more capable than its predecessors that had only a 400MHz FSB. If you are really on a budget and every dollar counts, this is the processor for you.

Although also a part of the Celeron family, the Intel E3200 is a dual core rather than single core processor. It is a 2.50GHz CPU and carries a street price of $49.99.

Like the Celeron D430 discussed above, this processor also sports 512KB of cache and an 800MHz FSB. Still, getting more speed and the dual core architecture is definitely worth the extra US$10. This processor probably represents the absolute minimum processor you would need to do any kind of gaming. Just don’t expect it to give you 1,000 frames per second. A good budget CPU with some extra features, choose the E3200 over the D 430 unless you really need to save that US$10.