Laptops these days have overtaken desktops in terms of sales, and from all the adverts in the media, you might be forgiven for thinking desktops no longer have a place in the modern home. In fact, in practical terms the popularity of laptops does mean that there are fewer manufactures making desktops at all and budget desktops are even rarer as manufactures are less interested in cutting their margins to the bone to get the price down.

But what defines a budget desktop? Well really as it is called a budget desktop it is all down to the price. My definition would be a PC that cost less than a given a price, and the best budget PC would therefore be a PC with the best specifications possible for that rate.

I generally set a budget price of £400 and with that budget it is possible to find a few nice examples such as the HP DX2300 Desktop. For around £350 you get an Intel dual core CPU, with 1GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive. This would provide a very nice system, capable of doing most computing tasks, as long as you weren’t expecting to edit video regularly or play the latest games.

Have you bought a budget desktop recently? How and why did you decide on your system?