Cheap eMachine Desktop Computers

eMachines is a brand of low-cost PCs based in Irvine, California. eMachines was a company that employed about 135 employees and sold between 1 to 2 million computers per year before its purchase on January 30, 2004, by rival Gateway Computers. Gateway was in turn purchased by Acer in October 2007, and eMachines is still used as a brand for low-cost PCs.

An example and a review of one of the real bargains from eMachines would be their T3508. EMachines desktop computers for home users remain one of the best bargains consumers can buy for a complete PC. Although the T3500 series that eMachines offers doesn't ship with a monitor by default, many vendors have paired them with a display and still offer these home desktop computers for around $300.

So, what do you get for $300 in a desktop computer for home users? Well, you're not going to get a top of the line gaming machine. and the processor inside the T3504 (the lowest-priced system on the line) is a 3.2GHz Intel Celeron D 352 CPU. It's the budget processor line from Intel, but it's still fast enough for most home user activities, including some light gaming. All of the systems in the line utilize Celeron D CPUs, although the T3508 ships with a faster 3.33GHz version and a higher price tag, retailing at $380.

Memory is a bit low at only 256MB of 400MHz DDR RAM in the low-end T3504. The line supports up to 2GB of RAM, so a performance boost could be gained by increasing the RAM. The other systems in the line start out with a more healthy 512MB of RAM, so I would strongly recommend you either pay the extra up front for a jump in memory or install it yourself for a very reasonable price.

Hard drive space is fairly impressive, with the low-end T3504 starting out with a 7,200rpm 100GB drive. This gives you plenty of room for application installs and multimedia file storage. And as you move up the line, the hard drive size increases, peaking at the 160GB drive in the T3508. Of course, internal hard drives are easy to add and and external USB drives are even easier.

For a powerful desktop computer that doesn't bust your budget, consider looking at some of our eMachine line.