The Rs. 20,000 price barrier continues to the most important segment for a lot of PC buyers today. We have featured and built PCs in this segment a couple of times already, and we had received a very good response from our readers.

The comments on our previous two efforts are flowing in even today, and this prompted us to revisit this segment. There was a certain curiosity on our part, to see how the passage of a few months has affected this price bracket. A detailed investigation followed, and here's what we found.

The first and more important point is the fact that dual-core processors have finally penetrated this entry level bracket. Secondly, the price of RAM has crashed significantly. This has resulted in a major upgrade in processing power available in this segment when compared to just a few months ago.

That said, this remains the only segment that AMD continues to hold on to. Intel’s processors over the last year have become ultra-competitive, and as prices continue to drop it’s only a matter of time before they take over this segment too.

As Gaurav, my fellow author and good friend who has since moved on to pursue his dreams, once said:

"With computer components becoming increasingly powerful over the years, you can now have a powerful, good-looking and feature-rich desktop PC for as little as 20,000 rupees. That’s exactly what we're going to do in the following article. We will build a fully functional system that easily complies with our regular computing needs like web surfing, office applications and entertainment in the form of movies and music, and can also handle multi-tasking to a degree."

This was a very prophetic statement and holds good even today. Keeping this in mind we present you latest budget effort. Please note that some of the components have not changed in relation to the previous article, so those sections have remained unaltered.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (Rs. 2,850)

This is an entry-level processor that offers a clock speed of 2.1 GHZ, 512K of L2 cache and, in an important development, is made on a 65nm die process. This results in lower power requirement, keeping the processor running significantly cooler .

Motherboard: Asus M2A -VM (Rs. 3,450)

The M2A VM is a recently launched product and is based on the AMD690G chipset. It is the first product to come out of the ATI/AMD stable, since the merger occurred. This new chipset is an impressive effort and supports the entire range of currently available AMD processors.

Apart from that it also has support for DDR2 800, offers dual video connectivity options (DVI and D-Sub) with the help of the Radeon X1250 graphics engine. The presence of both DVI and D-Sub is great as it allows you to connect both LCD and CRT monitors.

The board also offers a Hi-Definition 7.1 channel audio chip – the Realtek ALC883 codec – which offers excellent music playback capability. The board also features a single PCIe slot, which is perfect for people looking to upgrade to a dedicated graphics solution for gaming. For its expansion options, the board offers an impressive 10 USB slots and 1 Firewire.

With its support for current generation AMD processors, onboard graphics and sound, and a vast array of peripheral connectivity, the Asus M2A VM forms the perfect foundation to build our PC on.

RAM: Kingston DDR2 667 MHz (Rs. 1,550)

RAM prices have recently been going south and it's time take advantage of this. 1 GB of system memory is absolutely vital for system operations nowadays with the increased size and requirements of software. Kingston really needs no introduction. They have been making quality RAM sticks for a long time. Now available at a price of Rs. 1,600 with a 5-year warranty, it’s the perfect product for our machine.