Since its launch many years ago, the Athlon 200GE was the refuge of the tired, the hungry, the poor and oppressed. For a tiny fee of about $55, you would get a decent-ish CPU that had a decent-ish iGPU within. All you had to do next was find a very cheap motherboard to house it, and you had yourself averyaffordable computer. This made it our go-to recommendation for the absolute cheapest build inour main chart.

But recently, the price of the 200GE has been going up, and it is getting harder to find…

Planning for a World without the Athlon 200GE:

While I cannot find official confirmation that the Athlon 200GE isEOL, all the signs are there. The CPU is not in-stock in normal stores, and other stores will have it shipped from a land far far away for a hefty price. Very soon, when exotically located caches are depleted, you will no longer be able to buy it.

好消息是,有一个合理的CPU再保险placement from Intel: The 1200-socket Celeron family. The cheap ones are even cheaper than the 200GE, costing about $26.

The bad news is that the Intel G5900 and its Celeron siblings are 2c/2t CPUs, so multithreaded power is cut by half. Worse, the iGPU is quite weak in gaming, suitable only for light titles on low resolution. So it’s cheaper and available (and will therefore be our 200GE replacement, at least for the time being), but weaker as well.

Changes Elsewhere in the Chart:

A couple other price-related changes are coming for non-destitute tiers of the chart.

First, the B650 series of motherboards is now available, which are more sensibly priced compared to the X670. You will find them in the Outstanding tier.

And second, I have added the new DeepCool AK400 to replace the old DeepCool Gammax 400 across the three lowest-tier rows of the chart, as the former is cheaper and better. Thanks to the reader who wrote about it!

Summary of Chart Updates:

• We’re replacing the Athlon 200GE with the Celeron G5900/G5905 inDestitute
• In the same tier, we’ll be adding suitable motherboards, and swapping the (stock) HSF and iGPU to Intel
• We’re swapping to B650 motherboards inOutstanding
• We’re replacing the Gammaxx 400 with the AK400 in various tiers