Since the beginning of the year Intel have been dominating the market with their new Sandy Bridge LGA1155 line of processors.

Times are hard in today's economic climate, not everyone can invest in a fully fledged high-end computer system and so it is needful for many to keep cost as low as possible. The Sandy Bridge platform bridges the gap between performance and cost, meaning that many can now move across even if money is tight.

Today we will be doing something a little different from the typical review/article. With many moving over to the Sandy Bridge platform due to the excellent price : performance ratio, those wanting to upgrade at the current time will be surely considering Sandy Bridge. But not everyone has the cash to spend on a high-end system, and as our Sandy Bridge reviews have revealed - mainstream boards are now at a much more affordable cost when compared to any other platform to launch. Mainstream performance comes at budget pricing.

So the idea of today's article is to show how you can build a budget system around the Sandy Bridge architecture, at an affordable cost. We are looking at keeping costs to around the £400 region and well under £500. The machine may not be capable of running the latest gaming titles at high resolutions with all the eye candy but that's not the objective here. This machine will be suitable for typical operations such as web browsing, image editing and light gaming.

The components selected in this article are only an example of what can be used to construct a budget Intel Sandy Bridge computer. You may prefer different brands, different rated components. Remember this is just one of the many avenues that can be taken. Over the following pages are the selected components and then the final build.