It's all about the Pentiums, maybe? Remember when Intel's Pentium processor was all the rage? It's hard to believe that the above ad is almost 20 years old, and for those who are sentimental about their PC hardware, it's a shame the once-glorious Pentium is now a mid-range product that rarely gets a mention.

Intel has spent so much time and money in marketing the low-end Atom and the high-end Core that the humble Pentium is left neglected, yet for budget-conscious builders, this is a product line that's well worth a closer look. After all, in its current form, the Intel Pentium is based on the same Haswell microarchitecture that powers the latest-generation Core processor family, and is simply made cheaper by cutting away some of the more advanced features.

Hyper Threading and Turbo Boost are strangers to the Pentium product stack, you can typically expect lower clock frequencies, as well as a smaller onboard cache and downgraded integrated graphics. Performance aficionados should look away now - Pentium is practically a derogatory term in your eyes - but for anyone who's looking to put together a low-cost PC, the current crop of Pentiums trim away a lot of the excess to deliver capable computing at a very agreeable price.