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New eMachines desktops hit the shelves

if you head into your friendly-neighborhood desktop retailer next week (and possibly even today), you'll find three new eMachines budget PCs on the shelves: the $500 T5230, the $450 T5062, and the $400 T3616.

Rich Brown Former Senior Editorial Director - Home and Wellness
Rich was the editorial lead for CNET's Home and Wellness sections, based in Louisville, Kentucky. Before moving to Louisville in 2013, Rich ran CNET's desktop computer review section for 10 years in New York City. He has worked as a tech journalist since 1994, covering everything from 3D printing to Z-Wave smart locks.
Expertise Smart home, Windows PCs, cooking (sometimes), woodworking tools (getting there...)
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Rich Brown
eMachines announced three new budget PCs. CNET

eMachines has become so regular with its quarterly refreshes, it might be more newsworthy if they didn't announce new systems every three months. But rest assured, if you head to your friendly-neighborhood desktop retailer next week (and possibly even today), you'll find three new eMachines budget PCs on the shelves: the $500 T5230, the $450 T5062, and the $400 T3616. All come with a $50 mail-in rebate as well.

We've been lukewarm on eMachines the past few releases, mostly due to questionable CPU selection. This time, though, we're particularly impressed with the T5230 and its Athlon 64 X2 4400+ dual chip. We'll have our full review of that posted today or Monday, but our early impression, based on our benchmarks, is that eMachines has a performance coup on its hands with this system. The other two we're less high on, mostly because they still cling to single core chips.