$500 Gaming PC Day 2 Testing & Analysis

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scryer: a new IDE HDD for laptop cost approx 50 euro for 120 or 160 GB. The instalation is usually more than simple.

my PC is:
Gigabyte MB (40 euro)
4200 Athlon XP Dual x65W (50 euro)
2x1GB Kingston 800 (2x15 euro)
500GB SATA with 32 MB cache (80 euro)
8600GT Gigabyte passive (60 euro)
mini ATX case with 400W Fortron (25 euro full price)
Light Scribe DVDRW Asus (25 euro)
=====================================================
approx 310 euro total price (practically the same as in this article)
and...
old-fashioned, but very true colors 19" Trinitron



Yes, i did spend money on this components, but the diffrence is WHEN i bought all that. Little but very important moment... I bought all that components one (or even more) year after the product went on the price lists. That brought me price cuts of more than 60% inicial price. Thats the only difference. Maybe one day i will have today's top products, but not now. Its financial suicide to buy a recent product on its top high price.

Just wait the moment, and buy THEN, not now. No need to follow the last hi-tech and spent too much money just for difference of CL4 and CL3...
 
these articles are right in my realm of thought. I am glad to read yet another one... the last few years however have added strange twists in the pc world, in fact, I could call them outright lies. I personally would build a 2.8e from 2003 pc with dual channel DDR of the prehistoric generation, again, before I fell for this new stuff and think "big changes". To go new and for the fact to say it is new, is the only reason I would build this low cost version. the big thing for me is the graphics and dx10...that is all I have really seen change (pun intended). I will wait a few years contently for my build #8..thanks for another great article.
 
When I run crysis with a e6300 stock clocked cpu and set the resolution at 1280 x 1024, the benchmark runs at 1024 x 768 (my monitor info reports this resolution). I think that may be why the $500 gaming pc got better fps in crysis at stock clocks compared to overclocked settings.
 
Although I just built a new rig with a Q9450 in it (re-using a lot of parts), I've also realized that Stunny is quite right. I cannot begin to suggest I "needed" to build this box. I'd probably be quite content with my old S939 3800 X2, or the e6750 that came after.
For myself as well as others though, this is a hobby; building computers is what we do, and we can always find an excuse to build another one. This article helps make clear that it is possible to build a decent rig without spending a lot of money. We can nit-pick individual components half to death on the forums and in our own minds, but as a starting point an article like this is extremely useful, and exactly the sort of thing I really enjoy reading.
 
Both rigs look very nice indeed. still i think i might would go for a amd 6400+ or q6600 at this time might be its dirt cheap. but then on the other hand you can upgrade the phenom and you could have a better HT 3.0 support. ill just wait a cople of months and i buy what ever would be in a buget range of about 800 euro. we shall see. by then we might already an phenomenon running on 3.2GHZ with 6mb cache or a nice Nehalem breaking records. who knows. radeon 4870 might also be a good deal by then.
 
I agree with p3matty. The graphics card was a bad choice considering I've seen both the 9600gt and the 3870 for the same price (perhaps only after MIR). I've actually seen the 9600gt (after MIR) for less money than the cost used for the 8800gs. A straight 3870 to 3870 comparison would have been better though or an added section using that PC as a base then adding in a more expensive card such as the 9800gtx for the cost difference; to compare where the $$ really counts.
 
New to Tom's Hardware and first time poster. A few questions...

- How did you get Nvidia platform drivers to work on an Intel chip motherboard? Just curious.

- Why did you benchmark both DivX and XviD instead of adding a H264 encoding benchmark? H264 is being used more and more each month and it is a more determined measure of CPU performance than either of the formentioned. It would have made sense to include it. Well, to me at least.

- How hot did the Northbridge HSF get when you OC'd to 3.2 GHz? If my own OCing with a similar Gigabyte board is any indication, than it should have been dangerously hot. If you play games regularly @ 3.2GHz the heat generated on the NB will cause the board to completely fail within months. I see no mention of this heat in the article and I have a hard time believing that it wasn't worth mentioning to your readers.

- Lastly, why didn't you at least include a few benchmarks of "mild" overclocks for the average user. @ 2.4GHz (or even 2.7GHz) would have been nice. It doesn't require a voltage adjustment, yet the performance scaling from stock to 2.4GHz (or 2.7GHz) is much greater than 2.4GHz to 3.2GHz. I know Tom's is an enthusiast site, but it never hurts to slow it down just a little for those "less knowledgable", but whatever.

Thanks for the article.
 
Personally I found that at 3ghz some voltage adjustment was required to achieve complete stability. Without voltage adjustment I would get an occasional lock-up when compiling large applications with Gentoo Linux...I would enable the bios to auto adjust the voltage for stability instead of doing it manually...This works very well for me...I have had no system lockups or crashes in the past month...and It stays properly cool with the stock intel heatsink/fan. Another tweak that I needed to do was to change the Performance Enhancer setting in the bios to standard.

If it burns out in two years then I'll upgrade to a quad-core...
 
It it a little unclear that how long will the 0/c systerm last.
Is the o/c systerm perform steadily?I want to be infored. Thank you very much.
 
It it a little unclear that how long will the 0/c systerm last.
Is the o/c systerm steadily?I want to be infored. Thank you very much.
 
[citation][nom]animehair[/nom]Personally I found that at 3ghz some voltage adjustment was required to achieve complete stability. Without voltage adjustment I would get an occasional lock-up when compiling large applications with Gentoo Linux...I would enable the bios to auto adjust the voltage for stability instead of doing it manually...This works very well for me...I have had no system lockups or crashes in the past month...and It stays properly cool with the stock intel heatsink/fan. Another tweak that I needed to do was to change the Performance Enhancer setting in the bios to standard.If it burns out in two years then I'll upgrade to a quad-core...[/citation]
you are cool!
 
In china this Gaming PC cost 531$.Video card and motherboard cost more in USA than in china.I can not think out why! Gigabyte and xfx bullshit!
 
Could you really recommend a 380w PSU for this configuration? An overclocked CPU like this does need more power. And if you push it even further with a 8800GT instead of the GS, add a HD, an optical drive and fill a few PCI slots?
I would't mind to much if the CPU won't last more then 2 years but if the hole system blows because of the PSU i would!

Let me know what you think!
 
[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]It sounds like you need help, why don't you start a new forum thread asking for it?[/citation]

I already did 🙂

On the overclocking page in the forum. I did manage to get it up to 2.9. It boots at 3.2 however Windows crashes.
 


Try walking into a shop and saying "this card is $130 with a $30 rebate...how about I give you $100 and you keep the rebate" See how well that works. If you only have $500, you only have $500...
 
base on this overclock setting, can i know how long this CPU can last until its proc + mobo life span reach its limit??? 2yrs? 4yrs?
 
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