Best PC Builds (Archive)

[Guest]

Here are eight gaming PC builds that are recommended by the Tom’s Hardware community. These builds range from $500 to $2,000.

Best PC Builds : Read more

 

[thormejh]

I did not see that the EL 4k build had 2 980Tis and i was like WHY IS THIS SO EXPENSIVE but then i seen the x2 after 980Ti so it makes sense now xD

 

[MVinhas]

Choosing AMD Graphics Card for a Steam Machine is a waste of money, for now. For Linux if you want the best performance, then you have to go with nVidia.

 

[Myrmidonas]

The Steam Machine Build is a perfect GPU oven. Expect the poor 380 to fry sooner or later.

 

[littleleo]

Congrats to the winners and best wishes to the rest.

 

[mortsmi7]

I think your $1500 pc is the better choice over the $1750 pc. Similar performance with better stability. Going for the second 970 is really only recommended if you already have one.

 

[TallestJon96]

It's already been said, but the steam machine would be better off with a 960 and the $1750 should swap the gtx 970s for a 980 ti.

 

[darcotech]

I simply can't imagine not to have SSD big enough to store all my game library. Would accept cheaper cooler, cheaper case , smaller PSU for the sake of bigger SSD anyday.

 

[Mattly]

I'm surprised that in looking at the builds, especially the high end units that there is no mention or apparent consideration given to VR capability. Would I be wrong to assume that gamers who can afford the higher spend would be likely to buy a Vive or Oculus or are we not there yet? My tech buddies tell me that Sli solutions are problematic for VR currently and it is better to just get the best 980 Ti you can afford. I'm curious to what others here feel about this?

 

[James Mason]

I'm surprised that in looking at the builds, especially the high end units that there is no mention or apparent consideration given to VR capability. Would I be wrong to assume that gamers who can afford the higher spend would be likely to buy a Vive or Oculus or are we not there yet? My tech buddies tell me that Sli solutions are problematic for VR currently and it is better to just get the best 980 Ti you can afford. I'm curious to what others here feel about this?

VR isn't quite "out yet" so until people have had times to actually test it, no one really knows what's good / cost effective build for it.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Congrats to the winners and a big high five for the 2 million member milestone.
Looking ahead to 3 million.

 

[Daniel_G]

Are you people having a laugh? These builds are at best mediocre. Poor graphics card choices and abysmal storage choices. $2000 build doesn't even have an SSD... At that price should have a 950 pro 512gb.

 

[Daniel_G]

Single channel memory and AMD graphics in a steam machine? This is ridiculous. This site I would have expected actual good builds.

 

[Crashman]

Single channel memory and AMD graphics in a steam machine? This is ridiculous. This site I would have expected actual good builds.

Since you're the expert, I would have actually expected solid responses. These are READER CHOICE builds, you're a reader and you didn't make a choice?

That doesn't leave you much room to complain. Next time try competing

 

[filippi]

That used to be the "Tech People Choice Award" so it was kinda disappointing...
Anyway Congrats to the editors-selected builders! Good job!!

 

[metalSHOCK]

did i just see a $2000 build without an SSD? LOL

 

[ufo_warviper]

Choosing AMD Graphics Card for a Steam Machine is a waste of money, for now. For Linux if you want the best performance, then you have to go with nVidia.

I second this! AMD makes great cards that deliver exceptional Windows performance for the price. But Linux performance is another story entirely.I saw an article on Phoronix where the $150 GTX 950 outperformed a $600 R9 Fury in some benchmarks. The R9 Fury Linux performance wasn't terrible for lets say a $100 to $200 part. But for $600 you should expect quite a bit more. In current times, you will get better Linux Gaming performance and longer driver support for your dollar by choosing nVidia every time.That's the very reason I went for a GTX 970 over an R9 290 or 290X. A few years back, I had a Radeon 4850 and a 9800 gt green edition on Linux with similar CPUs, and the 9800 gt slammed the 4850 every game I played. IMHO The 4850 was premature kicked back to legacy status in 2012 for Linux, during a time when the card still ran Windows games well at decent settings.

 

[brucek2]

Next time, would love to see a category for HTPC (small and/or av gear form factor, quiet, powerful enough to run madVR, inexpensive, no gaming or maybe just game streaming if not too harmful to other goals.)

 

[Darkbreeze]

That used to be the "Tech People Choice Award" so it was kinda disappointing...
Anyway Congrats to the editors-selected builders! Good job!!

These were not selected by the editors. These were voted on by the community at large.

 

[filippi]

That used to be the "Tech People Choice Award" so it was kinda disappointing...
Anyway Congrats to the editors-selected builders! Good job!!

These were not selected by the editors. These were voted on by the community at large.

Seriously? Sorry...

I just saw the posts w/ all those community suggested rigs (Best PC Build: Under...) all closed in November/2015. I even suggested some builds myself.

Sadly I did not saw the posts w/ the 5 runners-ups for each category to be voted the best one by the community.

Could you show me where they are? I really wanna see the runners-ups...

Anyway the "We received numerous submissions and enjoyed examining all of your PC builds, but we could ultimately only select one system per price range" kinda made me believe that Toms skipped the "people choice" phase this time.

glad i was wrong

 

[Darkbreeze]

The winners were chosen entirely by popular vote, and was posted as both a thread and editorial link. You would need to revisit the original thread to see the other competitiors. The initial qualifying was open to everybody. We then picked the top five builds per category and the community elected the winners. So in a sense, we did have some part in the process since we chose the top five entries based on criteria for parts compatibility, quality of parts selection, probable performance and that everything was below the maximum cost at the time of selection.

Quality of power supply was a major factor in disqualification or not being considered as a finalist. Longevity of the build was determined to be an important consideration so units with lower quality power supplies were superceded by other configurations that might have had similar or even slightly less performance, but had a superior power supply. We see it as your system does you no good, and is not of value, if you have a high end CPU and GPU card, but a dump truck for a power supply and it fails two weeks later.

I suspect that upcoming competitions which are planned will likely be judged in similar fashion. Being limited to only Amazon was a real kick in the gonads, and I believe we were told that on upcoming iterations we are going to try and open it up to other vendor sites to better represent the actual process any of us would use when selecting the best build in a given budget.

 

[filippi]

The winners were chosen entirely by popular vote, and was posted as both a thread and editorial link. You would need to revisit the original thread to see the other competitiors. The initial qualifying was open to everybody. We then picked the top five builds per category and the community elected the winners. So in a sense, we did have some part in the process since we chose the top five entries based on criteria for parts compatibility, quality of parts selection, probable performance and that everything was below the maximum cost at the time of selection.

Quality of power supply was a major factor in disqualification or not being considered as a finalist. Longevity of the build was determined to be an important consideration so units with lower quality power supplies were superceded by other configurations that might have had similar or even slightly less performance, but had a superior power supply. We see it as your system does you no good, and is not of value, if you have a high end CPU and GPU card, but a dump truck for a power supply and it fails two weeks later.

I suspect that upcoming competitions which are planned will likely be judged in similar fashion. Being limited to only Amazon was a real kick in the gonads, and I believe we were told that on upcoming iterations we are going to try and open it up to other vendor sites to better represent the actual process any of us would use when selecting the best build in a given budget.

Nice darkbreeze! In my suggested rigs for this competition i did adopt the quality tier you guys use in the system builder marathon.
Maybe not the wisest strategy. lol.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/newegg-system-builder-marathon-q3-2015-value-comparison,4293.html

Anyway please sure i can find those original thread to see all the competitiors. But i cannot find the thread w/ the popular vote.
Can you help me? Thaks a lot!

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'm not sure if it's even still there. I think you would need to contact Titillating, the community manager for answers on that. I know it was a poll on the original thread that was used for the voting and every moderator supplied a list of the five finalists for each category so I don't know that other than in the poll on each category page, there is anything else that lists that information.

 

[filippi]

I'm not sure if it's even still there. I think you would need to contact Titillating, the community manager for answers on that. I know it was a poll on the original thread that was used for the voting and every moderator supplied a list of the five finalists for each category so I don't know that other than in the poll on each category page, there is anything else that lists that information.

I see darkbreeze. I thank you for your kind answer. I will ask Titillating about the "top five builds per category" thread.

 

[justasii]

No SSD on anything but the $500 build is really unacceptable.