Best PC Builds for Gaming, Streaming and Productivity

[David Siebert]

Where were the builds for productivity? I only saw gaming builds.

That is harder to define. What kind of productivity? CAD? or that Content Creation category? standard business tasks like using Office? Maybe web development or .net development? Or what about Embedded development using VXworks or Linux? What about FPGA work?

For example, most office tasks will be fine on just about anything. For what I do which is embedded development I want cores and lots of RAM. For content creation, I would want an Intel with a GPU for QuickSink a lot of RAM, and a good Nvidia GPU with a lot of VRAM. It's very much the same as I would want for AI work. I am sure I left out some other productivity tasks, but as you can see, the category of productivity is just too large to deal with it should be broken down into several categories. At least that is my opinion. The ideal development desktop for me would be a 7950 or I9 with at least 64G of RAM, and fast NVM storage (RAID mirror please), and the standard IGPU would be fine. Throw on a Quadra if you want me to do some CUDA work on the system.
If you have a big budget then Treadripper or a HEDT Xeon with a Quadro but I think that I would spend that money on the FPGA folks since it would be overkill for most development I do.

 

[David Siebert]

Tom's Hardware seems to be focusing more and more on gaming. That is bad. There is a myriad of gaming oriented websites already. I'm a business user, focused on productivity. I couldn't care less about gaming.

What kind of productivity? For your general office work, anything will work including a laptop. Most businesses do not build productivity desktops they buy from Dell or HP. If you are talking about "Content creation" like Video editing and you are using Adobe then get an Intel with as many cores, as much ram, and an Nvidia GPU with as much vram as you can afford. You will also have to get a good monitor and so on.
I am willing to bet you good money that most people building PCs are doing so for gaming or the joy of building one. Notice I said most but not all.

 

[Dantte]

I'm going to have to disagree with most of this, to start with all video cards listed are Nvidia, I'm going to guess there was some sponsorship $$$ in these builds??? The 7900XTX (RT excluded) is only beaten by the 4090, and at the price of a 4070ti there should be no consideration for the 4070 or 4080, yet these are in multiple builts in which there are clearly outclassed by a similar priced, and/or cheaper GPU.

All builds are "gaming" PC. The #1 component in a gaming PC should always be the GPU and you build the system around that with your available budget. That being said, many of the builds could benefit by using a cheaper processor and upping the GPU. The thought that you need to have something like a 7800X processor with a 4070ti for a $2000 PC is wrong, use a 5800X (or 5800X3D) with a 4080 or 79800XTX and save yourself some money with a much more powerful rig (for gaming).

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I'm going to have to disagree with most of this, to start with all video cards listed are Nvidia, I'm going to guess there was some sponsorship $$$ in these builds??? The 7900XTX (RT excluded) is only beaten by the 4090, and at the price of a 4070ti there should be no consideration for the 4070 or 4080, yet these are in multiple builts in which there are clearly outclassed by a similar priced, and/or cheaper GPU.

All builds are "gaming" PC. The #1 component in a gaming PC should always be the GPU and you build the system around that with your available budget. That being said, many of the builds could benefit by using a cheaper processor and upping the GPU. The thought that you need to have something like a 7800X processor with a 4070ti for a $2000 PC is wrong, use a 5800X (or 5800X3D) with a 4080 or 79800XTX and save yourself some money with a much more powerful rig (for gaming).

There's no sponsorship, but there are reasons Nvidia outsells AMD about four to one on graphics cards. Right now, at every price level, you generally end up with roughly similar rasterization performance for the same price, and Nvidia has better ray tracing plus DLSS to give it the win. Other features like AI also matter to plenty of people.

4080 Super or 7900 XTX? Nvidia wins on performance, AMD is $100 cheaper.
4070 Ti Super or 7900 XT? Nvidia is clearly faster, so AMD competes on price again — $100 cheaper
4070 Super or 7900 XT? This time, overall performance is nearly tied (faster rasterization on AMD, faster RT on Nvidia), so Nvidia competes on price — $100 cheaper.

Note also that Nvidia GPUs use less power for every comparison. Sure, it's "only" about 80~100W less (depending on card models), but that can add up. More heat, more noise, more electricity cost.

It's not that AMD cards are terrible or even bad, but it's entirely possible to make the argument at virtually any current price level that Nvidia's GPUs are better. And branding truly does matter to a lot of gamers — I probably get about ten to one in terms of people wanting Nvidia versus AMD GPUs from the people that ask me for advice.

Ultimately, this is an ecommerce piece along with building advice, and thus catering to what people tend to want helps it to perform better for the company.

(And I say all this as someone who does not maintain this page.)

 

[Dantte]

There's no sponsorship, but there are reasons Nvidia outsells AMD about four to one on graphics cards. Right now, at every price level, you generally end up with roughly similar rasterization performance for the same price, and Nvidia has better ray tracing plus DLSS to give it the win. Other features like AI also matter to plenty of people.

4080 Super or 7900 XTX? Nvidia wins on performance, AMD is $100 cheaper.
4070 Ti Super or 7900 XT? Nvidia is clearly faster, so AMD competes on price again — $100 cheaper
4070 Super or 7900 XT? This time, overall performance is nearly tied (faster rasterization on AMD, faster RT on Nvidia), so Nvidia competes on price — $100 cheaper.

Note also that Nvidia GPUs use less power for every comparison. Sure, it's "only" about 80~100W less (depending on card models), but that can add up. More heat, more noise, more electricity cost.

It's not that AMD cards are terrible or even bad, but it's entirely possible to make the argument at virtually any current price level that Nvidia's GPUs are better. And branding truly does matter to a lot of gamers — I probably get about ten to one in terms of people wanting Nvidia versus AMD GPUs from the people that ask me for advice.

Ultimately, this is an ecommerce piece along with building advice, and thus catering to what people tend to want helps it to perform better for the company.

(And I say all this as someone who does not maintain this page.)

I did clarify my previous comment to exclude RT, Nvidia is a clear winner here, its not even debatable, but if RT isnt important to the buyer, AMD starts being very attractive and better pricing for the same performance. IE i like to play FPS on a 240hz monitor and a friend makes fun of my because i have a 7900xtx and run games in what he calls "potato" mode where my 1% is like 239 frame rate, lol!

The difference in a 4080 super and 7900xtx is more like $300 ($1200 vs $900), not $100, and if you bought one on prime day the 7900xtx was $800 with a free $70 game, guess when i bought mine and i was trying to decide between the 4080 and 7900xtx myself... Now were at 4070ti super pricing and the 7900xtx is the clear performance winner. Yes the 4080 super does beat the 7900xtx in performance, but were also talking about a card that was just released, 8mos after the 7900xtx with 1 goal, to beat it... in 8mos is amd going to release a 7900xtx super to retake the crown, this is the game the two companies are playing right now and its kind of annoying.

im going to agree with the power, but i have never considered this when buying components. It exist, but does anyone actually care?

I dont agree with the perception and Nvidia being a perferred brand so it influenced the component choices. As an engineer myself, i like the raw data to decide what is best for my needs/wants, i dont want that "data" skewed because 9 out of 10 readers preceive nvidia is better so were going to give them what they want even if it may not be the best for all situations.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I dont agree with the perception and Nvidia being a perferred brand so it influenced the component choices. As an engineer myself, i like the raw data to decide what is best for my needs/wants, i dont want that "data" skewed because 9 out of 10 readers preceive nvidia is better so were going to give them what they want even if it may not be the best for all situations.

I'm not saying this is the only reason, but the purpose of ecommerce is to sell items to make money, via affiliate revenue. So, the ecomm team could in theory notice that systems that list an Nvidia GPU generate more clicks than systems that list an AMD GPU, and thus advise, "You should put in Nvidia GPUs because they make more money."

I don't think I've ever heard that exact directive from Future, but certainly there are routine comments and suggestions on ways to reorganize things to try to drive more clicks and make more money for the company. Tom's Hardware isn't quite as bad as other websites in this regard, because we know our readers are knowledgeable and so we give lots of details. But if you look around you'll find a lot of "best GPU" lists where the top picks are all Nvidia, and those are almost certainly an ecomm directive.

Incidentally, I'm pretty shocked at most of the current street prices on the 4080 Super. Like, it's a $999 MSRP, and I didn't think the 4080 was selling well at $1,199. I figured the price correction was necessary. There are routinely one or two models that will show up at like $1,049, but they go out of stock quite quickly.

Who is buying these!? I mean, seriously, the 4070 Ti Super has the same 16GB of memory, and the 4080 Super is only like 15~20 percent faster. Paying $999 for the 4080 Super I can totally see some people doing. $1,300+? Ludicrous! 4090 at $2,000+ because it has 24GB (and can thus run larger AI LLMs), at least makes a bit of sense.

 

[Joms89]

Has anyone actually successfully built the $500 build?

It's my first build, and I did some research, and tried to confirm compatibility but ultimately trusted the article. I first put it entirely together. It would turn on for approx. 30 seconds and then reboot until manually powered down. I then deconstructed it and ran a bench test, using only the MOBO, CPU and RAM but the PC still fails to boot. It powers on, and the CPU fan turns on, but it still just restarts every 30 seconds or so. There is no display.

I have cleared the CMOS and I've run through all the troubleshooting that I've learned about, that can be done without spare parts. I've tried multiple monitors. Everything has been seated and reseated, and installed correctly.

My thought is that one of the components was DOA, that the RAM isn't actually compatible or that the BIOS needs to be updated?

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.

 

[Aeacus]

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.

I suggest that you replace the PSU. Thermaltake Smart series is low quality PSU, essentially crap quality PSU.
For proper good quality PSU, look towards Seasonic Focus or Corsair RMi/RMx or Super Flower Leadex series.

Due to this, i have a beef with the entire build article and PSUs suggested in there.

Whether you’re spending $500 or $2,000 on components, we’ve picked out the perfect parts for your next PC build.

Let's get it crystal clear: PSU is the most important component inside the PC because it powers everything!

Almost none of the PSUs suggested for the builds should not be used.
Tt Smart series is crap quality.
Corsair CXm, at best, is mediocre quality, good for office PC but not enough for gaming build.
Corsair RMe is better than CXm but not much.

With this, at best, i'd expect to see Corsair RMe in $500 build.
Starting from $800 build, a good quality PSU, like Seasonic Focus or Corsair RMi/RMx or Super Flower Leadex Gold is suggested.
Fro $1000 and up builds, Seasonic Focus or Corsair RMi/RMx or Super Flower Leadex Gold can easily carry all the way to $2000 build (this included).
But for $4000+ build, i'd expect to see the very best regarding PSUs. Currently, PSU is 2nd most cheapest component in that build. Are you kidding me? At that price point, for bare minimum, i'd expect to see Seasonic Vertex or Corsair HXi or Super Flower Leadex Platinum in there, in 1200W range. Whereby Seasonic PRIME ATX 3.0 or Corsair AXi or Super Flower Leadex Titanium in 1600W range is preferred.

It is disgusting to see PSU cheaped out on, in official publication.
Don't have enough money to buy better PSU? Easy, buy cheaper GPU/CPU. But never cheap out on PSU!

 

[logainofhades]

Corsair CXM is fine enough for budget gaming rigs. A chip like the 5600/5700x, or an LGA 1700 i3 / locked i5 and an RX 6600 would be just fine with a CX650m. The big problem is the price. For $11 more you can get a 750w Thermaltake Toughpower gold with a 10yr warranty. For low budget rigs, I would start there.