System Builder Marathon: $1,250 Mid-Range PC

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64 bit operation system is an eventuality after seeing games (like GTA 4) uses up to 3.8 Gb of system ram at 1280X1024 and low to medium settings! 3 Gigs ain't enough no more!!
 
The power source was overkilling. Two Antec NeoPower 430 430 W ATX12V can be soldered (it only takes one or two pin soldered. I think of them is Pin14).

An you can match even higher power and reduce costs soldering two or tree cheaper power sources.

Any enthusiast who does overclocking, can soldier a cooper thread!! (and save money,which can be invested on a better video card.)
 
[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]The power source was overkilling. Two Antec NeoPower 430 430 W ATX12V can be soldered (it only takes one or two pin soldered. I think of them is Pin14).An you can match even higher power and reduce costs soldering two or tree cheaper power sources.Any enthusiast who does overclocking, can soldier a cooper thread!! (and save money,which can be invested on a better video card.)[/citation]
Can you show the way to do it please? a link to a guide or something?
 
[citation][nom]JeanLuc[/nom]The temps were a little worrying but the Intel Stock cooler isn’t designed with overclocking in mind and you can pretty much guarantee a decent 3rd party cooler will slash those temps by a third.[/citation]

Not to be offensive, but I giggle whenever I see this statement. Considering we all truly have no factual information as to what the new temperature thresholds are. This was true when the P3 first came out, P4, P4c, P4e, Core 2 Duo etc. 😀

I do agree with all of your other points though!
 
I forgot to add a positive comment about the article itself!

This was a great article, and it really could be seen as a good basis for building a system around this price range. Simple things like case choice / psu can add several hundred if you're not careful. Also seeing a mobo choice of decent price / performance built up to be overclocked by TH gives me a lot more faith.
 
I don't see a real point getting a 4850x2 as it is a "special" product. You would end up with better driver support going with a regular 4870x2. Of course to keep the budget you have to bargain hunt a little but for the constantly updated drivers and much higher userbase and of course the higher fps a 4870x2 is a "safer" choice.
 
A 4870 X2 is ~200 bucks more than the 4850 X2 and Newegg has pretty much the best prices you're going to find. It's not like they are going to get a used one off of ebay - the point of these articles is to build a system typical of what an average (computer savy) joe could get for a certain amount of money.
 
I've been reading tom's Articles for about a year and this is my 1st post, I think it would've been very informative if you included a chart comparing December's build with4870X2 against November build(at least it would shed some light on the value of Core i7 for gaming versus C2D)
 
[citation][nom]avatar_raq[/nom]Can you show the way to do it please? a link to a guide or something?[/citation]Here is more

Check the links from the first post on how to make a dual power supply

For the lazy enthusiast, here is a cable ready for use (for 15$)

here some random link:
(I not read it)
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache...+add+a+second+power+supply&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2

There are four problems to avoid:
1- Grounding all the power supplies, to the same ground voltage, to avoid having different voltage differential than standard. Easy, just short (make contact) some of the the ground/black wires.
2- Make the second power supply power on at the same time than the Power supply connected to mother. Easy. The pin 14 (if I remember well), who is commonly green, should be short circuited to ground, for the power supply to start.
3- Noise. One power supply fan is noisy. Two or tree are more noisy. Choose cheap power supplies, but silent ones.
4- Heat. Power supplies produce heat, so you need to be sure all the fans from them throw air to outside (really, having more fans trowing air out can reduce the case temperature, compared to only one power fan.

Finally, you may need a bigger case to house the power supplies.

And Do no connect different power supplies.
 
I really enjoyed this article, and although the conclusion isn't "wrong" it is "narrow-minded". What I mean is that although you're sacrificing a bit of gaming performance, the i7 build is clearly better suited for a system builder with an eye to the future.

If I was building a $1250 rig right now, I'd be inclined to go with the Core i7 and sacrifice a bit of performance (which will only really be noticeable at the highest settings and highest resolution or the most demanding games). Then, in a few/several months, you could upgrade a single component (the GPU). The alternative is to get the absolute top performance you can currently have, but there really isn't much upgrade potential left.
 
If gaming is what you are building this system for, then I would personally go for a high-clocked dual-core CPU as they are the best bang for the buck at the moment and a more expensive video card. It's obvious that Crysis is still GPU limited, as a Core 2 Duo will do much of the same thing as the Nehalem unless you are using two 4870x2 in CrossFireX or three GTX 280 in 3-way SLI. That being said, my system for the month would be:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 4Ghz (444 FSB * 9) - $164.99
CPU Cooler: ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 - $49.99
Motherboard: ASUS P5Q3 (P45 + ICH10R) - $149.99
Memory: OCZ Platinum 2*2GB DDR2-800 @ DDR2-888 - $61.99
Graphics: ASUS EAH4870X2 Tri-Fans Cooling Design (OC-ed to maximum stable frequencies) - $509.99
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB - $79.99
Sound & Network: Onboard - $0
Power: Corsair 650TX - $99.99
Case: Antec Nine Hundred - $109.99
Optical: LITE-ON 20x DVD Burner - $20.99

TOTAL: $1247.91

I am pretty sure this PC will beat TOM's in almost every game, but will be quite slower when it comes to CPU intensive applications. As current games are not that multi-threaded, I don't see any point in getting a quad-core CPU for gamming at this moment if you are planning to spend your money wise. Quad-cores will almost certainly take off later this year (2009), but as for December 2008, dual-cores are probably the best bang for the buck (unless you are building your rig for video/picture editing, highly-thread applications, file conversion, extreme multi-tasking, etc. 😉 )
 
just built a similar system with the same processor, & mobo. vista 64 bit. enermax 650w PSU. our original sapphire vid card = "windows has disabled this device, it has problems". bios will not post from a cold computer until 5 minutes or so. then posts/boots, then fine in shutdown/restarts. once it gets cold, the no post cycle repeats. trying to track down the problem. it's a pain!
 
[citation][nom]stef2503[/nom]If gaming is what you are building this system for...[/citation]

Ah! But it isn't!

The system was made for a combination of work and play, with an eye to stick within the $1250 budget frame. The secondary objective was to see if the new 920 could stand up to the E8500 from a budgetary standpoint.

Of course, if it was a pure gaming build, we would have concentrated more on the graphics end. :)
 
Wanker 79 is on the money! I'm curently building 2 x58(UD5) i7-920 systems, but with 6Gb 1333 Gskill RAM and I've chosen the Gigabyte GXT260+ OC graphics (I prefer Nvidia drivers). ATM Graphics IS the bottleneck. In 6-12 months, I'll upgrade my "cheaper" graphics card for less later. That's more bank for buck into the future, not just for now - hopefully I'll get an extra year or two at the other end!
 
I would absolutely love to see a comparison between the Q9550 and the i7 920!!! This would be incredibly useful for those of us who plan to upgrade in the next few months.

Whoohoo!
 
I recently purchased this setup, the only thing I changed was the dual 4850's for a single Asus 4870 1gig. Problem I have is hit the power button and the computer just keeps restarting over and over. Only way I can prevent this is remove all the memory modules. Real bummer, not sure if this system is going to live, guess we will see how gigabytes customre service is.
 
As part of productivity benchmarks I'd like to see some VM related ones. Running VMware Player or Workstation.
 
I'd really like to see a $1,250 comparison between the dual core, and quad core systems.

Is the money spent on a quad worth it, compared to what you COULD spend on faster RAM, different MoBo, better vidcard, etc?

I suspect the two systems would look very different, and have very different performance peaks.
 
I would get 4870 1GB Instead. Then get LG Super-Blu DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe (125 @ bestbuy). So now ur computer can play blu rays, still burn, play games almost as well. And I believe you end up saving some money. Also don't think 640 is necessary. don't most people have seperate system for real storage. really these systems they post only need enough storage to run the apps.
 
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