System Builder Marathon: $2,500 Enthusiast PC

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[citation][nom]SirSuperSouthern[/nom]The assertion that purchasing 3 GPUs is good bang-for-the-buck is insulting. The whole point of this month’s comparison to October’s is the value that can be had now compared to back then.[/citation]
Investing in high-end 3D-GPU hardware is always a bad investment. That goes for the majority of pc hardware. What i find anoying is this; why didn't they used the same 4870 x2 in pair and see what the i7 is capable off against the s775 ?


[citation]
Its unconscionable to recommend/defend the idea of buying 3 mid-high range cards now when everybody knows that the 3-series cards are due out in less than 6 months. Why would you wanna do that to anybody?[/citation]
6 months is a long time for PC Hardware. In six months, there will be somthing else to wait for; etc.etc. Now, if it was a month or so, you would have a point.

[citation]
Nice one, you pedantic company-man, but two can play that game. When Chris said “Ferrari”, he was making a generalization to top-brand cars. Porche drivers are “enthusiasts” because they… stay with me now… OWN a top flight car. Its like they have a couple 280s instead of 4870X2s. That makes them… stay with me now… “enthusiasts”. They put their money where their mouth is.[/citation]
So, what does this tell us ? You are not getting top-dog performance from 2x HD4870x2 at anything less then 2560x1600! At lower resolutions there are other solutions that dare to beat the "top dog" !

Triple-Sli have every right to be here; Three GTX260 beat two GTX280 and two HD4870 x2. For a better price!

Your rant sounds silly; like you are not willing to take into account that there is a driver issue; something, that can be fixed! It only occurs at one or two games. It's like saying; that Ferrari is a piece of crap; it can't go fast on Monza! Hey, just like pc-hardware; those cars needs to be tweaked; again and again; for every track a different setup.

The only idiot i see here, is nobody else but you. Asuming i know you; you won't see it yourself. That's oke though 🙂

 
Honestly I'd ditch all the Nvidia cards and go with a single 4870x2. Additionally change the Evga for ASUS P6T6 WS. Subsequently, since I am a true enthusiast, not just OC aspiring gamer I'd place two Fujitsu MBA3300 MBA3147RC 147GB 15000 RPM there. As pointed in previous comments I'd also put 6GB of RAM instead of 3.
Additionally, Windows may not support PAE but Linux does so bourgeoisdude can shut up. The comment about RAID 5 against RAID 0 performance he/she made is hilarious and incompetent.
Finally if I want redundancy I'd go for RAID 1 and that's it.
So yeah, guys, do you not consult each other when writing articles anymore? As stated in a previous comment you are being rather controversial given your previous articles about 3 way SLI. One more hint. Guys, if I'm an enthusiast I'm pretty sure I'd have some spare HDDs for storage and would like to improve my storage's performance. Why get 3TB indeed?
 
I really didn't have an issue with the 2TB RAID-5 (3x1TB). I also don't think that Enthusiast=Gamer; not necessarily. Maybe this one is also a rabid media-downloader, or likes to mess around with video. At the $2500 price point, buying smaller drives seems an unrealistic choice of where to be frugal. If, in this case, our Enthusiast IS strictly a gamer, there are other options, as there would be if he is instead a non-gaming avid day-trader, or a sports-statistics nut. On the whole though, I thought this drive setup made a lot of sense.
My issue with the triple-GPU SLI setup is I can't see it being cost effective. I'm beginning to see more clearly the convergence of inputs / constraints that led THG to make this choice, but IMHO the only person who would actually build such a system is likely spending money he didn't have to earn himself, and doesn't [yet] have a sense of value.
 
SirSuper why don't just shut-up! If you hate THW so mush -well that's what it looks like from yor futile argument- leave this site and find another one, one that only targets "papa where T.F. is the 7000$ for this month's new PC?" spoilies like you..
And you Chris and Thomas! You both should have neglected him once he started throwing meaningless insults!
I join the vote for 6 Gb of ram and x64 OS, kind of wished you build an insane 4500$ system and show us what's capable of.
On a side note; GTA 4 uses up to 3.8 Gb of ram @ low to medium settings and 1280x1024!!! I know it's still un-optimized, but it surely made 4 Gb a must for any gaming PC..
Again thanks for all the efforts you put in this article, keep up yhe good work!
 
Guys:
1. A single HD 4870 X2 might be a better value, but it's still slower than the 3x graphics used here, and it wouldn't make this a $2500 system.
2. Nobody at THG cares if a few readers think 2TB is "too much storage", because a 1TB RAID 5 array made of 500GB drives would have cost almost as much. The RAID 1 from October had similar performance issues, hardware RAID cards are expensive, SSD's are TOO SMALL and too expensive, etc.
3. 3GB RAM was used to resolve a software issue, feel free to use 6GB, or even 12.
 
Guys, as far as 3-way SLI... we have already seen it can scale very well with Core i7. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-gaming,2061-13.html

Personally I feel the three GTX 260's offered the best performance for the allotted GPU budget, and therefore were a great choice. I would be thrilled to game on that system. Sure, (as is typical)depending on the desired games/resolution, it may or may not be a good option for each individual. But is there a GPU solution for the price that performs better overall?

 
[citation][nom]DavidGBailey[/nom]With 3TB of storage it should be called the 2500$ pirates build. AARRGGHH!![/citation]

D00D, if you're not going to read the article at least read the comments: That's a 2TB array, and it was picked as a low-cost path to RAID 5. The options for data security were two drives in RAID 1 or three drives in RAID 5, well, with 3-drive RAID 5 you only lose 1/3 the capacity. The drives were picked for being high-value performance drives: Anything faster would have cost much more money, and anything smaller would have cost very little less money.

Now if you think about it, pirating say 1.5TB of data would take...forever. But this PC has HD-DVD read capabilities. Because HD-DVD is a dead format, we've seen HD movies selling for as little as $2.

Low cost high-capacity drives and a path towards using them to cheaply store purchased, high-def movies sounds like a winner. And if you think that this level of storage is only for pirated HD movies, try downloading 30GB of data and let us know how it goes 😛
 
Actually you can fill up a large HDD if you're into photography and video. 60MB TIFF files and 12MB RAW files can add up quickly. If you record regularly to a video recorder with an internal HDD that easily can take up space as well.
 
[citation][nom]engrpiman[/nom]Whay use intergrated sound? drop a hard drive and add a sound card[/citation]
Are you kidding? First, and for most, integrated sound chips are great nowadays. Second, add-on sound cards are relatively costy and add almost nothing other than more CPU load. Honestly I can't figure how Creative and ASUS xonar are still being manufactured!
 
I hope you guys (THG employees) get a lot of vacation time because some of the comments you have to put up with drive me nuts, and I'm not even on your payroll. I read all 6 pages of posts and how many times did someone ask why you didn't use 6GBs of ram. half a dozen? Ridiculous. Read the review, read the posts.

But my real point (and the reason for posting) is the comment earlier about why this rig was not water cooled. Man that annoys me considering the absolute lashing THG got a few months ago for their system builder marathon rig that DID have water cooling. Any what happened? Everyone was in an uproar about it. "oh you don't need water cooling" "it costs too much" "water cooling is overkill" Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. And because of so much hoopla over that water cooling incident you took the kind time to start renaming these rigs 'enthusiast' machines which anyone with a brain would realize it already was for enthusiasts; not for grandma to check gmail.

I appreciate the ability to post quickly and anonymously but boy I wish there was a way to keep flamers from posting just to start fights.

-Bob-
 
But my real point (and the reason for posting) is the comment earlier about why this rig was not water cooled. Man that annoys me considering the absolute lashing THG got a few months ago for their system builder marathon rig that DID have water cooling. Any what happened? Everyone was in an uproar about it. "oh you don't need water cooling" "it costs too much" "water cooling is overkill" Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. And because of so much hoopla over that water cooling incident you took the kind time to start renaming these rigs 'enthusiast' machines which anyone with a brain would realize it already was for enthusiasts; not for grandma to check gmail.
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QFT. +1. Water cooling (imo) is one of the key items that separate hard core 'enthusiast' gaming rigs from the rest. I don't know why people think water cooling is a waste. True, if you don't OC like hell,etc and you don't need a very quiet rig then WC is pointless. But for a 'enthusiast' PC WC is good.
 
[citation][nom]Shadow703793[/nom]QFT. +1. Water cooling (imo) is one of the key items that separate hard core 'enthusiast' gaming rigs from the rest. I don't know why people think water cooling is a waste. True, if you don't OC like hell,etc and you don't need a very quiet rig then WC is pointless. But for a 'enthusiast' PC WC is good.[/citation]

Yeh, it's unfortunate that Newegg didn't have any water blocks for LGA-1366. I believe they still aren't stocking them. They carry Swiftech, and Swiftech has a new block, so I'm hoping to see it there.
 
I just want to say, I have followed toms hardware for years. I regularly read the articles. And I think they are all great. I also really enjoy the SBM articles. And I wanted to ask if you all might consider some additions to it?

In particular, (and I realize this is difficult to believe) there are still many of us hardware geeks that don't play games anymore. Many of us also don't have the time or patience for extreme cooling and over-clocking endeavors. So I would personally Love to see some SBMs for say Productivity PCs and/or HTPCs. Even if you didn’t write Entry, Mid, and High-End levels for both each month, maybe you could just do an Entry level HTPC and Productivity one month. Then write a Mid level article of each the 2nd month. Finally, write a High-End level article of each the 3rd month, then start over.

If you do consider adding those, I would also say that those of us, like myself, that do not have as much time for gaming and testing, would also like to see more info on how you choose and configure components and less on over-clocking them. Don’t get me wrong Over-clocking is great! But many of us don’t have the time to invest in rerunning burn-ins and benchmarks over and over to determine stability levels at different settings to get the most tweak out of every component. Personally, I stick to stock speeds, pre-overclocked components, or only perform the easy and relatively safe overclocks, so that I can usually have a solid system within 2 or 3 runs.

Back to choosing and configuring components. I would love to see helpful information on things like how various hard drive configurations, speeds, software and hardware RAID levels affect performance. How various architectures affect performance for using the system for Virtualization like VMware ESXi and Server 2008.

Anyway, that was probably too much for one post, but hey, that’s my 2 cents for ya…

Regards,
TechDicky
 
I think that MSI Eclipse is the fantastic motherboard within X58 chipest.
That content features mre than any motherboard within X58 chipest
 
I just want to say, I have followed toms hardware for years. I regularly read the articles. And I think they are all great. I also really enjoy the SBM articles. And I wanted to ask if you all might consider some additions to it?

In particular, (and I realize this is difficult to believe) there are still many of us hardware geeks that don't play games anymore. Many of us also don't have the time or patience for extreme cooling and over-clocking endeavors. So I would personally Love to see some SBMs for say Productivity PCs and/or HTPCs. Even if you didn’t write Entry, Mid, and High-End levels for both each month, maybe you could just do an Entry level HTPC and Productivity one month. Then write a Mid level article of each the 2nd month. Finally, write a High-End level article of each the 3rd month, then start over.

If you do consider adding those, I would also say that those of us, like myself, that do not have as much time for gaming and testing, would also like to see more info on how you choose and configure components and less on over-clocking them. Don’t get me wrong Over-clocking is great! But many of us don’t have the time to invest in rerunning burn-ins and benchmarks over and over to determine stability levels at different settings to get the most tweak out of every component. Personally, I stick to stock speeds, pre-overclocked components, or only perform the easy and relatively safe overclocks, so that I can usually have a solid system within 2 or 3 runs.

Back to choosing and configuring components. I would love to see helpful information on things like how various hard drive configurations, speeds, software and hardware RAID levels affect performance. How various architectures affect performance for using the system for Virtualization like VMware ESXi and Server 2008.

Anyway, that was probably too much for one post, but hey, that’s my 2 cents for ya…

Regards,
TechDicky
Click to expand...



After I read this comment, I thought the same thing. Then later I thought "well, not exactly." If you review the components you can see that this machine has heaps of storage. We know the intended use of this space is for movies, music, pictures, and documents as well as games. If we were only concerned about gaming then we would have spent those dollars on a lot less storage and spent more on processor, video, cooling, etc.

Secondly, there is an included blu-ray / HD-DVD player which a strict gaming rig builder would quickly bench for a $30 Liteon to save even more money. This move I'm sure is in the interest of watching movies, ripping movies, etc.

However, I do absolutely agree with you about seeing more non-gaming oriented machines. I myself would like to build a HTPC and it would be nice to see a monthly build or two. (there has been a few i know that were great) I merely wanted to point out that this machine was not solely gaming oriented and it is quite obvious THG is trying hard to make it a gaming machine with the ability to be an all around home pc. This machine can play all the most demanding games, play all your movies no matter the format, and store all your pics and torrents. I like it.
 
[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]D00D, if you're not going to read the article at least read the comments: That's a 2TB array, and it was picked as a low-cost path to RAID 5. The options for data security were two drives in RAID 1 or three drives in RAID 5, well, with 3-drive RAID 5 you only lose 1/3 the capacity. The drives were picked for being high-value performance drives: Anything faster would have cost much more money, and anything smaller would have cost very little less money.Now if you think about it, pirating say 1.5TB of data would take...forever. But this PC has HD-DVD read capabilities. Because HD-DVD is a dead format, we've seen HD movies selling for as little as $2.Low cost high-capacity drives and a path towards using them to cheaply store purchased, high-def movies sounds like a winner. And if you think that this level of storage is only for pirated HD movies, try downloading 30GB of data and let us know how it goes[/citation]

You're using an archaic technology in your argument. And I wasn't the only person to recommend dropping the HD's for something more useful, just a preference. And it was a joke. AARRGGHH!!!
 
[citation][nom]bobbyd[/nom]After I read this comment, I thought the same thing. Then later I thought "well, not exactly." If you review the components you can see that this machine has heaps of storage. We know the intended use of this space is for movies, music, pictures, and documents as well as games. If we were only concerned about gaming then we would have spent those dollars on a lot less storage and spent more on processor, video, cooling, etc.Secondly, there is an included blu-ray / HD-DVD player which a strict gaming rig builder would quickly bench for a $30 Liteon to save even more money. This move I'm sure is in the interest of watching movies, ripping movies, etc. However, I do absolutely agree with you about seeing more non-gaming oriented machines. I myself would like to build a HTPC and it would be nice to see a monthly build or two. (there has been a few i know that were great) I merely wanted to point out that this machine was not solely gaming oriented and it is quite obvious THG is trying hard to make it a gaming machine with the ability to be an all around home pc. This machine can play all the most demanding games, play all your movies no matter the format, and store all your pics and torrents. I like it.[/citation]

Absolutely agreed bobbyd. I did not mean to imply that these were strictly gaming rigs and they are certainly very versatile builds. Well equipped for many of the typical home users needs.

But they do cater more to gaming than other uses. For example on all three of the SBMs this month, the graphics solutions ranged from at least 24% of the total budget to as much as 33% of the budget. While the storage solutions ranged from 7% to 13% of the solution and focused almost exclusively on capacity rather than performance. The cheapest storage solution was used in the Mid range system. Likewise the memory ranged from 3% to 8%. This time the 3% went to the High-End system. Finally even though many of these would have served well the technical needs for a Media Center or HTPC, they were all more than likely too large and too loud for a true HTPC.

I think we would find that well build HTPCs and Productivity computers would have been versatile as well. Of course they would not fair nearly as well at gaming but could be well rounded for most non-gaming use.

So, once again, I agree that these are versatile machines and I am not trying to take anything away from them. Just giving the authors my opinion on some additional builds not replacement builds.

Regards,
TechDickey
 
You could get 12 GB's of RAM and a solid SLC drive instead of 3TB of storage...would have much bigger performance impacts...3x SLI? Alil outrageous
 
[citation][nom]Claimintru[/nom]You could get 12 GB's of RAM and a solid SLC drive instead of 3TB of storage[/citation]

Where are you going to get all that for $300? And how many 1TB hard drives do you plan to add WITH that SSD just to make it a viable system? Because an SSD is rediculously small for nearly anything, unless you get a ludicrously-expensive 256GB version, which is just about fine for surfing the net and playing a few games.

Oh, I get it, use a 128MB SSD and load only a few games. Then, put in a lesser graphics solution and PRETEND it's a gaming PC. Great suggestions, all outrageous.
 
[citation][nom]Claimintru[/nom]You could get 12 GB's of RAM and a solid SLC drive instead of 3TB of storage...would have much bigger performance impacts...3x SLI? Alil outrageous[/citation]

In the comments Crashman said that they only used 3gb just for testing purposes. He also said that to feel free using 64bit vista and 6gb or more of ram.
 
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