System Builder Marathon, August 2012: $2000 Performance PC

[Crashman]

We took our highest-priced build back to the drawing board to focus on features, rather than price. Can I compete with the less expensive configurations without spending all of my time worrying about benchmark results? Tomorrow's analysis will be telling.

System Builder Marathon, August 2012: $2000 Performance PC : Read more

 

[Darkerson]

Interesting setup. I would have favored a way beefier single GPU or a nice dual GPU setup, but I mainly only game, and dont do a lot of encoding or whatnot.

 

[Guest]

The contest opens on August 20, 2012 9:00 PM PDT and closes on September 3, 2012 9:00 PM PDT.

So... i notice now that it opens at August 20, not August 19 when the $500 SBM appeared. I submitted my entry at August 19 10:30 PM. So that means that i haven't entered into the sweepstakes, or did i? I am confused, cause only one entry can be accepted.

 

[Guest]

Nice quality build! Enough said!

 

[trumpeter1994]

That has got to be one of the luckiest GTX 670s I've ever seen.

 

[sarinaide]

i5-3570k/i7-3770k
Gigabyte G1 Assassin Z77
120GB SSD
500GB HDD
2xGTX 670
2x4GB DDR3 1866

And still probably cheaper with obviously better performance.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]sarinaide[/nom]i5-3570k/i7-3770kGigabyte G1 Assassin Z77120GB SSD500GB HDD2xGTX 6702x4GB DDR3 1866And still probably cheaper with obviously better performance.[/citation]Probably not, unless you're only testing games. But we should probably test that anyway. Does anyone else want to see it?

 

[zander1983]

Ditch the BR Writer, get a BR combo drive and save yourself $60

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]zander1983[/nom]Ditch the BR Writer, get a BR combo drive and save yourself $60[/citation]Sorry, I don't see any combo drives for $30 so the savings would be much less than $60. Plus, you'd lose BD-RE backup capability, which can be handy.

 

[sarinaide]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Probably not, unless you're only testing games. But we should probably test that anyway. Does anyone else want to see it?[/citation]

It would be very interesting, the IvyBridge chips in productivity numbers hold quite well with the SB-E chips that is the only area which should be a contest.

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

16GB ram pointless imo. 2 TB 5400rpm hdd? ...i rather get a 1 TB 7200 rpm hdd. i7 3970k ... i rather get the i7 3770k. From theese i would squeeze in a gtx 680.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Probably not, unless you're only testing games. But we should probably test that anyway. Does anyone else want to see it?[/citation]

2x670 is overkill for 1920x1080.
But a 2000$ build is already overkill. So this SLI setup is OK

 

[bawchicawawa]

Should have cut some corners on some 'overkill' items and gone with sli 660 ti's or a single 680.

 

[namelessted]

I am sorry. This is one of the dumbest builds I have seen in a long time. It is almost as if the person who put this together was just a complete noob to PC building. Its like they just went to CPU and found a really expensive one and decided to get it.

I just tossed a build together on PC Partpicker that would absolutely DESTROY this build.

CPU - 3570K
CPU Cooler - Corsair H100
Mobo - ASUS P8Z77-V
RAM - Corsair Dominator Platinum 8GB (2x4GB) 1600
SSD - Corsair Force GS 360GB
GPU - ASUS GTX670 x2 in SLI
Case - Corsair 550D
PSU - Corsair AX750
Optical - Asus whatever

If you purchased everything from Newegg it would be $2070. Yes, a bit over the budget, but I am sure I could trim that off somewhere without too much difficulty. I definitely didn't go with the best valued products in my build. The Platinum ram is double the price of their normal RAM, but it fit with the theme espoused by the author of this article of having a QUALITY build, which I totally agree with.

On the subject of quality, I have chosen a better cooler, better case, and better PSU. How can anybody seriously justify buying a non-modular PSU for a $2k build? That is insane to me. I wish I had the $2k to actually put this build together with a couple of tweaks and put it up against Soderstrom's build and watch him weep as his system gets destroyed.

Also, I realize I haven't selected a storage drive. I just went with one big SSD. Yes, the 2TB is nice, but I don't think most people actually need that kind of storage, and if you are somebody that does need it, it is a separate cost that should be part of the main build, IMO. Similarly, we typically don't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. pricing into builds. I think mass storage needs to join this category.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]namelessted[/nom]I am sorry. This is one of the dumbest builds I have seen in a long time...[/citation]No, it's just you (the noob thing). These gaming resolutions are too low to take advantage of SLI, and this one DESTROYS yours in this benchmark set.

Your config would only be better if there were significant changes to the benchmark set.

 

[Mac_McMan]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]No, it's just you (the noob thing). These gaming resolutions are too low to take advantage of SLI, and this one DESTROYS yours in this benchmark set.Your config would only be better if there were significant changes to the benchmark set.[/citation]You were right the first time, you can tell by the language he's trolling

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Mac_McMan[/nom]You were right the first time, you can tell by the language he's trolling[/citation]OK then, ignoring the hate and going back to rational response, Sarinaide recommended a PAIR of GTX 670's, a 3570K, a Gigabyte Z77 board and 8GB RAM. But this still needs to be a $2000 PC or else it becomes an "enhancement" of yesterday's $1000 build.

I'm going to take a long shot and say, blow the leftover money on quad SLI support. That could lead to even more tests down the road, no?

Of course an Ivy Bridge SLI build would still lose under this benchmark set, so it would need to be tested at higher gaming resolutions. Is everyone OK with 5760x1080?

 

[namelessted]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]OK then, ignoring the hate and going back to rational response, Sarinaide recommended a PAIR of GTX 670's, a 3570K, a Gigabyte Z77 board and 8GB RAM. But this still needs to be a $2000 PC or else it becomes an "enhancement" of yesterday's $1000 build.I'm going to take a long shot and say, blow the leftover money on quad SLI support. That could lead to even more tests down the road, no?Of course an Ivy Bridge SLI build would still lose under this benchmark set, so it would need to be tested at higher gaming resolutions. Is everyone OK with 5760x1080?[/citation]

Have you looked at the test results? The old build with a GTX680 beats the current build when you look at maximum settings at 2560x1600. Let me say this again, at the highest settings and full resolution the old build with the GTX680 beats the current build on every single game tested in this article. Every single game.

A 670 SLI setup would only further the performance gap.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]namelessted[/nom]Have you looked at the test results? The old build with a GTX680 beats the current build when you look at maximum settings at 2560x1600. Let me say this again, at the highest settings and full resolution the old build with the GTX680 beats the current build on every single game tested in this article. Every single game.A 670 SLI setup would only further the performance gap.[/citation]Games make up 30% of the benchmark set. 2560x1600 makes up 25% of gaming scores. Therefore, 2560x1600 performance makes up 7.5% of the overall value score.

On the other hand, heavily-threaded programs make up 50% of the encoding and 75% of the productivity benchmarks. That's 37.5% (15%+22.5%) of the benchmark totals. 37.5% is a much larger portion than 7.5%, so 3930K+GTX 670 beats 3570+SLI. It's simple math, and the only way to change that math is to change the benchmarks.

Really, dropping the 3930K only furthers the performance gap.

 

[namelessted]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Games make up 30% of the benchmark set. 2560x1600 makes up 25% of gaming scores. Therefore, 2560x1600 performance makes up 7.5% of the overall value score.On the other hand, heavily-threaded programs make up 50% of the encoding and 75% of the productivity benchmarks. That's 37.5% (15%+22.5%) of the benchmark totals. 37.5% is a much larger portion than 7.5%, so 3930K+GTX 670 beats 3570+SLI. It's simple math, and the only way to change that math is to change the benchmarks.Really, dropping the 3930K only furthers the performance gap.[/citation]

First, I would argue that when it comes to a $2k build, the only thing that matters in terms of gaming benchmarks are the max settings and resolution. When you are spending that much, it literally doesn't matter how well it can do on mid settings and 1080p. Completely irrelevant.

Secondly, I might have to argue that the benchmarks should be changed to better reflect real-world scenarios instead of reporting Sandra numbers.

It is just extremely frustrating to see a build like this. With $2k there is so much potential to put together a truly great and balanced machine. This build is far from that. Soderstrom had all that money, and it just feels like he picked out a crazy CPU and then just went down the line and picked random other hardware. I also realize some of the choices are personal preference. I personally think the Phantom 410 just looks awful. When I see a case that looks like that, it makes me think of a 14 year old kid building a "cool" PC.

There is also that fact that every single component in this build all come from different companies. For budget builds that absolutely makes sense. You have to find deals where they are and that pretty much always means buying different brands. But, he had $2000. It is just something that makes no sense to me, to open up a PC and see that every single component not matching up in any way.

The whole build just feels like Soderstrom picked a CPU, and then just added the rest of the parts to the cart and he just didn't save the proper budget for a GPU and decided to downgrade it instead of figuring out where money was just being wasted.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]namelessted[/nom]The whole build just feels like Soderstrom picked a CPU...[/citation]Soderstrom didn't pick any of the major components. Back in the Q2 SBM, readers complained that they wanted an SB-E and LGA-2011 in the $2000 machine. Readers also complained about the price of its GTX 680, since the GTX 670 performed almost as well for much less money (the GTX 670 wasn't available when the order was placed). Readers also complained that the SSD should not have been shrunken from the Q1 system's 240GB. So you're complaining about reader picks in the 3930K, single GTX 670 (not enough money left for two), and 240 GB SSD.

So your real beef is with your fellow readers, not the builder of this machine.

 

[doggysoft]

Who will spend 2000$ on PC good enough for encoding a f*cking video clip... for this kind of money you'd like to hook up 3 monitors and play!

 

[noob2222]

should just rename these to intel buildoffs. I thought the purpose of these builds were to show different configurations and what you can do differently to see the end results. Here we have an entire year of builds and one AMD build using a mediocre quarter-disabled cpu. Thats right, 12 builds 11 of wich are intel. Not to mention the AMD build was before windows scheduler repairs that are now part of the windows automatic update.

If you guys hate FX that much, there are still phenoms that can be purchased cheap, show how they stand up a year after they were replaced with the new video cards. Especially the $500 build. I wouldn't even try BF3 online with a dual core cpu. you should load it up and see just how low you have to run the graphics. sure, single player will work, thats it.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]noob2222[/nom]should just rename these to intel buildoffs. I thought the purpose of these builds were to show different configurations and what you can do differently to see the end results. Here we have an entire year of builds and one AMD build using a mediocre quarter-disabled cpu. Thats right, 12 builds 11 of wich are intel. Not to mention the AMD build was before windows scheduler repairs that are now part of the windows automatic update.If you guys hate FX that much, there are still phenoms that can be purchased cheap, show how they stand up a year after they were replaced with the new video cards. Especially the $500 build. I wouldn't even try BF3 online with a dual core cpu. you should load it up and see just how low you have to run the graphics. sure, single player will work, thats it.[/citation]That response should go into the $500 build's thread. AMD isn't competing at the top right now.

 

[noob2222]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]That response should go into the $500 build's thread. AMD isn't competing [strike]at the top right now.[/strike][/citation]
you mean at all? actaully it probably should be in tomorrow's roundup. I was trying to get a feel of why you guys hate amd so much or if these builds are just for intel only from here on out.