System Builder Marathon, August 2012: Alternative $2000 Gaming PC

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[citation][nom]hapkido[/nom]You can get two high-end GPUs, an i7, 240GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and Blu-ray burner in a $2000 build. Proof --CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K $339.99Cooler: COOLER MASTER V6 $57.99Mobo: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 $134.99RAM: Patriot Gamer 2 Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 $85.99GPU: DIAMOND Radeon HD 7970 x2 $819.98SSD: Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 240GB SATA III $179.99HDD: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM $84.99Optical: LG Blu-ray burner $69.99Case: Antec Eleven Hundred $99.99PSU: RAIDMAX 850W 80 PLUS GOLD $119.99Total: $1993.89The writers are always making it seem like you have to make huge compromises with a $2000 build. You don't have to --there are no compromises here compared to original build except the CPU, but you get the extra GPU most readers were asking for.[/citation]

Raidmax anything = build automatically fails.
 
I'd like to ask if there are games that support resolutions like 3240x1920 (that's 3x1080 for vertically flipped monitors)? Or something like 3150x1680... I'm thinking about a panned desktop on 3 monitors but I'm playing games. Also wondering about 4 flipped monitors (4200x1680 or 4320x1920) what you think about that?
 


That's not the point. I don't care if you like that particular brand or not.

Like I said, I just skimmed for parts for maybe 15 minutes on newegg. You can change brands to whatever you want. The point is, you don't have to make huge sacrifices like the $2000 SBM suggest. With $2000, you can get a lot of PC and can make a machine that's awesome at cracking hashes, encoding video, and playing video games. You don't have to decide "well I want a 6-core i7, so I have to give up top graphics" or "I want top graphics, so I can only get an i5 and can't watch blu-rays". I disproved that logic.

Both $2000 builds this quarter were poorly chosen. That's not to say they're bad -- I would take either in a heartbeat -- it's just they could have been better with a smarter balance.
 


You always want odd numbers -- 1, 3, or 5 -- otherwise you have a bezel in the middle of your view. But modern games should support portrait multi-monitor resolutions.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]I don't think that a 690 can do SLI with a 680 like a 6970 can with a 6990 and the 7970 would with the 7990 (if it ever gets released) and the 7970X2 (if it ever gets released).[/citation]
You can't do SLI with a 690 and a 680. You'd have to have two 690s or two 680s.
 
[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]BTW, you do know that 1 500 ms frame and 100 5 ms frames can happen within a 1-second poling period? And you die/crash/whatever due to loss of focus/control/etc in the freeze frame even though its 101 FPS?We have to measure FPS because that's "the way it's done", but maximum frame time would be more revealing. The again, there are games where nothing really happens in the first few seconds, but the first few seconds have really long frame times so....eh, maybe a graph[/citation]
How else can you determine the performance from a practical standpoint? FPS. Whether the rest of the equipment is capable or not. Three 1080p 120Hz monitors would not require vsync.

I've found my 120Hz monitor provides a far better gaming experience than any 60Hz monitor. There's a smoothness and responsiveness to it that you really realize when you take a quick trip back to the 60Hz world. I tried an IPS monitor at 2560x1440 (6.5ms response) last night to see for myself what the extra pixels could get me and to compare the difference when gaming with more pixels versus a faster refresh rate. While the extra real estate was nice, the tearing is just nasty (running 2x680s). It required vsync and we all know what that does to performance. I won't run with vsync, so I'll be returning the IPS today.

I don't think I can ever go back to 60Hz monitors for gaming.

As a result, FPS beyond the "ideal" 60fps/60Hz matchup is important to someone like me. There's really no way to describe the difference in performance/perception other than you'd have to try it to understand what I'm saying.

At any rate, my goal is to get my games to perform at 120 fps or higher.
 
Very nice article!

Altough im really curious about the possibilities for next SBM $2000. What about 3x660ti or 3x7950s?
Affordable if you reduce the SSD from 256 to 128gb, along wit a possible price reduction till then.
 
[citation][nom]Article[/nom]With three-way no longer possible, we could have gone back to a less expensive motherboard or power supply. A $200 drop on those two components could have boosted this system's value score by 11%. But your feedback last time around made it clear that you want to see us push the budget as far as possible, but then not go over. Keeping the rest of the system intact gives its lucky winner the chance to upgrade to four-way SLI without needing to replace those two important components.[/citation]

Or, you caould've tried to fit 2 GTX 680s under the $2000 considering the target of this build.
 
[citation][nom]ubercake[/nom]How else can you determine the performance from a practical standpoint? FPS. Whether the rest of the equipment is capable or not. Three 1080p 120Hz monitors would not require vsync.I've found my 120Hz monitor provides a far better gaming experience than any 60Hz monitor. There's a smoothness and responsiveness to it that you really realize when you take a quick trip back to the 60Hz world. I tried an IPS monitor at 2560x1440 (6.5ms response) last night to see for myself what the extra pixels could get me and to compare the difference when gaming with more pixels versus a faster refresh rate. While the extra real estate was nice, the tearing is just nasty (running 2x680s). It required vsync and we all know what that does to performance. I won't run with vsync, so I'll be returning the IPS today. I don't think I can ever go back to 60Hz monitors for gaming. As a result, FPS beyond the "ideal" 60fps/60Hz matchup is important to someone like me. There's really no way to describe the difference in performance/perception other than you'd have to try it to understand what I'm saying. At any rate, my goal is to get my games to perform at 120 fps or higher.[/citation]
I actually have 3xHD (5900x1080/bezel correction) specifically 3xAcer GD235HZbid with 3-WAY EVGA GTX 680 4GB (04G-P4-2686-KR) + EK and the whole purpose is 3D Vision which takes the 120Hz and divides it into two (2) 60Hz 'channels' per eye (lens) and otherwise whether I'm running 45~50+ min FPS there's absolutely no discernible differences other than your 'perception' of what you believe it to be.

Now the reason I went with 4GB GTX 680's is to avoid vRAM bottlenecks with 3xHD, next in most games you still can drive down the FPS with over the top AA/quality. Further, most games often cut in half your 2D FPS rendering running in 3D.

The best I can say 60Hz vs 120Hz is some reduction in motion blur** that frankly I cannot see but rather sense. So is this a belief or reality?!

** Another consideration is quality of the panel, TN/TFT vs IPS and specifically TN/TFT (120Hz) vs IPS (60Hz~75Hz) most 120Hz use TFT panels which are not as good as the superior IPS panels. So high refresh rate with blurry images vs crisp and clear 60Hz~75Hz on IPS LCD displays? My home monitor uses an IPS, my daughter's gaming rig is the 3D/TFT. Decent IPS panels like Dell UltraSharp are a good choice to consider.

My point is there's more to it and 60Hz vs 120Hz isn't doing to do much if anything for most. If your rendering exceeds your monitor's refresh rate (60Hz or 120Hz) my best advice is to use vSync and avoid the ripping/tearing that I almost guarantee in any game.

Tearing looks like this; Disabled vSync:
VSync.png
 
The one thing that worries me with both the $2000 PCs is the lack of decent cooling. Both are running up to their thermal limits here - and who knows what extended gaming or folding sessions would do.
 
hapkido
Yup, you're right 3/5 that 4 was a mistake 😀
Anyway... if the resolution is 5760x1080 you'll basically see mainly the middle of the picture, while looking at 3240x1920 you can see more things that otherwise would be in peripheral vision :)
 
Great build. If I was forced to buy one of these builds, this would be the one for sure. I say this even though I don't care for gaming on more than one monitor despite already having three monitors on my desk. If I had this build I'd remove the 500GB drive and put it in an external enclosure. I'd sell the i5 and replace it with an i7. The 2nd GTX 670 would go perfect in my older machine. Last I'd throw the DVD drive in the trash and put the plate back on to make the case look better. Hate not to recycle the optical drive but I don't think I could even give one away to anyone I know.
 
3 out of 4 builds in the series would have greatly benefited from removing mass storage from the core build specs. Putting a 500GB mechanical drive in a $2K machine is simply ridiculous. If the rules simply stated that only the system drive would be included in the core build a lot more sanity would be brought back to the building process. As it is now, some of the builds have unusable system drives with reasonable mass storage drives and the other builds have reasonable system drives with ridiculous mass storage drives. As you have correctly stated, it almost always makes sense to include an SSD as the system drive now. Without a rule to protect you, you are forced to put in a mass storage drive or have the forums devolve into repeated moaning about how 240GB isn't enough storage. You'd have the same problem if you didn't have a rule about keyboards.

"I can't believe you put a $20 keyboard in the spec, I would never type on anything less than a $200 leaf spring with variable throw. Nothing is used more on your system than a keyboard".


In my opinion, there is WAY more variation in what keyboard to use than there is around mas storage. Determine how much you want and pick from one of three vendors. Like anything there is detail but it isn't going to make or break the rig. Some have servers and have no need for local bulk storage. Some have large external drives. Some are building a dedicated game machine and leave storage to their workstation rig. Even for those that DO want storage, I would bet none buy the configuration recommended in any of the builds since they were all highly compromised.
 
Since you have these three setups and they all use Nvidia cards, I was wondering if it would be possible to do one more benchmark set with a 3D Vision setup. I know that right now it is not really fair to compare Nvidia 3d with AMD 3d, but I am really curious where a 1920x1080 120hz 3d screen's performance lies compared to your other high resolution setups (1920x1080, 5760x1080, and 2560x1600). Does 3D Vision tax a processor enough that it would be CPU limited on the i5? I believe you might have to adjust your suite for this (since Skyrim and Starcraft 2 are not on the "supported" list, but maybe Batman: Arkham City would be an appropriate substitute), but I have a preference for seeing games in 3d rather than in surround.
 
[citation][nom]incantator[/nom]Since you have these three setups and they all use Nvidia cards, I was wondering if it would be possible to do one more benchmark set with a 3D Vision setup. I know that right now it is not really fair to compare Nvidia 3d with AMD 3d, but I am really curious where a 1920x1080 120hz 3d screen's performance lies compared to your other high resolution setups (1920x1080, 5760x1080, and 2560x1600). Does 3D Vision tax a processor enough that it would be CPU limited on the i5? I believe you might have to adjust your suite for this (since Skyrim and Starcraft 2 are not on the "supported" list, but maybe Batman: Arkham City would be an appropriate substitute), but I have a preference for seeing games in 3d rather than in surround.[/citation]

3D means a roughly 50% drop in FPS per eye. I'd expect that to mean it needs twice as much CPU performance and graphics performance as non 3D on the same screen.
 
Could the builders just build what they we personally choose to build for $1K or $2K budgets instead of trying to optimize for the benchmarks? I don't really care about the benchmarks.

I view this more like custom bike builders -- I've bought a $3600 PC (pentium 100!) and would never again. But it's fun to see what people choose, like the G520 build. Neat. I'd rather see a $1000 PC in a $100 case than a $50 case. I'd rather see 2x 240GB SSDs in raid 0 than spending every nickel on frame rates above 100 at the resolutions humans use.

I'm more interested in seeing what Paul, Don and Thomas would build for themselves instead of "I don't like this but I need to optimize for that benchmark" or "60GB SSD -- needed because the readers wanted it".
 
[citation][nom]tsnor[/nom]Could the builders just build what they we personally choose to build for $1K or $2K budgets instead of trying to optimize for the benchmarks? I don't really care about the benchmarks. I view this more like custom bike builders -- I've bought a $3600 PC (pentium 100!) and would never again. But it's fun to see what people choose, like the G520 build. Neat. I'd rather see a $1000 PC in a $100 case than a $50 case. I'd rather see 2x 240GB SSDs in raid 0 than spending every nickel on frame rates above 100 at the resolutions humans use.I'm more interested in seeing what Paul, Don and Thomas would build for themselves instead of "I don't like this but I need to optimize for that benchmark" or "60GB SSD -- needed because the readers wanted it".[/citation]

RAID 0 on SSDs is truly something that doesn't make much difference in applications used by most gamers. Having high FPS is something that can matter because it can reduce micro-stutter and simply raising the quality settings can let the FPS drop and thw quality go up even further.
 
[citation][nom]tsnor[/nom]Could the builders just build what they we personally choose to build for $1K or $2K budgets instead of trying to optimize for the benchmarks? I don't really care about the benchmarks. I view this more like custom bike builders -- I've bought a $3600 PC (pentium 100!) and would never again. But it's fun to see what people choose, like the G520 build. Neat. I'd rather see a $1000 PC in a $100 case than a $50 case. I'd rather see 2x 240GB SSDs in raid 0 than spending every nickel on frame rates above 100 at the resolutions humans use.I'm more interested in seeing what Paul, Don and Thomas would build for themselves instead of "I don't like this but I need to optimize for that benchmark" or "60GB SSD -- needed because the readers wanted it".[/citation]You're right, a bunch of parts that the builders don't really prefer go into these builds simply because they offer more performance for the dollar. It's all about competition. I don't see that changing any time soon.
 
[citation][nom]EzioAs[/nom]Really? If it were me, I'd pick this one over the original $2000 PC. There are a lot more people gaming at 5760x1080 and 2560x1600 than they used to be so having more GPU performance is much more beneficial. Although that's primarily for the gamers, for other 3D purposes, video editing, etc the 6-cores 3930K and single GPU might be the best choice[/citation]

Pretty much any gamer would, as would I. But you entirely missed the point of how these System Builder builds were chosen. the alternative build does not fit the category, because it is outside the parameters. That makes it the "alternative to what did fit the category".

These builds are exercises with artificial limits. It is rare that some has to spend a particular amount of money, and can't go under or over it more than a few dollars. I mean, good as the cooler used here is, especially for the price, I'm going to spend a little more money and hope to get closer to 4.8GHz, or even better. Most of us are going to buy a bigger hard drive, even though we don't need it for gaming. We'll go ahead and spring for Blu-ray. We'll buy a case we like the looks of better.

And, almost no one spending for the significantly more expensive socket 2011 build is going to limit the rest of their expenses. They're going to put in another video card or two.

These things are obvious budget-breakers that would be common in the real world.

😉
 
[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]I actually have 3xHD (5900x1080/bezel correction) specifically 3xAcer GD235HZbid with 3-WAY EVGA GTX 680 4GB (04G-P4-2686-KR) + EK and the whole purpose is 3D Vision which takes the 120Hz and divides it into two (2) 60Hz 'channels' per eye (lens) and otherwise whether I'm running 45~50+ min FPS there's absolutely no discernible differences other than your 'perception' of what you believe it to be. Now the reason I went with 4GB GTX 680's is to avoid vRAM bottlenecks with 3xHD, next in most games you still can drive down the FPS with over the top AA/quality. Further, most games often cut in half your 2D FPS rendering running in 3D. The best I can say 60Hz vs 120Hz is some reduction in motion blur** that frankly I cannot see but rather sense. So is this a belief or reality?! ** Another consideration is quality of the panel, TN/TFT vs IPS and specifically TN/TFT (120Hz) vs IPS (60Hz~75Hz) most 120Hz use TFT panels which are not as good as the superior IPS panels. So high refresh rate with blurry images vs crisp and clear 60Hz~75Hz on IPS LCD displays? My home monitor uses an IPS, my daughter's gaming rig is the 3D/TFT. Decent IPS panels like Dell UltraSharp are a good choice to consider.My point is there's more to it and 60Hz vs 120Hz isn't doing to do much if anything for most. If your rendering exceeds your monitor's refresh rate (60Hz or 120Hz) my best advice is to use vSync and avoid the ripping/tearing that I almost guarantee in any game. Tearing looks like this; Disabled vSync:[/citation]

What kind of frame rates were you getting when you were looking at "120Hz"?

The whole point of running such a screen is that you get a much higher frame rate limit, and if you are still getting 45-50fps, you won't see much, if any, difference. If you are actually getting 120fps in your game, the difference will be much more obvious.

😉
 


That is not true at all. See any of the 3 builds I linked in this comment thread. The builders, especially at the $2000 budget, usually have bogus excuses why they do things the way they do. I respect the SBMs where the builder says, "I'm going to try this because I'm curious..." I don't respect where the builder says, "I could only afford an i5 on a $2000 build." I get it, it's to generate comments which in turn generates hits which in turn generates ad revenue.

But don't blame it on the readers. I'll admit, the readers suggest a lot of bad things, like buying AMD CPUs and raiding SSDs, but the overpriced PSUs and motherboards chosen for "future expansion" on a set budget build are totally on the builder.
 
[citation][nom]hapkido[/nom]That is not true at all. See any of the 3 builds I linked in this comment thread. The builders, especially at the $2000 budget, usually have bogus excuses why they do things the way they do. I respect the SBMs where the builder says, "I'm going to try this because I'm curious..." I don't respect where the builder says, "I could only afford an i5 on a $2000 build." I get it, it's to generate comments which in turn generates hits which in turn generates ad revenue.But don't blame it on the readers. I'll admit, the readers suggest a lot of bad things, like buying AMD CPUs and raiding SSDs, but the overpriced PSUs and motherboards chosen for "future expansion" on a set budget build are totally on the builder.[/citation]So the fancy power supply in the system above would have been better explained by curiosity...but it's really there to provide the eventual owner a wider range of upgrade options.

Personally, I'm not big on the curious builder. I like a build to go almost exactly as planned. The build above for example probably could have had a 3770K if its builder had chosen to go with a cheap power supply, but overclocking was part of the plan and it only came up 2.2% short of its target. Both processors produce very similar performance when set to very similar clocks, so that elitism is the only reason "not to" pick the cheaper i5 over the more-expensive i7.
 


I thought that better non-gaming performance was the argument in i7 versus i5 due to the Hyper-Threading actually making a significant difference in some applications.
 
I know that you guys have to cut some corners, especially in the 1000 and 500 USD build, but I do wish you guys would also give some thought into cable management.

you got them beasts up and running, and for cheaps most of the time, might was well show it off, right?
 
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