System Builder Marathon, August 2012: System Value Compared

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[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]I think I made this point some time ago, but you guys should *really* start introducing monitor pricing in your articles, since like many point out, a USD$500 build should not be meant for anything above high/medium @1680x1050 and the USD$1000 should target ultra @1680x1050 and high/medium @1920x1080 and the USD$2000 should be built to push either high resolution gaming (eyefinity/sorround) or wide productivity (like this build, which I think came out pretty well balanced).Other than that, great insights as usual.Oh, add some more games to the mix if you can, please. Or some way to measure them in MP rounds Cheers![/citation]

Or, we could include the monitor and peripherals in an additional $150 ($500 machine), $300($1000), and $450 or $600 ($2000 machine) budget over the regular budgets of each machine.
 
[Apologies if this posts multiple times, this website is bugging out quite a bit when I try to post, also, this is much shorter because I don't like typing things 3 times!!!]

I think the hexacore isn't worth it, an alternative is to drop it to the quad core, while maintaining Hyper-Threading, and adding in liquid cooling to boost the overclock, and viewing the value of the quad core with the higher overclock, as well as the better graphics then afforded. Changes:

i7-3770k (-$230)
GTX 680 (+$100)
Corsair H100 (+$60)
Difference: -$70
 


H100 isn't really any better than much cheaper high-end air coolers and the i7-3770K can't be overclocked nearly far enough for it to even come close to the i73930K in highly threaded performance. It has 50% more similarly performing cores and that's simply too huge of an advantage. I also fail to see any reasoning in spending $100 more than a 670 on a 680 that will have nearly identical performance.
 
[citation][nom]noob2222[/nom]Toms did a bunch of game reviews showing how bad AMD is so they don't have to use them for the SBM articles. 11 of the past 12 SBM have all been Intel, and the one AMD was bugged with a cheap cpu. Even though SBM was I thought to test hardware with different components, apparently as long as its only with Intel.BF3 as a test needs to be done online, wether its controlled or not, you can at least get a feel of how its going to work. Especially with a dual core cpu.[/citation]
When was that AMD test? As I thought. It's irrelevant for today. Best would be to have both AMD and Intel builds in all price ranges and thus compare competitors too somewhat in "good enough" deparment. And would give answer how would FX 8150+2 GTX 660 Ti fare against i7 3930K+GTX 670 in $2000 build for example.

Concerning BF3 you are right that people are more interested in MP performance, especially because how much CPU bound it is. But problem is that it's nearly impossible to get consistent results, I can think of way to do it but would be logistic nightmare. BF3 is at the moment one of the best games for pushing your hardware to the limit, but is very awkward choice for comparation between components, unless you are only interested to compare maximum FPS by getting on empty server with Metro map and looking at your feet or sky.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Why go down to the 7770 when the 7850 will probably drop into a price low enough for a $500 build? It wouldn't get better for a single GPU setup.[/citation]
Key word is "will", when will it happen is question. Per your logic you can say "why go 7770 when 9770 will be much better when it comes out".
 


The problem is that, as the article pointed out, the extra cores are not used. The i7-3770k may be a bad option for the overclocking, as ivy bridge hates overclocks, but the point is still there - Can you take a quad core and liquid cooling and overclock it to perform better than the hexacores?

The GTX 670 and GTX 680 do not have nearly identical performance.

Liquid cooling provides a lot more heat reduction than air cooling.
LGA-2011-CPU-Cooler-Comparison.png


The only thing that made any sense in your post was that the Ivy Bridge processor doesn't like overclocking, everything else was pure nonsense.
 


The extra cores are used in many non-gaming tasks (often the point behind very expensive builds and Tom's reasoning behind the LGA 2011 builds) and Tom's reviews of the 670 disagree with you. Also, the Hyper 212s are not high-end air coolers and the A70 is not nearly the best air cooler.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]The extra cores are used in many non-gaming tasks (often the point behind very expensive builds and Tom's reasoning behind the LGA 2011 builds) and Tom's reviews of the 670 disagree with you. Also, the Hyper 212s are not high-end air coolers and the A70 is not nearly the best air cooler.[/citation]You're right about the air cooling, Tom's Hardware's test continuously shows really big air matching mid-sized liquid.
 
Processor and Graphics: AMD A8 3870K APU (95Watt, 4-core 3.0 GHzCPU + DX11 GPU): $95
Motherboard: Foxconn FM1 A75m (USB3.0, SATAIII): $65
RAM: Pareema DDR3 1600 2x4GB (CL9, 9-9-9-24): $41
System Drive: Intel 330 SSD 60GB: $70
Storage Drive: However much you can get for a $70 HDD (usually around 500GB-750GB)
Optical Drive: any $20 DVD-R
Case: Rosewill R101-P-BK (120mm back fan included, quiet): $30
PSU: SeaSonic SSR-360GP (120mm fan, 360Watt, about 50W more than needed): $60 (NEVER skimp on PSU)

Total: $451

Features: SSD system, SATAIII, 8GB RAM, quiet, low power, modern GPU, USB 2.0 (USB 3.0 if you purchase front bay adapter), motherboard has intrusion alarm header, TCM header, infrared header.

I would personally use this for gaming.
 
[citation][nom]systembuild5160[/nom]Processor and Graphics: AMD A8 3870K APU (95Watt, 4-core 3.0 GHzCPU + DX11 GPU): $95Motherboard: Foxconn FM1 A75m (USB3.0, SATAIII): $65 RAM: Pareema DDR3 1600 2x4GB (CL9, 9-9-9-24): $41System Drive: Intel 330 SSD 60GB: $70Storage Drive: However much you can get for a $70 HDD (usually around 500GB-750GB)Optical Drive: any $20 DVD-RCase: Rosewill R101-P-BK (120mm back fan included, quiet): $30PSU: SeaSonic SSR-360GP (120mm fan, 360Watt, about 50W more than needed): $60 (NEVER skimp on PSU)Total: $451Features: SSD system, SATAIII, 8GB RAM, quiet, low power, modern GPU, USB 2.0 (USB 3.0 if you purchase front bay adapter), motherboard has intrusion alarm header, TCM header, infrared header.I would personally use this for gaming.[/citation]

The HD 6550D of the A8 is a mere fraction of the 560 and better cards such as the 560 TI and even better, the Radeon 7850. If you want to go this route, then I recommend that you at least throw in a Radeon 6670 for CF and get some better RAM or you won't even be half as good as many other $500 builds that have been recommended. Head on over to the $500 article to see some of what we came up with if you want to. I recommend it if you're interested in the minimum budget gaming machines because we've literally had some damn good builds that would wipe the floor with this $500 SBM (due to recent price changes only; these builds were not available when the $500 SBM's parts were bought and this should not be held against it nor its builder who has been very helpful in working with some of us these last few days to piece together $500 recommendations that could be done in an SBM).
 
$1500 is the sweet spot, about $1000 for your core [cpu+mobo+ram+gpu+psu], $250 for hard drives [ssd boot, mechanical for data], $100 on really good case, $50-$100 for a really good heat sink, $100-$150 for case accessories [fans, memory card readers, lighting, optical, fan controller, wireless]
 
The problem with saying the Pentium over the quad AMD? It kinda ignores reality. Sure you want your PC to game good but that is never ALL that you will do with the PC. In fact in all my years building systems i have never met anyone who wanted a PC that would ONLY be used for games. Sure they wanted it to be a good gaming machine, but they also wanted that balanced a little with the ability to do other tasks. Otherwise why not just get an X360?

Lets use myself as an example. yes i wanted to play pretty much every game out there at the native 16x9 of my monitor but I also wanted to do fast transcodes, DVD ripping a little A/V editing, web surfing, I wanted this machine to do as much as I could get it to do because with 2 teen boys i don't get to build a new machine every year and my budget was between $600-$700. I ended up getting a 1035T 6 core that would support the 8Gb I already had so I could spend a little more on bigger hard drives and a little faster GPU (this was last year) so I got an HD4850.

In the past 2 years I ended up building both boys new PCs (a hexacore for the oldest and my Deneb 925 I gave to the youngest who isn't as hardcore as his brother) along with my own and by reusing the one chip and board and being smart on shopping we ended up with 3 gaming PCs, all with HD4850s so nobody would be beating anybody on graphics, all for around $500 less than the top range PC listed here. It all comes down to balance, getting the best overall performance in as many tasks as possible while still having a decent gaming machine and I'd say i achieved that the way we blast through SR 3 and TF 2. Sure the Pentium might be good if the ONLY thing that machine is gonna do is play games that only use 2 cores, how long is that gonna be the case?
 
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