System Builder Marathon, December 2010: $1000 PC

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[citation][nom]Freshnbaked[/nom]WOW look at what I just put together from my local hub, Microcenter, I have a I7-950, 460sli, with blueray player, but the 70 buck from the blueray player could of took me to 8gb of 1600mhz ram. Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA ---49.99Micro Center 4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) CL9 Desktop ---49.99Samsung SH-B123L 12X BD Combo Drive ---49.99x2-Palit NE5TX460FHD79 GeForce GTX 460 ---329.98Intel Core i7-950 3.06GHz Boxed Processor ---199.99Diablotek PHD Series 650 Watt ATX12V Power Supply ---39.99PowerSpec Powerspec TX366 ATX Case ---17.98Gigabyte GA-X58-USB3 LGA 1366 X58 ATX Intel MotherBoard ---184.99for a grand total of ---999.48It would blow that PoS they built away, let me at them! Ps. if I were to spend it, I would say F the blue ray player and the I7-950 and get the I7-870 for 229.99 and the 97.99 X-fire mobo and go for 2 5850's with 8gbs of 1600 mhz ram. But what do I know ")[/citation]
yes, but that junk power supply will blow up your computer 😛 😵
 



I think it is successful to show folks the weaknesses of the i3. :)

It's also a viable starting point for a budget 1156 system. People who are saying they wouldn't want to win this build are crazy... sell the i3, swap in an i5-760 and this thing is a friggin monster. The motherboard, PSU, memory, case, cooler, and hard disk are solid.

 


Thanks man, nice to see someone get it. 😉

We've done a ton of Core i5-750 and Core i7-920 builds, and Phenom II based systems, too.
If we don't try new things sometimes, we can't learn anything. It's even valuable to prove or disprove what we think we already know, because sometimes assumptions aren't always right. :)

 
No insult intended here, but I think these were very poor choices for this build. $1000, and you put a lower-end dual core in a machine meant for gaming. That immediately sets off a red flag in my mind. From the get-go, if someone said they were going to spend $1000 to build a "gaming computer" and told me they were going to use a dual-core, I'd stop them right there and sit them down for a talk.

-Why spend $130 on a dual-core, when you can get a better-performing 3.0GHz Phenom II X4 940 for $96?

-Why spend $150 on a mobo for an i3, when you can get an 890FX board for the same price, or even cheaper?

And why pair a lower-end dual-core CPU with two GTX 460's? I would consider balancing the aspects of the PC.

Heck, you could have gotten a $100 3.0GHz Athlon II X4 640... $50 less than the dual-core i3, and when you compare i3 cores and Athlon II cores, they perform on par clock-for-clock when it comes to gaming. And for those games that can make use of more than 2 cores, you'd not only have a quad-core, but you'd have saved $50.

Also, save $20 on the HDD. This is for gaming; you don't need a WD Caviar Black if you're strapped for cash. Get one of the new Caviar Green 1TB drives with 64MB cache- they're plenty fast.
 
If the goal is to just see who can get the most value, why not say "build a gaming machine, unlimited budget, but whoever has the highest benchmarks (and still playable) per dollar wins"? This concept would prove both what makes a balanced system, but also show that maybe older and cheaper hardware still is worth hanging on to (Core2, 8800 GT SLI for ex).

Maybe also throw in a 30% weight of "future proofness" to prevent Core2 builds from winning, since most would agree that building on a dead platform isn't a good idea.
 
This build is a little graphics-heavy, it's clearly trying to get the best fps possible, although it could be shooting itself in the foot by not getting an i5.

I say, get a 570. You get comparable graphics and its just 1 card so you might not feel the bottleneck of the i3.
 
Its not what I would build for sure, not that its not a good system. Like others I can appreciate something different too. I have confidence that anyone here can build a great system as well.
 
Just an FYI, the memory performance of the new system isn't lower just because of the "lower clocks". The memory performance is worse because the memory controller is not on the processor, but is on GPU, which reduces memory performance.

More to the point, with Sandy Bridge coming out soon, why would anyone buy a system now anyway? LGA 1156 has always been a dead end, and a compromise. Much better to wait for Sandy Bridge and see where the prices fall than get stuck in a brain-damaged and obsolete platform like LGA 1156. If not, x58 offers a much better upgrade path, with more channels (for USB 3.0, or SATA 6), and greater CPU choices.
 
To all those urging the use of a Phenom II, a few months back a Phenom II was used in a SLI rig and found to be a bad bottleneck. I'm still hoping for further analysis on that, to see if it was platform-related, but the point is: although for a single GPU an AMD CPU would have made more sense [than i3], I'm not certain about that at all in the case of SLI. A head-to-head comparison of an Intel i3 vs. an AMD Phenom II in SLI scaling would be a very nice "data point" to add here...hint, hint.
 
I think the critics are failing to see the positive drawn by, and probably the purpose, of this build. The purpose was probably to give the reader as much of data as possible. Hence major tweaks were needed to the configuration.

A different setup might have got good frame rates, but such radically different builds give the reader a clear idea of what would suffice his requirements and what would not. A similar build would have generated little new data. Especially since there have been no major product launches since the last SBM.

One thing : $18 Optical drive ? What my experience tells me is that cheap optical drives have drawbacks. They don't handle scratched media well.

I have a LG CD-RW, September 2004 (Must have cost around ~$85 that time), a Lite-On CD writer/DVD reader, bought 2007 or 2008, second hand, for ~$50, and a MoserBaer DVD writer, bought 2009, ~$23, and none of them are match for the 2004 LG in handing poorly stored media. I've been guilty of letting my collections get damaged due to poor storage, and since those are DVDs, I can't use my old faithful LG with them.

Maybe my purchase was a poor choice, though.

On that note, I'd love if Toms could compare optical disk reader/writers in different price segments.
 
Both dual core Core i3 and Core i5 supports HT. Therefore in Windows you will see 4 threads. To the uneducated, they may think it's a quad core which of course it's a "fake" quad.

It seems the CPU has to be sacrifice due to the "need" of a 2nd graphic card. From what I've seen, some like to brag about their system and if there is SLI, it makes them feel they've got a "powerful gaming system". If that is the case, why not just slapped two GTS450 and SLI them instead. It's still SLI isn't it?

 
Ideas for future...

It seems that i5-750 or i7-9xx chips are the way to go at this price point. So what does that leave to change from one build to another-
graphics systems
hard drive systems
case

I really don't pay much attention to the case that you use. If any reader wants to build their own version of this machine they will certainly buy the case that they like.

So here the idea- take the basic machine with quad core cpu and run it with different graphics systems to find the best performance per dollar.

Then take the basic machine and run it with different hard drive systems, including conventional hard drive, conventional hard drives striped, single SSD, striped SSD's.

Oh and if you get real energetic- pick a good graphics system and good hard drive system from above, and try to determine at what price point you would switch from AMD to intel CPU's.

OK, another idea-
Since it seems that we can't rely on each subsequent system builder marathon to improve on or outperform the previous one, we need a database so the readers can easily find the articles containing the previous builds. Someone looking to replicate one of your builds might choose to build using aspects of the previous one and not the current one. On occasion I've tried using the basic search feature and found it hard to pick out articles for just the system builder marathons.
 
How about this for going the AMD / ATI route? Having read a few reviews of GTX 460 SLI setups and some more for 6870 Crossfire setups it's clear the ATI 6870XF thrashes this and leaves it for dead.

One thing THG haven't covered yet is the viability of Hybrid drives vs. true SSD drives.

How about this for $2,000? I think it would give THG's setup a damn good run for it's money, and you get double the HDD space to boot.

http://imgur.com/c1uBd.png
 
For the Nth time, please remember that prices and availability are set when the SBM is planned, not when it is published, possibly weeks later. Saying how much better a certain GPU (e.g. the HD6850/70) would have been is irrelevant since it was not available when the parts for this build were purchased. Please READ before criticizing.
 


There's more to it than that.

You guys who are complaining about this build: read the first page, please. It's all there, black and white.

This build was never about squeezing the most performance for the dollar, it was never about making the best $1000 build possible.

You need to read the first page, guys. Please read the article before commenting.
 
thanks Tom's. results were pretty much what i expected. hope this puts a stop to the whiners who keep saying dual core! dual core! in the higher end intel system builds.
i'm only left wondering how much better memory would have achieved in the results for both the september and this sytem builds still. after reading this months $2k build i think i've got that figured out tho.
i guess cutting HDD capacity to save some bucks for better memory is worth it.
glad to see this nzxt case properly fitted this time as well as the use of that asus board and in sli.
only thing left to wonder is what cheaper but quality psu could be used to gain the extra $ needed for a good quad core cpu!
 
[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]For the Nth time, please remember that prices and availability are set when the SBM is planned, not when it is published, possibly weeks later. Saying how much better a certain GPU (e.g. the HD6850/70) would have been is irrelevant since it was not available when the parts for this build were purchased. Please READ before criticizing.[/citation]

You can't blame Tom's - agreed. However, if the idea here is to get the "best possible value" available today - then in that case it does make sense to suggest alternatives.

And in the case of the 1k build... 6870 all the way.
 
Thanks for the article, this build is one of 3. Its valuable to see combinations of hardware people consider and already have and consider upgrading.
AMD's cpu's (some) are themselves bottlenecking some new midrange cards, they have gotten more powerful.
To fit within a 1000 dollars, 2 mid range cards give great performance/value. Except the 5830 is weak, the 6850's were not out when the article was written.
Take the above facts, SLI does not work on AMD chipsets, Nvidia offered the best gpu route in this builders opinion. So imo , thats how he arrived with that set of parts.
Its valuable to know, where the cpu bottleneck goes away, and what kind of performance you get up to that point. We see the results here.

The next build might be a amd 955 and 2 6850's, we will then see that pitted against this set of results.
Someone who has a 27-30 inch monitor with 2560x resolution has a different needs than someone with 1920x1080.
We need comparisons to give options and keep things interesting.
 
[citation][nom]AMW1011[/nom]I can't say I'm impressed this time. You should never have went with a clarksdale, they are simply bad. Getting a more reasonably priced motherboard, cutting another $20 from the HDD and PSU, and an i5 750, would have been much better.Still, we have more information than before so I can't complain.[/citation]

this guy here doesn't clearly take minimum fps into account, neither does the article, which makes this SBM's $1000 system look bad. Just imagine getting the i3 now and a nice i5 within 6-8 months(if you really better application performance that bad). Just like that, your problems are over for at least the next two years. BTW,when you're gaming , it's the smooth experience that counts, not the raw fps data.
 
[citation][nom]mrmotion[/nom]I love seeing something different than predictability. Nice work guys. I would gladly have this system sitting next to my I7 rig.[/citation]

I would be honored to have any of the SBM machines but, sadly, I don't live in the U.S.
 
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