System Builder Marathon, June 2010: $550 Gaming PC

[Guest]

After a few months of higher-priced builds, we're reverting back to a $550 configuration that once again deserves its value designation. Is this less-expensive model able to compete with last quarter's $750 setup? Don't forget to enter to win this box!

System Builder Marathon, June 2010: $550 Gaming PC : Read more

 

[gkay09]

^ I dont like the idea of using the CM eXtreme power PSUs...
You could get a EA 430W for about $49 @newegg...
Just a thought - you could save money on the mobo by going with TOM's favorite brand ASRock board with the 770 Chipset...So with the money saved, getting a better PSU would have been a good idea...

 

[adbat]

I plan to build a similar machine so it's nice to see the numbers
Again unlocking was successful the 50-50 chance do not apply to your tests.
But no surprise this is a just enough machine.

 

[archange]

Buying the same components here, online, gets me to ~800 USD. That, including my 3% Diamond Customer discount at my favorite e-tailer. Granted, the Power Color was out of stock, which led me to Sapphire and i also had to exchange the RAM for Kingston HyperX CL7.

People in the States have way to much... fun

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]gkay09[/nom]you could save money on the mobo by going with TOM's favorite brand ASRock board with the 770 Chipset...[/citation]Wait, Tom's has a favorite brand? I've heard rumors in the past that Asus got all of Tom's Hardware's attention...and Gigabyte has been getting a lot of awards so maybe them...where does ASRock come into all of this favoritism, from its use in previous low-cost SBM machines?

 

[zooted]

I like this build much better than the $1000 one

 

[noob2222]

This one and the $1000 show some pretty impressive efficiency and power savings over the previous, more expensive builds. Save some dough now and in the long haul. Imo thats pretty important on a tight budget build, you don't want it costing more over its lifetime than what you saved in building it.

 

[skora]

and liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build.[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Wait, Tom's has a favorite brand? I've heard rumors in the past that Asus got all of Tom's Hardware's attention...and Gigabyte has been getting a lot of awards so maybe them...where does ASRock come into all of this favoritism, from its use in previous low-cost SBM machines?[/citation]

No, this month its Coolermaster.

"and liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build."

No shame, we all have bills.

Very well balanced system. Very helpful to see a working system with just 2 gigs ram and break the stereo type that 4 is required.

 

[tacoslave]

ah i miss the days when you could buy 4 gigs of ram for $20. But now that only buys you about 1gig.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]skora[/nom]and liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build.No, this month its Coolermaster. No shame, we all have bills.Very well balanced system. Very helpful to see a working system with just 2 gigs ram and break the stereo type that 4 is required.[/citation]

You're reading that completely out of context.

 

[ta152h]

At this price range, I think an Athlon II x2 or Pentium E6500 system would probably do better for pure gaming.

Both have more cache, the Pentium dramatically so. The Athlon II x2 would almost certainly over clock better, since stock speed is much higher, and most sites show them generally able to get to 3.8 GHz at roughly 1.4v or lower with a stock heat sink. On top of this, they use less power. So, more cache, 250 MHz more with stock heat sink (maybe more with a better one), and more cache against an extra core. Probably for games it would be better, but not always.

The Pentium E6500 is probably better still. Getting it to around 4 GHz wouldn't be too hard, especially with an upgraded heat sink, and is generally faster clock per clock compared to an Athlon II x2. Power use is significantly lower too.

Neither are clearly better though. I would rather have a faster two core than a slower three core, but the latter certainly have advantages too.

 

[wildeast]

if i changed the 5770 with 5870 in this build, will it be bottlenecked?

 

[killerclick]

Plus keyboard, mouse, OS...

By the way I love it how Tom's makes it sound that you can unlock cores in almost every AMD CPU. I tried with 3, 2 wouldn't unlock and the 3rd didn't make it even 20 minutes through Prime95.

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]wildeast[/nom]if i changed the 5770 with 5870 in this build, will it be bottlenecked?[/citation]

most likely
an example:

my curent pc i run a amd athy 64 X2 500+ blacked OC'ed to 3 ghz
and i have 3 gigs of ddr 2 pc 800 ram in it

I've gone trhough 3 video card upgrades since i built this rig

my first video card was a Gf 9600 GT i saw avaerage frames in Fallout 3 around 40-45 fps , my lowest frames (in are moments) were around 18 fps that's at a resolution of 1280x1024 with 4x aa and 8 samples on AF (i know low resolution but eh what the heck older monitor i ahd at the time i got newer monitor now)

then i got a GF 9800 GT , becasue my bro inlaw couldn't use it at the time , its averaged around 48-53 fps with lowerst frames beign at 19-20 on teh same settings as listed above


lastly i bought a readeon 5770 since it was amuch newer card I'll try to get win 7 soon , on the same old monitor and same settings i see frames avaerage around 55-70 however the rare moemtns of lows stil occur from time to time with the lowerst frames being 22 fps , now i know i ahve seen this card do better here at toms , on a new cpu and i highly douvbt anotehr video card upgrade with out a processor upgrade woudl give me any boost at this point. given that i can say it'ssafe bet that yeah a 5870 would be bottle necked by the cpu in this rig.


P.S. my old montior got repalced reccently i now finally have a newer widescreen monitor it's 20 inches with a max resolution of 1600x900 and better yet my radeon 5770 pushes this resolution just as smoothly as it pushed my odler montior's max res ... however it shoudlb e noted that this monitor has amax refresh rate of 60 hz whiel teh older one could do 120 so now in FO 3 (and other games ) my technicall higehst frame rate is 60 (unless i turn off v-sync which really only induces tearing)
and you don't actually see a higher frame rate since teh monitor only refreshed at 60

 

[gkay09]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Wait, Tom's has a favorite brand? I've heard rumors in the past that Asus got all of Tom's Hardware's attention...and Gigabyte has been getting a lot of awards so maybe them...where does ASRock come into all of this favoritism, from its use in previous low-cost SBM machines?[/citation]

Well I dint literally mean the ASRock is THE FAVORITE brand of TOMs, but with boards from ASRock based on the X58 chipset being one of their recommended, why not have tried their AMD chipset mobo too?

 

[pauldh]

[citation][nom]adbat[/nom]I plan to build a similar machine so it's nice to see the numbers Again unlocking was successful the 50-50 chance do not apply to your tests.But no surprise this is a just enough machine.[/citation]
Wait... Some stability issues (even at stock clocks) with this one, so the unlock was not a success. Overclocked data is for 3-cores at 3.556 GHz.

We are 2/3 if you just count SBM's. This one joins a few other unsuccessful PII and Athlon II unlocks I've encountered so 50/50 is closer to my own findings.

Our repeated advice: Spend a few bucks more on an X4 if you desire a quad.

 

[Guest]

The "Network:Integrated" and "Sound:Integrated" in the chart was really necessary?

It's a $500 Computer, but you don't need to go back to the Dark Ages and use terms as "integrated sound" or "New pci-e slot".

 

[pauldh]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Plus keyboard, mouse, OS...By the way I love it how Tom's makes it sound that you can unlock cores in almost every AMD CPU. I tried with 3, 2 wouldn't unlock and the 3rd didn't make it even 20 minutes through Prime95.[/citation]
Plus a display too, if you need one. For us, that's $1400 alone and skews the value results a bit right?

The SBM series has never included peripherals or software. Hardware and pricing are clearly spelled out. We have complete faith our readers can add these other costs if need be.

Oh contraire regarding the unlocking. This one successfully ran many 1+ hour stents through Prime 95, but was not fully stable nor considered successful. You are completely ignoring our repeated advice of not relying on unlocking when making a processor decision.

 

[zodiacfml]

@TA152H
I was also a fan of dual cores back then but most games and applications able to utilize a third core now.

I only find the 2gig memory quite uncomfortable since I'm using a 2gig 64bit system right now which maxes the ram occasionally so I have enabled virtual memory which sucks.
The budget could have been $600 or could use the stock heatsink to get the system to 4GB RAM.

 

[pauldh]

[citation][nom]ddragoonss[/nom]The "Network:Integrated" and "Sound:Integrated" in the chart was really necessary?[/citation]
Does it really hurt either? It's a standard component table used month after month for every SBM I've been part of. All SBM price tables included the same at one point but the other authers have since chosen to remove those rows when integrated. I still prefer they stay, but no it is not necesary. If those are the biggest complaints, I'm satified.

 

[Userremoved]

Great! The fact that it's only a little behind the 750$ from March is great!

 

[spartanii]

IMO this is a good starting build, this would be the cheapest setup that can still perform and if you want more GPU power just upgrade the GPU, no cpu bottle necking until you get into extreme gaming at 2650x1600.

 

[pauldh]

^ I dont like the idea of using the CM eXtreme power PSUs...
You could get a EA 430W for about $49 @newegg...
Just a thought - you could save money on the mobo by going with TOM's favorite brand ASRock board with the 770 Chipset...So with the money saved, getting a better PSU would have been a good idea...

Yeah, I always consider the Antec Eathwatt units for each build. A reliable choice, but pricing does vary week to week. Currently you can only buy the EA430D (Green) on Newegg and it's on sale for $65 not $50.

I had $45 in this budget left for a PSU. Had the system required more, sure I'd go over for $60 unit. But I'd even have good faith in the EA380D for this system, and mentioned that just for those who focus on "Watts" alone.

 

[Onus]

I definitely agree with gkay09 about the PSU.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Cooler-Master-eXtreme-Power-Plus-500-W-Power-Supply-Review/728/10
It's a notch or so above a Chokemax, and in this build is in a comfortable part of its range, but I would have liked to have seen a warning about it if you start with this build and upgrade. I know article lead time makes a big difference, but over the last few weeks I've seen quite a few good PSU deals; early last week I picked up a 550W Truepower New for $40 after $20 MIR; I've seen some Corsair and OCZ units discounted too.
Not dinging the build for it, because A) you mentioned this in the article, and B) cases are a very personalized choice and tend not to affect performance; but you are correct in wondering if the tool-free mounts will hold up in moving or shipping. They won't. I lost a 320GB HDD when it shook loose in shipping, and the SATA connector snapped off the circuit board. Since WD does not provide replacements for drive parts, an otherwise perfectly good drive was bricked.
Otherwise, the results obtained from this build were informative. Nice job.

 

[nzprogamer]

good to know that AMD is BACK.