System Builder Marathon, June 2011: $1000 Enthusiast PC

[bigfatgus]

The MSI P67A-G43 does have 2 USB 3.0 ports, the review has it wrong.

I was actually scared for a second, I have one here in the box still and had to double check. Especially since I just ordered a USB 3.0 drive bay yesterday from NewEgg.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]bigfatgus[/nom]The MSI P67A-G43 does have 2 USB 3.0 ports, the review has it wrong.[/citation]

Yes, that part was poorly written. I meant to say it has no on-board USB 3.0 support. It does have two USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel--fixed!

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]shredder777[/nom]I would get an amd the 955 to be exact and with the $100 bucks I save I could get dual-6870's[/citation]

And have the same CPU bottleneck they encountered with a previous $2000 build, I don't think AMD will perform as well as Intel with multi-card setups.

Don't get me wrong, I have an AMD PII 955 BE and it's very good for a single card rig. But after that particular SBM, I wouldn't risk getting AMD for a multi-card rig.

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]genghiskron[/nom]Newegg claims that the G43 has 2 rear USB 3.0 ports, whereas the article claims the board has no usb 3.0 support. Is this an error, or am i mistaken?[/citation]

Actually, it does have USB 3.0 and I was mistaken too in my previous comment,sorry.

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]fulle[/nom]Wow, look at those CPU temps! What a difference investing a few extra bucks into a quality cooler makes.[/citation]

And they had $9 left over. This could've bought the Xigmatek Gaia instead of this cooler.

 

[fb39ca4]

[citation][nom]quixilver1[/nom]Why change the cooler from the $200 pc. It is only $5 more and still within the budget.[/citation]
I agree, I used the Xigmatek Gaia in my $750 build, and it is well worth the extra five bucks. Even if the thing wouldn't fit in the case used, there are plenty of other good $50 cases to choose from, the NZXT M59 for example.

I just checked the price of the Hyper 212+ on Newegg, it is ridiculous now. Nobody will pay $50 for that thing if they know there are others that do the same job for $20 less.

 

[robisinho]

tom's has been drifting further and further away from sanity in the $1000 build tier. At this point I don't think Im going to look at the system builds here any more. The main problems are the 2 discreet gpus on this rig — whose operational costs would exceed an energy star compliant refrigerator, even excluding the rest of the system, and the lack of SSD, something intel has been trumpeting as necessary in mainstream builds for 6 months (the last two guides now).

Anyone who can afford to run the gpus would be better suited to go up a notch in the price range .. that's just my opinion but to have a system so absolutely lopsided in configuration is comically reminiscent of a bodybuilder who only does his arms.

With that money you could have installed a 126GB SATA III SSD, and raised the overall system performance tremendously in the exchange.

 

[mapesdhs]

I must be missing something... the comments on the CPU benchmark pages keep
saying there's no significant difference between the old and new builds, so
how come the ABBYY FineReader results are totally different?

"Compression tools and ABBYY FineReader have nothing new to show us."

Old build vs. new: 13% speedup at stock speed, 23% speedup when overclocked -
I'd call that new! So what's going on with test? Or is it related to disk
speed? (in which case it's not a useful CPU test)

Ian.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]robisinho[/nom]Anyone who can afford to run the gpus would be better suited to go up a notch in the price range .. that's just my opinion but to have a system so absolutely lopsided in configuration is comically reminiscent of a bodybuilder who only does his arms.With that money you could have installed a 126GB SATA III SSD, and raised the overall system performance tremendously in the exchange.[/citation]

I think you're analysis is a little narrow minded. In many cases it would be lopsided to spend far more money on an SSD instead of graphics cards if you building a machine with primary use as a gaming rig.

This machine simply targets the best gaming performance for the budget. That doesn't equate to lopsidedness, it equates to preferring not to waste tons of money on components that don't add anything much the task at hand.

As always, it depends on the intended use. Just because that use doesn't jive with your preference, that doesn't make it lopsided. In the next build we'll probably go back to a single graphics card for a well-rounded machine, but that doesn't make this type of build any less attractive for someone with gaming in mind.

 

[Guest]

The total price of this configuration is not $991 but exactly $1,000. Is it correct ?

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]alexper[/nom]The total price of this configuration is not $991 but exactly $1,000. Is it correct ?[/citation]

$999.90 at the time of writing. But a day or two can change prices significantly.

 

[eddieroolz]

So the gist of this build was really to test out the difference of having two mid-end cards vs. one high-end card, in a real-world situation.

No, I'm not complaining or anything. Good story. Just wish we'd see some more NVidia action soon...

 

[hasappra]

I just bought CM Hyper 212 Plus a week ago and it only costs me $30. Not twice as much as Xigmatec Loki. And I'm using Amacrox Free Style modular 650W certified 80+ Bronze for only $82, and it's cheaper than Corsair TX650W 😛.

 

[Guest]

There appears to be a serious disconnect between the "Conclusion" and the charts for the 4 game-tests. The charts show the crossfire solution beating the March 2011 single-card build at 2560x1600 for everything but very high details for Metro 2033 (for which neither set-up was playable at this resolution).

Why, then, does the author reach the opposite conclusion?

 

[rafer]

[citation][nom]Stagger_Lee[/nom]There appears to be a serious disconnect between the "Conclusion" and the charts for the 4 game-tests. The charts show the crossfire solution beating the March 2011 single-card build at 2560x1600 for everything but very high details for Metro 2033 (for which neither set-up was playable at this resolution). Why, then, does the author reach the opposite conclusion?[/citation]

I'd have to agree - the article seems to disagree with itself.

 

[geok1ng]

too much CPU power, too much money spend on MOBO,too little Graphics power.

How about fitting 2x 2950 2GB inside the $1000 budget?

CPU Phenom II X4 955 $114
MOBO AsRock Extreme3 $90
Patriot 2x4GB $68
XFX 650w $90
2x 6950 2GB $540
500GB Hdd $40
24x DVD $21
Case Sentey 4x120mm fan $35

Grand total of $998, not including rebates nor gift cards, for twice the memory and more than double of VGA muscle, all of it powered by a PSU with twice as many PCI-e connectors.

 

[hangfirew8]

The problem with the Hyper 212+ has always been that it was a great $25 cooler, so availability and demand quickly skewed it into a mediocre $40-50 cooler, a price range where there were always better choices. Lately prices have been overlapping with the close-outs of the Mugen 2 (now mostly gone), which is insane, as the Hyper is not even in the same league as the Scythe.

I know, I own both. I bought my Hyper 212+ for $19.99 on sale at MicroCenter, at the same time the Egg was (briefly) gouging folks for nearly $60.

All in all, this is an excellent build, and while we may quibble with the cooler or HDD choice, it made all the right major trade-offs.

 

[Guest]

I got two issues with the build ( I used it to upgrade my current PC).

- Do I have to do something special to have the GPU working ? booting with one (or two GPU) will not work (hardware looks ok, all fans on both cards spin( , I got a couple of number on the screen, but nothing else.

The only main difference is the power supply, I kept my Antec TruePower 650W. Is it possible the power is not enough ? there are a couple of additional power "ports" for PCI-E

Note : my old geForce 8800gts works on the setup (now installing and patching win7), so the hardware seems to be ok.

Thanks.

Max.

 

[infectedspam]

I'm looking to build a similar setup to this (almost identical minus the case and cooler). The only problem is I can't find the memory in stock at newegg. Any suggestions on similarly spec'd and priced memory?

 

[thewalkindudenv]

Do I have to do something special to have the GPU working ? booting with one (or two GPU) will not work (hardware looks ok, all fans on both cards spin( , I got a couple of number on the screen, but nothing else.

The article states this:
"The build went smoothly, and there were only two issues to note. First, CrossFire did not work until I updated the motherboard's firmware to the newest option available, version 1B. The second issue was a surprise: the Gigabyte Radeon HD 6850 cards don’t come bundled with a CrossFire connector! Luckily, we had a spare lying around the lab, but folks who don’t have that luxury will be disappointed. A CrossFire bridge should automatically be included with cards this powerful, and we encourage all graphics card vendors to keep that in mind. "