System Builder Marathon: Low Cost System

[cleeve]

Well you certainly have the right to that opinion, Phrozt. I simply disagree with it.

I don't think I'm pigeonholing anyone, but I think you might be, suggesting that only geriatrics and students are interested in a sub-$1000 PC; I think everyone with less than $1000 is interested in a sub-$1000 PC, regardless of their use for it.

And for the record, the gamers I know with sub-$1000 computers pretty much ALL build them. Cheaper that way, usually.

 

[acidpython]

Those of you with opinons as to the costs, how about the following tiers for the next SBM:

low-cost: $650
mid-range: $1300
high-end: $2600

Also, did you want us to do a dedicated gaming build next time? Or an all-round build?

thoughts and comments appreciated gents...

Much better more of what i expected the article to be around especially the 650 build which i thought would be interesting. (I'm sorry but the "low cost" build didn't cut it for me.

 

[Shadow703793]

^ Agreed. The low cost should be $800. The other two are OK, you could increase the high end to $3k. I think cleeve should make a new topic where people can vote on the budget. Its much better that way.

 

[Crashman]

^ Agreed. The low cost should be $800. The other two are OK, you could increase the high end to $3k. I think cleeve should make a new topic where people can vote on the budget. Its much better that way.

Since the site occasionally does a $500 gaming PC, how about just starting with that?

 

[zenmaster]

^ Agreed. The low cost should be $800. The other two are OK, you could increase the high end to $3k. I think cleeve should make a new topic where people can vote on the budget. Its much better that way.

I don't think the issue is just the Budget.
He should steer clear of using subjective words in the title such as "Low", "Mid", or "High" budget.

Regardless of the values selected, nobody will agree that $XXX falls in "Low/Mid/High" Budget.
But Nobody can Aruge that a $500 is a $500 computer or a $1000 Computer is a $1000 Computer.

He may still choose to select "3" seperate builds at "3" seperate prices, just avoid the extra adjectives.

 

[Shadow703793]

^ Good idea.

To get an idea of what people think as a "mid range":
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/249924-31-poll-midrange-price-build#t1795729

 

[cisco]

I am baffled as to why they are recommending a $230.00 3870. When was this article written 6 months ago? Not only are the 3870 cheaper now, but for $230.00 you could get all kinds of 8800 GTs or GTSs. And why the hell did they recommend 8800GTX on their higher end builds. Was that written last year? The new (G92) 8800 GT performs as well at half the cost, for that matter you could add new GTS for less and they definitely outperform the old GTX. Very strange recommendations, especially for Tom's.

 

[Shadow703793]

That's a NICE system, not a budget system. Of course all this is relative, but let's get real. I know almost all
of you drive the latest Lexus, and that's your second car, the real honey being in storage, but in the real world...




Uhh, OK, let's get to the real world:
(New egg - because driving somewhere to get parts is questionable on a budget, the exhaust might fall off delaying the purchase, or the 15 head gasket driveway repair you saved $1,200 bucks on you never had might blow. )

E2180 = $80 that's fine, I won't be a total jerk and whine 2160, or 2140 which is
currently out of stock, since so many Lexus owners bought em up !
lol
P35-DS3L = X$90X Umm, that's a "silver model" - we're talking copper or aluminum here
ABIT IP35-E (large seller) = $60

Corsair 450VX = X$70X Uhh, what is that, your caviar ?
no replacement, you get one of these with your budget midtower - duhh.

Crucial Ballastix DDR2 800 (2*1GB) = X$63X Yeah, a fat wallet Crucial Ballistix bullet shooting skull exploder...
Transcebd Jetram DDR2800 2x1BG = $36 Reverse those numbers! Yes it overclocks it's a sleeper. Blow on it if you
think it gets too hot.

8800GT 512 = X$220X Oh boy, golly, yeah everyone on a budget has one of these...NOT !
8600 GT take yer pick = $80 Yes, you won't be bragging about your "RIG!" - but then you're a
nobody on a real budget, no problem. Put to use all your overclock
and bios hack and optimization skills all these rich folk supposedly
have from being TH master members... and having fat wallets where
they never have to successfully tweak a dang thing.

COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 = X$50X Oh yeah, yer a Centurion at the gate of the Castle...
no wait yer at least a GD Knight of the roundtable with yer $50 case
and $70 separate power supply
Logisys Area 51 with 430 watt = $35 YES it includes a power supply, and glowing fans... since you can't
light bulbs and more electricity than just for your "rig" - small r.

Seagate Barracuda 250GB = X$70X Nice, but once again this isn't high society hour, this is hotdog night.
Exelstor Jupiter 160GB SATA3.0 = $46 I could have said 80GB for $36, but even bums have standards.


Total with out rebates = X$686X OMG, is Santa Claus still coming, or is the milk for the kids
and they're skipping the cookies for a year ?

BUM total = $337 Yeah that's right, money man, less than half the cost of the reduced.

Ok, you could still get the MSI 9600GT 512 w/ a free Witcher game (that you-err- well the people other than all You's - cannot afford any other way) and only add $60 to the total.

This is a budget system, low end system.... I mean come on.... I know I know... you SkullTrailers laugh at the chattle below...... heck you Corsair Cuda crackers are uptown connected...

*rant over*

Thanks to the other non-bum NE experts who had the budget parts picked. LOL

Oh my, I forgot the $20 HS -

Sunbeam CR-SW-775 giant tower cpu cooler with heatpipes and all of 512 grams - another sleeper, or if you're a fancy bum:
XIGMATECH HDT-S1283 = $36
My apologies to all the Feezer7 pro fiends = $37 - but let's face it, $20 for a Sunbeam is the way to go.

The parts that are bolded are very questionable when they come to performance, quality, and price vs $ value. Going with a BAD PSU can actually cost more in the long run. For example a bad PSU can completely kill motherboard,etc. I have used Trancend RAM before and I promised my self never using that RAM again after I had 2 sets giving Memtest errors at stock. The 8600 is cR@p when it comes to gaming. That card is over priced for the low performance it gives. The build I did used quality parts AND aimed at ACTUALLY PLAYING GAMES AT GOOD RES. I used Newegg because of their customer service and not every one has a Microcenter,etc close to them and many people buy from newegg.

 

[miser]

I have a couple of questions about the low end build.

It notes in the article that it uses a 3870 graphics card. Was this card used with crossfire hybrid to the intergrated graphics on the southbridge? I ask because it doesn't specifically say and I know that some cards will not do the hybrid crossfire.

Second with RAM so cheap why not go for the full 4 gig of RAM you could use some of the extra to dump into the 780g chipset and have two 512mb video cards running. I have also read that the motherboard onbaord graphics overclocks right nice too.

I like the sound of the new 780g chipset and this board is appealing but I would like to know some more about the two configuration I asked about before exploring too much more.

 

[cleeve]

1. Hybrid crossfire using the integrated 3200 will slow things down if your discrete card is too fast. I believe the 2400 XT is about the level where hybrid crossfire with the integrated 780G starts to become useless, but it might even be slower than that.

2. With a discrete card the integrated graphics care useless, see point 1

3. The real benefit with a 3870 is the ability to drive 4 monitors. Not much more than that.

 

[miser]

Hmmm, I am a bit confused it seemed to me the adding the correct Crossfire type card could add a little punch to the system. That is at least the impression that I got from this article (at the bottom of the page)

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/04/amd_780g_chipset/page7.html

 

[Shadow703793]

Yes, shadow, everyone knows that. Only I've got 2 system boxes at the same price not one, and the lan party is on.

True. But you are risking the chance of hardware problems down the road. Mainly the PSU.

 

[cisco]

Right now they have Evga 8800GTS 320mb for 114.00 after rebate at newegg. That's a hell of a sweet budget card.

 

[praxus]

That's one of the worst articles I've read on Tom's, and I've been around since the beginning. As many people have pointed out, different parts would produce a much better system for the price.

For example; I just ordered this system from ncix.com:

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard $89.99

Intel Xeon E3110 Dual Core Processor LGA775 3.0GHZ Wolfdale 1333FSB 6MB $204.99

EVGA E-GEFORCE 8800GT 600MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card $219.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 3.5IN 500GB SATA2 8.5MS Hard Drive $97.99

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro LGA775 2500RPM 45CFM $26.01

Corsair CMPSU-450VX 450W ATX 12V 33A 24PIN ATX Power Supply $69.98

Antec Nine Hundred Mid Tower Gamer Case $88.99

Mushkin HP PC2-6400 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL4-5-4-11 DIMM Dual Channel Memory Kit $52.99


Total Price, about $850 bucks

 

[Phrozt]

Well you certainly have the right to that opinion, Phrozt. I simply disagree with it.

I don't think I'm pigeonholing anyone, but I think you might be, suggesting that only geriatrics and students are interested in a sub-$1000 PC; I think everyone with less than $1000 is interested in a sub-$1000 PC, regardless of their use for it.

And for the record, the gamers I know with sub-$1000 computers pretty much ALL build them. Cheaper that way, usually.

You completely missed what I said... again.

I never said that I thought that people who have sub $1k to spend aren't gamers, I said that if people who have sub $1k to spend and plan on building the computer, they would most likely be interested in overclocking to get the most out of it.

Anyone who doesn't want to spend more than $1k on a computer that *isn't* a gamer or an enthusiast probably wouldn't build it anyway, so for them it would be buying a boxed rig. For those who would actually buy parts and build a sub $1k comp, they'd be interested in overclocking.

3. The real benefit with a 3870 is the ability to drive 4 monitors. Not much more than that.

So..... your builder doesn't have $1k to spend on a computer... but you think he's got $1k to spend on 4 monitors? Yeah.. that makes sense.

If that's honestly the only benefit for choosing the card, then that was probably the stupidest choice on the rig.

 

[tj_the_first]

Phrozt: Not trying to hijack your discussion but to add some weight to Cleeve's point; I have built my own gaming computers for almost 10 years and never overclocked. I think many folks on Toms forget there are those of us who don't overclock. Of my half a dozen gaming friends (about 30 & working in IT) with value-mid machines not one has ever overclocked a component for anything but experimentation. My view is the flipside of yours where I get frustrated by so few articles placing importance on stock components (overclocking numbers are a bonus not a baseline). I like seeing components chosen on their merit rather than potential because I'm not going to achieve that potential. The 3870 is an interesting choice if you're not crossfiring but it's not like he chose a FireGL or something - I'm looking at a 3750 to replace my 1950s btw. Also the 4 monitors bit was Cleeve saying that there's no benefit WHEN ADDED TO THE ONBOARD GRAPHICS. You got that out of context. Next bit is not directed at you either.

Cleeve: Fair enough box. Well done dealing with the folks you mentioned at the start of your article. I also get sick of people suggesting crappy dual core processors (X3800, E2160) based purely on games performance. It's a general machine and most people on a budget box are doing everything on it from DVD encoding to music ripping to gaming to office docs and the net.

E2180 vs 9500 in general multithreaded apps? You idiots.

 

[cleeve]

You completely missed what I said... again.

What part of it did I miss?

You're saying nobody builds their own rigs under $1000 unless they overclock, and I'm simply disagreeing with you based on my experience.

Does that sound particularly wrong to you?
If so, set me straight Phrozt!

 

[Headfoot]

Graphics card selection is SERIOUSLY out of whack. Buy a 3870 for 230 when an 8800 GTS 512 is only 220 (200 with rebate) on NewEgg?