System Builder Marathon, March 2010: $1,500 Enthusiast PC

[jlyu]

Wow..this doesnt seem much difference..I wouldnt mind getting this over the $3000..they both sound great..2 5850?

 

[sempisan]

All of the graphs are either labeled wrong (they all say $1300 for current system) or just copy and pasted from last quarter's article. How can we trust the results?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

The price increases are a bitter pill to swallow.

 

[Guest]

I live in Uruguay, here AsRock is the worst brand you could ever buy, I wonder if in the USA it's different, here an AsRock motherboard is more dangerous than buying generic RAM, you're inevitably doomed...

 

[awaken688]

Noise measurements? Why is noise not standard to measure like temp and power?

I like the build though.

 

[pepperman]

[citation][nom]enzo matrix[/nom]No mention as to why two 5850s were chosen over a single 5970?[/citation]

Likely price and availability: they already went over budget; the cheapest 5970 I found was $750. That would have put them another $110 over budget.

 

[eaclou]

Something's really fishy about that 3D Studio Max benchmark.

There's no way the 920, clocked higher, should lose by a good 3+ seconds to the i5 750. The benchmark has been shown time and time again to be faster with more threads, and there are multiple established benchmark comparisons in some of your CPU articles that show all i7s (9xx and 8xx) are clearly superior to the i5 here.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i5,2410-12.html

 

[Gabkicks]

I have had my ASRock x58 mobo for a few months now @ 3.8 ghz. no problems make sure to install the latest BIOS!

 

[wlaziu]

FAIL FAIL FAIL
Asrock x58 motherboard... PC will last for 6 months, if overclocked will fail after ca. 3-4 hours of gaming. Also using 2 graphic cards will burn the x58 chipset pretty soon.
PROOF:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/x58-motherboard-i7,2252-3.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asrock-x58-supercomputer,2275.html
All Asrock X58 motherboards have the same under spec. power and cooling design and Tom has actually burned 3 of those motherboards.
Want a x58 platform? Stay away from Asrock, DFI and cheaper Foxconn's and MSI's.
YOU'VE been Warned, this CPU has 130W TDP BUT around 200W of max power consumption.

 

[jhkokst]

Ya'll should start including Audio Workstation benchmarking in your gamut of tests. Alot in the music industry would like to see benchmarks about the number of VSTi's these chips can handle, FX processing, and mixdown speed.

 

[thedreadfather]

However, for those about to overclock, the Core i7-920 salutes you.

Cleeve, you are my hero.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]thedreadfather[/nom]Cleeve, you are my hero.[/citation]

Nice to know the reference wasn't lost on everyone.

 

[envolva]

Every picture talk about a "Current $1300" build. But it costs over $1500... rebate?

 

[Guest]

REALLY want to start seeing some professional audio processing benchmarks. Use a pro grade audio card (ASIO) and measure maximum polyphony from various VSTi and sample players (eg: max poly from Ivory pianos). This will measure the speed of the processor (fully threaded), memory bandwidth and disk.

 

[bustapr]

I want to win that one. Pick me from the system giveaway plz.

 

[curnel_D]

Why oh why would you not use the 690 II over the older original??? They're the SAME PRICE!!!

 

[Guest]

It would be nice if you guys would add the overclocking settings used/change as a link so overclocking noobs like me can benefit from them... Sorry but 2 screenshots of the bios screen don't cut it for me

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]sempisan[/nom]All of the graphs are either labeled wrong (they all say $1300 for current system) or just copy and pasted from last quarter's article. How can we trust the results?[/citation]

Labels have been fixed. Now your trust issues have been resolved.

 

[youssef 2010]

Great Article as usual but,there is only one thing.
Did you read the customer reviews on the PSU you chose? because it clearly has a high failure rate (91 reviews 1egg,24 2eggs,32 3eggs).I am a very big fan of corsair but I think something's wrong with Newegg's CMPSU 750 TX stock.The biggest reason that prevented me from buying this PSU is the 91 reviews that gave it 1 egg because, after reading them, I felt it was an unsafe gamble(more than the usual risk considered when buying products online)

 

[DookieDraws]

Man, I sure wish they'd bring back the printer-friendly view option.

 

[CerianK]

Regarding AVG: "Ed.: which is why we're doing away with this test; post-version 9, it's no longer a good performance measurement"

As a possible alternative to killing this benchmark, I suggest kicking the performance slider from 'Auto' to 'High' (or 'Low' maybe). For an older P4 Celeron/XP system I had to knock it down to 'Low' to prevent v9 from crippling it. I'm not sure if changing that setting will bring relevance back to AVG or not, but it is worth a try before giving up on it, since AV of some kind will be a ghost running in the background of most systems.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]enzo matrix[/nom]No mention as to why two 5850s were chosen over a single 5970?[/citation]

[edit] sorry, I thought you said 5870, there.

I chose two 5850's because they're cheaper than a ssingle 5970, and easier to find in stock. Also, I wanted to compare this system to the previous one with identical graphics cards.

Mostly, it was a budgetary decision tho.

 

[jsrudd]

Isn't that VTT higher than the safe maximum? I thought the highest VTT was supposed to be 1.4?

 

[osiguy]

I just RMA'd my ASRock x58 extreme, for many reasons, 1 was for false advertising and for another was I had nothing but problems with it.
I tried every voltage setting I could think of and it constantly crashed if i tried to overclock even to the lowest setting up from i7 920's stock 2.6. I have an excellent 950 watt ps which is overkill and it's an 80 rated ps from a well respected company so i know it wasn't a ps issue.
The only reason I bought the ASRock was on behalf of the best buy rating that Tom's gave it. (The only time Tom's has steared me wrong imho)
It also had bad ram slots.Also the SATA storage drivers from J-micron suck (not to put too fine a point on it)
I've done my research this time and I'm going with a Gigabyte board.
I am a mild gamer and I love the Sapphire 5670. It has a 3rd party arctic fan which is 100 times better than stock.
I was using an Arctic cpu cooler (Arctic 7.0 pro) but it wouldn't keep up with the rated 2500rpm level and it didn't keep the cpu very cool even at idle. (I don't know for sure if it was the cooler or the motherboard having just one more issue?
I'm going to go with the Corsair chcp50 liquid cpu cooling system. I've heard great things about it.

 

[shiva7663]

[citation][nom]Stardude82[/nom]Rosewill is just the name New Egg slaps on to "unbranded" imports.[/citation]
That's interesting; I did not know that.