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

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[citation][nom]Don Woligroski[/nom]Armed with two Radeon HD 5850s, even taxing DirectX 11 features like tessellation aren’t a problem. This is definitely not the case when it comes to a single graphics card running DiRT 2 in DirectX 11 mode--our recent performance analysis showed that even the mighty Radeon HD 5870 can only manage about 30 frames per second at 2560x1600 when 4x AA is applied.[/citation]
Does it means I should crossfire the Radeon HD 5770 instead of buying a single Radeon HD 5850 if I want the best tessellation performance for ~$300?
 
[citation][nom]CIB24[/nom]Swap the cooler with a Hyper 212 Plus and the PSU with a Seasonic 750w 80-plus certified Gold and I'd buy it.[/citation]The Rosewill FORT120 beats the Hyper 212 Plus. You can probably figure it out from looking at the Cogage True Spirit results, since its the same sink as the Thermalright MUX-120. Tom's reviewed all three coolers using the same fan.[citation][nom]jedimasterben[/nom]Seriously, does anybody EVER mention that the P55 Express PCH has 8 lanes of PCI-e available?[/citation]People ignore that because those eight lanes are at half-speed and share a very slow pathway to the CPU.[citation][nom]osiguy[/nom]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.[/citation]Well, I'm sure the last thing Tom's would want to do is stear you, but there's a chance ASRock might have sent Tom's a specially-prepped motherboard! As for your "bad RAM slots", that's probably the first thing that was wrong with your board: Bent Pins. The slots are almost never bad, the "bad slot" probably is usually caused by bent LGA pins, causing a poor connection to the CPU's integrated memory controller.
 
Osiguy, that you got a bad mobo does not mean they're all bad, or that you were "steered wrong," just as Tom's getting a good one doesn't mean they're all good. If you're going to build systems, occasionally you will get a bad part, no matter the reputation of the manufacturer.
 
Everything about that machine is amazing. My only quall with this is having to enter a drawing. Why can't we all just fIght to the death over it? At least then we can put it on YouTube make some money off of the views :)
 
I'm surprised this system beat the last one at stock speeds so bad, Even overclocked it was not much of difference between the two. I guess its the X58 chipset. This system keeps up with the $3k one two.
 
[citation][nom]Marc82[/nom]The Storm Scout is simply the best case I have used with virtually no negatives. -Marc[/citation]

Hey Marc, I like that case too! In fact I even considered using it in the $3000 machine a few months ago, but it didn't have room for HD 5870's.
 
[citation][nom]akula2[/nom]Could someone tell me why Tom removed "Print" feature?[/citation]

I think an associated application broke and they're trying to fix it. I was privy to a discussion about it a few days ago.
 
Printing worked fine for me today- seems they've fixed all the problems I've been having lately- The printer button is now down just above the comments and stuff though- took me a while to find it.
Also- I Love that case- same one as I have and its been totally fantastic.
I would have liked to see the i5 system overclocked with the same cooler as this though because really, that would make it a much fairer comparison (I've gotten my i5 to 4GHz with my Xigmatek HDT-s1283 with temps staying under 65C with prime95 running). Might make a difference in the comparison to have more similar overclocks as opposed to the stock crap cooler. I got better cooling just setting my xigmatek on top of the CPU than I got with the stock cooler firmly locked down, which is PATHETIC.
 
The RAM listed for this month is the one for last month on the test system and benchmark page. Don't diss Crucial by calling them Corsair. :)
 
5850s are ridiculously priced. I'm glad you guys pointed that out. I've been waiting for them to drop and they keep going up. It's a weird market now with prices rising instead falling. SSD and the 5850 are the 2 things I covet most. I won't touch em til they drop.
 
[citation][nom]dookiedraws[/nom]Man, I sure wish they'd bring back the printer-friendly view option.[/citation]

It's there, at the bottom of the page! Right under the drop-down menu for page selection!
 
well the reason I feel I was steared wrong was that in comparison to the ASRock x58 supercomputer there was really only 1 review at the time of the x58 extreme and when Tom's gives it a "best buy" rating well... we all come to tom's for a reason, to learn something from someone who knows more than we do. I didn't necessarily say I was steered wrong by Tom's. I just mentioned I was steered wrong.
I agree with Shiva that unlike for production... I'm sure the Motherboard companies go out of their way to send in one they have gone over with a fine tooth comb to make sure everything is working.

That's one thing I appreciate about this review was the author went and spent money from a review budget and got a random motherboard. Course he admitted that since one of his compatriots had already done a full review that he didn't see the need to do another one. Personally I wish he had gotten one from newegg since there are dozens of complaints on neweggs website regarding this motherboard. I'm willing to bet that Newegg got a bunch of bad ones from ASRock.

I also think that ASRock has changed the basics of the bios since that first person had done the review on this mobo because all the pictures of the review show the voltage settings in the "advanced" window not in the tweak window where it is now and vary hard to find. Another reason why I wish this reviewer had done a new review on the board as well as the ram and cpu and video cards.
 
I'm kind of surprised that Tom's hasn't done more builds with Thermaltake's Armor + series. This box is only 180-190 at Newegg and talk about space.
I've crammed as much stuff as I can think of into this thing and I still have enough room left over for a Jacuzzi. 🙂
If anyone wants to get a full tower where there is room for cabling and room for ram coolers and heavy duty cpu coolers and room for multiple video cards (even 2u cards) and still have a ton of room left over and even have room for a large 2u water cooling unit??? Get a Thermaltake Armor + series. I love this thing. I had one of the Antec 900 series before and that was big before I got this Thermaltake and the Antec is dwarfed by this box.
 
One thought that has been missed today....
Since most of us have been bitching (myself included) we should thank these guys for their info. They don't have to share.
I am sure they have fun doing what they do. I mean if i could actually get paid a great pay and "play" with computers to see if i could break them and not have to pay for it? OH wouldn't i love that.
 
@osiguy: It would be great to get paid to assemble these things, see how close we can come to building them within a specific budget, and seeing how much we can squeeze out before they fail.

---

That CM690 case can hold the HD5870s without a prob. I measured and I think a HD5970 would work to as long as the power connectors were not on the end (on the top edge would be no problem.) I haven't looked at the CM690-II to know if there is any differences in space though. Oh yeah, the CM690 will hold a Zalman 9700-LED cooler no prob. (Can't vouch for it if you have a second side fan though.) Just don't force the power and reset buttons to move front to back.

I'd be interested in seeing a "Mixed" SBM sometime. I think AMD doesn't get enough time in these.
 
Your intel biased setups. For this price the 750 is just worthless specially with the crappy stock heatsink.

In gaming i5 750 and PII 955 compete in equal terms.

I would put in the $1300 setup a 965BE + a 890GX mobo + Coolermaster Hyper 212+ heatsink.
 
pfft i had an Arctic 7 pro cpu coooler in my tower which is a huge cooler and it didn't even come close to causing grief for ram or for video cards.
This Thermaltake Armor plus has plenty of room.
It has room for 7 tooless 5.25" drives (5 if you go with the 2u bigwater cooler)
standard tooless rack for 6 hard drives (8 if you don't run fans on the bottom) you can run option for 2 120 or 140 fans on the bottom (if you take the 2 hd slides out on the bottom), it comes standard with a 220 on the side, a 140 intake on the front and a 120 outtake in the back. There is room in the top for a 120 for outtake on the top.

It also has an incredibly convenient heavy duty pull out tray (nothing flimsy about this box)for the motherboard which is great for installing mobo and components.It's easy to slide back in even with a fully loaded mobo.It also has a convenient sliding tray on top for the PS. My 950 watt modular PS is pretty long so I had to pull the slider back quite a ways but I still have room in the top for the water cooler should I chose to go that route in the future when I get more $$.
But the incredible thing about this mobo tray pull out feature is there is about 3/4" between the back of the mobo tray and the right side door. This allows for wonderful cable management and with the included sticky back tie downs that come with the tower, you can hardly even see any power cables at all. If you're not running water it has a nice hidden tray on the top to hide your flash sticks or the fancy cloth that comes iwht the tower to keep the outside high sheen black finish looking nice.

Did I say that for 189 this is one hellaciously great tower.
 
i'll stand on my i7-920 any day.
The 2.6 920 out paced the phenomII 3.2 processor 6 ways to sunday.
there was only 1 test that the phantom beat the i7 920 on and that was pretty much worthless unless you were specifically looking for that one result. the i7 920 is a billion times better, faster, more efficient, and better at overclocking than even the phenom II 945. When they oc'd it to 3.6, 3.8, and 4.0 the 920 was like a Space shuttle in outer space compared to a 2000 yr old tortoise in quick sand.

I have always been a die hard AMD fan. I will always appreciate AMD. I was originally going to get an ASUS board and an AMD 965 but when I saw the comparison and the specs on the i7 920 and the fact that I could get it for almost 20 bucks cheaper than the 965 and the fact that it uses tri core ram and I can run 3 sticks of 2 gb instead of 4 and get 6 versus 4 gb and it's a lot faster and more efficient, I had to go with an Intel i7 920.
This is the first time in years that I intentionally purchased an intel processor that didn't come in a laptop and didn't have any choice.
Look at the facts and swallow the hard truth and your pride. The i7 920 is the best way to go even for an unemployed network admin like me who had to wait for his tax money to even think about buying a new pc set up. It was down to the wire for me and at the last second I changed my mind and went with the i7 920 and an x58 mobo. ( I did stick with my kingston hyper x though, imho corsair is good, but time after time in professional uses and personal uses Kingston is the long term champion (I don't care what you oc'rs say about me 🙂
 
Nice comparison I am looking hard at these new asrock 333 boards if they ever hit the US... http://www.asrock.com/feature/true333/index.asp?cat=Models
Although from what i see there customer service seems poor and like someone else said here the Egg may have gotten a bad batch.

That being said, is there an area of Tom's that has Hardware Customer Service Reviews I have overlooked, and if not maybe could one be started? I know this is a hardware review site and not a customer review...but what does it say about the hardware if the company don't stand behind it. Only drawback to such would seem to be bias fanbois badmouthing companies for products they dont own though.

I think PC enthusiast and mainstreamers spend good hard money on hardware and alot of time we dont get the customer service we deserve...maybe that would improve if more sites like this could shed light on not only there opinion but readers opinions of customer service with some of these companies

my 2 cents...keep the change
 
i'lltake_two

Trust me avoid ASRock. They are in Taiwan and during Chinese New Year their whole company closes down for a week and they shut down the tech support mail page so you can't even send them email for a whole week. (I know because I unfortunately happened to buy one at that time frame)

Their idea of turning the X58 extreme into a 333 mobo is to throw in a pcie adapter for sata and usb....

I had to wait almost 2 weeks for my first contact from them and their rep was rude, typed in piss poor English and obviously has no clue about spell or grammar check. I just don't understand how a manufacturer would not have phone support. It's absolutely farkin nuts.

Newegg users have reported on this thing numerous times and a very large portion of extremely negative feedback on all their motherboards.
I had to do testing for them and they used the excuse that OCZ didn't give them all the information for the ram i had so they didn't program the bios very well for it. Well isn't that just a piss poor excuse. I find it odd that on Gigabyte website the very same memory was tested and marked valid for their motherboards. (color me shocked)

As far as customer service goes... if you have a local store in town go there rather than buy online because then you can just take it back and remove the OEM from the picture. If you're going through newegg or tigerdirect, then I've heard excellent things about EVGA although i've seen some negative feedback re their new 1366 mobo's but they are a stand up company.... Gigabyte I've heard mixed reviews on their customer service but pretty much everyone says their mobo's are solid.

my new mother board that i'm replacing the rma'd asrock POS is the Gigabyte udr3 with the usb 3.0 and sata 3.0 already in the board.
I'd get the ud5 or ud7 if i could afford them but i'm unemployed so I'm on a limited budget.

I thought the poor reviews on ASRock was due to ignorant users as many of them complained about their 1600 ram showing up as 1060 etc...(as we all know ram is defaulted to 1066 on the i7 chipset and you have to bump it up in step from the bios) but I was wrong. Spend a little extra money and get a good board. Someonee on Tom's said a very wise thing in a forum.... If you're going to spend 300 bucks on a CPU.. Spend over 200 on the mobo.... The motherboard is arguably the most important part of the computer... why skimp? If you love your family would you buy a used Yugo that came from a junkyard?
good luck and good buying
 
I tell ya what, the outright GPU performance is pretty stellar, but then again, I'm after overall system performance, not framerate alone. If I can get over 30FPS minimum at screen resolution in common games, I'm happy.

So, $1580 for the base system. Add a kbd, mouse, webcam, speakers, OS, and a decent screen....

For a hair over $2K I can get an iMac 27" i7 (which is 2.8, not 2.6Ghz btw). That 27" IPS screen alone is worth $900, 4850 graphics are none too shabby for everyday gaming, Wireless N dual band MIMO is a nice plus, and having a system that comes with a warranty that costs only $119 for 3 years isn't bad, and the iMac will have nice resale value... Personally, I'll wait a few more weeks for the hardware refresh to come before I buy, but I'd rather have a faster i7 iMac (with more storage), than a GPU on steroids that in reality costs more.
 
Only problem is, if one little thing goes wrong with your imac, you have to send the whole thing in, not just a part.
You can't add or subtract anything and you can't custom build.
Your os is limited to what apple provides... good luck if your printer or game isn't mac compatible. Did I mention you can't change or fix your computer yourself?
what if that sweet monitor burns out? Mac monitors are brighter so they burn out quicker. You would have to send your whole pc and be without it for probably a month or more.
If you want to spend an obscene amount of money and not be able to control what goes into it... (snicker snicker snicker) go ahead.By the way Tiger Direct has a 27 inch monitor that is just as good and has a longer lumen life than the apple for under $350 (cackle laugh snicker snortle)
Sorry - darn my stomach hurts from all the laughter.
I find it humerous that the really expensive Apple computers ( they suck because even though the intel processors are better and way cheaper than the old motorola chip, they still charge a ton of money) run better and faster on Ubuntu than they do on their precious MAC OS9 or 10
 
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