System Builder Marathon, Q1 2013: $1000 Performance PC

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[citation][nom]stoogie[/nom]poor build, psu too crap, no storage. a expensive version of a 7870 for no reason at all < waste of money[/citation]And my boss wonders why I hurl insults at people who comment without actually reading the article.

Now instead of insults I can tell people "Don't be a stoogie". Thanks!
 
3570K 230$
660ti 280$
Hyper 212 EVO 33$
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 125$
Crucial Ballistix Tactical 48$
Seagate ST1000DM003 80$
Mushkin Chronos 90GB 100$
Lite-On iHAS124 $17
Xigmatek ASGARD 381 40$
RAIDMAX RX-600AF BRONZE 55$

Total 1008$
 
... looks like intel cpus, amd gpus and asrock made a clean sweep this quarter. so did xigmatek, to a lesser extent. personally, i didn't like any of the motherboards. i've seen the extreme4 and 6, and those look weak, kinda flimsy despite being very feature-rich.
keeping the roomy ssd will likely help score against the $800 build while keeping rest of the scores similar. interesting.
will there be a surprise $800-1000 amd-build-for-teh-lulz? like with fx6300/8320, cm hyper 212 evo, asrock(a-gain) 970 mobo, and so on. i think the amd fanboys would be pacified a bit.
 
[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]I believe Nvidia has lower CPU overhead. So, if you're going AMD for the CPU, you'd might be onto something with the Nvidia GPU.[/citation]

Are you really considering to build this "alternate $ 1000 build" ? Would be very interesting to see the results. No need to give it away, if Newegg is not happy.
 
Intel and AMD work well together. The irony. 😀

I'm wondering, could you guys look into this stuff:
1) An article that compares GPU performance on a range of processors from Intel and AMD from the Core 2 era, by using a 680 first and then a 7970.

2) Thomas said he'd like to repeat the Cross-Fire scaling article (FX vs Core i7) with an SLI config...

3) $600, $900, $1200 builds for next time's SBM

4) A10-5800K vs FX-8350 vs Core i3 3225 vs Core i5 3570 vs Core i7 3770 (yes, all non-K Intels) value comparison, with games capped to 60 fps (using vsync), with frame time analysis

5) Same as (4) but this time running a virtualized Windows environment

6) I think time for a Linux Distro v12.10 vs Win 7 vs Win 8 vs Mac OS X 10.8 performance comparison?

7) Memory bandwidth (and the impact it has had) and total power consumption (over the benchmark's duration) comparison from the Core 2/Phenom II days to today, use only 4C/4T processors.

8) Crysis 3 benchmark?

9) Adobe Photoshop CS6 Open CL comparison: AMD vs Nvidia across multiple price points

10) actually i think (7) should be divided into two, i'd actually like to see the performance impact of an external memory controller, in terms of latency, bandwidth and frame-times. Or something like that. External vs internal, basically.

I think that's all for now 😛
 
I did not care for this build. It was made to perform in benchmarks, but I do not think is a realistic representation of what someone would actually build. Other than lacking a hard drive, it is, however, what someone might end up with if they started with a lesser build (e.g. the $800 PC) and added a SSD to it.
 
What's with the case selection here (and even on the previous two builds)? I know it doesn't add anything to the performance metrics (even though it does affect thermals/noise) but I'd like to see some thought go into the case, considering that is what you see the whole time you have the computer, and it what you build in. Just being cheap isn't enough. At this price range $5-10 makes a difference in case choices, and probably won't affect performance component selection.

For $1000 build why wasn't the Corsair 200R used, for example? It looks a lot nicer and less like 9 yr old gamer than the Rosewill chosen. It's not like it is a huge price difference. At least the Xigmatek's chosen in the prior builds are less eye searing, although for the same amount of money, I'd go with the NZXT Source 210: better cable management, and cleaner looks.
 
[citation][nom]onus[/nom]I did not care for this build. It was made to perform in benchmarks, but I do not think is a realistic representation of what someone would actually build. Other than lacking a hard drive, it is, however, what someone might end up with if they started with a lesser build (e.g. the $800 PC) and added a SSD to it.[/citation]

For what it's worth this is quite similar to the system I've built over the past two weeks, based largely on following articles and forum threads right here on TH. (very much appreciated)

Prior to these recent batch of Q1 articles I purchased the following:

$190 - I5 3570k (price matched at a local Fry's Electronics to a sale on microcenter.com)
$110 - ASRock Z77 Pro4 (with 8GB of free Corsair RAM - Newegg)
$238 - Sapphire 7870 XT (reviews I read commended the card's superior cooling, superbiiz.com)
$150 - Samsung 840 250GB SSD (w/ $100 restaurants.com giftcard, on cnet's deals page)
$55 - XFX Pro 550W PSU (w/ $20 MIR - Newegg w/ a promo code)

I tossed all that gear in a second-hand Lian Li PC-B25F along with a Corsair H60 I bought used for $20.

It's been close to 8 years since I built a new system, so I'm bloody stoked.
 

1) a Lot of work.
3) how about $600, $800 and a $1000 amd-powered sbm builds with the same goal as this quarter and compare that data to this quarter's and figure out once and for all which build offers better bang for buck overall and for specific tasks such as 1080p gaming. prices change all the time, next quarter, who knows, amd might have an advantage.
4) capping fps introduces an artificial gpu bottleneck which will in turn give the illusion of all the cpus performing similarly.
7) would show amd cpus in a very bad light. :) reviewers might need to bring out task-specific performance per dollar comparisons to lessen the impact of worse performance per watts.
8) Ditto. i'd like to see how toms bench cpus for crysis 3. i've been seeing some crysis 3 benches being paraded around like the time techspot showed bf3 sp benches showing amd and intel cpus performing similarly making amd fanboys very very happy....until 2011's sub $200 gaming cpu roundup came out. :)
 
Also, I just want to +1 to all the comments on the lack of a HHD with the SSD. for that same $180 dollars spent on the 240GB SSD Thomas could have procured a 128GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. Definitely would have been the way to go.
 
Although a interesting approach I dont like limiting the "high" end build to $1000. It really defeats the purpose of making a high end build to begin with and while the value and performance per dollar is nice you loose out on intangibles that make a high end build nice.

I am not willing to cut these just to save a few bucks (on a high end build):
Dedicated HDD storage drive in addition to an SSD boot drive.
Blue Ray drive
Hyperthreading (yes I video encode a lot so it provides a benefit I want)
Better air cooling
GPU - the chosen card is fine but in a high end build I would opt for a little more power under the hood.

To sum it up: dont skimp so much on the high end builds any more it encroaches too much on the mid level build and sacrifices too many intangibles that I expect to see in a high end machine.
 
yeesh...dropped the ball on that case guys. there are much better choices in that price range.

i was gonna debte the choice of no hdd but as 1 poster said 'THIS IS A PERFORMANCE BUILD...NOT A STORAGE BUILD.

if someone asked me for a all-around do everything comp i wouldnt recommend this build.
 
Essentially what this SBM proves.. That as long as Intel keeps a chip at that $200 price point.. The world of do-it-yourself PC building will be, OK.
 
Nice job on the build but it's clear the $800 price point is the way to go.
I've always found the price points to be at $500-$800-$1200-$1500 and up. As someone else mentioned, the $1200 price point is to get you to the next tear of video cards and a little fancier looks.

Overal, very close to my build. I splurged on a little extra ram, power supply and a fancy case (first time) but I even used the Redbone on my cheaper i3-3220 build. I'm also still trying to decide how much I want to spend and how long I want to wait to buy a new GPU but have been staring at the Sapphire 5870 XT.
I've only overclocked the CPU to 4.0 at this point.

ASrock Z77 Extreme4
i5-3570K
CM 212 EVO
G-skill Ripjaws 12gb 1600 9C
Sapphire 5870 Vapor-X OC
Samsung 830 128Gb; WD Blue 320GB (from old system)
Seasonic X850
Antec 900 USB 3.0
 
I have this same motherboard with a 2700k. There's a known "flaw" with the way Asrock reports and/or applies voltage to the cpu. The only way I've found to verify this is by using a multimeter to read the voltage across one of the caps feeding the cpu from the back of the board. Under load I've seen nearly .1V difference from what CPU-Z is reading and what is actually being fed to the processor. So under load you may actually be seeing closer to 1.4V than 1.3V. Just a heads up to anyone using or thinking of getting this, or most other Asrock Z77 motherboard.
 
Compared to the other two systems, this one was disappointing. With $20 budget left over, the case could have been better. Rather than a 240 GB SSD, the GPU could have been made more interesting - perhaps a bump-up to a 7950, or maybe some SLI / Xfire solution using cheaper cards with a combined price at ~300. Not necessarily because it would be definitively better. Just because it's possible, and to shake things up a bit.
 
My Steam library is, currently, 360GB worth of data. And still have titles to download.

You can take your build to the dumpster for me. I'll stick with the higher loading times of my RAID0, but 8 times the space.

KTHXBAI!

Cheers! 😛
 
1 system drive? I don't think so. That should be cut to a $100 SSD w/ a HDD and a better PSU, as I have a hard time thinking that a 500W PSU will be able to adequately power that system. That should still bring u under $1000...
 
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