System Builder Marathon, Q1 2013: System Value Compared

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All of the builds are competing for same thing: value. Perhaps the builders would better be able to find the "sweet spot" price without being restricted to a certain budget. Something should be done to prevent 3 identical builds, but it's a good theory.
 
1. Change what the computer is built for at each article.
a. Best Gaming at 3 price points
b. Best Productivity at 3 price points
c. Best Balance at 3 price points
2. An upgrade article would also be a good idea.
3. Silence, htpc, mini itx
4. Thermals and noise included in the results
 


I just had this discussion with a buddy of mine actually, and I was once in the same frame of thinking as yourself.

Basically I'll list the reasons I gave him for having an SSD. These reasons may/may not apply to most people.

1. Booting time is reduced greatly. This helps for overclocking sessions really well for trial and error overclocking testing. If you are installing a new OS there will be many restarts involved in the update process as well, which an SSD will help with greatly. Anything really that requires a restart. If you have a lower end system and want to get the most out of it, overclocking is a must in most cases.

2. Some games, like BF3 for example let you start to play in multiplayer as soon as your loaded. With an SSD you will be one of the first to load allowing you to set up camp, or get to a safe location before everyone else loads in. I'm not talking about 5-10 seconds either. It can easily be 30-45 seconds, allowing you to maybe even have an objective captured before everyone is loaded. They may of changed this along the way though. I haven't loaded the game in almost a year. Some games load different areas as well as you move from one point to another. This is almost instant on a decent SSD.

3. Working on a system to repair it can be a real pain as well when your faced with a non SSD system, after getting used to having one yourself.

4. Multitasking with an SSD is sped up signifigantly. You can record video and play a game with higher FPS. Not confirmed by myself, but have read of it in alot of places. One of my buddies used to use fraps to record video for montages, and he always said that recording would drop his FPS quite a bit if recording in 1080p. After he got his SSD he said his FPS would barely budge.

5. It's said that good SSD's are more reliable than HDD's, but I don't know if they have been out in the mainstream long enough for that claim to be true. I still have an original WD Raptor 10k that is still kicking and that thing is 8+years old now. We'll have to wait and see about that one.

Really it's not 100% necessary to have one, but once you've been using one for awhile it would be really hard to go back to a standard HDD for these tasks.

PS: For a budget gaming PC, I would recommend a smaller(128gb) for just the OS and a few programs that would benefit from the SSD so that it doesn't cut much into a lower budget. 256gb drive takes to much money away that can be spent on other things.
 
[citation][nom]BigMack70[/nom]I guess maybe my values in a gaming build are just different from others... I wouldn't even consider an SSD in a gaming only build until I was approaching or past the $1500 point, where you don't have to really sacrifice on either GPU or CPU to get it in your budget.[/citation]
I agree with you, but if people complain then they feel obligated to include a ssd in the top build every time. That is why they should separate the audience they are targeting with these builds. I myself am more into productivity than gaming but I still love reading gaming articles but I'm not going to go buy a $200 graphics card in a $800 pc with that budget. Nor am I going to buy a ssd when I'm trying to get the best gaming experience for under $1000. I'm sure that extra money going to a better graphics card would be better for a gamer on a strict budget.
 
Considering the comments here, I'd say that the decision to change the price points was a success. It helps to breath life into what can be a predictable build at times and helps to avoid picking inferior components just to 'change things up'. Variety is good.
 
Maybe try keeping the $600 and $800, but raise the high-end to $1200 so that the SSD and video card can be updated, and so the Core i7 can become feasible again.
 
I enjoyed this series, because it forces authors to give value at least nominal consideration - something that is far too often overlooked on this website.

I don't care for the way the performance per dollar summary is skewed to favor the more expensive machines, but since the whole build-off/contest has always been sponsored by a vendor, I guess that's no surprise. Still, even the verbiage used to describe the sacrifices one must make to hit a price point are painted with broken logic; if a SSD is crucial to performance, one may be better off adding it to a cheaper build versus upgrading to a platform that (especially in the past, with the larger budgets) has a lot of useless bling (hugely expensive aftermarket heatsinks on mediocre overclocks, vastly overpriced cases, etc).

We do, ultimately, learn what we needed to know from the review: consumers interested in maximizing their purchasing dollars at present while still building reliable machines will probably want to look at Intel CPUs, AMD GPUs, ASRock motherboards, whatever kind of RAM their motherboard recommends, and whatever is on sale for storage.
 
[citation][nom]Thomas Soderstrom[/nom]With this many options available, we’ll leave it to you to decide whether the next System Builder Marathon should return to the broad budget ranges of our previous efforts, center around the $600 price point, center around the $1000 price point, or...?[/citation]

I fear that nobody will ever see this comment, as there are already five pages of comments before it, but...

I think the most interesting storyline at this point is to offer each builder a stipend of, say, $300 or something and ask them to upgrade their machines. Then, bring them back for a second round of benchmarking. The magazine gets off w/ less than $1000 in expenditures, and the readership gets to see machines evolve in the more organic way fits the pattern that a lot of PC users use.
 
just noticed something odd.

AMD Catalyst 13.1 AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 5 AMD Catalyst 13.1

How much impact does the beta drivers have on the $800 build and why would you do this? Could the $800 build performance on skyrim be the video card drivers and not the actual hardware, throwing off the end value chart.

Also, if your doing a ssd vs hdd comparison, how about some load time tests.
 
I like the idea of 600/900/1200, mid fits in about the same and 1200 should give the opportunity for dual gpu
 
[citation][nom]atomicWAR[/nom]Honestly i would like to see an up-graders marathon. With price points of 600, 800, 1000, 1300, 1600, 2000 covered all using the same case, CD/dvd, and mech HDD (not included in cost). Those are the most common carry over parts besides my water-cooling that carries over build to build. I believe it would be a very useful and realistic application of funds many of your readers could relate to.[/citation]
That sounds like an excellent idea. I think they should do something do discourage the "I'm going to take this awesome hardware and put it in this shitty case" mentality (240GB total HD space fits in the same category). I understand it's the best strategy to squeeze out performance on a budget, but most real builds don't do that, so it just ends up feeling kind of strange.
 
[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]That's an awesome idea too! We could get some old-fashioned Chieftech Dragon (or similarly-popular) cases, maybe some older 700W power supplies and hard drives, match everything and just change the platform. Anyone else think this is a good idea?[/citation]
This is something that for a long time now I have thought would make for an excellent article. Personally, it wouldn't do much for me as I know what parts to upgrade to given an existing platform but like I said, it'd make a good article.
 
[citation][nom]flyflinger[/nom]On the Power Consumption And Efficiency page, the third chart labeled 'Average Efficiency', what does the blue bar represent?[/citation]Sorry about that, it's power consumption (average of four readings).
 
I've found the $800 range is usually where you can get the barebones of what I'd consider an enthusiast's system ( smallish SSD system drive, true quad-core CPU, respectable GPU. ) It's not a system that will max out game graphics, but it will play them well at full 1080p ( and usually is only a GPU upgrade away from hitting ultra detail. ) And of course it's still more than a match for any sort of sub-professional level productivity software.

Going up from there just gets you extra trim ( better case, larger SSD, larger HDD, slightly better GPU, etc. ) It's like stepping up from an Impreza to a WRX. Overall performance goes up a bit, but more importantly the system feels better to the user. That point I think is right about $1200. The problem is that most of these systems don't have things that can be quantitatively measured ( how DO you put a value on acoustics, on front panel usability, on style? )

To continue the car analogy, most builds over $1200 mark start hitting the STI point. No one will doubt you've got performance to spare, but few people can justify to themselves, let alone their significant others, the additional cost that largely just goes into bragging rights. We don't heckle the people that do have these systems, we just quietly envy them while remembering that our little rig may not be flashy, but we know it gets the job done.

On another note, I do like the ideas presented about having an Upgrade Marathon. Would be a very interesting bang-for-buck comparison. Also, what about spreading the budget lines from here to something like $600/$900/$1200? While I love the idea of having the machines closer in budget, I think this range puts them a little too close and doesn't allow enough flexibility to really get different machines running. The $800 and $1000 machines were near identical, and I know that's not anyone's fault since they were built blind. I think it demonstrates that a lot of us think very similarly about system design. But having an extra $300 instead of $200 might inspire a little more risk taking and inventive configurations.
 
If you're looking for sweet spots, how about about an upgrade marathon: give them a baseline of X platform (working system with all components, maybe 6 months old) and then give them $300, $500, $700 budgets to upgrade whatever they think will get them the best performance/value boost.

Plus, you could have each person try out a few different strategies at each budget point. (Does memory plus gpu help more, or cpu plus motherboard?)
 
Can we get a $2000 PC build again please. I'll soon be doing a replacement of my 4 year old machine and I am budgeting right around 2K for it.

One thing that's always bothered me about the comparison between the 3 systems is that it's all done based on 'today'. But in reality someone who buys a 2K machine expects it to last a lot longer than a 600 one. So the metrics should take into account how long the system is useful for. In other words are the 2K systems from a year ago or even 2 years ago better than the $600 systems of today. That justifies the extra expense.
 
How about how to build a machine meant to play Crysis 3 at various settings, from low to max? What to expect when attempting to play at a higher resolution than what your PC is meant for. I don't have Crysis 3, but I presume there's Low, Mid and Max settings, thus a machine built for each caliber. Most likely, it'll be the difference between video cards, I think.
 
[citation][nom]silvermorph[/nom]how about about an upgrade marathon: give them a baseline of X platform (working system with all components, maybe 6 months old) and then give them $300, $500, $700 budgets to upgrade whatever they think will get them the best performance/value boost.[/citation]

I think an upgrade marathon kind of series would be awesome, but rather than having everyone start out with the same system, I'd rather see them all be given money to upgrade the systems they've built for this current series. It would allow folks to more quantitatively judge upgrade paths and see the feasibility of skimping any given part now with the expectation of upgrades down the road. It would be great to revisit the same charts already generated augmented with the upgraded results, and I don't remember ever seeing anything so comprehensive published.
 
[citation][nom]texastim65[/nom]Can we get a $2000 PC build again please. I'll soon be doing a replacement of my 4 year old machine and I am budgeting right around 2K for it.One thing that's always bothered me about the comparison between the 3 systems is that it's all done based on 'today'. But in reality someone who buys a 2K machine expects it to last a lot longer than a 600 one. So the metrics should take into account how long the system is useful for. In other words are the 2K systems from a year ago or even 2 years ago better than the $600 systems of today. That justifies the extra expense.[/citation]

Actually, most people getting very expensive computers upgrade/replace at least a little more often than most low budget users. Furthermore, the expense really isn't necessarily worth it unless you specifically have use for that performance now or will soon. For example, for someone who doesn't have use for high performance at a given time, will find it much cheaper to get a $600 build and give it a few cheap upgrades over a few years than if they were to buy a $2000 computer and replace it once every few years.

I've got nothing against having a very expensive system in the SBMs, but if you're looking for specific advice, it'd be better for you to go to the forums. Even the best SBM systems are hurt by the fact that prices can change over the several weeks or so between buying the parts for the SBMs and publication of the finished articles and an SBM machine might not necessarily be tuned to your specific use(s).
 


My sentiments exactly. If I'm building a pure gaming rig then an SSD isn't even in the lists of components. $140 is the difference between a 660 TI and a 680 (on sale) or a 7870 and a 7970. I'd much rather upgrade my GPU.

Take the rig in my sig. I had a $500 budget and got the best CPU & GPU I could at the time (i3-2100 & 6850) and built the rest of the components around them. I later upgraded to the i5 & SSD. Build for what you need now, then upgrade later.
 
I'd like to see an extreme high end system build, with budgets like $2500, $5000, and $10,000. Maybe include monitors in that price range.
 


Yes, exactly. The assumption that more expensive hardware will last longer relies on a faulty premise -- namely, that there's a universal standard of acceptable performance. Realistically, someone who buys a $2,000 rig will tend to have much higher performance standards than someone who buys a $600 rig. Thus, the $2,000 rig isn't likely to offer its user any more longevity.

The above-described principle is further reinforced by the native-resolution restrictions of LCDs. You can effectively shoe-horn yourself into high-end computer hardware if you get accustomed to gaming at high resolutions -- and if you buy an expensive, high-res monitor (or monitors), you may feel compelled to buy high-end hardware to justify that initial investment. By contrast, someone who only has a middling-res monitor, and is satisfied with it, can get an awful lot of mileage out of even low-end computer hardware.

Ultimately, and perhaps ironically, the most important things to consider when buying computer hardware are unquantifiable: the user's personal needs and expectations. Technical knowledge is obviously important too, but it's useless without context.
 
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