System Builder Marathon Q3 2015: Gaming PC

[RedJaron]

^ God I hate these people lol. Like get a life and do something outside than spam websites

My bet is that it's a spam script, not an actual person. But I could be wrong.

 

[Math Geek]

i like the spam, thanks to them i now make $250k a month from home IN MY SPARE TIME!!! never would have known it was possible if not for the spam messages. did not bother to stop at only a single opportunity but took advantage of each one as they were posted.

and i spend the rest of my time enjoying my newly minted 18" man phallus. again i did not stop at the first pill and by going with multiple options i enjoyed the 2-3" promised increase multiple times over

 

[Karadjgne]

I like seeing what someone can do with a lower budget build, its all too easy to throw together a top line $1400 gamer, it invariably ends up as the same basic i7 build with an overblown gpu.

 

[Fulgurant]

Nice build, but I don't understand why you'd want an aftermarket cooler for an i3.

 

[Karadjgne]

When pushed, even a lowly i3 gets warm enough to make the stock cooler sound like a freight train, a decent aftermarket cooler makes a world of difference if you don't enjoy sitting at a pc with headphones.

 

[Math Geek]

he states in the article "I had an "extra" $20 leftover at the end, so I chose to get the best CPU cooler I could get my hands on"

it's as simple as that. he had a few bucks left over so he spent them on a cooler.

 

[Onus]

^That, and didn't he mention the possibility that the winner might go for an i5 upgrade at some point?

 

[Math Geek]

he said that too

"It will also be a welcome feature if the recipient of this computer decides ditch the i3 for something more powerful."

 

[Fulgurant]

When pushed, even a lowly i3 gets warm enough to make the stock cooler sound like a freight train, a decent aftermarket cooler makes a world of difference if you don't enjoy sitting at a pc with headphones.

You must have better ears than I do.

^That, and didn't he mention the possibility that the winner might go for an i5 upgrade at some point?

Fair enough, and given that it's a contest prize I can see the reasoning. Still, if I won the thing I'd rather have a $15 better PSU than the mostly speculative aftermarket cooler.

 

[Karadjgne]

A $15 better psu is a timing and speculative thing. The builder has only so much time to work with and has only newegg to rely on for source. There simply might not have been a better psu available. You are looking at retail sales prices today, not the day the decision was made and quite often you'll find only 1-2 units on sale at any given week and it's usually a $20-30 jump in prices between a quality 550w and a decent 500w. Now if you wanted a piece of junk 550w, that's easy enough for the same or less than the psu chosen. It wasn't a bad call, its a budget build, on a budgeted time scale in a specific source. I'd be quite happy with it as is.

 

[Fulgurant]

A $15 better psu is a timing and speculative thing. The builder has only so much time to work with and has only newegg to rely on for source. There simply might not have been a better psu available. You are looking at retail sales prices today, not the day the decision was made and quite often you'll find only 1-2 units on sale at any given week and it's usually a $20-30 jump in prices between a quality 550w and a decent 500w. Now if you wanted a piece of junk 550w, that's easy enough for the same or less than the psu chosen. It wasn't a bad call, its a budget build, on a budgeted time scale in a specific source. I'd be quite happy with it as is.

It's a $20-30 jump in price to buy an aftermarket cooler.

Of course it's a nice build, and anyone who won a free system would have no basis to complain about it. But the decision to buy an aftermarket cooler and skimp on the PSU is questionable from a system-builder perspective. That is why we're all here, after all -- to discuss how build a rig.

I'm not saying, "LOL, dude who wrote this article is a moron!" I'm saying that if you're in the real world lookin to make a build like this, you should ditch the aftermarket cooler and pick up a higher quality PSU, even if it's at the same wattage. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme, but little decisions add up when you're on a tight budget.

Call me an old fart, but I suspect that a lot of the aftermarket cooler advocacy is just enthusiast reflex. If you're used to building overclocking rigs, you get in the habit of building around cooling, whereas the average dude building a low-to-mid-range stock rig really doesn't have to worry about cooling much if at all.

Likewise, an enthusiast -- someone who enjoys rebuilding/replacing his rig regularly -- probably won't place as high a premium on a rock-solid-reliable power supply.

And for what it's worth, I have a rig with an i3 3220 and a rig with an i5 4590, both running on the stock cooler, and both are cool and quiet. The i5 rig, which has a better case, is nearly silent. YMMV.

 

[Karadjgne]

You miss the point. This builder marathon is sponsored by newegg. At the decision time to pick a psu, there probably weren't any psus on sale low enough to cover the $20 extra. If what is considered a quality psu in the 500-650 range was all $60+ and the Evga chosen $25, then the builder is stuck with it. Any other psu chosen would have put the build over budget. It's not the builders fault xfx 550w went on sale 2 weeks later, but the decision was made with the best psu available at the time from the only source, Newegg.

The extra $20 wouldn't have gotten any better equipment, just equivalent stuff at a higher price, so option B was for some creature comfort.

And I AM an old fart, my first pc was a Vic20, my second a Commodore 64 with spaced invaders loaded via cassette player that took a solid 15 minutes to load.

 

[Math Geek]

also keep in mind that rebates don't count either. so those awesome evga b2 rebates making the 750w one $40 can't be used. it would go as the $79 hit to the budget.

and so on, many of the real awesome prices out there are rebates and not a simple price reduction. that is also a MAJOR factor in what gets picked.

but hey don't believe me. go to Newegg and piece together a better new $800 build including os that does not include rebates or other such incentives and show how much more awesome you are built that awesome system the builder clearly is not smart enough to build but you are

keep it mind it has to have the ODD like was required here, and should please everyone on the forum at all times. so it needs to be an awesome looking case, great cooling, lots of extra fans, top notch psu, one better gpu than whatever you find (that EVERYONE JUST KNOWS IS $40 LESS all over the place). should have the newest latest greatest cpu, chipset and should be overclockable.....

starting to get the picture of what they are trying to do here? just so much crazy second guessing after the fact not based in the reality these builders have to work under.

 

[Fulgurant]

You miss the point. This builder marathon is sponsored by newegg. At the decision time to pick a psu, there probably weren't any psus on sale low enough to cover the $20 extra. If what is considered a quality psu in the 500-650 range was all $60+ and the Evga chosen $25, then the builder is stuck with it. Any other psu chosen would have put the build over budget. It's not the builders fault xfx 550w went on sale 2 weeks later, but the decision was made with the best psu available at the time from the only source, Newegg.

The extra $20 wouldn't have gotten any better equipment, just equivalent stuff at a higher price, so option B was for some creature comfort.

I missed nothing.

Per the article, he paid $40 for the PSU, not $25. At the moment, the newegg link puts it at $45. (And at the moment, the newegg link pegs the aftermarket cooler at $30.) I don't care what the sale situation is; you should be able to find a good quality ~500 watt PSU for $60-70.

He also says in the article that "money was tight, and even if it weren't, I wouldn't bother buying anything more than this PSU." (Paraphrased)

Thus the criticism about the aftermarket cooler. If you're strapped for cash, you don't blow money on an aftermarket cooler for an i3.

 

[Fulgurant]

keep it mind it has to have the ODD like was required here, and should please everyone on the forum at all times. so it needs to be an awesome looking case, great cooling, lots of extra fans, top notch psu, one better gpu than whatever you find (that EVERYONE JUST KNOWS IS $40 LESS all over the place). should have the newest latest greatest cpu, chipset and should be overclockable.....

starting to get the picture of what they are trying to do here? just so much crazy second guessing after the fact not based in the reality these builders have to work under.

I have similar complaints about nitpickers on these articles, generally. We're getting a little lost in the weeds, here; at no point did I criticize the builder on the basis of what he paid for a given part. I didn't post a dream-world pcpartspicker configuration; I didn't tell him he coulda gotten an i5 at Microcenter for x amount of money or that he shoulda gone with a different GPU or cheaper one.

I said it was a good build, in fact.

The decision to go with an aftermarket cooler on a build like this has nothing to do with the exigencies of a changing market, mail-in rebate shenanigans, or choice of vendor.

If you were building this PC for yourself, with your own money, you wouldn't have any obligation to use the entire budget. You could pocket the extra cash. Or you could put it towards a higher end component that puts you slightly over budget. Point is, the aftermarket cooler does almost nothing for you. That is true regardless of what other components you could or couldn't buy with the money saved by foregoing it.