System Builder Marathon, Q4 2012: $500 Gaming PC

[pauldh]

We were hoping to kick this quarter's System Builder Marathon off with AMD's new Athlon X4 750K. But a lack of availability compels us back into the arms of Intel's dual-core Pentium. Happily, an affordable Radeon HD 7850 promises great performance.

System Builder Marathon, Q4 2012: $500 Gaming PC : Read more

 

[killerchickens]

$501 Plus $100 for a copy of windows 7.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]killerchickens[/nom]$501 Plus $100 for a copy of windows 7.[/citation]Run Linux, this is a hardware shootout.

 

[willyroc]

I personally feel that they could have gone with H61 and gotten a 2GB 7850 instead.

 

[killerchickens]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Run Linux, this is a hardware shootout.[/citation]

Linux for a gaming desktop I dont think so.

 

[willyroc]

Not to mention that the 500GB version of the HDD is only $3 more.

 

[jerm1027]

Our best alternative remained the quad-core Phenom II X4 995 Black Edition for $95. But we chose not to revisit this old favorite, figuring that adding a Radeon HD 7850 would have taxed our budget.

What about the Phenom II 965? It's only $75 at TigerDirect.

 

[killerchickens]

Why is Windows 8 Professional being used?

 

[EzioAs]

I personally feel that they could have gone with H61 and gotten a 2GB 7850 instead.

I think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.

 

[killerchickens]

Windows is free and we use Linux in are gaming Machines what are we in Soviet Russia .

 

[kj3639]

Well done! I built a $700 rig for a friend a few weeks ago. Parts were mostly identical except for a Corei5 3330, 2 GB 7850 and 120 GB SSD. The 7850 is by far the most bang for the buck and overclocks quite well. I recently bought two for a crossfire setup on my rig for $300 dollars on black friday as well. The 7850 was a solid choice.

 

[colinstu]

[citation][nom]EzioAs[/nom]I think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220.[/citation]

Exactly. Couldn't've said it better.

 

[aznshinobi]

The FX-6300 doesn't get any love?

 

[killerchickens]

So guys you would buy Windows 8 Professional for a $500 gaming computer.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]aznshinobi[/nom]The FX-6300 doesn't get any love?[/citation]

It's too expensive.

[citation][nom]killerchickens[/nom]So guys you would buy Windows 8 Professional for a $500 gaming computer.[/citation]

This was a hardware test. You're OS complaints are irrelevant and there's no practical difference between Home and Pro versions when it comes to simple performance tests. such as these.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]killerchickens[/nom]Windows is free and we use Linux in are gaming Machines what are we in Soviet Russia .[/citation]

Several Linux distros works pretty well with most modern popular games, just FYI. Also, getting Windows for free legally is easy if you care to do it. Dreamspark has many free versions available to college students and most people know at least one, even if by proxy. Even in the unlikelihood of not knowing any, there's still the eval copies that MS gives away for free on their own website.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.[/citation]

I disagree. The current drivers for Windows 8 are pretty much on-par with the Windows 7 drivers. Heck, they're better than AMD's pre-Catalyst 12.6 drivers.

 

[de5_Roy]

was hoping to see a piledriver based cpu in this quarter's build. but i was much happier to see the 1gb radeon 7850 instead. nice gaming build.

 

[blazorthon]

was hoping to see a piledriver based cpu in this quarter's build. but i was much happier to see the 1gb radeon 7850 instead. nice gaming build.

Meh, I would've preferred seeing at least an A8-5600K with a cheaper motherboard and memory kit or keep the same memory kit and get a cheaper case. It could have fit, IDK why Tom's didn't do it. Maybe there weren't good prices on other components at the time :/

 

[killerchickens]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]This was a hardware test. You're OS complaints are irrelevant and there's no practical difference between Home and Pro versions when it comes to simple performance tests. such as these.[/citation]

Windows home still costs $100 which is still some how not part of the budget.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.[/citation]
We did a ton of benchmarking the week Windows 8 came out that demonstrated comparable performance between both operating systems. Don't let the software side of things dissuade you

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]killerchickens[/nom]Windows home still costs $100 which is still some how not part of the budget.[/citation]

I listed free methods of getting it legally and regardless, that doesn't matter even if you had to pay for it because, again, this is not a full build marathon, it's a hardware marathon. If you want to act like that, then call it a $600 build for all it matters.

 

[lunyone]

One of the smarter $500 builds that I've seen a while Not much to change for this kind of $ and performance. I'm glad that you kept the budget realistically close to $500 this time.

 

[Guest]

Isn't it about time you started ditching the DVD drive for good, at least on the budget machines? At least this seems to be the trend in many other places (new iMacs, Ultrabooks, etc.). It might just be 16$, but that money could be spent elsewhere, for example upgrading the storage.
From my personal experience, I haven't used my DVD drive for the last couple of years, since almost everything can be downloaded through Steam or elsewhere.

Additionally, I still don't understand the affectuation with having 8 GB of RAM. In my own experience, the impact is neglible when it comes to gaming, and the money could just as well be spent on a better CPU or a larger graphics card.