System Builder Marathon, Sept. '09: $650 Gaming PC

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"Still, given the massive increase in stock performance, easy overclocking, and even potential to unlock cores, the AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition made for a fine choice in accomplishing our goals. The September $650 gaming PC may have fallen short of sweeping all benchmarks, but it’s still the best stock-clocked machine to date at this budget, and one that set a whole new bar in overall gaming performance."
Excellent conclusion. As tired as I was sometimes of listening to all the AMD fanboi whinging, I hope a lot of them feel vindicated by this, especially since they would not have to limit themselves to the stock cooler.
If [latest-title] gaming isn't the focus, dropping a GPU makes room for the 720BE (at least) and a better cooler. It looks like AMD still has a firm grip on the budget market.
 
[citation][nom]Transmaniacon[/nom]Yea, Samsung F3 HDD, pick up a single HD4890, change the PSU to an OCZ Modstream, and then get an AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE.[/citation]
Why in the world would you want to replace an okay psu with something less good?
 
The choices of CPU and graphics seem really good for this one. The only nitpick I have is that you could have squeezed some money out of the mobo or PSU to get a better CPU cooler.

Looking at the already very high performance of this build at $650 and the pointlessness of the latest $2500 builds, wouldn't it be a good idea to replace the highest tier with a lower cost "real cheapskate" build? I'd be interested in seeing what you can build on a 300-400$ budget. Alternatively, an Eyefinity build with 3 or 6 monitors could possibly use the 2500 budget without being a complete waste if you include the price of monitors.
 
[citation][nom]grimjester[/nom]The choices of CPU and graphics seem really good for this one. The only nitpick I have is that you could have squeezed some money out of the mobo or PSU to get a better CPU cooler.Looking at the already very high performance of this build at $650 and the pointlessness of the latest $2500 builds, wouldn't it be a good idea to replace the highest tier with a lower cost "real cheapskate" build? I'd be interested in seeing what you can build on a 300-400$ budget. Alternatively, an Eyefinity build with 3 or 6 monitors could possibly use the 2500 budget without being a complete waste if you include the price of monitors.[/citation]

You can save a little money going with an OCZ PSU, and while I am a Corsair fan, the OCZ PSUs are decent choices. But I do agree that Antec PSU > OCZ PSU
 
I kind of agree with grimjester, especially when considering that the budgets seem to be creeping upward. Maybe they should move back down again, say to $550, $1100, and $2000. Assuming ONE monitor, mouse, and keyboard also justifies having to include additional monitor prices if a multi-monitor setup is desired. That will likely rule it out, which makes sense, because I certainly wouldn't sacrifice other things for additional monitors; I'd buy them separately later.
 
[citation][nom]Transmaniacon[/nom]You can save a little money going with an OCZ PSU, and while I am a Corsair fan, the OCZ PSUs are decent choices. But I do agree that Antec PSU > OCZ PSU[/citation]
Used corsair psu's in all builds since mid 2007 when I shifted from antec. Not because corsair's better, but they're better value. They do seem to have that wierd noise generating when certain video modes are active though. Dunno why, but all corsair psu's I've seen do that.
 
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition? You can get the Phenom II x3 720 Black Edition combo with the GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P for $179, then overclock it on stock voltages to 3.2 GHz, 1.4V to 3.4 GHz, or 1.525V to 3.7 GHz.
 
[citation][nom]El_Capitan[/nom]AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition? You can get the Phenom II x3 720 Black Edition combo with the GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P for $179, then overclock it on stock voltages to 3.2 GHz, 1.4V to 3.4 GHz, or 1.525V to 3.7 GHz.[/citation]
keyword combo - that's cheating
 
[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]I kind of agree with grimjester, especially when considering that the budgets seem to be creeping upward. Maybe they should move back down again, say to $550, $1100, and $2000[/citation]Another possibility would be to skip the fixed budgets and try to make great price/performance builds for "budget gamer", "best overall price/performance" and "highest performing that makes sense" categories. With 3-month intervals, you can't make apples-to-apples comparisons to the earlier SBMs anyway.

[citation]Assuming ONE monitor, mouse, and keyboard also justifies having to include additional monitor prices if a multi-monitor setup is desired. That will likely rule it out, which makes sense, because I certainly wouldn't sacrifice other things for additional monitors; I'd buy them separately later.[/citation]
We'll have to see how Eyefinity works out and if Nvidia also goes for multimonitor setups. It may well be that 3 monitors is the de facto standard for a high-end gaming rig a few months from now. If 90% of games on near-maxed settings run 1920x1200@60+fps on the new generation GPUs, building for and testing on multimonitor setups will make sense.
 
[citation][nom]grimjester[/nom]Another possibility would be to skip the fixed budgets and try to make great price/performance builds for "budget gamer", "best overall price/performance" and "highest performing that makes sense" categories. With 3-month intervals, you can't make apples-to-apples comparisons to the earlier SBMs anyway.[/citation]
I think ALL of the SBM builds are going for best performance/price. I also don't think they're trying to do apples to apples comparisons, but are trying to show how much bang/buck (i.e. technology) has improved from one build to the next.
 
[citation][nom]JohnnyLucky[/nom]Nice budget build. Would have been better if a third party cpu heatsink had been used.[/citation]

I'm actually glad he used the stock cooler. I'm sure an extra $30-$40 would have gotten you 200-300MHz as mentioned in the article. However, that would still not be the best bang for buck. If they had an extra $30, he would have stepped up to the 720, which would have been a better overall chip if more money was available. I'd much rather have a X3 running at 3.4ish than a X2 running at 3.7ish personally.
 
it seems the pricier Phenom II dual-core has its hands full competing with the Pentium E5200 on a clock-for-clock basis--never mind if both were pushed to their maximum potential. Dethroning the E5200 in bang-for-buck overclocking performance with a Phenom II will probably have to be done with more than two processing cores

Price of intel chips that are faster:
E5200 $67.99
E5300 $69.99
E6300 $82.99
E5400 $89.99
E6500 $92.99

SBM reviews were always about best for the price at the time. AMD is not best for the price at the time right now. I know Tom's felt like they had to satisfy the AMD fanboys, but it's funny how all the comments are about how great this system is when in reality Intel has 5 chips cheaper that will out perform. Maybe this wasn't the best time to showcase dual graphics at this level and reduce overall price a little or was it planned to give AMD at least some kind of chance.

 
^ +1

It's true: SBM can't do right by anyone it seems, because everyone has their favorite brands. Last time, the AMD fans got butt-hurt over the Intel chip, and now the Intel guys are complaining about missed opportunity to use an i5 (even though they were not released when these parts were ordered). Yeah, they could have used an after market HSF, but they didn't have the money. Yeah, they could have used combos and rebates and made a better system, but SBM doesn't use sale prices so that anybody could, in theory, build the same thing for the same price a week or two later- sale or no sale.
Telling them they could have gotten something cheaper and better a month later is the job of Captain Obvious, everyone. Tech prices go up and down, mostly down and that's just how it is. In the time that I ordered and assembled my last rig a month ago, the price of my mobo went down, RAM and VGA went up, and by CPU and PSU stayed pretty much the same. Just gotta deal with it.
 
I'm really glad that you guys finally did an AMD build, the only issue I noticed is that despite most of the time people complaining that you're using the latest Catalyst drivers, I've found that across the board the Catalyst 9.9 hurt 4850 performance compared to 9.8, I was just wondering if you tried 9.8 vs. 9.9 and saw the same issues.
 
AT LEAST NOBODY BUYS SOUND CARDS ANYMORE.

AMD 720BE be Better, Case & PS @ $50 for 650 w with all chorddss you need is better. ide optical or ide to sata converter be better 7 1 tb seagate 7200.12 be better. Free microsoft enterpricse 7 64 bit helpful.

Signed😛HYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART von DRASHEK M.D.
 
Nice build, good choices throughout and well presented.

It is just a shame that here in the UK, pricing would have led its self to E7300, aftermarket Artic cooling, Foxcon bloodrage x48 and the rest of the build as is, and saving enough for a slightly better case.
 
Hey sorry for the double post, I can't seem to find an edit button... but I meant to say "people always complaining you're NOT using the latest catalyst drivers"; just for clarification.
 
[citation][nom]omgpwntime[/nom]I'm really glad that you guys finally did an AMD build, the only issue I noticed is that despite most of the time people complaining that you're using the latest Catalyst drivers, I've found that across the board the Catalyst 9.9 hurt 4850 performance compared to 9.8, I was just wondering if you tried 9.8 vs. 9.9 and saw the same issues.[/citation]

Seriously, there is no difference at all. I think it depends on the games you are playing. For exemple, RE5 with catalyst 9.9 can use crossfire settings. I was happy to see my rig rendering the game near 150fps at peak and an average of 125 fps... Way more than most single card and single GPU settings.
 
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