System Builder Marathon: TH's $2000 Hand-Picked Build

[thechief73]

Thanks Tom's for ANOTHER!!! great give-a-way. But am I missing something here? This was posted at (2:00 AM - September 30, 2010) and you cannot enter the contest until (Contest starts on September 30, 2010 11:00 pm, Pacific Daylight Time) Did I get hit on the head too hard at one time or is this odd?

 

[scook9]

Call me a fanboy....but AMD just gets thrashed in IPC measurements compared to Intel

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]Call me a fanboy....but AMD just gets thrashed in IPC measurements compared to Intel[/citation]
OK then, you're a fanboy. The Intel processor does cost four times as much as the AMD, yet it doesn't appear to be four times as powerful.

 

[scook9]

The i7 750 which is comparable in cost still beats the Phenom II x6 pretty hard....that removes the cost argument

 

[theoutbound]

Wow, I wasn't expecting another build/giveaway so soon. Great job as always Tom's. Can't wait for the next marathon.

 

[IWC Member 23495867]

Thanks for doing this Tom's! All this info is great for my next build (coming soon) and really reassures me that I do not need 6 cores and SLI/Crossfire.

 

[jaghpanther]

Sometimes you just can't win. Even though it's mentioned in the article as to *why* you're doing a 6 core to 6 core eval people just don't read. That aside I did read, I wouldn't mind if either build showed up on the steps of house pretty please?

 

[Guest]

i absolutely agree that boot times and load times along with some form of data transfer benchmarks need to happen! my i5 build was an absolute dog with a 1.5TB 3.5" drive, but two SSD's in Raid 0 make the computer experience so much more fulfilling. Nothing like having a sweet processor and good RAM only to have it wait for data from a mechanical hard drive! I also think your $1000 pc is brilliant-prove it by showing how well it scales in gaming based on what graphics chips you use. I doubt you will bottleneck the GTX 480 SLI as long as you have a proper cooler for oc'ing that i5-750, and it should destroy the GTX 470! and perhaps you guys should hit some faster ram as well, like some real enthusiast stuff--->PC16000

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Not a criticism, but just a sugegstion.

These artificial or better said "rounded off" budget limits will invariably result in compromises. Putting SLI GFX cards w/ internal heat exhaust in a small case like the Illusion instead of using something like the Antec 1200 / CP-850 combo because "it would exceed the dollar limit by $20" seems silly....especially when the conclusions essentially say that "Gee, if we could cool this better, we might have hit our OC goals."

Understood, people have budgets and ya can't come outta the gate doing a "Build a $2,000 PC" article and immediately toss the upset limit out the window. Seems to me however that a paragraph at the end addressing the observed shortcomings of a "mismatched" build seems to be warranted.

I'm thinking that an "options" paragraph .... something along the lines of what's below would really out the icing on the cake:

"Given the heat issues we observed, we examined how much more than our budget we'd have to spend to address the shortcomings of this build. Swapping out the Case / PSU combo for X/Y costs us an extra $50 but the extra cooling enabled us to raise our OC to 4.x GHz.

Dropping from the factory OC'd version of the cards to the stock version would have given us the necessary cash to meet our budget with the large case / PSU. We'd gain the same speeds after OC'ing the cards ourselves but we'd lose the factory guarantee on the OC. [Note that at today's newegg prices w/ rebates, no need]

To address the RAM limitations, we tried the following substitutions:

$20 extra for [insert model here] got us this
$30 extra for [insert model here] got us that
$40 extra for [insert model here] got us where we wanted to go w/ no stability issues."

Again, I enjoyed the article, but every buyer sets himself / herself a budget in the "please review my build" posts on the forum and includes the statement "I'd be willing to go a little bit higher if it's warranted". A "Budget Breaking Options to Consider" paragraph at the end would address that area of curiosity.

 

[SpeedyVV]

Really interesting article. It just shows that 1 size does not fit all conclusions.

And why do some comments come across with such arrogance? You do know that you can make constructive critism without being a jerk about it, right?

 

[triculious]

Interesting articles, however I've always thought a 2k build would only be valuable to anyone playing on a resolution of 2560x1600 and higher, overkill for lower resolutions
the same can be told on a 1k build where I would use a 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 resolution, not lower nor higher

here's waiting for the hand-picked 1k build =P

 

[terr281]

+1 for the many comments regarding the i7-930 + 2 "~$200" video card "obvious choice." However, as the authors have said, this was a 6 physical core showdown.

I would like to see the $1k and $2k pcs in the future have a SLI/Crossfire Vision/Eyefinity test, since many people will use that kind of setup for a pc in the $2k range. (And, some people do so in the $1k range. My personal gaming pc, a Core 2 Duo 6750 with a 5770, runs Eyefinity in some games.)

And, with the above said, the cost of monitors isn't a real issue for someone at this level if they are budget conscious. I am a big fan of the 16:10 1680x1050 resolution, and, as such, I use 22" monitors from the now defunct aspect ratio in my setup. (With an extra one already purchased for when I go with 3 monitors instead of 2.)

For Eyefinity, at least, all you need is 3 24" 1920x1080 monitors at ~$220 (Example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236049 ) & a DVI to DVI adapter. The catch is the adapter. However, as of June of this year, AMD was "working actively with several manufacturers" to get them to produce a ~$30 single link DVI adapter instead of forcing people to buy a DVI-D adapter at $100. (Nvidia, of course, fixes this issue by requiring 2 cards and using the output from the 2nd card.)

Either way, I definitely would like to see such an inclusion including in the SBM articles. (And, from there, let people decide if they wish to pay the price premium for multiple monitors, even if the budget conscious price premium is lower than what many people say it is.)

 

[cadder]

I've been reading Tom's articles for several years, trying to pick up knowledge about how the GPU, CPU, # of cores all affect performance. Toms has even done comparisons to show how the # of cores affect performance. Toms has also done articles on how to achieve a balance between cpu power and gpu power. It seems that this machine is unbalanced- too much cpu power at the expense of gpu power. I agree with the readers that said it would would be better with an i7-930 and putting more into the GPU. I'm not sure that a 6 core cpu makes sense for anyone that isn't doing video processing.

 

[cadder]

Sorry- I wanted to make a comment on the Antec 300 case. I've used about 6 of them myself and I really like them. All of the machines I've built have been overclocked and used as workstations. When I order the case I automatically order 2 more fans for the front- all of these machines are running 4 case fans. Noise is not an issue in our office, I don't even mind it in my home computer. Good fans are about $6 each, you guys should consider doing this for any machine that you are going to heavily overclock.

 

[deletemach_kernel]

yeah i kinda like cooler master cases..too bad its hard to find them out here in many reviews..

anyway its no like i have choice where i live.... themaltake is a bit difficult to get and lian li well.... its out of the question..

 

[deletemach_kernel]

oh wait....most of the guys with games configs on the forums use cooler master haf 922's...my bad

 

[gm0n3y]

I agree that if anybody is building a $2000 PC, they should consider an SSD, however, considering that this machine is designed solely for obtaining the highest benchmark values they should not have included one since it would have little impact.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]PaulEWog2002[/nom]I doubt you will bottleneck the GTX 480 SLI as long as you have a proper cooler for oc'ing that i5-750, and it should destroy the GTX 470![/citation]That's not what the PCI-Express and SLI Scaling article showed. It showed an overclocked Core i7-980X as a HUGE bottleneck to a pair of GTX 480's at 1080p and below, which are the settings normally used for the SBM. [citation][nom]PaulEWog2002[/nom]and perhaps you guys should hit some faster ram as well, like some real enthusiast stuff--->PC16000[/citation]Tom's Hardware has a vast array of articles that show data rates in excess of 1333 make little difference in real-world performance, and it gets even worse when you go over 1600 (PC-12800)Since there is a value component in the series, its sounds like faster memory would be a bigger waste of money than the six core processor, which actually DID benefit a few real-world benchmarks.
[citation][nom]JackNaylorPE[/nom]Putting SLI GFX cards w/ internal heat exhaust in a small case like the Illusion instead of using something like the Antec 1200 / CP-850 combo because "it would exceed the dollar limit by $20" seems silly....especially when the conclusions essentially say that "Gee, if we could cool this better, we might have hit our OC goals."[/citation]Actually, the article links to the previous high-end build to use the same case with two GTX 470's and no poor case temps. It didn't need a bigger case. In fact, a bigger case would have helped less than a switch to externally-venting cards, as proven in the June SBM.[citation][nom]cadder[/nom]I've been reading Tom's articles for several years, trying to pick up knowledge about how the GPU, CPU, # of cores all affect performance. Toms has even done comparisons to show how the # of cores affect performance. Toms has also done articles on how to achieve a balance between cpu power and gpu power. It seems that this machine is unbalanced- too much cpu power at the expense of gpu power. I agree with the readers that said it would would be better with an i7-930 and putting more into the GPU. I'm not sure that a 6 core cpu makes sense for anyone that isn't doing video processing.[/citation]Bingo, this is a video editing machine that can play games, so it's darned-near perfectly balanced

 

[rick4937]

The article states they were looking for "a super-stable board with two PCIe x16 slots that were at least three spaces apart. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any within our budget. Giving up our three-slot spacing desires, Gigabyte’s X58A-UD3R was the default choice."

So what's an example of a board where the PCIe x16 slots are at least three spaces apart?

 

[tom thumb]

Question: Why would you go for a 970 as opposed to a 980?

Also, the 930 is better value, you'd be able to un-bottleneck those 480s with it.

Finally, why still no SSD? Does no one care about load times and system responsiveness? ...or are fps and $$ the only variables that matter?

 

[IzzyCraft]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Quality-wise, the Three Hundred is probably the best case you can get for under $80, but there should have been one more fan in the system given the internally-vented graphics cards the system ended up with. On the other hand, a lot of builders would be more than happy to "settle for" 4GHz at 1.30V, and the CPU will certainly live longer at the lower voltage.[/citation]
Mostly the reason i like the raven is looks and rather good cooling lol.

A antec 300 with all 4 fans installed is alot of venting which i'm sure only a full tower could compete with.

 

[deletemach_kernel]

[citation][nom]tom thumb[/nom]Question: Why would you go for a 970 as opposed to a 980?Also, the 930 is better value, you'd be able to un-bottleneck those 480s with it.Finally, why still no SSD? Does no one care about load times and system responsiveness? ...or are fps and $$ the only variables that matter?[/citation]


dude read the article properly... they had to stick to the budget of $2000. doing so they sacrificed the SSD.... even more..they sacrificed a higher end x58 Motherboard.... they chose to stick with the UD3R instead of the UD9 or the big bang.... coz they had a budget to stick to....

in the real world scenario.... if i could get this performance i wouldnt mind a 1Tb hdd for a few more months or maybe a year till the SSD's start getting cheaper... then i would maybe buy them..... a more powerful processor over a SSd anyday!!

 

[deletemach_kernel]

ok now i was wondering if the same specs were installed in a CM Rc100k full tower case and in the HAF 922 or for that matter Thermaltake's Speedo advance ... what would be the effect?

 

[deletemach_kernel]

how do i edit my post here.... anyway i wanted to add.... tried to enter the giveaway....too bad its only for the americans... and i am in india

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]tom thumb[/nom]Question: Why would you go for a 970 as opposed to a 980?Also, the 930 is better value, you'd be able to un-bottleneck those 480s with it.Finally, why still no SSD? Does no one care about load times and system responsiveness? ...or are fps and $$ the only variables that matter?[/citation]
For the third time no, you can't unbottleneck a pair of 480's using any available CPU at resolutions of 1920x1080 and below, this was already shown in the PCIe and SLI Scaling article from around July, mentioned in the article, linked in the article, and responded to several times in this thread.