System Recommendations: Your BestConfigs Are Online!

[cangelini]

After weeks of poring over submissions, setting up polls, and watching the votes add up, the BestConfigs section of Tom's Hardware is finally up to date with your top choices. Thanks to all who participated; feel free to share your favorite builds!

System Recommendations: Your BestConfigs Are Online! : Read more

 

[RazberyBandit]

LOL. A $430 dollar difference between the "Budget" Intel and AMD builds? How the hell does a $900 machine even qualify as a "budget" PC? And those of you who voted for it, what the hell were you thinking?

That's one of the reasons many people repeatedly asked Tom's to define the actual budget of the "budget" builds in the first place.

 

[wifiwolf]

i'm just curious why you'd need a 1200W psu for a workstation with no graphics card or tegra in it. That build must be using around 300W.
Would you need an Intel based office PC with more graphics than the H2000 is able to provide? I know it doesn't even deserve calling it graphics, but a 6700 card is overkill.

 

[illo]

cant figure out why anyone would build a high end gaming pc and not get the 2600k, but would get dual gtx580's...

 

[wifiwolf]

[citation][nom]RazberyBandit[/nom]LOL. A $430 dollar difference between the "Budget" Intel and AMD builds? How the hell does a $900 machine even qualify as a "budget" PC? And those of you who voted for it, what the hell were you thinking?That's one of the reasons many people repeatedly asked Tom's to define the actual budget of the "budget" builds in the first place.[/citation]

Thought the same about it, but if you made an AMD based 900$ PC you wouldn't call it a budget PC anyway.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]RazberyBandit[/nom]LOL. A $430 dollar difference between the "Budget" Intel and AMD builds? How the hell does a $900 machine even qualify as a "budget" PC? And those of you who voted for it, what the hell were you thinking?That's one of the reasons many people repeatedly asked Tom's to define the actual budget of the "budget" builds in the first place.[/citation]

We can change the budgets next quarter, for sure. But yeah, those were the systems that folks built and voted on ;-)

 

[king smp]

illo- why would you want 4 HT cores for gaming-2600k is more suited for encoding and other multithreaded work-games dont do well on HT
2500k is the best gaming CPU while 2600k is the best workhorse
and a gaming machine is all about the GPUs-2600k is a waste

P07h34d-955 BE is a great chip for the money for GAMING
Best bang for buck gaming CPU out right now
what chip were you thinking?


Nobody pointed out that the multimedia build doesnt have a tuner in it?
Any media PC needs to have a tv tuner.

 

[festerovic]

I have tons to say about the choices voted, but I won't. I will say that this is a pretty good feature. I would likely recommend most of the builds (with my own tweaks of course).

 

[Partizan92]

honestly.. these builds are bad really bad... and some people really don't understand the meaning of budget...

 

[Chewie]

I thought I recalled a Tom's Hardware article suggesting that crossfire scaling worked better with two cards, rather than 3?
So perhaps 2x 6950 2GB cards might offer a better bang/buck ratio, at least that's the way I see it.

 

[aznshinobi]

The "Budget AMD-Based Gaming PC" sucks... IMO, he allocated $10 more than needed to the HDD, and $10 more for the PSU. With that money saved you could get a 6790 which for $10 more gives you quite a performance boost.

 

[Guest]

The ASRock Z68 PRO3-M LGA 1155 Motherboard has only one PCIE 2.0 Slot, how can it take two 570s?

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]BabyTOD[/nom]The ASRock Z68 PRO3-M LGA 1155 Motherboard has only one PCIE 2.0 Slot, how can it take two 570s?[/citation]

That wasn't in my build. They've added that on their own (check the forums for the original).

 

[halls]

Great feature, but I think the term "budget" needs to be a little better defined next time.

I remember putting a $350 computer together for my friend back in the day for light gaming; I want to know what a budget like that is capable of now!

 

[batman4u]

i know this might make me look like a typical hater, but i happen to disagree with

1 budget intel builds, a BUDGET in mind would buy a Core i3 at most and a 560Ti at most i built for my little brother a core i3 witha 6850 and a 720p good quality monitor so no scaling would ruin the image and he is happy with 570 dlls of rig

and

2 i happen to agree that a 955 or any AMD phenom ll with a crossfire config with high end cards will bottleneck

 

[kittle]

So where are the benchmarks on these things?

 

[tacoslave]

[citation][nom]halls[/nom]Great feature, but I think the term "budget" needs to be a little better defined next time.I remember putting a $350 computer together for my friend back in the day for light gaming; I want to know what a budget like that is capable of now![/citation]
How about this?
DVD =19
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136236
HDD = 40
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136770
6670 = $100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121442
ram = $26
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161279
athlon ii plus mobo = $100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.699098
case =$30
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811815006

total 349.88

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]That wasn't in my build. They've added that on their own (check the forums for the original).[/citation]That sounds pretty serious. Chris is busy editing, but I'll ask him to look into it anyway. Fingers crossed!

 

[RazberyBandit]

Hey Crash... While this is totally OT, would you tell Chris that when he's done, he should consider editing Wolfgang's latest HP article? It's chock full 'o mistakes.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]That sounds pretty serious. Chris is busy editing, but I'll ask him to look into it anyway. Fingers crossed![/citation]
Thanks a ton. Last thing we want on the forums is people asking if it's possible to fit 2 cards in one slot or something as vague (and cursing me for wasting their $330) 😀

 

[ojas]

^As a follow up, it's been fixed, which is just amazing. You guys really work fast, very impressed.

Proud to be a Tom's member! 😉

 

[Guest]

Looking at the high end intel, when using dual cards it goes from 16x to 8x... is 8x not a bottleneck for a GTX 580?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]sunvogt[/nom]Looking at the high end intel, when using dual cards it goes from 16x to 8x... is 8x not a bottleneck for a GTX 580?[/citation]No. Haven't you read Tom's Hardware's scaling articles?

 

[Guest]

The only one I could find is this one from 2010:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696.html

It references GTX 480s and x8 vs x16. I have dual GTX 580s and run at 2560x1600. I'm looking to upgrade from LGA 775 and would like to go to LGA 1155, since I do not want to wait for not only LGA 2011, but a lower end non-extreme i7 to go with it. The 2500k looks perfect, but am concerned with dual x8 lanes. Should I pair it with NF200 to be good to go?

 

[Mousemonkey]

The only one I could find is this one from 2010:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696.html

It references GTX 480s and x8 vs x16. I have dual GTX 580s and run at 2560x1600. I'm looking to upgrade from LGA 775 and would like to go to LGA 1155, since I do not want to wait for not only LGA 2011, but a lower end non-extreme i7 to go with it. The 2500k looks perfect, but am concerned with dual x8 lanes. Should I pair it with NF200 to be good to go?

No, not really.