Tom's Intl. $750 Cheap Computing Challenge

[dirtmountain]

I guess you are the kind of people that buys Ford Excursion gasoline to drive your 2 person family to work/school.

Actually i drive an 11 year old 4 cylinder manual transmission truck that gets 25-30 mpg when driven like an old man (which i am). I also don't disable LED lights on my case/monitor or appliances which would save about 64watts per year each. I do however turn my system off when it's not in use (gasp!). Saving miniscule amounts of power to stroke the current rage of fanboi greeness is not a concern for me.

 

[jcknouse]

For grins, I went to Newegg a bit ago and pasted together a system that (with $45) of rebates was $734 (S/H not included), and consisted of:
700W PS
9800GT OC'ed from the factory
8GB DDR2-6400
500GB HD
PhenomII-920 AM2+ CPU
Xigmatek cooler

etc. etc.

one thing I'm not sure of: why always going for the big 1TB drive? is the performance better? i would think with more platters to seek, bigger would equal slower.

i like these articles tho. i like to see the outcomes of various configurations. that way, i can see what works best for future builds of my own.

i am jonesing for AM3 tho.

 

[BSMonitor]

I think green was a big consideration here. You certainly won't get a Phenom II up to 4Ghz at 1.25 Volts...

I bet the Wolfie at 4Ghz is very competitive against Phenom II at even 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz. Even in the multi-core optimized apps. However, in the dual-core optimized apps, aka most games, The Wolfie is going to annihilate the Phenom.

Performance / Watt will definately go to Wolfie, especially with both overclocked.

 

[computerninja7823]

I think green was a big consideration here. You certainly won't get a Phenom II up to 4Ghz at 1.25 Volts...

I bet the Wolfie at 4Ghz is very competitive against Phenom II at even 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz. Even in the multi-core optimized apps. However, in the dual-core optimized apps, aka most games, The Wolfie is going to annihilate the Phenom.

Performance / Watt will definately go to Wolfie, especially with both overclocked.
/quote]
cant agree more...
but i seriously wish they would have gone with a nvidia gfxs card though i have not used one of the ati gfxs cards lately so things might have changed

 

[Dax corrin]

Something that seems to be missing from all these build articles is A: the OS. B: Keyboard, monitor and mouse. All those items quickly make this $750 build a $1,000 build. If you were to follow this and build this machine with just the hardware specified, you'd have a nice $750 paperweight.

 

[ackthbbft]

I would love to know where THG got the cooler for $17. Newegg is charnging $36.99 for it, which is even higher than it was during their $650 build last month.

 

[seboj]

Something that seems to be missing from all these build articles is A: the OS. B: Keyboard, monitor and mouse.

Odds are, if you're doing a new build, you already have these things from old builds. It's not a necessity to buy all that stuff new every time you upgrade your hardware.

Nice article all around. Good build and at a good price point.

 

[rstthomas]

The title of this article has "...cheap computing..." in it.
Is $750 really a cheap computer?
Seems to me an E-machine at Walmart/Office Depot for $298 is cheap computing. [buy, plug-in, done]
This machine is 2.5x more than that.
[+ man hours to find components, buy, install, configure, test]
I guess it depends on where your baseline is:
e.g. if it's an AlienWare ALX X58 for $4000. then this would look pretty cheap.
Just thinking out loud.

 

[seboj]

Seems to me an E-machine at Walmart/Office Depot for $298 is cheap computing. [buy, plug-in, done]

Key word being 'computing'. You go ahead and buy that $298 paperweight from Wal-mart.

 

[sohei]

a good system with good OC capability ..very good performance in games for 700 $

 

[justinmcg67]

I still would have gone with a Phenom II now that they just lowered the price to $195 on the cheapest model. =]

 

[Pei-chen]

[citation][nom]dirtmountain[/nom]Actually i drive an 11 year old 4 cylinder manual transmission truck that gets 25-30 mpg when driven like an old man (which i am). I also don't disable LED lights on my case/monitor or appliances which would save about 64watts per year each. I do however turn my system off when it's not in use (gasp!). Saving miniscule amounts of power to stroke the current rage of fanboi greeness is not a concern for me.[/citation]
Do you turn of your heater in summer? The principle is the same; if you are not using it, why should you powering it on? Maybe you think unplugging the fan is a case of pennywise but it is in fact a penny saved is a penny earned.

[citation][nom]jcknouse[/nom]For grins, I went to Newegg a bit ago and pasted together a system that (with $45) of rebates was $734 (S/H not included), and consisted of:700W PS9800GT OC'ed…..[/citation]
Power efficiency and gaming performance are important in this article. If I am building a cheap number cruncher, Q6600 + integrated graphic would be my choice.

The 700w PSU is way too big for your suggested build and 9800GT is substantially slower than 4850 (I used both). In addition, Tom’s picked a custom PCB version of 4850 which should outperform the plain 4850.

[citation][nom]ackthbbft[/nom]I would love to know where THG got the cooler for $17. Newegg is charnging $36.99 for it, which is even higher than it was during their $650 build last month.[/citation]
Newegg’s price shifts base on availability. The price will drop when they have more in stock.

 

[sohei]

this article is not about competition among various pc....Tom's want to show as that : we can built a good pc without throw money

 

[brendano257]

I'm with dirtman about disabling the 140mm fan for 1.2w of "savings." That saves a WHOPPING 10Kwh per year, thus saving you 157 Cents per year if you ran your computer 24 hours a day, and payed 15c per Kwh(PSNH figure.) And that would save 5.5Kg of CO2 from being released per year (@ .527 Kg per Kwh) or .01% of what a household releases in CO2 per year from driving. And to top it off, extra cooling can't kill you =[)

 

[Onus]

As much as I prefer to be "energy-aware," I've got to side with Dirtmountain on the fan. It seems silly to disable it. Two points though:
1. If he didn't need it (i.e. would disable it), I suspect that Dirtmountain (and many others) would simply not buy the fan (or that particular case with the fan) in the first place, which would save additional money on the build.
2. This is a competition between the various Tom's offices. If disabling that fan is the singular act that means a victory, I'm sure the chortling and snickering that would ensue would be just that much more sweet. If that turns out to be the case, then I say "Well done!"

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]enewmen[/nom]I don't know why THG uses Vista 32 so much??[/citation]
As has been mentioned in most SBM articles, there are many benchmarks in the TH suite that don't work on Vista x64. The German team (I believe) are the ones who need to port the suite over.

 

[V3NOM]

who cares about power consumption? i care about price/performance. i wouldh ave gotten a cheaper E8400 and spent the extra on a better cooler...

 

[Siffy]

[citation][nom]pauldh[/nom]Problem is, we couldn't even install the test suite on a 60GB drive. Could have trimmed this down, but there was about 150GB used on the test drive, and if keeping the system for daily use, how much more would we need? I wouldn't have even considered less than 250GB of storage, but even that many readers would chew up instantly. 500GB would have been fine, but only if performance per watt made it beneficial.[/citation]

Thanks for reply and wow @ 150GB. I had no idea y'all put that much on the boxes just for testing. It either never gets mentioned, or I've never noticed. As I'm not a gamer, my complete Vista install + programs is 12GB. Sure I have much more than that stored, but I'd never keep it on the OS drive. I understand games take up more space than typical programs but I have to ask you this, do you really think it's reasonable to expect a $750 PC to run $(insert the thousands your test suite costs) of software at any given time? I highly doubt there are many gamers out there that are willing to pay for 10 $50 titles but only willing to build a $750 box. I imagine a lot are making due with 150GB Raptors/VRs just fine. While I wouldn't expect anyone to ever recommend a $300-600 (120 and 250gb ssd's) drive for a budget build, I would expect some realistic estimates of what software would actually reside on those budget systems and feel some flexibility in the testing procedures would be appropriate.

Since you mentioned 500GB drives, I'd like to see a review of those from a performance/watt/price perspective. Especially as I just picked up a 7200.12 last week for only $60 + free shipping at Newegg. Actually, what I'd like to see most is a comparison including all brands' latest gen single platter drives as opposed to just their largest capacity flagship drives.

Oh, and sorry my first comment got cut off. I was unsure if the comments section would take a less than symbol or treat it as html. All that got cut off was that I hope the US team does its testing on 240 VAC to get the best efficiency out of the PSU.

 

[Guest]

@siffy
I only have 3 $50 titles installed on my PC and yet my 250gb drive is barely enough for me since I dont use my PC for Games alone.

Media files is barely enough to be stored on a 150gb specially on a 60gb drive.

About comparison of the hard drives, I think they already made an article about it.

 

[PhuqTard]

Guys.....slow down a minute....
The purpose/drive of this article was the 'challenge' of building a machine which would strike the best balance of price, speed, and power consumption. We all know what components would be better, cheaper, more future proof, blah blah blah. There is no right or wrong here. Why do you all think there are SO many options when choosing components? Opinions, budgets and personal styles differ greatly. This was a challenge within the THG group (remember the 'other' countries listed?) to come up with the overall best config for $750 or less. So, musing about why or why not quad-cores were used, it a totally moot point.

 

[PhuqTard]

Guys.....slow down a minute....
The purpose/drive of this article was the 'challenge' of building a machine which would strike the best balance of price, speed, and power consumption. We all know what components would be better, cheaper, more future proof, blah blah blah. There is no right or wrong here. Why do you all think there are SO many options when choosing components? Opinions, budgets and personal styles differ greatly. This was a challenge within the THG group (remember the 'other' countries listed?) to come up with the overall best config for $750 or less. So, musing about why or why not quad-cores were used, it a totally moot point.

 

[enewmen]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]As has been mentioned in most SBM articles, there are many benchmarks in the TH suite that don't work on Vista x64. The German team (I believe) are the ones who need to port the suite over.[/citation]
Thanks for explaining. I wondered about this for a while.

 

[Siffy]

[citation][nom]chyll2[/nom]@siffyI only have 3 $50 titles installed on my PC and yet my 250gb drive is barely enough for me since I dont use my PC for Games alone.Media files is barely enough to be stored on a 150gb specially on a 60gb drive. About comparison of the hard drives, I think they already made an article about it.[/citation]

There's no reason at all to keep your mp3s on a 100MB/s+ or 10k rpm drive. FWIW, they could be played off media the speed of a 3.5" floppy disk. Well, most could, unless you rip everything into CBR@320. A small, fast drive for the OS + Programs and a large, slower drive for everything else. It's not a new idea at all. In fact, it used to be the cheap route when 7200rpm drives were first appearing and cost much more per GB than 5400rpm drives.

On the comparison, no, not recently. New drives come out all the time and typically the single platter version gets ignored in favor of reviewing only the flagship drive. I would say to check out the hard drive charts to see why I think it's important to review both, but I've searched TH for a review of the ST3320613AS that comes in right behind the VR (on that bench) and came up with nothing. I'm wanting to say I've read that review and it was a weird engineering sample because the 17ms access time is horrible.

The Barracuda 7200.11 are the only drives with all the sizes on the chart. I've seen several user reviews with 2 or 3 WD RE3 single platter drives in RAID-0 showing some very impressive numbers, but 1 user benchmark of 1 individual component is about useless. There aren't any numbers for the Cuda 7200.12, Momentus 7200.4, or Momentus 5400.6, single platter or otherwise. I mention the laptop drives because I'd like to be able to compare the 5400.6 to the recently reviewed WD Blue 500GB drive, but honestly I'd rather have the 250GB lower wattage, cooler, single platter drive in my laptop as it's plenty of storage space. That 1 number (watts) would be the deciding factor on which I'll pick up. I'm trying to do everything I can to extend battery life. They're also drives that should be seriously considered for a low wattage PC.

 

[mdillenbeck]

I can understand why Tom's has to do this style of article over and over and over and over and over again - computer hardware is constantly advancing and by the time they print something, its out of date.

However, I challenge Tom's to at least once mix it up a bit. Instead of the best gaming rig, do these build offs for a different application. Myself, I already have my gaming rig... now, help me improve my HTPC. Try to build the best darn computer you can that also has to be power efficient, quiet, and handle full BD and HD-DVD playback with full audio.

As to including the OS, I almost always buy the OEM version. $140 versus $300+ makes a big difference. Unfortunately, OEM is technically tied to the hardware for which you buy it (yes, I know you can get around these - but lets keep these above board). So lets go under the assumption that the builder either a) owns a mass-manufactured computer that has hardware-locked OEM software installed (like a Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc), b) this is their very first computer, or c) they want to keep their old computer as-is and this is an additional computer.

 

[nerrawg]

So far I've read three pages of attempted criticism of this build and yet none of it manages to make a worthy point for a better build towards this competition. Therefore I must hand it to Toms for a thoroughly conceived build!
Only points that I would agree with that have been mentioned so far was the choice of a 1 TB drive, although you justified this from the fact that you just want to try it out of curiosity, no probs, however that aside I would have chosen the 640GB western if this was not an issue. Also I assume that Crysis and 1900x 1200 res will be part of the tests so if wattage wasn't an issue I would have saved some money elsewhere and gone with a beefier gpu: 4870 or Nvidea; or possibly a cheeper CF configuration like the 4830. However considering all of the test parameters I think Toms has made the best choice.