Tom's Intl. $750 Cheap Computing Challenge

[revolaj0121]

this is good

 

[dark41]

I'm not a fan of going quad core just to go quad core. And although I keep seeing people say how more apps are quad enabled, I see very few that are. If you encode/decode or use a quad core compatible app 10% of the time, you still gain much more overall by going with the faster C2D 90% of the time.

Again, since overclocking will be considered by most gamers and a 3rd party CPU cooler was included with the build, the E8400 will do everything the E8500 will do and is a bit cheaper ($23 on newegg at the time of this writing). You can easily run the E8400 at 4GHz with that cooler and see no noticeable effect on your electric bill.

I'd have stuck the difference in CPU price in the HIS H485QT512P. It runs cooler, performs slightly better, and costs $5 more than the Saphire after rebate. Efficiency is the same.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161244

I'd also swap out the WD HDD for a Samsung F1 HD103UJ 1TB. Much faster drive, costs less, and uses slightly more power.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102

What people fail to realise is that by running the OS on the edge of a large drive such as this, the speed increases are pretty noticeable. I still think the SSD is unrealistic for price and performance at this point in time.

Overall, not a bad system TG USA chose. Minor tweaks on my part would actually save money on the build and get better performance though.

 

[red_kryptonite]

The guys were right for going with a dual core CPU.
Cheaper, and can reach high speeds on air for more performance per core.

This is most important in games, as even newer games like Crysis see negligible performance gains with similarly clocked quads vs dual cores.

As for the topic of the operating system, I don't believe it should be included in the price, however there should be some mention of the fact that if you do not have one handy to put on this computer (Stating that it would have to have its own license, etc) that you would also need to get an OS for the rig as well.

While I don't condone piracy, it is a big part of the industry, whether you like it or not, so it should be considered (and in some cases people may just not need to go out and buy a new OS).

 

[deftond]

What annoys me about these articles is not including the operating system into the cost. Now they should at least say...$750 computer including new operating system for a person that is building thier first computer or stating that they are using a left over operating system. It is pretty rediculous to think the average person has WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE lying around the house. An oem version will still cost at least $150 bucks. So really this is a $900 computer.

 

[justjc]

Just realized I would have to pay 23% more for the above PC and 12% more for the German to get the same hardware in Denmark... Funny how little emphasis is on the fact the German team has less buying power than the US team. Looking forward to seeing if I should consider buying in Italian shops in the future as German shops suddenly looks a lot more appealing than Danish ones(if the costs mentioned in the articles are to be trusted)

 

[egowhip69]

[citation][nom]pauldh[/nom]The USA 4850 was OC'ed to 700 MHz core/ 2340 MHz mem. CHeck the OC section in the US article for reasons why these CPU/GPU speeds were chosen rather than pushing max clocks. http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 134-5.html[/citation]
Ahhh, missed that. What about the German team? did they step up their GPU?

 

[Nitrom]

I wonder if you guys can sugest a much smaller Hard Drive with similar performance ever since I am only going to use this computer for just a few games and that's it. Maybe I can save a few bucks that way.

Also wonder if Windows Vista is the recomended OS for this system?

 

[Guest]

I have built the same rig exactly as the one mentioned. I have spent hours overclocking according to theirs but fail to see how they were able to achieve 3.95ghz at processor voltage set to 1.25.......in order for me to get the same results voltage increases to 1.3 something. I can only clock mine at 3.66 with out bumping voltage. Mike