WEIGH IN: Jan.09 System Builder Marathon ~$1250 system components

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Cleeve,

Do you use rebates in your selection of parts? Because PC&Powercooling is considered to be one of the best PSU brands out there.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341011

It's a PC&Powercooling 750W for $80. Not only will it save you $20 over the $100 corsair, but it's roomier for OCing power.

All the rest of the parts look solid.

I would give some consideration to X2 GTX260 core 216s in SLI for the people who don't like ATI. They can be found for $235 each. $470 total.

Just a thought.
 
I hear you Deuce. Having said that, we all know the Three Hundred is a great case, so I don't thyink it hurts to try something new once in a while. It might turn out it's great during the review, or it might turn out it sucks crap; either way, the readers win because they get exposed to more information about one more piece of hardware.

Sometimes there's a gem or two in the cheap stuff. And if it junk, I'll just recommend people stay away from the Rosewill and pay the extra $20 for the three-hundred. Everybody wins!
 


Hey Wicked,

Good ideas. But unfortunately you're right, we don't include rebates as a matter of principle. Just a guideline we have because we detest having to wait for rebates to come back. :)

As for the video card, if I could have gotten a sample I would have put the new GTX 295 in there. Unfortunately it's a bit early for that.

However, two 260s would require an SLI motherboard, and for a good SLI motherboard you're going to add a lot of cash to the price methinks, unless you're happy with 8x + 8x PCIe on the 750i, which honestly should perform just as well. But I'd prefer the P45 chipset for overclocking, and since we'll be comparing this system to Novembers E8500/4870 X2 system the 4870 X2 might be a better choice.
 
The 295 would be nice.

And darn it all on the rebates!! :)

So i'm curious, the builds toms does every month, is it best bang-for-buck at the $1250 price range? or is it what a person could go out and get?

I only ask because if I had $1250 to send on a machine, I would figure it as cost + rebates+in-store deals+ tax, vs just buying $1250 flat out.

I'm just a bit confused.

lastly, how was your holidays? And your doing a great job talking to the forum junkies and getting user/gamer input. We need to feel like Tom's takes our opinions seriously. Good job man! :)
 
Honestly, as long as it's PCIe 2.0, 8x+8x bandwidth should be fine... I don't think you'd see a diffrence based on our testing. Of course, you could go 790i chipset for 16x16, but that'd be wayy overbudget. But I think I'd recommend a single 4870 X2 over two 260's just for the convenience.

As for pricing, the way we figure it out is to add the prices of the components, plain and sinple. Taxes, rebates, shipping - that's all out of the scope of our calculations.

 
Ok, thanks for clearing that up Cleeve.

On the motherboard side of this conversation. I currently run X2 GTX260 216s in SLI on my ASUS p5N-D mobo. I only paid $99 for it at central computers.

It's a 750i non-reference design with both slots at 16x each. While in SLI mode.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131232

$99 was a good find at the time :)

And I do agree that the 4870x2 is better in terms of convince.
 
if you plan on doing sli you mise as just go with a x58 board. the nforce chipsets i think have seen their glory days and have moved on. So for this build I think you've got the best bang for your buck setup.

I can back short up on that carvier drive. It's worth the 100gb loss, at least from a gamers point of view. However i'd stick with the 750gb if it was for movies, work ect... kinda of things.

I do question the roswill case but I understand the budget crunch. I still think i'd stick with the antec 300. Its more of a gaming case.
 
I am curious on why toms picked $1250 as a midstream build. I don't think i have met a gamer yet that spent that little.

I watch each month on the $1250 build, and i'm always interested in seeing people's suggestions for, (if we only had 5 dollars more) or (if you upped the budget to $1300 you could get this....)

Honestly $1500 is a solid and realistic build amount. Including taxes and shipping. In many cases, a few extra dollars here or there could mean the difference in OCing, or reliability of your machine.

Why $1250? It would honestly give you great headroom if you made the build $1500 as max. (shipping and taxes inc.)

Also, putting a build for $1250 and not including taxes or shipping makes some readers think, hey, i could go out and spend $1250 and get what he got. When in reality, even if a person did find all the same deals found here at toms, they would have to add another $103.50 for tax.


I'm only giving my 2 cents, I love toms and i do welcome the information provided by the builds!
 
Next month you should do builds at the following price brackets;

500
700
850
1000
1250
1500
2000
2500
3000
4000

That way everyone will be happy about the bracketing and we'll have more to argue about. 😛
 
Anyone have any idea how many people actually take the builder marathon pc at each of the price brackets and just orders as is? I suppose if its enough people then maybe it'd be worth it.
 


Well, we don't include Tax, shipping, the OS, or the monitor - so a real-life system would cost more of course. We like to concentrate on the hardware that makes a diffrence; the OS will be up to the end user if they have a copy or need to buy new, and the monitor doesn't affect performance.
 
Monitors may not affect performance, but I do think they are closely related. A 30" monitor running at 25x16 is going to push the exact same manchine a ton times harder than a 19" running at 12x10. Ontop of that the look of a 30" monitor vs the 19" is going to be quite a bit different as well. So yes the monitor isn't part of the guts of the PC but it is what the PC pushes and should be considerd in all builds imo.
 



They run benchmarks for the most common resolutions so you are covered for what monitor you are using. They just don't 'buy' a monitor for the build.
 
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