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01-10-2008, 05:26 PM
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An Animal I Have Become
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: In Canada, eh?
Posts: 834
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System Builder v2.0
THE BUDGET BUILD
With all the price cuts and recent releases in technology, once again the dynamic for building a home pc has changed. From budget offerings to extreme gaming systems, all can once again be had for less money and more power. For the office/multimedia computer, that isn’t expected to play games, we can get by quite cheaply. Processor: Cheapest possible Celeron using Core architecture. Don’t be fooled by the lower clock speeds than Celeron Ds, the Celeron L is actually faster. 1.6Ghz comes to a whopping $38. Motherboard: We want cheap without getting a piece of crap. MSI is a decent name and its 945GCM5 motherboard has a video slot, support for up to 2GB of memory, and Core 2 Duo support all coming in at $47. Video: The motherboard has integrated Intel GMA950 graphics, but lets face it: that sucks. We aren’t gamers, but it would be nice to have multimedia capability like good movie playback and the like. Vista support would also be nice. Best for less is either the Geforce 8400 GS or the Radeon 2400 Pro. Either is great, and can handle the occasional sneak game on the Sims 2, and comes a mere $40. RAM: Since we aren’t really gaming, we don’t need much more than 1GB. Officially Vista says you only need 512, but that’s more or less a lie. 1GB allows the computer to run comfortably, and we can get it dual channel (or 1 stick of 1GB memory) of Wintec AMPO at 667 mhz of DDR2 for $20. Hard Drive: Western Digital always offers the best for the cheapest. The 80GB Caviar SE will set you back a mere $43. PSU: We can go easy here, but its still not a good idea to get a no name brand. Fortunately the Antec 350W can be found for $25. Antec is trustworthy, and this system is by no means a power hog. Optical: A DVD Burner at the most should only cost you $25. Case: A pretty cheap case will work. I recommend the Rosewill R218-P Mid tower. Only $18 and its nice to look at. CPU: Intel Celeron L 1.6 Ghz $38 MB: MSI 945GCM5 $47 GPU: Geforce 8400GS $40 RAM: 1GB Wintec AMPO $20 HD: WD Caviar SE 80GB $43 PSU: Antec 350W $25 Opt: Sony DVD+R/RW $25 Case: Rosewill R218-P $18 Total: $256 Yeeps, that’s pretty darned cheap. If you don’t care about multimedia you could forgo the video card and even get down close to $200. This will snag you about 3000 marks in 3DMark05, relative to the 600 from the $217 build and 3600 from the $400 build I did last August. Nice, hmm? BUDGET GAMING BUILD (Or mainstream non-gamer) Okay, that’s great, but what can it run? I mean, you want to be able to play newer titles like Crysis without totally breaking the bank, right? Impossible, you say! Well I beg to differ… here I shall outline a $500 machine that can play Crysis on medium settings at 1280x1024 and maintain 35 frames/sec! Processor: Okay, we don’t have a whole lot of money to spend, and we know Crysis can utilize dual-core CPUs. Since as of the current pricing scheme, it is pointless to buy anything AMD (sorry fanboys, its just not practical), we shall go with the cheapest possible dual-core offering from Intel. For this we take the Intel Pentium E2140, with two cores running at 1.6 Ghz each and a 800 FSB. Now don’t be fooled by the name Pentium, it has Core Duo architecture through and through. It’s a great little overclocker, and can be had for the measly price of $75. Motherboard: For this we want cheap as possible without sacrificing performance. For this, the Giga-byte P31 series motherboards have it in spades. They benchmark nearly the same as the more expensive P35 boards, have all the nice features like PCI express as well as support for FSB1333 and DDR1066 (in fact the only P31 chipset boards that do so). It can be found for $70. Video: Now here’s where we’re forced to go a tad expensive. To be able to play all the latest games requires some serious horsepower, and a budget card just won’t cut it. Games like Crysis are far more GPU than CPU bound, and we need a card that can keep up. Generally, Nvidia has been kicking the shit out of ATI, but the best possible card for the cheapest money currently belongs to the red team. The HIS Radeon HD 3850 can be had for $170, and CAN and WILL give you an acceptable experience in games such as Crysis and COD4. It’s got DX10.1 support, PCI-E2.0 support, and can fulfill all your multimedia needs like a dream. Also, it can potentially run in quad-crossfire (not that we care at this price segment). RAM: Yay! So cheap lately! We won’t go with the extreme cheapest though, because we can get a much better brand for $4 more. 2 sticks of 1GB DDR2 of Kingston memory running at 667 Mhz can be had for $39! It seems like just last year it would have cost nearly $100… Either way, 2GB of total memory will give you happy moments with anything and you’d pretty much never have to worry about getting memory bottlenecked. Hard Drive: My recommendations here seldom change. Western Digital is a good solid brand with a 3 year warranty and great quality products, and a 160GB WD Caviar RE can be had for $60. Lots of space, decently fast, and with a 16MB cache. PSU: Okay, we’re trying not to spend an excessive amount of money here, but we need at least a decent brand. We also want a minimum of 450W. Well, the Cooler Master Xtreme Power 460W is only $40. It’ll do the job, and you won’t have to worry about your system burning out due to a dead PSU. Optical: A DVD burner. Sony, Samsung, LG, it doesn’t really matter. Try to keep it around $25. Case: As we are trying to stick around that $500 mark, we just need a case that will do the job without looking butt ugly. The Coolmax CS-480 black mid-tower case is decently stylish, and keeps the system relatively cool. Its not the most durable thing in the world, but enough so that it can protect your budget investment. Only 25 buckaroos! CPU: Intel Pentium E2140 $75 MB: Giga-byte GAP31 $70 GPU: Radeon HD 3850 $170 RAM: 2GB Kingston ValueRam $39 HD: WD Caviar RE 160GB $60 PSU: Cooler Master 460W $40 Op: Sony DVD+R/RW $25 Case: Coolmax CS-480 $25 Total: $504 With this system you can expect a 3DMark06 score of about 7000, which as about 1500 higher than the score of the $765 mainstream system I posted back in August, and about 5000 higher than the $400 budget system. This is approximately equivalent in power to an Xbox 360 or a PS3, so don’t let people tell you PC gaming is excessively more expensive. MAINSTREAM GAMING BUILD (Or a performance non-gamer) Okay, the budget gamer build is decent, but we want more power! *insert Tim Allen grunt here* Screw medium settings! I want to play Crysis on high and run crap in the background! But I’d like to do it for only $1000… well, I do have an answer for you! The Mainstream Build! This is what the average game enthusiast wants to have, and is very similar to my own system currently. It makes pretty pictures… pretty pretty pictures. This system will be designed to run optimally for current needs, but I’m leaving the motherboard open for decent upgradeability (see quad core and SLI). Processor: As most applications and programs cannot currently utilize more than two cores, the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 is currently the fastest offered (at least until the E8500 comes out next month, in which case it becomes the better deal due to lower power and heat consumption). Two cores running at 3.0 Ghz each makes it one of the single fastest processors, even beating out most of the quad-core processors in non-multi-tasking heavy areas. $280 dollars for this bad boy, but it might be wise to wait for the E8500 as it will be about 10% faster and will go for about the same price. Motherboard: ASUS P5N-E SLI 680i motherboard has it all. SLI capability, support for every single Intel processor currently on the market, decent overclocking capability, and capacity of up to 8GB of memory when running 64-bit versions of Windows. However, please note that most operating systems are 32-bit and can only utilize 2GB efficiently. It has all the great features of a mainstream board, coming in at a respectable price of $115. Video: There is only one mainstream card out there right now worth talking about, and that’s the Geforce 8800GT 512MB. The Radeon HD 3870 is too close in price and too far away in performance, and the 8800GTX/Ultra are too close in performance and too much more in price. It is the best bang for buck card on the market, and gives similar performance to $500 cards for only $280. Best versions to get are always eVGA, BFG, or XFX because of their lifetime warranties. eVGA Superclocked edition is my personal favorite. The amount of memory is great because it doesn’t limit your resolution, so you can go ahead and play Call of Duty 4 on 1600x1200, or even Crysis if you’re willing to make a sacrifice in anti-aliasing. Crysis however is a beast of a game, and needs to go down to 1280x1024 for maximum settings for any single card out there. RAM: Well, unless you have a 64-bit edition of Windows, its pointless to get more than 2GB of RAM. We can, however, go a bit faster than our budget build and get OCZ Platinum DDR2 running at 800 Mhz for excellent gaming performance. Only $46! Hard Drive: We can afford to get more space on this build, as well as a bit more performance, so a good option here is the Seagate Barracuda 400GB hard drive. A great warranty, a 32MB cache, and lots of space to install all the latest games. $120 for this baby. PSU: We again want a decent brand name, but we want more power as well. We need more than 500W to be completely stable, and we want brandnames like Thermaltake, Enermax, Antec or Apevia. My own choice is the Apevia 600W for $100 because its pretty and its got both Crossfire and SLI support. Optical: Even if you want to increase the cache size, you shouldn’t need to spend more than $30 on a decent burner. Case: For the most part, the case is an aesthetic choice. To a degree you need a case big enough to fit everything, as well as one that has enough airflow as not to overheat anything. However, we also get into considerations for sturdiness, appearance, material, paint job, light display, case window, etc. It is really up to you how much you want to spend, but I’d suggest a $50 Thermaltake case minimum. CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 $280 MB: Asus P5NE-SLI $115 GPU: Geforce 8800GT 512MB $280 RAM: 2GB OCZ Platinum $46 HD: Seagate Barracuda 400GB $120 PSU: Apevia 600W $100 Op: LG DVD+R/RW/DL $30 Case: Thermaltake Mid-tower $50 Total: $1021 This setup puts the Xbox 360 and PS3 to shame, but costs significantly more as well. 3DMark06 will give you approximately 14000 marks relative to the 11000 scored by the $1115 sweet spot build from August. A 25% increase in performance is not too shabby at all. In fact its even a bit faster than the $2185 build which only scores about 13000 marks. At a 1280x1024 resolution there isn't a significant performance difference between this and the budget gamer, however once you go past 1600x1200 you could expect this machine to be about twice as fast to improved memory bandwidth on both the motherboard as well as the video card. PERFORMANCE GAMING BUILD Okay, you’ve got a lot of money to spend, so you want power and future-proofing. The performance gaming build is for you! While it won’t be significantly superior to the mainstream build in terms of current applications, it will last longer and do far better with modern games. This will be able to game at insanely high resolutions without as much as a glitch. Processor: We want power, but we aren’t millionaires. While most games right now can’t utilize four cores, future games will. The Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 has four cores all operating at 2.66 Ghz for multi-tasking goodness. Realistically, there is little to no difference in current games between this and the E6850, but this particular CPU can multi-task like there’s no tomorrow. Heftier price than the E6850, though, as it runs at $540. Motherboard: Again,we want the whole package. The Asus P5E X38 has SLI support, PCI-E2.0, support for up to 1600 FSB processors (that’s like two years in the future), up to 8GB of DDR2 memory running at 1200Mhz!!! The X38 chipset is considered a favorite among overclockers, and this baby is actually quite a decent price at $230. Video: Normally this is where I’d suggest the 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra, but realistically such a suggestion would be stupid as you can get TWO 8800 GT’s for the same price with upwards of +30% the performance. So yeah, grab two of those eVGA Geforce 8800 GT 512MBs for $560 and link em in SLI and watch high resolution gaming come to life! There are people who for some strange reason believe a single 8800GTX or Ultra beats a pair of 8800GT in SLI... but those people are wrong. Radeon HD 3870s scale well in crossfire, so they are also an option. RAM: Well, I’m going to assume if you’re willing to buy a system at this level, you’re going to have a 64-bit edition of Windows. I’m also going to assume you want to use your motherboard efficiently and get some blazingly fast RAM. Furthermore, I’m going to assume you’re willing to spend a little extra for a small performance gainLook no further than the OCZ ReaperX memory running at 1000Mhz! Two sticks of this gets your 4GB of memory (currently there is no performance benefit to 8GB, and only a very small benefit to 4GB over 2GB). This will set you back $176, but will make your loading times as low as your processor can handle. Hard Drive: Well in this computer, a standard 7.4K rpm hard drive is not going to be able to keep up with your other parts. To fix this, we’ll be getting a Western Digital Raptor (or Raptor X) that moves at 10K rpm with a nice 16MB cache size. If you want space for extra storage, get the one of the hard drives from the budget or mainstream gaming builds but use it to store files rather than run applications. These run at about $175, but are considered the premium hard drive available. Another option, that will grant you far more space, is to get two of the 160GB Caviar hard drives and run them in RAID0 format… but that is also a potentially more hazardous method as a disk error can make you lose EVERYTHING. Power Supply: We need lots of juice in this machine as we’re running two video card, potentially multiple hard drives, a quad core CPU, and heavy duty RAM. While the wattage may be overkill, the features and power in the OCZ ModXstream 900W Psu is wonderful. Lots of PCI-E connectors, SLI ready, and noted energy efficiency to keep that electric bill from killing you. Sure, its $240, but we’re already being big spenders, might as well make us environmentally conscious big spenders. Optical Drive: Its still unnecessary to spend more than $30 here, unless of course you want Blu-Ray… but that’s more of a luxury than a necessity. Case: Okay, we need a big case, lots of cooling, and very sturdy because all this stuff is going to weigh a lot and take up a lot of space. To this point we’ve survived on mid-sized towers, but this system needs a full sized ATX to prevent heat build up. Aluminum is a good choice as a material as it is both light, yet sturdy, and quite good at cooling. Thermaltake is generally the best case to get, and the Shark VA7000 is one awesome looking case. It is both gorgeous AND effective! $170, but boy don’t you get bragging rights. CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 $540 MB: Asus P5E X38 $230 GPU: 2x Geforce 8800GT 512 $560 (or 2x Radeon HD 3870) RAM: 4GB OCZ ReaperX 1000 $176 HD: WD Raptor 150GB $175 PSU: OCZ ModXStream 900W $240 Opt: LG DVD+R/RW/DL $30 Case: Thermaltake Shark VA7000 $170 Total: $2071 This will score about 16000 in 3DMark06, from the 13000 from the $2185 high end August build. As I already noted, its not a huge increase over the mainstream build which was only half the cost, but it is more or less a limitation placed by the applications rather than the system itself as of yet. This could allow you to play Crysis maxed out at 1600x1200, or with a couple of sacrifices at 1920x1200. Games such as F.E.A.R and Unreal Tournament 3 can be played at 2560x1600 even! “I WIPE MY ASS WITH $100 BILLS” BUILD Okay, so you’re filthy stinking rich and want the best money can buy. Fine, stuff it in our faces. I’ll be honest, you pay an excessive price premium for the best of the best, enough to make our performance build look cheap! Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 with four cores running at 3.0Ghz, a 12 MB cache, and a 1333 Mhz FSB. Its big, its bad, and it will cost $1100 to play with the best. On a note, however, the fastest AMD processor is about half the CPU this beast is. Its got power most of us only dream of. Motherboard: The Asus Maximus Extreme also uses the X38 chipset, but employs the all new DDR3 as well as a built in sound card, extra cooling, more gizmos and gadgets than you could ever dream of, and is both SLI and Crossfire capable and has THREE PCI-E x16 slots!!! Apparently it can do something 3-Way crossfire. Theoretically it should be able to do 3-Way SLI as well, except that Nvidia has only released the needed drivers for its own chipsets yet. $350 for this monster. Video: Well, while its not a massive performance increase over the previous build, we want the best here. And that, my friends, is 2 eVGA Geforce 8800 Ultra KOs in SLI! It's still the king of the GPU arena for at least another few months, but you pay a hefty premium at $690 per card. Thats $1380 in total for those who hate doing their own math. RAM: Well we have a new scenario here: DDR3. Its ridiculously expensive for a minor performance increase over DDR2, but to each his own. 4GB of Corsair XMS (Two sticks of 2GB) running at a whopping 1600 Mhz ranks in as a whopping $860. HD: Well we clearly want more space than the WD Raptor offers us, but it would be nice to have more speed as well. For this we turn to the 300GB Seagate Cheetah, running at a blazingly fast 15K rpms. However, it DOES require $700. PSU: In case you've not noticed, the power draw coming here is phenomenal. You're talking mucho power needed, as well as a PSU without enough cables to actually hook into everything. My suggestion is the Thermaltake 1200W... $370, but at least you'll know that you've got enough juice. I cringe to think of your electric bill though. Optical: You want the best, go for the Sony 4X Blu-Ray burner. It can fulfill all your high-definition needs for a mere $600. Case: The best cases still come from Thermaltake, so we can opt for the SwordM VD5000 for a $500 price premium. However, it includes 5 120mm fans, reinforced aluminum structure, sexy as hell, and enough expansion slots and ports to make a swiss army knife cry. CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 $1100 MB: Asus Maximus Extreme $350 GPU: 2x Geforce 8800 Ultra KO $1380 RAM: 4GB Corsair XMS DDR3 1600 $860 HD: 300GB Seagate Cheetah $700 PSU: Thermaltake 1200W $370 Opt: Sony 4x Blu-Ray Burner $600 Case: Thermaltake SwordM VD5000 $500 Total: $5860 Holey Moley! Believe it or not, in spite of this you still can't play Crysis at 2560x1600. You can, however, do 1920x1200 with all the eye candy turned on. Everything else, however, can be cranked ALL the way up. Fortunately, since you're rich, you can afford a monitor that can actually do this beast justice. The only time you'll notice a sigificant diference on this machine over the performance gaming machine is at extremely high resolutions. 3DMark06 would only give this system a measly 16500, as it does all of its testing on lower resolutions.
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:fighter: "Buds 4-eva!!!" :bmage: "No hugs for you." Quote:
Last edited by I_Like_Swordchucks; 01-15-2008 at 08:09 AM. |
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01-10-2008, 06:00 PM
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Troopa
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 75
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Whilst you may disagree, why the E6850 and Q6700? They're both slight clock bumps over their inferiors and are a fair amount more expensive. I mean, if you swapped the Q6700 for a Q6600 that's a good $250 saved for an absolutely negligible performance difference (2.4Ghz vs. 2.6Ghz). Similar for the E6850 - that's a fair bit off the price/performance track to be honest.
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01-10-2008, 07:38 PM
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An Animal I Have Become
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: In Canada, eh?
Posts: 834
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The Q6700 is also a superior overclocker to the Q6600, but I agree that it isn't worth the extra dollars. I wouldn't buy it myself, but there are people who hate having an inferior component, even if it is only slightly so. Also, you can totally run SLI on the X38. Its not officially acknowledged by Nvidia, who want to push for their own chipsets, but it works and works quite well. Thats falling for their "SLI Ready" marketing scheme and assuming only things that are SLI Ready can do SLI. You are correct that crossfire scales better, but its more like two HD 3870s and two 8800 GTs are nearly identical bang for bucks. The two 8800 GTs ARE faster in most scenarios, but cost more. However, not everything supports multi-GPU setups and in those situations the 8800 GT is still the better choice. Really, it is a toss up however. I'm not claiming that these systems are the only setup you can go with, I'm merely pasting them as excellent example systems for the different price points.
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:fighter: "Buds 4-eva!!!" :bmage: "No hugs for you." Quote:
Last edited by I_Like_Swordchucks; 01-10-2008 at 07:42 PM. |
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01-11-2008, 08:54 PM
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Sent to the cornfield
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Reality
Posts: 2,914
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...I am getting that first one so hard when my birthday comes.
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01-15-2008, 12:13 AM
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Trash Goblin
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Coldwater, Ontario
Posts: 6,433
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Where are you doing your pricing from? Tigerdirect? Newegg?
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01-15-2008, 08:07 AM
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An Animal I Have Become
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: In Canada, eh?
Posts: 834
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Newegg and NCIX.
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:fighter: "Buds 4-eva!!!" :bmage: "No hugs for you." Quote:
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