Holiday 2010 System Builder's Guide
by AnandTech Staff, edited by Jarred Walton on November 19, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
- Systems
- Holiday 2010
| Vivek's Midrange Intel System | ||
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| Processor |
Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 45nm (4x2.8GHz to 3.33GHz Turbo, 8MB L3, 95W) |
$200 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 (Intel P55) | $120 |
| Video | EVGA GTX 460 768MB (768-P3-1360-TR) ($30 MIR) | $140 |
| Alternate GPU | ASUS GTX 460 768MB (ENGTX460 TOP)($20 MIR) | ($150) |
| Alternate GPU | ASUS Radeon HD 6850 1GB (EAH6850) | ($200) |
| Memory |
Corsair XMS3 2x2GB DDR3-1600 CL9 (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) |
$65 |
| Hard Drive | WD Caviar Blue 1TB (WD10EALS) | $70 |
| Optical Drive | ASUS 24x DVDRW (DRW-24B1ST) | $20 |
| Power Supply | OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W (OCZ700MXSP) ($25 MIR) | $55 |
| Case | Antec Nine Hundred Two | $89 |
| Total System Price (Price based on GPU choice) | $759-$819 | |
When Jarred pitched his idea of a midrange gamer build, I liked the general idea except for one thing—the AMD processor. I'm more of an Intel guy at heart, so I tried to envision a similar midrange system built around an Intel platform. I built a very parallel system for personal use around this time last year, so I'll toss in a few anecdotes from my experience.
The processor was by far the easiest choice to make. At the price point we're looking at, the Core i5-760 makes the most sense. It's a quad-core Lynnfield running at 2.8GHz, with the only difference between it and the $280, 2.93GHz i7-860 being the clock speed bump and the lack of Hyper-Threading in the i5. Given that you've got four cores to work with, you won't miss the extra threading capabilities unless you're running some really highly threaded workloads. The 2.66GHz i5-750 is still kicking around at $199 (I can't believe that Intel has kept it at exactly the same price it was a year ago when I bought one!), but you can find the 760 for the same price. I figure it's not worth the $80 bump to the i7 line, as that money is better spent elsewhere.
For the motherboard, I went with the Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3. It's a rock solid board with USB 3.0 and a second PCI-E slot for CrossFireX support. In a mid-priced motherboard, there's not too much else you can ask for (except for maybe IEEE 1394). The Gigabyte P55 line has been popular since the launch of Lynnfield, and based on my experience I have no problems recommending it. As with Jarred's build, if you're serious about CrossFire you'll probably want to go with a different board that can do x8/x8 to the GPUs; as luck would have it, Biostar's T5 XE CFX-SLI has dual x8 slots and tosses in SLI support (via a PLX chip), and depending on the vendor it's even cheaper than the Gigabyte offering. Is it as reliable and does it have great support should something go wrong? We haven't had any serious issues with Biostar, but they can be a bit hit-or-miss.
RAM is kind of dependant on how much you need—I went with 4GB in my build last year and haven't felt short of memory, but I'm adding more this Black Friday just in case. For this build, I went with a Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) kit of DDR3-1600. Corsair's XMS3 was one of the more reasonably priced RAM kits on Newegg, but you can really go for whatever you feel comfortable with. I know a lot of people who like the G-Skill Ripjaws line, but they're rather pricey especially if you go for the 7-8-7-24 timings ($88 versus $75 for the 9-9-9-24 Ripjaws, and $65 for the XMS3s that also run at 9-9-9-24). Unless you have a specific preference for brand, you're probably better off going for whoever has the best sale.
Hard drives are another place where once you determine the capacity and speed, you're not going to get a whole lot of performance variation between different brands. I know people that swear by Seagate, I know some that swear by Western Digital, I know a lot that swear they hate either (or both), and there's Anand, who swears against hard drives on principle. In all honesty, I don't care either way, so I specced this system with the WD Caviar Blue 1TB 7200RPM drive, which at $69 is not a bad buy. There are 1TB drives from Seagate, Samsung, and Hitachi at the same price, so you're not at a loss for choice.
The graphics card is where things get interesting. If you're a serious gamer, I figure the lowest you want to go is the NVIDIA GTX 460 768MB. Most of those are going for $169, but the bog-standard EVGA GTX 460 listed above has a $30 rebate on top of that, and the more customized (and mildly factory-overclocked) ASUS ENGTX 460 comes with a $20 MIR. So if you don't mind the MIR, you can get away with a "low-end" GTX 460 for $140-150. Given the overclocking potential inherent to the GTX 460, that's a pretty good price.
But what if you want something faster? The best place to look is the HD 6850 (the 6870, at $240-300, is a bit too expensive for a midrange build). Ryan really liked the ASUS EAH6850 when he looked at the XFX, MSI, and ASUS retail HD 6850 cards earlier this month, and so it makes another appearance here. At $200, it's competitively priced against the rest of the HD 6850 partner cards, and it makes a good tradeoff between temperatures and noise. Like the ASUS ENGTX 460, it comes with a token overclock and ASUS' highly effective Direct CU cooler. It's faster than the comparably priced 1GB GTX 460 cards, so it's a worthwhile upgrade to make if you'll make use of the extra graphics horsepower on hand.
Of course, now you have to decide if you're at all interested in adding a second GPU in the future; if so, you should note that most budget P55 boards only support CrossFireX. For those going the AMD route, the specced Gigabyte board will be fine, but if you're after SLI support, the Biostar T5 XE CFX-SLI has what you need for $15 more than the GA-P55, with an epic, highlighter-esque colour scheme thrown in just for kicks.
For the power supply, I went with the OCZ ModXStream 700W. This is what I ended up buying for my build last year, and I’ve had no problems with it. There's usually a good sale on it somewhere; I picked it up for $49 last year (after a $35 rebate) and it’s currently going for $55 after a $25 rebate. I know that the Corsair line of PSUs is very popular, but they’re significantly pricier than the OCZ, as are the Antec PSUs (unless you get a combo deal on one with a case like in Jarred’s build). Generally speaking, most of the 80 Plus certified PSUs will work well; some are still better than others, but the difference between 82% and 87% efficiency isn't all that great and the price often climbs rapidly once you move beyond the Bronze level. The OCZ is a standard 80 Plus model at a good price, but if you're looking for other options the Seasonic S12II 520W is Bronze certified, well reviewed, and costs just $10 more than the OCZ.
Case choices are very personal; I prefer flowing and elegant cases, like the old Cooler Master WaveMaster and the Thermaltake Tsunami, which is what I got for my own system. I abhor the design of the wildly popular Antec Nine Hundred—something about the weirdly pentagonal side just doesn’t sit right with me, though I must admit that it is a very high quality case. The Nine Hundred Two on the other hand has a more rectangular design that suits my taste much better, but at $90 it’s not the cheapest case on the block. Jarred specced his build with the Antec Three Hundred, which is a bit smaller and a bit cheaper, but get what you like.
So how does this stack up against Jarred's build? It has a more expensive case, PSU, motherboard, and processor with a slightly slower GPU (assuming you get the standard GTX 460 768MB), but then the i5-760 will generally outperform Phenom II 965. As configured and with the mail-in rebate for the GTX 460 and PSU, the net difference is only around $30, but if we just look at the motherboard and processor the "Intel tax" is about $50 (or about 7% looking at the entire system). Whichever GPU and system you choose, both of our midrange builds will handle just about any task you might throw their way—including gaming.
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StormyParis - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
htpc should fit into a stereo cabinet. you're trying to build a NAS + HTPC + desktop into one machine, which makes no sense at all. Split the thing in 3, with a real, small, silent HTPC, a NAS, and a mini-itx desktop, and you're much better off, for pretty much the same price.ajlueke - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
While it is somewhat a matter of personal preference, I admit, some people really hate giant cases in the living room. I love having everything built into one system, and using it to serve the rest of the house and play Starcraft II on the big screen. The real downside, is then you are using a high end rig to serve you other computers as opposed to a NAS, and a NAS is going to have far superior numbers in the power consumption department.Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Good job on the builds everyone, great idea of getting several members of the AT's team to work together on this.Here are my opinions, suggestions and things that I'd personally change:
Dustin's AMD Pure Budget System:
Hard Drive: Actually, if you shop on Amazon instead, you can snap a Spinpoint F3 500Gb for about $46 and a 1TB for $53, without needing to find any coupons.
Power Supply: I'd mention that the Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D 380W doesn't include a power cord in its package. Not a big deal for most of us, but still good to knowi f you don't have a spare cord.
DVD Burner: Why go with an IDE based model, which is out of stock by the way? Because the motherboard comes with a single SATA and a single IDE cable? Hardly a reason if you ask me.
Might as well get a SATA model that can be used for years and years, if you upgrade the system down the road. Going by customer's feedback on NewEgg, ASUS 24x SATA DVD Burner is one of the most reliable model available, for only $20: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Balraj's Intel Budget System:
The one stick of RAM is an interesting trade off, sure you lose dual-channel but you gain the ability to easily upgrade RAM down the road. Then again, a motherboard with 4 RAM slots would allow for both options.
Blu-Ray: The Samsung SH-B083L/BSBP has pretty bad reviews on NewEgg, I'd get the Samsung SH-B123L instead, which costs $20 more, but is also faster (12x vs 8x).
Power Supply: I cannot skip this: you really want to avoid using a low-end, generic power supply, for reliability purposes and to protect your components. You do not want to cut corners on a power supply.
Jarred's AMD Budget Gaming System:
You mention Crossfire support, but go with a motherboard that has the PCI-Express 16x slots running at 16x and 4x, which would bottleneck performance?
For a similar price, the ASRock 870 EXTREME3 comes with two PCI-Express 16x slots at 8x/8x, which are well spaced to allow both cards to "breath".
125W CPU, with a stock cooler? Sure, it's "adequate" for cooling in most cases, but that stock cooler is going to be heard from miles away when you game for hours and/or during hot summer nights if you don't have an AC. Not much of an issue if you play with headphones, but still, I'd get at least a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler.
"Gaming depends primarily on your GPU" "You could even go with a cheaper CPU like the Athlon II X4 645 or the Phenom II X4 810"
Agreed for most games, but there are games that will be CPU bound (Think RTS like SC2, or MMORPG like WoW), where you'll want a powerful CPU that allow the GPU to flex its muscles.
Also, while the X4 645 isn't a bad CPU, losing the L3 cache and the lower frequencies are going to hurt performance quite a bit for video games.
Vivek's Midrange Intel System:
Once again, Crossfire is mentioned, but the second PCI-Express slot runs at 4x...
An ASRock P55 EXTREME4 will fix that and if you want USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s at the same time as Crossfire 8x/8x, you'll want an ASUS P7P55D-E Pro, which features a PLX chip, making it one of the few P55 boards that can run SATA 6.0Gb/s, USB 3.0 and Crossfire 8x/8x all at once, unlike most boards where USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s will fall back to USB 2.0 and SATA 3.0Gb/s due to the lack of bandwidth (lack of PCI-Express lanes, thanks to the P55 chipset).
PSU: OCZ don't exactly make the most reliable PSUs, with the biggest issue being that reliability varies from a model to another, since they use various manufacturers for their PSUs. You get what you pay for with a PSU and a solid Corsair or Seasonic PSU will serve you much better IMO.
Raja's Midrange AMD Overclocking System:
I actually agree with all your choices and like how you didn't strictly stick to NewEgg. Way to go.
Raja's Midrange Intel Overclocking System:
I'd avoid the ASUS Maximus III GENE like the plague. I used to recommend it, until I'd hear back from so many readers that had issues with it (Read some review on NewEgg) that I had no choice but to stop recommending it, because it's so unreliable.
Ryan's High-End Gaming System:
Way to go for keeping noise somewhat under control. Once again though, an IDE DVD Burner in a 2k+ system? Really?
Also, the sound card is priced at $100, not $75, unless I missed something here.
Brian's Intel Dream PC:
Hahaha, now you're talking! Couldn't agree more on the motherboard, which is a one of a kind.
Just one thing though: You forgot CPU Coolers, since Xeon CPUs don't come with any.
Also, why ECC RAM? ECC seems kind of futile for a Gaming PC.
Keyboard: Yes! Mechanical keyboards are the best. I personally recently got a Filco with MX Cherry Blue switches and that keyboard helped me increase my WPM typing speed tremendously. The feedback and noise is also great for gaming.
Mouse: I've always been a fan of the Logitech MX-518, which remains excellent years after its release and offers a great bang for your buck too.
Don't have much to add to the HTPCs, they make sense and quite frankly, it's a matter of personal tastes too.
Except for a few things mentioned above, great job all on the builds. Although I'm a bit sadden to not have seen any Workstation build.
P.S. For those who wonder about my experience building PCs and the like, I’m a computer enthusiast with 10 years of experience in building, fixing and modifying computers, who has been writing about/offering PC Builds of all kinds (Gaming, HTPC, Workstations, etc.) at various price points on my own blog (www.hardware-revolution.com) for over two years and a half now.
Cheers,
Mathieu
Ben90 - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I agree completely on the inclusion of a mechanical keyboard, they are the SSDs of the keyboard world. Once you try to type on rubber domes again it feels absolutely horrible.Personally I am a Cherry Black guy as I like the linear travel for gaming, but for typing its impossible to beat Cherry Blues unless quietness is a metric.
bji - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
How do you feel about scissor switch keyboards? I like them as I find them to be much less mushy than rubber dome keyboards, but alot quieter and with less key travel than mechanical keyboards. I use the Kensington "Slim Type Keyboard" (that's what it says on the bottom, I can't remember the exact model number) and highly recommend it.Tom_S - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Concerning keyboards etc. I *have* been living under a rock and had not heard of the DAS keyboard that sounds interesting, but while under the rock I have been using my Northgate and Avant keyboards (made by CVT Inc) which were always the gold standard in mechanical keyboards. I looked at the site, and it appears that the lesser of the Avant kbds is not available right now, but the Stellar is.http://www.cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/menu.htm
I concede that these are old fashioned - not USB without an adapter, no USB hub, but they have been around since the 1980's and are noteworthy. To further date myself, one of their features has been to remap the left ctrl and caps lock keys (moving ctrl next to the "a" key), for those of us still used to old terminals and editors/programming environments that use control keys.
strikeback03 - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Are the current Samsung HDDs any good? A couple years ago I bought a Samsung HDD recommended on this site for a build for work. First one wouldn't allow an OS install. RMAed it, got a replacement. That one died a few months later. RMAed that, bought one from another brand, and after testing the third Samsung to be sure it could be formatted when we got it just kept it on the side for emergency use. Can't say I'm anxious to try again.Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Samsung HDDs are some of the best drives on the market in my opinion. Their F3 and F4 (The 7,200 rpm 320GB model that is) line-up offer some of the best throughputs rates in MB/s, are very reliable and emit very little heat.For the average latency time, the Western Digital drives tend to be better, although they run hotter and have slightly lower reliability. For Gaming, I'd say that WD drives are the best, but quite frankly, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a system equipped with Samsung or WD drives.
Also, keep in mind warranty: W.D. offers 5 years on their Black Caviar line-up, as opposed to 3 years on their Caviar Blue and 3 years for Samsung drives.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I did try to price-check everything using our internal pricing tools (Dynamite-Data is an AnandTech affiliate of sorts), so where I could find clearly better prices from other than Newegg I went that route. Obviously, 10 systems or whatever makes it a bit difficult to get every little detail, which is why some IDE DVDRW drives slipped in. Oops!The CrossFire/SLI issue on lower end motherboards (i.e. P55 with x16/x4) was another one that I wracked my brain on for a good long time. I'd really like to go the Biostar route on Vivek's setup (or the overclocking board), but truthfully I'm a bit gun-shy with Biostar. I've had decent boards in the past from them, and other boards that sucked hard. Price is another item that I kept running into -- I don't want to recommend an expensive Intel board when SB is coming so soon.
I'll try to go through and update the optical drives to be SATA, though. Shame on my fellow writers for being so lazy! :-) Thanks for the comments.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Okay, I made some updates and added some additional commentary where appropriate. But I chose to disagree (or let the editors disagree at least) with some of your comments. IMO, there's no need for aftermarket cooling on CPUs if you don't intend to overclock, so I left my build without one.The other big issue is Newegg reviews; they're just not reliable by any stretch. We've had motherboards that our guys loved that get mediocre scores at Newegg because of idiot users. "Gee... my memory isn't working and I plugged it in, never looked at the BIOS, never updated the BIOS. What's wrong with this board!?" Likewise, some items get 5 eggs not because they're the best but because a lot of buyers think they're a great value... and they wouldn't know quality if it walked up and punched them in the nose. So, while I generally avoid stuff that gets 3 eggs or less, the 4/5 egg stuff may be decent, good, or great depending on the user. Plus, people with problems are about 10X more likely to post as people where everything worked fine.
Anyway, thanks for the corrections/suggestions.