Midrange System Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on September 11, 2012 12:35 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
- AMD
- Intel
- Ivy Bridge
- Radeon HD 7000
- NVIDIA
Closing Thoughts
All four systems in this guide represent a lot of value in terms of how powerful they are relative to their costs. Two things strike me as particularly noteworthy: the high-mid range gaming system includes the most powerful single-chip GPU available on the market today, and the workstation is extremely well-rounded with top (or nearly) top of the line mainstream components. In other words, a tremendous amount of capability is available to midrange buyers. Spending more than about $1,000 today is mostly necessitated by niche purposes.
Compared to our last midrange guide, the gaming systems outlined here are substantially more capable due to much faster video cards, with better SSDs and overall lower power consumption. The workstation in this guide is about 15% less expensive than last year's workstation, while including a faster CPU and SSD, as well as offering more storage capacity. It will be interesting to see how developments from Intel's upcoming Haswell CPU architecture along with AMD's Piledriver and Trinity architectures affect the midrange market. Trinity in particular appears as though it will shake up at least the lower midrange market segment. AnandTech will, of course, be covering Trinity upon its mainstream retail launch; expect a full Trinity buyer's guide at that time.
The systems in this guide are ready to go as they are outlined, but once you start spending around $1,000 on a computer, you might be interested in more customization—that's the point of doing it yourself. There are a variety of options with pros and cons for any change, and while you're always welcome to ask for help in our article comments, we have other resources avaialble. In particular, our forums are full of computer enthusiasts who can help you research which components are best suited to your purposes. General Hardware is a good place to start, and you can also save money by checking the Hot Deals forum.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
95 Comments
View All Comments
Streetwind - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
You'd be surprised how far a 400W PSU can take you.Checking Anandtech Bench, the 7950 is listed with a total difference of 251W between long idle (= video card at 0W) and running Metro 2033.
Mind you, that 251W is not only the Radeon, but the entire system, which also includes a 130W TDP Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz with 16 GB of RAM, and the mainboard and auxillary components also all consume some power too. This just shows once again that TDP has very little meaning when trying to determine power needs, except for tendencies. A different site tested CPUs under full Prime95 load and found that a Core i7-3960X will eat ca. 150W, just over twice as much power as an i5-3570k. So even if Metro 2033 is a GPU limited test, you can probably assume that you'll need about 40W-50W less running it with the Ivy Bridge CPU. So let's say 210W over idle.
Now, you want a power supply that has a few reserves, so that when the caps age and the maximum output drops a little over the years, you will not fry it. Having a 50W buffer on a 400W power supply is a good number unless you plan to keep it for more than 5 years.
So to touch your self-imposed 350W power draw limit with a system that runs at an estimated 210W over idle in a very demanding game, your system would have to idle at 140W.
Not even my six year old 65nm Conroe, 35% overclocked at 1.3V and with a video card that doesn't save power very well in idle, reaches 140W when sitting on the Windows desktop.
Ivy Bridge systems with AMD cards idle around 60W nowadays. So the 400W PSU has more than enough headroom to supply up to 290W additional power under load without touching the 50W safety buffer... and even a Radeon 7950 isn't THAT hungry.
Egg - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Um... I thought that the 7950 had 2 PCIe 6 pin connectors... or maybe a 6 and an 8?That PSU only has 1.
Streetwind - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
That, of course, would be a much better argument why the PSU choice is less than optimal ;) There are 400W units with 8/6pin + 6pin configurations, though.Admittedly, I wouldn't recommend fully utilizing those when running anything but a LGA1155 platform. Going 8+6 on a possibly overclocked LGA2011 platform, or those power-hungry bulldozers, will likely kill a PSU of this size. It's better to go 500W for that.
Egg - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
Antec HCG-400 M is one. But rather expensive.I did forget Molex to 6 pins exist, though.
rscoot - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
What's the point in recommending a GTX 680 when the 670 offers 95% of the performance for ~80% of the price? Both of them are overkill for 1440p gaming in the vast majority of cases and that $100 you save could be spent on a power supply that isn't as dubious as the Antec recommended.The0ne - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
I'm baffled by this as well. For the total cost of the mid range, the 670 is the perfect fit not the 680. And even for me it's to run both my 30" LCDs. As Rscoot said already, for most with much lower resolutions it's overkill.reasons?
Dribble - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
You either have just a HDD, or a HDD and an SSD. No one building a modern pc for anything other then simple tasks, which gaming/workstations are not, is going to be happy with 120GB of HDD space.DanNeely - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
If you've got a NAS to store your media going SSD only on your main computer's doable; certainly easier with 256GB than 128 though.antef - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
I would argue that "just a HDD" is not an option for a mid-range system, they are just so slow and SSDs are so cheap now. It's either both or just SSD.just4U - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
YES & NO..If we are talking about those that frequent these sites then fine.. but your average gamer while liking speed isn't necessarily adept at managing space on a smaller SSD. That can be a horrid experience for those that have little to no Hard Drive management skills. Most have been spoiled rotten by Large Capacity Hard Discs.