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
We've got a lot of great builds this year--some great options below $1000 and some great ones much higher than that. I wanted to offer something a little different for the mix.
Unfortunately, as Jarred mentioned in the introduction, building a new system today is pretty ill advised. Intel is set to release Sandy Bridge in another two months and with it we'll see a big reset in the components we recommend. Within six or so months of the Sandy Bridge arrival, AMD is expected to release its first new high end server/desktop architecture, codenamed Bulldozer. Thus my ideal build would limit spending on the CPU and motherboard, and move those dollars toward the rest of the components in the system. The idea is that you spend enough on a CPU/motherboard today to get good performance, but minimize the expense to enable upgrading in the not too distant future. You can then take your "old" CPU and motherboard and turn it into an awesome secondary system for a family member or even yourself (hello HTPC!).
| Anand's Ready for Bulldozer/Sandy SSD System | ||
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| Processor | AMD Athlon II X3 450 | $79 |
| Video | ASUS EAH6850 Radeon HD 6850 1GB | $200 |
| Motherboard | MSI 880GM-E41 | $75 |
| Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB DDR3-1333 (2x4GB) | $125 |
| Solid State Drive | Corsair Force F120 128GB SF-1200 SSD | $220 |
| Hard Drive | 2 x Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB HDDs in RAID-1 | $200 |
| Optical Drive | Samsung 22X DVDRW | $15 |
| Case | Corsair Obsidian 800D Full Tower Case | $280 |
| Case Alternative | Antec P193 | $183 |
| Case Alternative #2 | Antec Three Hundred | $60 |
| Power Supply | Antec BP550 Plus 550W | $65 |
| Base System Total | $1039 - $1259 | |
Below $100, you can't beat AMD on the CPU. Personally I like having more than two cores on a system, which is why I went for the Athlon II X3 450. It gives you a great balance of price/performance without even breaking $80. The MSI 880GM is a good motherboard from an upgrade standpoint. You can always reuse the Athlon II X3 + 880G setup later on as an HTPC as long as you don't mind not having TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming support. The rest of the system is well configured, with 8GB of memory that will be re-usable in whatever DDR3 platform you have next year.
People are always asking me what my ideal storage setup would be given my affinity for SSDs these days. The configuration above almost exactly mimics the setup I have at home. I've put a 128GB Corsair Force F120 based on the SandForce SF-1200 controller as the OS drive; you may want to upgrade your SSD in another 12 months or so which is the only reason I'd shy away from the F240. If you can get away with less space, then by all means go for it but I personally like having all of my applications and at least one frequently used game reside on my SSD to maximize the low-latency goodness.
If you don't have a NAS or some form of massive file storage at home, I highly recommend the SSD + two HDDs in RAID-1 approach. I grabbed a pair of 2TB Seagate Barracuda LPs for mass storage, although you could use smaller drives if you don't have a lot to store. These drives would be for other game installs, pictures, movies, music. The RAID-1 is just to protect things in case of a single drive failure, although you still want to have some sort of a backup plan external to your PC.
A good GPU is important if you're going to be gaming at all. I picked the Radeon HD 6850 because it is a good balance of price and performance and sufficient for most of my gaming needs at this point. While personally I'd probably opt for something faster, that's only because I tend to use relatively high resolution displays - no need in penalizing the system because of it.
The case selection is an interesting one. Typically I don't spend much money on a case in my builds, my focus is always on the internal hardware. Gary Key, our old Senior Motherboard Editor likes to view cases as an investment - something that'll last you several builds. I figured I'd give Gary's approach on this build and go overboard with the case. Corsair's Obsidian 800D is super easy to work inside, looks very sleek on the outside and seems like the type of case you could keep around for several builds. If you want to save a bit of money there are always cheaper alternatives from Antec.
Closing out the list is the power supply. We don't need to go overkill on power supply since we're not running a ton of hard drives or have a multi-GPU setup. The 550W Antec works well and is a decent choice to any midrange setup.
The end result is a system that's pretty quick today, and with a motherboard/CPU swap next year you've got a huge improvement in performance as well as leftover hardware to build a decent HTPC in the near future.
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JarredWalton - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Honestly, the AMD/Intel stuff was in a large part based on editor personal preference. For a budget build, it's hard to match AMD, but ultimately it's just a $40 upgrade to Intel. Some of us really like AMD, some of us really prefer to run Intel. Funny thing is that I'm more of an Intel guy but decided that AMD made the most sense for what I was building, and Vivek definitely wanted to do Intel. Also consider that we didn't want a ton of overlap; if you asked each of us for a system we would REALLY build, no one would put together a dream setup, and likewise few of us would go budget; you'd get all sorts of $700-$1300 builds.The graphics card side was left entirely up to the editors. Some felt the need to list both options and others went with what they felt was "best". But then, there's enough parity in current GPUs that you really can go either way and be fine. So that's pretty much how the process went.
wumpus - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Why in the world do you need to make separate Intel/AMD builds to keep the fanboys happy, and why don't you bother to include AMD/Nvidia splits as well?Second, I have to question pairing a GTX580 with a 1920x1200 monitor. While it does let you play crysis2 with absolutely everything turned on, it will be spinning its wheels doing everything else. While trying to build a decent $900 eyefinity* system might require raiding the budget from other components, the end result (5' of monitor instead of a big port hole) is likely superior to any single monitor 1920x1200 (even 24" IPS and a GPU that *never* drops below 60fps).
Finally, with all the worrying over hard drive brands nobody gave a thought to RAID5? You would think in the "ultimate HTPC" system might want to keep data after a drive death, but I guess all that expensive and noisy gear already thrown at it priced [physical] data integrity out the window (an SSD in an HTPC? Junk the software first and put something that works in its place!)
*note that a pair of 460s should not be ignored, and probably fit the price best when trying to match with 3 monitors
JarredWalton - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Might want to read Brian's build a bit more carefully:"On every system I've built in recent memory, I've gone with an SSD + RAID array of slow but capacious storage; I think the same is best here. Get four or five 1.5TB or higher HDDs of whatever brand makes you feel warmest inside, toss them in a RAID5 set, and enjoy a crap-ton of storage that's fully redundant. I suppose if you're really feeling ultimate, you could get a RAID card instead of using the ICH10R's software fakeRAID, but it probably isn't critical unless you want to eek out everything you can from those mechanical drives."
Anand has also added his build, with RAID1.
As for 580 + WUXGA, while Crysis is the game everyone mentions, let me just state that Bad Company 2 (and the new Medal of Honor uses the same engine) can be very demanding as well... about as demanding as Crysis in fact. Mafia 2, Metro 2033, and a variety of upcoming and recent titles are also very demanding. I've got a 30" panel with 5850 CrossFire, and I certainly can't max out everything!
ajlueke - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I did think about doing RAID 5 in my build. But in all honesty, out of the 3 WD20EARS drives I have purchased and the several 1 TB black editions from WD ,I have never had a single one fail...ever. Certainly I back up my programs and documents as well as anything that cannot be replaced such as pictures and itunes purchases. All the other data on the media drives is already backed up on the physcial discs from which they were ripped, and are now safely stored in my basement. Yes, it would be time consuming to rerip all of the media on a failed drive, but it is also time consuming to rebuild a RAID 5 array. I found the money spent on an extra drive for the storage overhead of a RAID 5 is better spent on cooling solutions to prevent drive failure in the first place. As I have never had a HDD fail in five years of building HTPC systems, I think the policy has worked out fairly well for me. The setup is actually extremely quiet, but certainly not as much some smaller solutions. But adding an SSD definately helps with the noise, as do the green edition WD drives.Jovec - Saturday, November 20, 2010 - link
I agree with the need for data backup, but RAID 1/5 really has no place in 99% of home usage situations. You are better off using a spare drive(s) for a proper backup. RAID provides insurance against hardware failures, but not user error. You are much more likely to suffer an accidental deletion/overwrite/etc than a drive failure.mattgmann - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Everything has looked pretty good until this machine.For one, why is a monitor now included? Though I do think it's a good monitor (nice alternative to the dell U2410). But, as a gaming system, why not get 3 24" tn panels for the same price for eyefinity goodness?
Also, what is with the use of all the WD drives? They're good drives, but the samsung f3 and f4 drives are just plain faster and don't cost any more.
Is a sound card really necessary? I would only include it if you're including speakers.
Iketh - Saturday, November 20, 2010 - link
i really appreciated the addition of a monitor in the higher priced builds... the cheaper builds are assumed you'll reuse your current display, just common sense in my book... and then eyefinity? no thanks, unless a monitor with one large curved display exists...i have never and will never build my mid-range or higher gaming PC without a dedicated sound card... the sound clarity is very noticeable for headphones or higher-end speaker systems... but I agree 100% with not a mention of speakers for the systems including a dedicated sound card, please add suggestions!!
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
3 TN monitors is certainly an option and I mentioned it in the writeup. However all of these builds are ultimately based at least partially around our preferences, and my preference is for a larger, high quality monitor paired with a single fast GPU, as opposed to many low quality monitors and a dual-GPU configuration.Nataku - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Eh... I just thought we'd see a few low~mid range systems with SSDs lolI was going to put together a system like below (im going to wait for sandy bridge instead though)
Zotac H55 w/ wifi
One of the lower cost SSD
probably thermaltake's Element Q for case
cheapest 4GB kit I can find
guess size of HDD does still matter more XD
Nataku - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
and... stupid of me to forget to include the CPU =.= i was thinking i3 lower end ones