Holiday 2011 Midrange System Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on December 6, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
- AMD
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Llano
- Holiday 2011
- midrange
- NVIDIA
Final thoughts
As I discussed in the introduction, I think now is a particularly good time to spend $1000 or so on a PC that's suited for the long haul. That is, the systems outlined in this guide are likely to be more capable in 2016 than 2006's PCs are today, for a number of reasons. I also want to stress how much of an improvement to your overall computing experience an SSD yields, and unless you absolutely must spend more money on lots of storage space or a GPU, a $1000 PC without an SSD is a shame in my opinion.
The three PCs outlined in this guide represent a wide range of cost (the Intel Core i7-2600K system is fully 50% more expensive than the AMD A8-3850 rig) and capability (the Intel Core i5-2500K box is a much more capable gamer than the AMD A8-3850 setup). The fun of a midrange build is also the biggest challenge—you have to think about and identify what the PC will be used for, and then buy parts accordingly. During the holidays, it is especially useful to identify many potential purchases and then watch for ephemeral sales. Just remember to send in your rebates on time!
You might also have noticed that we skipped out on keyboards, mice, displays, and speakers for these builds. Those areas tend to move quite a bit slower than the rest of the PC market, and you can find our opinions on displays and keyboards in our Back to School Guide--not much has changed as far as recommendations. For keyboards and mice, grab what you're comfortable using; Microsoft and Logitech offerings are always a safe bet, though some users prefer fancier hardware.
You can always visit AnandTech's Hot Deals forum for tips and information on especially low component prices. And our General Hardware forum is a great resource where you can ask fellow enthusiasts for advice about which specific components are best suited for your specific needs.
Happy Holidays!
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Will Robinson - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
I agree a good SSD makes a big difference to the feel and function of the rig.I recently installed a Patriot Wildfire SSD 120GB running Win 7 64-bit and it is impressive.
Great bang for the buck.
demonbug - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Definitely agree, my 64 GB SSD has made a world of difference. It provides plenty of space for OS and applications; games go on my spinning drive.It can be a pain to manage manually, though, as even if you tell Windows to put all your documents etc. on the HDD there are a lot of programs that will ignore this and automatically put things on your SSD (they seem to assume that your document folders are in the standard location and don't bother checking or asking where you want to put user data). This is probably where the Z68 method of using the SSD as a cache drive would be really nice (I put my system together about a year before Z68 came out), just to save you the trouble of managing things by hand when software companies are idiots (biggest issue I ran into was actually Amazon's downloader - not only does it prevent you from selecting a download location, once it downloads it also unpacks without asking you where to put it; when the program you are downloading is 10 GB [BF3], meaning you actually need 20 GB+ free on a 64 GB SSD, this is an issue).
stanwood - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Some of the geeks who read your site don't game. But we do use our computers for work. So I really appreciate the high-end "worker" build.One question. My current setup chokes in RAW image processing in Adobe Lightroom 3. Is HT in the 2600K likely to help here? (does LR3 make good use of multi-threading?)
Z Throckmorton - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Hi Stanwood - I do a bit of image processing in Lightroom 3, and when rendering previews, LR3 pegs all eight 'cores' of my i7-2600K. So it is worth considering springing the extra $100 on the 2600K vs the 2500K. If nothing else, you can always buy both chips, compare them, and then sell the chip you don't end up keeping. The 2500K and 2600K hold their values very well and you'd likely only end up losing out $20-30.LeftSide - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Stanwood, it would help to know what your current hardware is. My old system would stutter while editing, viewing, and processing raw images. It was a q6600 with 4gb of ram.My new system is a an 2500k with 8gb of ram, and it runs smooth. I think the ram was my biggest bottle neck, although I now edit my RAWs on a separate hard drive that has no programs installed on it. I can see how you could choke down a system if windows, lightroom, and the raw files are all on the same HD.
stanwood - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Thanks for the response Zach! I will go with the 2600K.LeftSide, currently I have no desktop system. Only a T61 notebook that I dock into a nice big Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP display. The Thinkpad runs Win7pro 64 on a C2D T9300 @ 2.5GHz with 4GB ram and an NVidia Quadro NVS 140M with 128MB . I run LR3 in 64-bit.
For most work this system has been great. And of course I can move easily to the couch. But once I started to take pictures in RAW and process them I noticed the limitations. It works (choke was really an exageration) but life is a bit slow. Also ripping DVDs to put onto my HDD for travel takes a while.
My work issued laptop is a newer T410 but has a comparable processor. And it can really slow down when I have lots of PPT and XLS files open, plus running Emacs, Exceed, Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime. For work my system seems to be CPU and RAM limited.
So I'm thinking to build myself a more powerful desktop system and use it for work, photo processing, and ripping DVDs. A SB system on Z68 with HD3000 graphics seems like a good start. I can spend my money on CPU cores, RAM, and an SSD. And I get access to Quicksync. I don't game but I may later try out a retail dGPU and see it it helps. If not I'd return it.
I can always couch surf on my T61 and there's an excuse to start eyeing tablets . . .
Achilles97 - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Is it really worth spending $140 on a case in a $1000 build? That's 14%. What about a $60 Antec 300 Illusion?tsnorquist - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
I'm with you. Get a cheaper case and invest in a video card.erple2 - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Normally, I'd agree with you. However, that $140 case will last you as long as you want it to, probably through several "builds". And that's where the niceness of the $140 case comes into play.If you plan on throwing everything out on the next "upgrade", then case prices don't really matter all that much. But I can tell you that I've enjoyed working on my Antec P182 case for the past 3 builds I've made for it. It's more than paid for its $140 price tag IMO.
Had I only made a single build, and trashed it for the next one, I'd agree with you. So, if you intend to reuse as much as you can for the "next" build (which, by the wording in the article seems to be "2016"), maybe that doesn't matter that much. But then again, saving 80 dollars over 7 years is only about 12 dollars per year. Is that worth it? Particularly if the cheaper cases are more difficult to live with? I dunno.
DanNeely - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 - link
Depends how often you upgrade your systems. Cases from 5 years ago often won't hold modern full length GFX cards, are generally lacking in PSU mounts with external intake, won't have behind the board cable management, and will have obsolete front panel connectors. I don't know what to expect over the next 5 years; but I do assume our current state of the art cases will be found lacking in multiple must have feeatures for a good enclosure.