Build-A-Rig Round 2, SilverStone vs Crucial: The $800 PC Build Logs
by Daniel Williams on November 4, 2015 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Build-A-Rig
- Crucial
- SilverStone
Sizing Up The Competition: The Weigh-In
SilverStone's Mighty Milo
At the end of the day I feel I prefer the looks of SilverStone’s Mighty Milo build. I appreciate a more conservative down to business look with my hardware. Ultimately though beauty is more than skin deep. Inside this machine has a few tricks that will help it hit against the opponent.
Mighty Milo & SilverStone's Tony Ou
Much of the hardware will be covered in the final fight when we benchmark each machine, but even just superficially we can see that this machine has the potential to keep quieter with an absence of case fans being installed on the machine coupled with large openings to aid passive airflow. The aftermarket CPU cooler should also perform better than the stock Intel cooler, allowing either higher overclocks or lower noise at the same temperatures. All of this in a low profile case that with the included handle installed can be easily moved from home to school and easily placed in many locations, though care may need to be taken to allow room for the case to breath with the absence of case fans.
While building in the ML08 I got to experience my first SilverStone case. The common thread I always see in SilverStone case reviews was that SilverStone cases take a little bit of extra work but leave you with good results. After the involved process was completed we are left with what I think is a good example of a compact and elegant machine, with room for much more potent hardware in the future should anyone want to upgrade it further.
Crucial's Ballistix Bantam
Ballistix Bantam & Crucial's Jeremy Mortenson
For Crucial's Ballistix Bantam build I honestly didn't look forward to building in a Thermaltake case in the same way I did the ML08 from SilverStone’s build. Though when I got down into building inside this case it felt more relaxed than I expected. The build process was a lot more straightforward and having little things like places that are out of sight made cable management much easier. When all the panels are off I was essentially building a computer in a cube frame and had very few instances where space was an issue despite this being a mini-ITX build.
I did have to work a bit but while I feel this case isn't as good looking on the outside I also think that I managed to put together a machine that looks much better on the inside. Along with the better cable management the addition of thumbscrews on the case panels means I expect this case to be much friendlier to tinkering in the future with the extra space and means to keep cabling out of the way helping ease any work that happens inside this computer. Alongside the build experience we have a beefier CPU and larger SSD that may lead to a more balanced experience, and an external DVD drive will allow optical media to both be used with this machine and any other computers the end user spends time with.
Performance results for both of these builds are coming in as we speak, so be sure to keep an eye out in the coming days for the final battle between SilverStone’s Mighty Milo and Crucial's Ballistix Bantam.
How To Enter
For Build-A-Rig, we are posting the survey link on each piece so users can enter at any time. The final entry date is November 13th, as round 2 of the Build-A-Rig challenge is quickly coming to a close.
For the purposes of the giveaways, we should state that standard AnandTech rules apply. The full set of rules will be given in the survey link, but the overriding implementation is that the giveaways are limited to United States of America (US50), excluding Rhode Island, and winners must be 18 years or older.
With apologies to our many loyal readers outside the US, restricting the giveaways to the US is due to the fact that AnandTech (and more specifically our publisher, Purch) is a US registered company and competition law outside the US is very specific for each nation, with some requiring fees or legal implementations to be valid with various consequences if rules aren’t followed. It’s kind of difficult for the rules of 190+ countries/nations worldwide to all be followed, especially if certain ones demand fees for even offering a contest or tax on prizes. We recognize that other online magazines and companies do offer unrestricted worldwide competitions, but there are specific rules everyone should be following in order to stay on the side of the law. That’s the reality of it, and unfortunately we cannot change on this front, even with the help of Purch.
The survey link is: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2382250/AnandTech-Newegg-Build-A-Rig-Challenge-Round-2-Sweepstakes
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isaac12345 - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Sure....lets have the user buy an already outdated piece of technology with their hard earned money which would hardly last a year or two for gaming purposes and maybe a year for other more CPU intensive tasks, just so that they could compensate for bad software and software management with an expensive component. Lets ask the user instead to overclock that could result in decreased longevity for all of its parts. That's definitely the more convenient and less risky way to go about this. Sure...isaac12345 - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
And lets not forget that the user will not get the full 120GB after formatting the SSD. And after installing Windows and essential software like antivirus, browser, codec pack,etc you will probably be left with 80-90GB. That's just enough space for 2 modern games. But obviously the incovenience of managing your data constantly is far less than brief random pauses of a spinning HDD. Sure...isaac12345 - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Try running this on any of these systems - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-06-assas...DanNeely - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
I have to use an HDD only crippled computer at work every day. I'd kill for even a 64GB SSD; which'd let me hold the OS a few key applications and the sourcecode for whatever I'm working on at the moment. Having to manually manage that a few times a year as I switch projects would be much less frustrating than the random HDD freezes I get a few times a day.isaac12345 - Friday, November 6, 2015 - link
Your random HDD freezes could do with not the HDD itself but with the software on it. If you are on a windows machine, run crystaldiskinfo to confirm whether your hard disk is in good condition. If it is, you could check out the event viewer in windows to see if it logs the random freezes.DanNeely - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
My observations aren't about any single computer except to the extent that outside of work I all of mine are SSD based and have been for years. Every HDD computer I've ever used, whether for home, work, or school has done it. Up until I bought my first SSD 5(?) years ago, I'd accepted it as just the way computers were. Now it's something I swear at every time I have to use someone else's piece of junk.Haravikk - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
In my experience RAM is more important for speeding up games; I'd still want an SSD to boost load times, but if dealing with a budget I think an SSD is something can be left till later (plus you'll appreciate the difference more). The 1tb Seagate SSHD is currently very reasonably priced, so would eat some of the speed difference, which is why it's my preference for any budget build.It's also worth looking at a motherboard with an M.2 slot, so when you upgrade to an SSD you can get something much, much better. The 256gb Samsung 950 NVMe M.2 SSD is pricey compared to SATA offerings, but 2.2Gb/sec I think it'd be way more worth it, as a future upgrade than forcing in a relatively weak SSD now and end up lumbered with a dual-core only CPU.
DanNeely - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
Enough ram to only swap under exceptional circumstances is something I assume is a given in any halfway decent system along with a PSU that won't self destruct under load and destroy your system. (jonnyguru has fun destructively reviewing these every one in a while.)isaac12345 - Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - link
That's odd. That usually doesn't happen unless you are running the latest intel skylake systems. My point here is though that prioritising loading times and a random hiccup here and there while using the system is far more tolerant if what you get in return is a much stronger CPU and GPU which will improve system performance FAAR more and make it more futureproof.Haravikk - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
For small form factor I'm actually rather intrigued by the Sharkoon CA-I; it's taller and narrower than the Thermaltake case, with a top mounted exhaust fan (which is my preference for exhaust anyway). It only takes half-length cards (20.7cm or less), but it's very reasonably priced, well made and compact, the only thing it lacks is a carrying handle which would be nice (might be possible to add one myself).I managed to get two systems for it under the $800 mark, though the component prices are varying wildly and you need to get the case from elsewhere (I've seen it as low as $40 though), so keeping it under budget may require some tweaks:
Here's the Intel i5 version (best future upgradeability, including an PCIe 3.0 4x M.2 slot):
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail...
And here's the AMD alternative which shaves cost on motherboard and CPU for a much juicer GPU:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail...