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System Builder Marathon: Sub-$4000 PC

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June 23, 2008 5:17:51 PM

Good Article, i'd still like to see more current generation games, such as COD4, Bioshock, Grid, Gears of Ware etc, I mean prey is a very old game and warhammer meh...

Either way very well explained article, but for some1 like me the 8800 Ultras still sell for around 500$ here, and 3 of them would set me back 1500, while the GX2s 1000-1200:p 
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June 23, 2008 5:22:16 PM

Liquid, what was their old rig? Wasn't it 2x 8800GTXes? That pretty much squarely beat 2x 9800GX2s? So you don't need 3, only 2!

Also, good point, they need to benchmark games like GRID and Age of Conan as well!
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June 23, 2008 5:23:53 PM

Ahhh too bad about the videocard choice here. I would have liked to see a 2x GTX260 rig...I think that'll be the next power-gamer's rig without dropping the extra $500 on the 2x GTX280 and the extra $300 on a 1wK PSU...although I'm sure this 850W could handle it. I'm going to be running GTX260s on a 750W quality PSU...I predict absolutely no problems.
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June 23, 2008 5:26:47 PM

Yes good article but I have to echo the exact sentiment from above. Prey is a fun game but it was never really the system killer to begin with. Some shader intensive games would be nice too.

I think Nvidia is going to discontinue the 8800GTX\Ultras real soon here. Right now on Newegg.com they don't have any of either card. Over the last few weeks they've been sporadic as far as being in stock. I would consider adding another 8800GTX to my rig but like L1qu!d said they're still pretty expensive. The lowest price I've seen for the 8800GTX's is around $350. If I could find one for $250-$300 range it would be worth it.
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June 23, 2008 5:33:10 PM

Yeah because I kno in certain games tri and quad scale better. Age of Conan, COD4 are some examples:) 
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June 23, 2008 5:39:08 PM

WaspyI think that'll be the next power-gamer's rig without dropping the extra $500 on the 2x GTX280 and the extra $300 on a 1wK PSU...although I'm sure this 850W could handle it. I'm going to be running GTX260s on a 750W quality PSU...I predict absolutely no problems.


Are you high? 2 GTX's on an 850w or even a 1KW PSU? With all the other peripherals installed, no way. Asus's new top of the line ARES rig uses 2 1KW PSU's for three GTX 280's. So GTX 260 SLI rig will need a minimum 1KW.
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June 23, 2008 5:45:36 PM

Nice article guys. Its funny that a $1,200 could beat that $4,000 rig in a lot of games/benchies. My E8400 @ 3.8GHz and SLI 8800GT get around 18,000 3dMark06
Can't wait to see how the other test builds are going to perform.
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June 23, 2008 6:12:04 PM

neodude007 said:
Nice article guys. Its funny that a $1,200 could beat that $4,000 rig in a lot of games/benchies. My E8400 @ 3.8GHz and SLI 8800GT get around 18,000 3dMark06
Can't wait to see how the other test builds are going to perform.


Of course it beats it in some things, it's overclocked. All the systems will get overclocked on Monday.
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June 23, 2008 6:14:41 PM

Mr RobotoAre you high? 2 GTX's on an 850w or even a 1KW PSU? With all the other peripherals installed, no way. Asus's new top of the line AREShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares rig uses 2 1KW PSU's for three GTX 280's. So GTX 260 SLI rig will need a minimum 1KW.


Well I was using an instanced case...I'm not going to be running mad-donkey peripherals. Plan is 4 HDDs, 1 DVD burner, 2x GTX260, E8400, bunch of fans and LEDs but those are tiny draws.

Dude anyways, no, 1kW is overkill. Look at this build! A quality 850W for a water-cooling rig with a QX9650 and 2x 9800GX2s! The GTX260 draws like 10W or more LESS than the 9800GX2, plus I won't be running a quad core OR water cooling. 750W is completely sound. My plan is for this rig to last me until Nehalem so I don't think I'll be going quad core on it etc.
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June 23, 2008 6:45:36 PM

I am shocked, I must give Tom's a hand for this build it was well thought out and they picked the right parts. Only thing I do not like is the TJ09 case, that case does not cooler very well, an Antec 900 beats it with all fans on low, sad. They need to drop the TJ09, I had one and returned it, because it's cooling performance was not great, for a $4k gaming rig you need GREAT cooling. The Cosmos S is not much better, but there are so many other cases on the market that could fit that cooling system in that are a lot better and much cheaper. Oh well, besides the case GOOD JOB THW!
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June 23, 2008 6:52:07 PM

The comments about the game choices are valid, but I think they try to stay with the same games for as long as possible to allow for direct comparison against previous tests. So they only get updated ever 18 months or so.
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June 23, 2008 7:00:02 PM

The_Blood_RavenI am shocked, I must give Tom's a hand for this build it was well thought out and they picked the right parts. Only thing I do not like is the TJ09 case, that case does not cooler very well, an Antec 900 beats it with all fans on low, sad. They need to drop the TJ09, I had one and returned it, because it's cooling performance was not great, for a $4k gaming rig you need GREAT cooling. The Cosmos S is not much better, but there are so many other cases on the market that could fit that cooling system in that are a lot better and much cheaper. Oh well, besides the case GOOD JOB THW!


My TJ09 cools fine. Front and rear fans are weak, replaced with scythe's and its fine. If you need more video card cooling, add a side window with a 120 MM fan hole. ran 2.6-2.8 ghz @ 22*C ~31-35 under load, 3.6 GHZ on air @ 32* c / 42 c * under load
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June 23, 2008 7:21:28 PM

The_Blood_RavenI am shocked, I must give Tom's a hand for this build it was well thought out and they picked the right parts. Only thing I do not like is the TJ09 case, that case does not cooler very well, an Antec 900 beats it with all fans on low, sad. They need to drop the TJ09, I had one and returned it, because it's cooling performance was not great, for a $4k gaming rig you need GREAT cooling. The Cosmos S is not much better, but there are so many other cases on the market that could fit that cooling system in that are a lot better and much cheaper. Oh well, besides the case GOOD JOB THW!


The Antec Nine Hundred was considered last year and rejected because it couldn't support as many radiators. The TJ09 has enough airflow that a single internal fan over the RAM can cool the RAM, chipset, and VRM. This wouldn't be true if the case was hot internally.
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June 23, 2008 7:38:24 PM

Just a note from the staff:

We're currenty updating our entire games suite, it won't be ready for this system builder marathon but it'll be up & running soon.
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June 23, 2008 8:25:05 PM

This is so stupid, 4 grand for what? a year later its a typewriter,

A ps3 costs, umm...~$500 ? and will last 5 years or more, and 5 years later it will still play the games as well as it did today.

While this overgrown typewriter will be sold on ebay for junk.
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June 23, 2008 8:53:23 PM

for the price, it is only a little bit faster than a PC thats half the cost

it is not worth it,

SLI it the worst bottleneck on earth

2 cards = twice the price for only a 10-20% performance boost
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June 23, 2008 8:59:09 PM

Quote:
This is so stupid, 4 grand for what? a year later its a typewriter,

A ps3 costs, umm...~$500 ? and will last 5 years or more, and 5 years later it will still play the games as well as it did today.

While this overgrown typewriter will be sold on ebay for junk.


Yeah spending $500 is a great investment for both of the games worth playing on a PS3 ... Buy a Wii for half as much and give yourself some options. Buy an Xbox 360 and have even more options.

Aside from that your comment is still dumb. It is an article about building a PC system on a $4k budget. It has nothing to do with value or comparison to consoles.
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June 23, 2008 9:11:56 PM

$4K budget??? thats like a $500,000 sports car budget..., hmm, should I get the Murcielago or Porsche Carrera GT..., what a challenge
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June 23, 2008 10:00:17 PM

Could you actually even spend $4000 on an AMD system?

For all the hype, $4,000 is an insane amount of money to spend on a PC. I'd like to see an AMD spider set-up with quad 4870's (when they come out) vs. these machines. I bet you could build two machines for $4,000 and realistically play all of the same games at simiar settings.
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June 23, 2008 10:01:57 PM

cleeveJust a note from the staff:We're currenty updating our entire games suite, it won't be ready for this system builder marathon but it'll be up & running soon.


Good job. It's very much appreciated.
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June 23, 2008 10:59:24 PM

Reading these feedback , seems Toms has done its homework , keep it up , and make sure the games are current and juicy ones.. Crysis , S.C, GRID , bench marking the real taxing games that kill video cards is a +

I would like to see the same machine but with 4850 x 2 or better , just to compare ATI with NVIDIA.. as people would like a choice at the end of the day.
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June 23, 2008 11:09:14 PM

warezme$4K budget??? thats like a $500,000 sports car budget..., hmm, should I get the Murcielago or Porsche Carrera GT..., what a challenge

couldnt agree more...
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June 24, 2008 12:13:07 AM

razor512for the price, it is only a little bit faster than a PC thats half the cost it is not worth it,SLI it the worst bottleneck on earth 2 cards = twice the price for only a 10-20% performance boost

Where do you come up with these figures? Ever heard of the Charts page on this website? My SLI scales very well with 8800GT cards. Learn to read before opening your mouth.
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June 24, 2008 12:19:00 AM

I'm looking forward to the system they're going to put together in the sub-$2000 category.
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June 24, 2008 1:06:32 AM

That was a realy good article but I am not too clued in with sli configaration that board can run 3 x 8800 gtx @ 16x corect
so does this mean that each gpu is scaled back to 2 x 8x per 9800gtx2 meaning that you have 4 gpus running at 8x then 3gpus running 16x
My motherboard restricks my to 2 x 16x or 4 x 8x but i am useing amd
can anyone explain to me why the 2x2 in the tri 16x didnt work
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June 24, 2008 3:04:36 AM

neodude007 said:
Where do you come up with these figures? Ever heard of the Charts page on this website? My SLI scales very well with 8800GT cards. Learn to read before opening your mouth.



Great concept, but in this instance it turns out the 9800 GX2's don't scale well. What you said would likely apply to several other cards, such as the 8800GT, 8800GTX, 8800Ultra, and probably the 9800GTX
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June 24, 2008 3:05:54 AM

Gazz said:
That was a realy good article but I am not too clued in with sli configaration that board can run 3 x 8800 gtx @ 16x corect
so does this mean that each gpu is scaled back to 2 x 8x per 9800gtx2 meaning that you have 4 gpus running at 8x then 3gpus running 16x
My motherboard restricks my to 2 x 16x or 4 x 8x but i am useing amd
can anyone explain to me why the 2x2 in the tri 16x didnt work


The GX2 doesn't do 3-way SLI because it only has one SLI bridge connector. You need two connectors for 3-way SLI, so that all three cards can communicate directly.
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June 24, 2008 3:45:38 AM

razor512for the price, it is only a little bit faster than a PC thats half the cost it is not worth it,SLI it the worst bottleneck on earth 2 cards = twice the price for only a 10-20% performance boost


I could not agree more, +1.
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June 24, 2008 4:05:49 AM

SLI is ok , but price v performance just doesnt make it worth while ..
CrossFire seem to do a better job..

Its all down to drivers in the end ..

CHoose your resolution that you are going to play games at and buy the card that suits it - no need to go overboard if you only have a 17" at 1280x1024 and gaming at this resolution..

My 8800GTS 640MB plays all my fav games very well .. ( apart from Crysis of course) ..
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June 24, 2008 4:52:36 AM

I'm actually surprised that the first page of comments wasn't flaming about only including 2 games.
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June 24, 2008 4:57:25 AM

I mean 5 games, I missed page 14 :lol: 
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Anonymous
June 24, 2008 6:55:17 AM

$4k isn't an insane amount of cash for a system built on newly released components (or reasonably new anyway). 3-4k has been typical for as long as I can remember. This year is one of the first where it would be easy to spend 5k if you don't keep your wits about you. 5k is certainly approaching foolishness unless you need a tooled up pc for your profession or your swimming in dough.

With that said, 4k is still a lot of cash for most people. If you don't mind using last years components, you can get great performance sub-2k.
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June 24, 2008 7:08:33 AM

HAHA, my Q6600 Overclocked to 3.6 Ghz (on Air no less) with (2) SLI'd 8800GT's and an EVGA 790i Ultra board and 4 gigs of DDR3 Corsair @ 1333mhz, spanks this rig ALL DAY!! My current best 3dmark06 score is 19,352 at the same settings I use everyday. And I get the same or higher FPS in all the same games. Something is not right here. You guys need to work on configuration and testing for best performance and stability.
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June 24, 2008 8:04:20 AM

dragoncyber said:
HAHA, my Q6600 Overclocked to 3.6 Ghz (on Air no less) with (2) SLI'd 8800GT's and an EVGA 790i Ultra board and 4 gigs of DDR3 Corsair @ 1333mhz, spanks this rig ALL DAY!! My current best 3dmark06 score is 19,352 at the same settings I use everyday. And I get the same or higher FPS in all the same games. Something is not right here. You guys need to work on configuration and testing for best performance and stability.



Hahahah you're such a joker, comparing a highly overclocked rig to a stock speed rig in a program that favors such a configuration. You knew that the overclocking competition was coming Monday but decided to confuse the neophyts with your deception?
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June 24, 2008 8:35:03 AM

Speaking of budget, biohazard computers currently offers a skulltrail rig with phase-change cooling on both cpu's, and liquid-cooled TRIPLE GTX 280 cards. Fully-loaded, this thing will set you back a good $18,000. And that's without the 30" display.

Kind of makes you wonder what the word budget means to some people these days...
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June 24, 2008 8:36:21 AM

Why that NEC 1.44MB Floppy Drive.
its totaly useless now, :p 
you should get a card reader or something :D 
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June 24, 2008 8:56:54 AM

The reason you have received criticism for the PSU is simply because of the multiple 12V rails. I have read in many places where people have had problems with PSUs that supply 18A or less per 12V rail since the video cards could draw more than 18A. If you have not had any problems than that issue might have been fixed but I will not buy a PSU with more than 2 12V rails any more because of that issue and I do not know what is going to happen in the future. What about using a Silverstone OP750 PSU? This has a single 12V rail, will supply plenty of power and is around the same price as the one you chose. or how about the OCZ OCZ800EXS, or the Corsair CMPSU-750TX? I have also read in many places that with CoolerMaster PSUs it is hit and miss sometimes you get one from a good source other times you do not while the ones I have listed here are more consistent on their quality.
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June 24, 2008 9:17:29 AM

xellos013 said:
Why that NEC 1.44MB Floppy Drive.
its totaly useless now, :p 
you should get a card reader or something :D 


Something tells me that the author is an XP user. You need to either slipstream the RAID drivers into an XP CD, or use a driver floppy, to install XP on a RAID array.
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June 24, 2008 9:26:52 AM

thexder1 said:
The reason you have received criticism for the PSU is simply because of the multiple 12V rails. I have read in many places where people have had problems with PSUs that supply 18A or less per 12V rail since the video cards could draw more than 18A. If you have not had any problems than that issue might have been fixed but I will not buy a PSU with more than 2 12V rails any more because of that issue and I do not know what is going to happen in the future. What about using a Silverstone OP750 PSU? This has a single 12V rail, will supply plenty of power and is around the same price as the one you chose. or how about the OCZ OCZ800EXS, or the Corsair CMPSU-750TX? I have also read in many places that with CoolerMaster PSUs it is hit and miss sometimes you get one from a good source other times you do not while the ones I have listed here are more consistent on their quality.


Last time people were saying "Cooler Master is listed on someone's Tier 3 list and that means that the power supply MUST be junk. Of course those people were WRONG, but as for your selections:

The Silverstone OP750 doesn't have enough 8-pin PCIe connectors. Several other Silverstone power supplies were considered and rejected due to the large number of complaints about the end of the PCIe power cable burning (the ones considered were modular units with two plugs on one end and one on the other).

The OCZ OCZ800EXS and Corsair CMPSU-750TX are supposed to use 6+2 pin connectors, which nVidia says won't fit into the card's connector hole due to the fact that the latch is offset to one side. This is nVidia's fault, for not making the release tab notch big enough in the card shroud.



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June 24, 2008 9:30:44 AM

Nice article, just wondering why they didn't consider the Thermaltake Kandalf case that comes with water cooling built in and a 3x 120mm Rad for close to the same price as the case they chose alone. Plenty of space, plenty of bays and loads of fans.
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June 24, 2008 9:47:31 AM

Jaq_Draco said:
Nice article, just wondering why they didn't consider the Thermaltake Kandalf case that comes with water cooling built in and a 3x 120mm Rad for close to the same price as the case they chose alone. Plenty of space, plenty of bays and loads of fans.



You're not going to like this:

"Even though the new processor is ready to astonish us in our SBM Day 4 overclocking comparison, we can't possibly overstress the value of a high-end case and cooling configuration for turning a run-of-the-mill performance system into a dream machine. To be quite honest, the liquid-cooled case of our previous high-end machine would have been more valuable as scrap metalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scrap - it is in no way comparable to the quality of Silverstone's Temjin TJ09, and the functionality of our custom-selected Swiftech liquid cooling kit."

Here's a link for that quote:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/system-builder-mara...

And here's the case they were refering to:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sbm-high-end-system...

The Armor LCS was junk. The Kandalf LCS uses the same structure and pump, but relocates the radiator into a huge door. Though the Armor LCS was inferior in nearly every way to any quality case, mounting the pump was the biggest problem, so the site didn't even bother substituting the Kandalf.

Thermaltake's Armor and Kandalf aren't even in the same league as the Cooler Master Cosmos S, let alone Silverstone TJ09, when it comes to fit, finish, and mechanical design.
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June 24, 2008 10:13:24 AM

Wow what a fantastic rig, all that processing power, amazing graphics, loads of memory and storage.......but its a shame it will be used as a DOORSTOP as someone has forgotten to include an OPERATING SYSTEM in the qoute !!!!

Someone was too busy with the Chrome fittings, floppy drives & hose clamps that they forgot to say to themselve "Hmmm now what shall we run it on..... an OS might be good"

Could be an idea to keep it simple eh?

DOH !!!
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June 24, 2008 12:50:12 PM

I'm not really that surprised about the performance after owning a 7950 GX2 a lot of the same problems existed there. I do wonder however how the SLI GTX 260/280 does they are obviously the new contenders.
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June 24, 2008 1:38:35 PM

Enjoyed this article. Good information, good job.
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June 24, 2008 3:41:42 PM

what a rush.
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June 24, 2008 7:17:44 PM

btgbut its a shame it will be used as a DOORSTOP as someone has forgotten to include an OPERATING SYSTEM in the qoute !!!!


Luckily I have a simple, 2 step system to help you out:

1. Take the price as listed
2. Add $100 to $220 to that for your Vista install of choice. :p 
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June 24, 2008 7:31:49 PM

cleeve said:
Luckily I have a simple, 2 step system to help you out:

1. Take the price as listed
2. Add $100 to $220 to that for your Vista install of choice. :p 


Heheh, it does have a floppy, even if it's not installed. I'm sure the builder has a few Windows XP licenses laying around.
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June 24, 2008 8:33:05 PM

When will Toms review the E8600 ?.. seems others have been ..
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Anonymous
June 25, 2008 1:23:26 AM

As someone that has had several Striker II Extremes and 790i Ultra boards. I would not recommend the Striker II. Instead I would go with one of the EVGA or XFX 790i Ultra boards. They cost less and yeild better results. Especially since they did not even use the water cooled fusion block. Also the coolant used seems to be conductive and not a good mix with electronics. The newer generation non conductive coolants do just a good a job of cooling and will not smoke your board and cards if there is a leak.
If all you are going to liquid cool is the CPU then, the better CPU cooler would be the Ultra ChillTec Thermo Electric CPU Cooler (ULT33186), that will cool the CPU better, simpler, less parts and will allow one to overclock the system better than the liquid cooling.
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