Tom's Intl. $750 Cheap Computing Challenge
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Anonymous
January 23, 2009 4:50:13 AM
Given $750, we embarked on a mission to build the most efficient, best-performing PC we possibly could. Then, the French, German, and Italian offices did the same, trying to beat our results with their own components. Meet our contender.
Tom's Intl. $750 Cheap Computing Challenge : Read more
Tom's Intl. $750 Cheap Computing Challenge : Read more
More about : tom intl 750 cheap computing challenge
xx12amanxx
January 23, 2009 5:04:43 AM
The Phenom 940 uses less power than your chosen cpu when cool and quiet is enabled at idle and it only cost's a tad bit more.
Difference of opinion but i think quad's are now cheap enough that not considering one to get maximum life and performance is a bad mistake.
Dual''s will go the way of single cores soon.
Difference of opinion but i think quad's are now cheap enough that not considering one to get maximum life and performance is a bad mistake.
Dual''s will go the way of single cores soon.
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0
kirvinb
January 23, 2009 6:48:26 AM
I totally agree with 12aman....the quads can outperform duals in anything that takes full advantage of their cores...pretty soo it will be everything!...8500 still is a good cpu...if you had to go dual i think that was the best choice...still you could of grabbed a amd 920 for under 200 now and get fantastic results.1
Score
2
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Noya
January 23, 2009 6:52:00 AM
dirtmountain
January 23, 2009 7:10:13 AM
Son_of_Blob
January 23, 2009 7:20:35 AM
This article is way past its use by date.
What's needed now is a bang for buck review of a basic but powerful Core i7 versus Phenom II quad core rig....and then some game loving overclocks to see what can be done....with a comparison of stock coolers versus 3rd party air cooling too.
Something like this for the Intel side:
i7 920
Asus P6T non deluxe mobo (or decent equivalent).
3GB DDR3 triple channel Kingston Value RAM with XP Pro(not overpriced 6 GB on a Vista 64 bit OS..let's wait for Windows 7).
GTX260(216 version) or a 4870 1GB, say.
Decent 750watt PSU, i.e. a Zalman, to allow possible 2 way SLI or CF.
That's the current sweet spot for people on a budget who want to get the best way forward at the moment.
What's needed now is a bang for buck review of a basic but powerful Core i7 versus Phenom II quad core rig....and then some game loving overclocks to see what can be done....with a comparison of stock coolers versus 3rd party air cooling too.
Something like this for the Intel side:
i7 920
Asus P6T non deluxe mobo (or decent equivalent).
3GB DDR3 triple channel Kingston Value RAM with XP Pro(not overpriced 6 GB on a Vista 64 bit OS..let's wait for Windows 7).
GTX260(216 version) or a 4870 1GB, say.
Decent 750watt PSU, i.e. a Zalman, to allow possible 2 way SLI or CF.
That's the current sweet spot for people on a budget who want to get the best way forward at the moment.
Score
-5
enewmen
January 23, 2009 9:40:42 AM
I don't know why THG uses Vista 32 so much?? Even 8 megs of DDR2-1066 RAM is getting cheap now.
This makes me think 64 bit apps made to use more than 4 gigs won't take off for a LONG time or people just don't want it (like the new curved screen iPod).
I also agree with most posters the days of dual-cores are very limited even though most apps can't use 4 cores yet. Personally I think a cheap E0 Yorkfield or Phenom-II makes much more sense in this case..
1 TB hard-drive? I like big drives. But, that's 10x more storage than then average econo user will use. Unless future apps will actually efficiently use lots of drive space like the 64bit apps can address & use 8+ gigs of RAM.
SonOfBlob, it seems to me the Intel system your describing is will cost way more than $750.
This makes me think 64 bit apps made to use more than 4 gigs won't take off for a LONG time or people just don't want it (like the new curved screen iPod).
I also agree with most posters the days of dual-cores are very limited even though most apps can't use 4 cores yet. Personally I think a cheap E0 Yorkfield or Phenom-II makes much more sense in this case..
1 TB hard-drive? I like big drives. But, that's 10x more storage than then average econo user will use. Unless future apps will actually efficiently use lots of drive space like the 64bit apps can address & use 8+ gigs of RAM.
SonOfBlob, it seems to me the Intel system your describing is will cost way more than $750.
Score
2
Anonymous
January 23, 2009 11:06:43 AM
Siffy
January 23, 2009 11:19:42 AM
Well Noya, I think that's a problem; people ought to care more. Just my opinion, but why pay for something you don't need? The choice to buy or build a low-energy PC is not an isolated decision; the same guy probably uses CFL bulbs, drives a fuel-efficient car (and doesn't take many short trips in it), keeps his thermostat on reasonable settings (75F in summer), runs only full loads of laundry, etc. Any one of those may not make a huge difference, but they add up.
Score
3
pauldh
January 23, 2009 11:47:24 AM
xx12amanxxThe Phenom 940 uses less power than your chosen cpu when cool and quiet is enabled at idle and it only cost's a tad bit more.Difference of opinion but i think quad's are now cheap enough that not considering one to get maximum life and performance is a bad mistake.Dual''s will go the way of single cores soon.
Phenom II's were not an option as component selections were prior to NDA and as a requirement needed to be readily available in retail.
Other Quad core's in general were avoided for our system as looking over the benchmark suite, they just don't currently win enough to warrant the consumption. There will be no bonus points awarded for a possible advantage in future aps/benches. But, we'll soon find out if any of the other countries went the quad route.
For now, take a look back at this article.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/e8500-phenom-9350e,...
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1
Pei-chen
January 23, 2009 11:51:30 AM
xx12amanxxThe Phenom 940 uses less power than your chosen cpu when cool and quiet is enabled at idle and it only cost's a tad bit more.
Citation please
NoyaThis article it lame. The corporate world cares about server energy use, the home PC user/gamer could give a s**t.
And I thought the “How Much Power Does Your Graphics Card Need?” article taught people the meaning of efficiency? Let me guess, the literacy rates of your neighborhood is 40%.
dirtmountain1.2 watts of consumption by disabling the 140mm fan? Give me a break.
I guess you are the kind of people that buys Ford Excursion gasoline to drive your 2 person family to work/school.
Son_of_BlobThis article is way past its use by date.What's needed now is a bang for buck review of a basic but powerful Core i7 versus Phenom II quad core rig....
Did you notice the number after the $ on the title?
SiffyWhy use a rotating drive at all if performance + low power is the goal? An OCZ Core V2 or Solid would provide better throughput and access times for less than half the wattage draw of even a 5400rpm disk. And you can pick up a 60GB Solid for
GTA4 is around 15GB in size. Enough said.
jtt283Well Noya, I think that's a problem; people ought to care more. Just my opinion, but why pay for something you don't need? The choice to buy or build a low-energy PC is not an isolated decision; the same guy probably uses CFL bulbs, drives a fuel-efficient car (and doesn't take many short trips in it), keeps his thermostat on reasonable settings (75F in summer), runs only full loads of laundry, etc. Any one of those may not make a huge difference, but they add up.
Totally agree.
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2
pauldh
January 23, 2009 11:55:46 AM
dirtmountain1.2 watts of consumption by disabling the 140mm fan? Give me a break.
Yes, the measured difference between running the Antec 140mm fan at it's lowest speed, vs. just unplugging it altogether. The added airflow wasn't needed, so shaving 1.2W could make a difference come the final comparison day. Again, the SLK 4480 case would have done the job for $20 less and eliminated the need to do this.
Score
0
pauldh
January 23, 2009 12:12:08 PM
SiffyWhy use a rotating drive at all if performance + low power is the goal? An OCZ Core V2 or Solid would provide better throughput and access times for less than half the wattage draw of even a 5400rpm disk. And you can pick up a 60GB Solid for
Problem is, we couldn't even install the test suite on a 60GB drive. Could have trimmed this down, but there was about 150GB used on the test drive, and if keeping the system for daily use, how much more would we need? I wouldn't have even considered less than 250GB of storage, but even that many readers would chew up instantly. 500GB would have been fine, but only if performance per watt made it beneficial.
@enewman, Matadon - This WD green drive consumed less and outperformed some other smaller "low energy" drives(look at the review linked in the description). We had plenty of room in the budget for it, and didn't see a need for increased budget in other areas. For a Black drive(and any other performance upgrade), you have to ask yourself if the performance gained would outweigh the extra energy consumed...it was a real challenge. Stay tuned for the other three systems and the final comparison.
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0
jtypeb
January 23, 2009 12:34:55 PM
jthorn
January 23, 2009 12:49:41 PM
The results from the article might be long-in-tooth considering the recently announced Intel price drops. The E8500 could now be upgraded to Q9400 and OC'd to 3.6GHZ. With the Q9XXX you gain longer life, future proof, etc. And imagine the performance per watt for encoding app's as well as games . . . . .
Score
0
I've been pondering this article some more, and I think it is very good, in context. There is one thing "missing", and likely beyond the scope of the competition, and that is the dollar value on time to complete tasks. This applies less to gamer builds, but it does to home and office systems, or those intended for specific tasks. The chosen CPU is just fine, unless its performance has no dollar value. In that case, a 45W CPU like an AMD 4850e will be a much better choice. If the performance of a CPU like that is "good enough" for the intended tasks, in terms of energy efficiency it does not matter if a more power-hungry chip is disproportionately faster. The same is true of graphics cards. As long as an acceptable performance level is achieved, the minimum power draw becomes the best choice.
Score
3
roofus
January 23, 2009 1:03:58 PM
i think the quad mantra is way over-simplified. that e8600 would do fine for gaming for a couple years on the flood of console ports that make up the majority of our selections to purchase. yes i know there are whole 5 or 6 that benefit from a quad (most of them are crap BTW)but i like the CPU choice. in most every game, that e8600 will bully most quads all over the place in gaming and definitely can be overclocked to negate most gains that a quad currently has with the exception of the i7 scaling with multiple GPU's.
Score
0
roofus
January 23, 2009 1:06:39 PM
jtt283I've been pondering this article some more, and I think it is very good, in context. There is one thing "missing", and likely beyond the scope of the competition, and that is the dollar value on time to complete tasks. This applies less to gamer builds, but it does to home and office systems, or those intended for specific tasks. The chosen CPU is just fine, unless its performance has no dollar value. In that case, a 45W CPU like an AMD 4850e will be a much better choice. If the performance of a CPU like that is "good enough" for the intended tasks, in terms of energy efficiency it does not matter if a more power-hungry chip is disproportionately faster. The same is true of graphics cards. As long as an acceptable performance level is achieved, the minimum power draw becomes the best choice.
if the article wasn't about a gaming computer, i would agree but since that is the primary purpose for this build, the 4850e shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as the e8600.
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0
Teamtalon
January 23, 2009 1:18:55 PM
squatchman
January 23, 2009 1:55:25 PM
inferno65
January 23, 2009 2:12:51 PM
PaulR08
January 23, 2009 3:00:15 PM
billiardicus
January 23, 2009 3:09:37 PM
marraco
January 23, 2009 3:17:43 PM
pauldhYes, the measured difference between running the Antec 140mm fan at it's lowest speed, vs. just unplugging it altogether. The added airflow wasn't needed, so shaving 1.2W could make a difference come the final comparison day. Again, the SLK 4480 case would have done the job for $20 less and eliminated the need to do this.
I would like to see, how much undeclocking would take, to allow avoiding the fans at all.
Score
1
dirtmountain
January 23, 2009 3:20:20 PM
Quote:
I guess you are the kind of people that buys Ford Excursion gasoline to drive your 2 person family to work/school.Actually i drive an 11 year old 4 cylinder manual transmission truck that gets 25-30 mpg when driven like an old man (which i am). I also don't disable LED lights on my case/monitor or appliances which would save about 64watts per year each. I do however turn my system off when it's not in use (gasp!). Saving miniscule amounts of power to stroke the current rage of fanboi greeness is not a concern for me.
Score
1
jcknouse
January 23, 2009 3:26:50 PM
For grins, I went to Newegg a bit ago and pasted together a system that (with $45) of rebates was $734 (S/H not included), and consisted of:
700W PS
9800GT OC'ed from the factory
8GB DDR2-6400
500GB HD
PhenomII-920 AM2+ CPU
Xigmatek cooler
etc. etc.
one thing I'm not sure of: why always going for the big 1TB drive? is the performance better? i would think with more platters to seek, bigger would equal slower.
i like these articles tho. i like to see the outcomes of various configurations. that way, i can see what works best for future builds of my own.
i am jonesing for AM3 tho.
700W PS
9800GT OC'ed from the factory
8GB DDR2-6400
500GB HD
PhenomII-920 AM2+ CPU
Xigmatek cooler
etc. etc.
one thing I'm not sure of: why always going for the big 1TB drive? is the performance better? i would think with more platters to seek, bigger would equal slower.
i like these articles tho. i like to see the outcomes of various configurations. that way, i can see what works best for future builds of my own.
i am jonesing for AM3 tho.
Score
-1
BSMonitor
January 23, 2009 3:37:46 PM
I think green was a big consideration here. You certainly won't get a Phenom II up to 4Ghz at 1.25 Volts...
I bet the Wolfie at 4Ghz is very competitive against Phenom II at even 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz. Even in the multi-core optimized apps. However, in the dual-core optimized apps, aka most games, The Wolfie is going to annihilate the Phenom.
Performance / Watt will definately go to Wolfie, especially with both overclocked.
I bet the Wolfie at 4Ghz is very competitive against Phenom II at even 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz. Even in the multi-core optimized apps. However, in the dual-core optimized apps, aka most games, The Wolfie is going to annihilate the Phenom.
Performance / Watt will definately go to Wolfie, especially with both overclocked.
Score
0
computerninja7823
January 23, 2009 4:29:06 PM
Quote:
I think green was a big consideration here. You certainly won't get a Phenom II up to 4Ghz at 1.25 Volts...I bet the Wolfie at 4Ghz is very competitive against Phenom II at even 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz. Even in the multi-core optimized apps. However, in the dual-core optimized apps, aka most games, The Wolfie is going to annihilate the Phenom.
Performance / Watt will definately go to Wolfie, especially with both overclocked.
/quote]
cant agree more...
but i seriously wish they would have gone with a nvidia gfxs card though i have not used one of the ati gfxs cards lately so things might have changed
Score
-1
Dax corrin
January 23, 2009 4:45:01 PM
Score
-1
ackthbbft
January 23, 2009 5:20:45 PM
seboj
January 23, 2009 5:33:17 PM
Quote:
Something that seems to be missing from all these build articles is A: the OS. B: Keyboard, monitor and mouse.Odds are, if you're doing a new build, you already have these things from old builds. It's not a necessity to buy all that stuff new every time you upgrade your hardware.
Nice article all around. Good build and at a good price point.
Score
1
rstthomas
January 23, 2009 5:37:38 PM
The title of this article has "...cheap computing..." in it.
Is $750 really a cheap computer?
Seems to me an E-machine at Walmart/Office Depot for $298 is cheap computing. [buy, plug-in, done]
This machine is 2.5x more than that.
[+ man hours to find components, buy, install, configure, test]
I guess it depends on where your baseline is:
e.g. if it's an AlienWare ALX X58 for $4000. then this would look pretty cheap.
Just thinking out loud.
Is $750 really a cheap computer?
Seems to me an E-machine at Walmart/Office Depot for $298 is cheap computing. [buy, plug-in, done]
This machine is 2.5x more than that.
[+ man hours to find components, buy, install, configure, test]
I guess it depends on where your baseline is:
e.g. if it's an AlienWare ALX X58 for $4000. then this would look pretty cheap.
Just thinking out loud.
Score
0
seboj
January 23, 2009 5:40:35 PM
sohei
January 23, 2009 6:02:43 PM
justinmcg67
January 23, 2009 6:07:57 PM
Pei-chen
January 23, 2009 6:34:52 PM
dirtmountainActually i drive an 11 year old 4 cylinder manual transmission truck that gets 25-30 mpg when driven like an old man (which i am). I also don't disable LED lights on my case/monitor or appliances which would save about 64watts per year each. I do however turn my system off when it's not in use (gasp!). Saving miniscule amounts of power to stroke the current rage of fanboi greeness is not a concern for me.
Do you turn of your heater in summer? The principle is the same; if you are not using it, why should you powering it on? Maybe you think unplugging the fan is a case of pennywise but it is in fact a penny saved is a penny earned.
jcknouseFor grins, I went to Newegg a bit ago and pasted together a system that (with $45) of rebates was $734 (S/H not included), and consisted of:700W PS9800GT OC'ed…..
Power efficiency and gaming performance are important in this article. If I am building a cheap number cruncher, Q6600 + integrated graphic would be my choice.
The 700w PSU is way too big for your suggested build and 9800GT is substantially slower than 4850 (I used both). In addition, Tom’s picked a custom PCB version of 4850 which should outperform the plain 4850.
ackthbbftI would love to know where THG got the cooler for $17. Newegg is charnging $36.99 for it, which is even higher than it was during their $650 build last month.
Newegg’s price shifts base on availability. The price will drop when they have more in stock.
Score
-1
sohei
January 23, 2009 7:00:45 PM
brendano257
January 23, 2009 7:40:57 PM
I'm with dirtman about disabling the 140mm fan for 1.2w of "savings." That saves a WHOPPING 10Kwh per year, thus saving you 157 Cents per year if you ran your computer 24 hours a day, and payed 15c per Kwh(PSNH figure.) And that would save 5.5Kg of CO2 from being released per year (@ .527 Kg per Kwh) or .01% of what a household releases in CO2 per year from driving. And to top it off, extra cooling can't kill you =[)
Score
1
As much as I prefer to be "energy-aware," I've got to side with Dirtmountain on the fan. It seems silly to disable it. Two points though:
1. If he didn't need it (i.e. would disable it), I suspect that Dirtmountain (and many others) would simply not buy the fan (or that particular case with the fan) in the first place, which would save additional money on the build.
2. This is a competition between the various Tom's offices. If disabling that fan is the singular act that means a victory, I'm sure the chortling and snickering that would ensue would be just that much more sweet. If that turns out to be the case, then I say "Well done!"
1. If he didn't need it (i.e. would disable it), I suspect that Dirtmountain (and many others) would simply not buy the fan (or that particular case with the fan) in the first place, which would save additional money on the build.
2. This is a competition between the various Tom's offices. If disabling that fan is the singular act that means a victory, I'm sure the chortling and snickering that would ensue would be just that much more sweet. If that turns out to be the case, then I say "Well done!"
Score
1
V3NOM
January 24, 2009 12:04:31 AM
Siffy
January 24, 2009 9:21:04 AM
pauldhProblem is, we couldn't even install the test suite on a 60GB drive. Could have trimmed this down, but there was about 150GB used on the test drive, and if keeping the system for daily use, how much more would we need? I wouldn't have even considered less than 250GB of storage, but even that many readers would chew up instantly. 500GB would have been fine, but only if performance per watt made it beneficial.
Thanks for reply and wow @ 150GB. I had no idea y'all put that much on the boxes just for testing. It either never gets mentioned, or I've never noticed. As I'm not a gamer, my complete Vista install + programs is 12GB. Sure I have much more than that stored, but I'd never keep it on the OS drive. I understand games take up more space than typical programs but I have to ask you this, do you really think it's reasonable to expect a $750 PC to run $(insert the thousands your test suite costs) of software at any given time? I highly doubt there are many gamers out there that are willing to pay for 10 $50 titles but only willing to build a $750 box. I imagine a lot are making due with 150GB Raptors/VRs just fine. While I wouldn't expect anyone to ever recommend a $300-600 (120 and 250gb ssd's) drive for a budget build, I would expect some realistic estimates of what software would actually reside on those budget systems and feel some flexibility in the testing procedures would be appropriate.
Since you mentioned 500GB drives, I'd like to see a review of those from a performance/watt/price perspective. Especially as I just picked up a 7200.12 last week for only $60 + free shipping at Newegg. Actually, what I'd like to see most is a comparison including all brands' latest gen single platter drives as opposed to just their largest capacity flagship drives.
Oh, and sorry my first comment got cut off. I was unsure if the comments section would take a less than symbol or treat it as html. All that got cut off was that I hope the US team does its testing on 240 VAC to get the best efficiency out of the PSU.
Score
0
Anonymous
January 24, 2009 11:03:45 AM
@siffy
I only have 3 $50 titles installed on my PC and yet my 250gb drive is barely enough for me since I dont use my PC for Games alone.
Media files is barely enough to be stored on a 150gb specially on a 60gb drive.
About comparison of the hard drives, I think they already made an article about it.
I only have 3 $50 titles installed on my PC and yet my 250gb drive is barely enough for me since I dont use my PC for Games alone.
Media files is barely enough to be stored on a 150gb specially on a 60gb drive.
About comparison of the hard drives, I think they already made an article about it.
Score
0
PhuqTard
January 24, 2009 11:34:19 AM
Guys.....slow down a minute....
The purpose/drive of this article was the 'challenge' of building a machine which would strike the best balance of price, speed, and power consumption. We all know what components would be better, cheaper, more future proof, blah blah blah. There is no right or wrong here. Why do you all think there are SO many options when choosing components? Opinions, budgets and personal styles differ greatly. This was a challenge within the THG group (remember the 'other' countries listed?) to come up with the overall best config for $750 or less. So, musing about why or why not quad-cores were used, it a totally moot point.
The purpose/drive of this article was the 'challenge' of building a machine which would strike the best balance of price, speed, and power consumption. We all know what components would be better, cheaper, more future proof, blah blah blah. There is no right or wrong here. Why do you all think there are SO many options when choosing components? Opinions, budgets and personal styles differ greatly. This was a challenge within the THG group (remember the 'other' countries listed?) to come up with the overall best config for $750 or less. So, musing about why or why not quad-cores were used, it a totally moot point.
Score
1
PhuqTard
January 24, 2009 11:35:24 AM
Guys.....slow down a minute....
The purpose/drive of this article was the 'challenge' of building a machine which would strike the best balance of price, speed, and power consumption. We all know what components would be better, cheaper, more future proof, blah blah blah. There is no right or wrong here. Why do you all think there are SO many options when choosing components? Opinions, budgets and personal styles differ greatly. This was a challenge within the THG group (remember the 'other' countries listed?) to come up with the overall best config for $750 or less. So, musing about why or why not quad-cores were used, it a totally moot point.
The purpose/drive of this article was the 'challenge' of building a machine which would strike the best balance of price, speed, and power consumption. We all know what components would be better, cheaper, more future proof, blah blah blah. There is no right or wrong here. Why do you all think there are SO many options when choosing components? Opinions, budgets and personal styles differ greatly. This was a challenge within the THG group (remember the 'other' countries listed?) to come up with the overall best config for $750 or less. So, musing about why or why not quad-cores were used, it a totally moot point.
Score
-1
enewmen
January 24, 2009 12:58:09 PM
Siffy
January 24, 2009 1:48:54 PM
chyll2@siffyI only have 3 $50 titles installed on my PC and yet my 250gb drive is barely enough for me since I dont use my PC for Games alone.Media files is barely enough to be stored on a 150gb specially on a 60gb drive. About comparison of the hard drives, I think they already made an article about it.
There's no reason at all to keep your mp3s on a 100MB/s+ or 10k rpm drive. FWIW, they could be played off media the speed of a 3.5" floppy disk. Well, most could, unless you rip everything into CBR@320. A small, fast drive for the OS + Programs and a large, slower drive for everything else. It's not a new idea at all. In fact, it used to be the cheap route when 7200rpm drives were first appearing and cost much more per GB than 5400rpm drives.
On the comparison, no, not recently. New drives come out all the time and typically the single platter version gets ignored in favor of reviewing only the flagship drive. I would say to check out the hard drive charts to see why I think it's important to review both, but I've searched TH for a review of the ST3320613AS that comes in right behind the VR (on that bench) and came up with nothing. I'm wanting to say I've read that review and it was a weird engineering sample because the 17ms access time is horrible.
The Barracuda 7200.11 are the only drives with all the sizes on the chart. I've seen several user reviews with 2 or 3 WD RE3 single platter drives in RAID-0 showing some very impressive numbers, but 1 user benchmark of 1 individual component is about useless. There aren't any numbers for the Cuda 7200.12, Momentus 7200.4, or Momentus 5400.6, single platter or otherwise. I mention the laptop drives because I'd like to be able to compare the 5400.6 to the recently reviewed WD Blue 500GB drive, but honestly I'd rather have the 250GB lower wattage, cooler, single platter drive in my laptop as it's plenty of storage space. That 1 number (watts) would be the deciding factor on which I'll pick up. I'm trying to do everything I can to extend battery life. They're also drives that should be seriously considered for a low wattage PC.
Score
-1
mdillenbeck
January 24, 2009 2:28:53 PM
I can understand why Tom's has to do this style of article over and over and over and over and over again - computer hardware is constantly advancing and by the time they print something, its out of date.
However, I challenge Tom's to at least once mix it up a bit. Instead of the best gaming rig, do these build offs for a different application. Myself, I already have my gaming rig... now, help me improve my HTPC. Try to build the best darn computer you can that also has to be power efficient, quiet, and handle full BD and HD-DVD playback with full audio.
As to including the OS, I almost always buy the OEM version. $140 versus $300+ makes a big difference. Unfortunately, OEM is technically tied to the hardware for which you buy it (yes, I know you can get around these - but lets keep these above board). So lets go under the assumption that the builder either a) owns a mass-manufactured computer that has hardware-locked OEM software installed (like a Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc), b) this is their very first computer, or c) they want to keep their old computer as-is and this is an additional computer.
However, I challenge Tom's to at least once mix it up a bit. Instead of the best gaming rig, do these build offs for a different application. Myself, I already have my gaming rig... now, help me improve my HTPC. Try to build the best darn computer you can that also has to be power efficient, quiet, and handle full BD and HD-DVD playback with full audio.
As to including the OS, I almost always buy the OEM version. $140 versus $300+ makes a big difference. Unfortunately, OEM is technically tied to the hardware for which you buy it (yes, I know you can get around these - but lets keep these above board). So lets go under the assumption that the builder either a) owns a mass-manufactured computer that has hardware-locked OEM software installed (like a Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc), b) this is their very first computer, or c) they want to keep their old computer as-is and this is an additional computer.
Score
-1
nerrawg
January 24, 2009 4:31:14 PM
So far I've read three pages of attempted criticism of this build and yet none of it manages to make a worthy point for a better build towards this competition. Therefore I must hand it to Toms for a thoroughly conceived build!
Only points that I would agree with that have been mentioned so far was the choice of a 1 TB drive, although you justified this from the fact that you just want to try it out of curiosity, no probs, however that aside I would have chosen the 640GB western if this was not an issue. Also I assume that Crysis and 1900x 1200 res will be part of the tests so if wattage wasn't an issue I would have saved some money elsewhere and gone with a beefier gpu: 4870 or Nvidea; or possibly a cheeper CF configuration like the 4830. However considering all of the test parameters I think Toms has made the best choice.
Only points that I would agree with that have been mentioned so far was the choice of a 1 TB drive, although you justified this from the fact that you just want to try it out of curiosity, no probs, however that aside I would have chosen the 640GB western if this was not an issue. Also I assume that Crysis and 1900x 1200 res will be part of the tests so if wattage wasn't an issue I would have saved some money elsewhere and gone with a beefier gpu: 4870 or Nvidea; or possibly a cheeper CF configuration like the 4830. However considering all of the test parameters I think Toms has made the best choice.
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