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System Builder Marathon, Q4 2012: $500 Gaming PC

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  • Gaming
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December 4, 2012 3:00:05 AM

We were hoping to kick this quarter's System Builder Marathon off with AMD's new Athlon X4 750K. But a lack of availability compels us back into the arms of Intel's dual-core Pentium. Happily, an affordable Radeon HD 7850 promises great performance.

System Builder Marathon, Q4 2012: $500 Gaming PC : Read more

More about : system builder marathon 2012 500 gaming

December 4, 2012 3:15:56 AM

$501 Plus $100 for a copy of windows 7.
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-20
December 4, 2012 3:19:29 AM

killerchickens$501 Plus $100 for a copy of windows 7.
Run Linux, this is a hardware shootout.
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22
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December 4, 2012 3:24:02 AM

I personally feel that they could have gone with H61 and gotten a 2GB 7850 instead.
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21
December 4, 2012 3:24:25 AM

CrashmanRun Linux, this is a hardware shootout.


Linux for a gaming desktop I dont think so.
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-13
December 4, 2012 3:26:47 AM

Not to mention that the 500GB version of the HDD is only $3 more.
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26
December 4, 2012 3:28:09 AM

Quote:
Our best alternative remained the quad-core Phenom II X4 995 Black Edition for $95. But we chose not to revisit this old favorite, figuring that adding a Radeon HD 7850 would have taxed our budget.

What about the Phenom II 965? It's only $75 at TigerDirect.
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9
December 4, 2012 3:29:15 AM

Why is Windows 8 Professional being used?
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-17
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 3:32:12 AM

willyroc said:
I personally feel that they could have gone with H61 and gotten a 2GB 7850 instead.


I think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220.
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21
December 4, 2012 3:54:06 AM

I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.
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4
December 4, 2012 3:54:29 AM

Windows is free and we use Linux in are gaming Machines what are we in Soviet Russia .
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-19
December 4, 2012 3:57:50 AM

Well done! I built a $700 rig for a friend a few weeks ago. Parts were mostly identical except for a Corei5 3330, 2 GB 7850 and 120 GB SSD. The 7850 is by far the most bang for the buck and overclocks quite well. I recently bought two for a crossfire setup on my rig for $300 dollars on black friday as well. The 7850 was a solid choice.
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4
December 4, 2012 4:02:44 AM

EzioAsI think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220.


Exactly. Couldn't've said it better.
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21
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 4:03:44 AM

The FX-6300 doesn't get any love?
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0
December 4, 2012 4:09:50 AM

So guys you would buy Windows 8 Professional for a $500 gaming computer.
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-15
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 4:17:53 AM

aznshinobiThe FX-6300 doesn't get any love?


It's too expensive.

killerchickensSo guys you would buy Windows 8 Professional for a $500 gaming computer.


This was a hardware test. You're OS complaints are irrelevant and there's no practical difference between Home and Pro versions when it comes to simple performance tests. such as these.
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16
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 4:18:44 AM

killerchickensWindows is free and we use Linux in are gaming Machines what are we in Soviet Russia .


Several Linux distros works pretty well with most modern popular games, just FYI. Also, getting Windows for free legally is easy if you care to do it. Dreamspark has many free versions available to college students and most people know at least one, even if by proxy. Even in the unlikelihood of not knowing any, there's still the eval copies that MS gives away for free on their own website.
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10
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 4:19:46 AM

mayankleoboy1I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.


I disagree. The current drivers for Windows 8 are pretty much on-par with the Windows 7 drivers. Heck, they're better than AMD's pre-Catalyst 12.6 drivers.
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12
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 4:22:07 AM

was hoping to see a piledriver based cpu in this quarter's build. but i was much happier to see the 1gb radeon 7850 instead. nice gaming build.
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7
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 4:23:42 AM

de5_Roy said:
was hoping to see a piledriver based cpu in this quarter's build. but i was much happier to see the 1gb radeon 7850 instead. nice gaming build.


Meh, I would've preferred seeing at least an A8-5600K with a cheaper motherboard and memory kit or keep the same memory kit and get a cheaper case. It could have fit, IDK why Tom's didn't do it. Maybe there weren't good prices on other components at the time :/ 
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-4
December 4, 2012 4:23:55 AM

blazorthonThis was a hardware test. You're OS complaints are irrelevant and there's no practical difference between Home and Pro versions when it comes to simple performance tests. such as these.


Windows home still costs $100 which is still some how not part of the budget.
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-16
December 4, 2012 4:58:36 AM

mayankleoboy1I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.

We did a ton of benchmarking the week Windows 8 came out that demonstrated comparable performance between both operating systems. Don't let the software side of things dissuade you :) 
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14
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 5:28:36 AM

killerchickensWindows home still costs $100 which is still some how not part of the budget.


I listed free methods of getting it legally and regardless, that doesn't matter even if you had to pay for it because, again, this is not a full build marathon, it's a hardware marathon. If you want to act like that, then call it a $600 build for all it matters.
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12
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 6:07:10 AM

One of the smarter $500 builds that I've seen a while :)  Not much to change for this kind of $ and performance. I'm glad that you kept the budget realistically close to $500 this time.
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8
Anonymous
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 7:49:45 AM

Isn't it about time you started ditching the DVD drive for good, at least on the budget machines? At least this seems to be the trend in many other places (new iMacs, Ultrabooks, etc.). It might just be 16$, but that money could be spent elsewhere, for example upgrading the storage.
From my personal experience, I haven't used my DVD drive for the last couple of years, since almost everything can be downloaded through Steam or elsewhere.

Additionally, I still don't understand the affectuation with having 8 GB of RAM. In my own experience, the impact is neglible when it comes to gaming, and the money could just as well be spent on a better CPU or a larger graphics card.
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4
December 4, 2012 8:24:53 AM

Did you try disabling windows AERO to see if this was the cause of the high IDLE power? I suspect it could be something to do with it...
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2
December 4, 2012 9:46:47 AM

killerchickensSo guys you would buy Windows 8 Professional for a $500 gaming computer.


Windows 8 or Windows 7. There is zero difference in performance in most if not all cases.

Also, this series never considers the OS cost as a factor.
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8
December 4, 2012 9:49:03 AM

I would have rather seen an ASRock B75M-DGS Motherboard (-$15), i3-3220($+50), 4GB of ram(-$15), a 250GB HDD (-$15), Silverstone PS08B (+$0), for a new total of $506
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0
December 4, 2012 10:05:34 AM

EzioAsI think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220.

Problem is the math didn't add up. That was $50 more into the CPU, and a $12 savings on RAM, leaving us $32 for the motherboard.

$500 is real tight, and it's a split among readers whether we should even slightly break budget or not. Believe me, I had so many configurations going and there was no way to spend over $100 on the CPU, retain the HD 7850, and stay within budget. Even the $95 Phenom II left about $79 for Mobo and RAM , and the one I would have wanted to build was $506 with 4GB DDR3-1600 and a 250GB drive. (edit) There were some tiny daily price changes occuring on HDD's and RAM while this was in the works, but nothing that changed the picture at all. Basically, I wouldn't take money off the PSU, couldn't do much if anything on the drives, which left the case. Any savings on an ATX Midtower outfitted with at least one 120mm fan would have been paid right back in shipping charges. There was a Micro ATX case I used earlier this year which could have allowed a $100 CPU, but that was pretty much the ceiling this time.

Honestly, I tried, but it was so hard to argue against the G850 @ $70, and I wasn't going to ditch the 7850 for more CPU.
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12
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 10:10:24 AM

With the title referencing a "Gaming" build, I would like to have seen a few more games tested, including something like GW2 which is somewhat more CPU dependent than a lot of games. Still, it looks very well done. It's nice too that price drops would now allow a 500GB HDD.
Interesting note about the thickness of the mobo. Nice choice on the case, and throwing in the remarks about shipping cost.
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6
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 10:35:07 AM

pauldh said:
Problem is the math didn't add up. That was $50 more into the CPU, and a $12 savings on RAM, leaving us us $32 for the motherboard.

$500 is real tight, and it's a split among readers whether we should even slightly break budget or not. Believe me, I had so many configurations going and there was no way to spend over $100 on the CPU, retain the HD 7850, and stay within budget. Even the $95 Phenom II required a $55 mobo to make budget, paired with just 4GB DDR3-1333, and the one I would have wanted to build was $506 with 4GB DDR3-1600 and a $60 Mobo. I wouldn't take money off the PSU, couldn't on the drives, which left the case. Any savings on an ATX Midtower outfitted with at least one 120mm fan would have been paid right back in shipping charges. There was a Micro ATX case I used earlier this year which could have allowed a $100 CPU.

Honestly, I tried, but it was so hard to argue against the G850 @ $70, and I wasn't going to ditch the 7850 for more CPU.


Honestly, I understand how that felt :( . Last month, I was helping a friend of mine as well to pick up parts for a gaming system. His budget was $500 too and I tried lots of different ways to get at least an i3 in there because I didn't want the productivity to be hampered too much. In the end, I told him to increase the budget by 50 more bucks and so that he was able to get an i3-3220, B75 motherboard (it was a gigabyte board), 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM, Radeon 7850 1GB, CM Elite 430, Corsair CX 500, 320GB WD Blue to start and no DVD drive. Luckily, since he was actually able to get a Windows 8 for free, he didn't bother much spending an extra $50. But seriously, it was very hard to find a better balance config at such a low budget so I really get how you feel Paul ;) 

Edited: I said 2 months ago when it was actually last month
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4
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 10:42:32 AM

Onus said:
With the title referencing a "Gaming" build, I would like to have seen a few more games tested, including something like GW2 which is somewhat more CPU dependent than a lot of games. Still, it looks very well done. It's nice too that price drops would now allow a 500GB HDD.
Interesting note about the thickness of the mobo. Nice choice on the case, and throwing in the remarks about shipping cost.


I agree with you there.

Which actually reminds me have Tom's drop Metro 2033 from the test? And how about Dirt 3 or The Witcher 2 as well? I sincerely hope you (Tom's staffs) have any future plans on testing Assassin's Creed 3 since a lot of users are reporting about not getting great framerates even with a high end card. I've started to ponder whether is it really am extremely demanding game?
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5
December 4, 2012 12:26:09 PM

I most thoroughly enjoy reading the SBM marathons to see how performance swings one way or the next depending on the % of budget allocated to the CPU and graphics.
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2
December 4, 2012 12:28:25 PM

Will the rest of the system builder PC articles be published this week as well?
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3
December 4, 2012 12:32:36 PM

I also think it's fair to say that the June SBM had the Celeron bottlenecking the 560ti.

Clearly, this shows that when splitting the budget for GPU/CPU, 34%/14% is superior 42%/10%
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0
December 4, 2012 1:07:32 PM

This would be a good build to jack-in a higher dollar CPU (extra $100, or so) for further comparisons (and do a give-away).
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1
December 4, 2012 1:08:18 PM

Very, very nice build and I would be proud to own/win this system.

I understand budget constraints and the reason for them in an article like this but personally I would always be willing to spend just a few more dollars for things like a bigger hdd, video card with more memory, and/or a faster cpu.
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3
December 4, 2012 1:27:21 PM

CrashmanRun Linux, this is a hardware shootout.

Linux isn't a very fun game.
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3
December 4, 2012 1:28:17 PM

The Scion of BalanceWill the rest of the system builder PC articles be published this week as well?

Yes!
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7
December 4, 2012 1:32:17 PM

cangelini said:
Yes!


Thanks for replying! It's always nice to have a confirmation :) 
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5
December 4, 2012 1:35:10 PM

Nice findings, indeed.

Too bad for the Athlon not being anywhere, would have been a great investigation article :p 

And, as a favor, can you guys include Mists of Pandaria and/or Guild Wars 2 in your benchies? At least, I know GW2 is very taxing on CPUs and has very nice graphics (DX9 still though, AFAIK).

I really want to know if a G8x0 still can handle MMORPGs and RTS for online play. I know the FX4xxx (or better) can at least for their price, but in notebooks, the A8 (Llano) struggles a LOT with GW2.

Cheers!
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6
December 4, 2012 1:50:37 PM

It would be interesting to have follow-ups for each of the three SBM competitors where the builder is given an incremental $100 and asked what he would have changed in the build. For example, in this build you could back out the $70 CPU and upgrade to something for
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1
December 4, 2012 1:52:55 PM

Prior post got truncated due to inclusion of lt character.

...less than or equal to $170, such as a Core i3-3240, and put leftover change into storage. Or you could swap out the CPU and MB and use an FX processor instead.
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1
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 1:57:03 PM

TeraMedia said:
Prior post got truncated due to inclusion of lt character.

...less than or equal to $170, such as a Core i3-3240, and put leftover change into storage. Or you could swap out the CPU and MB and use an FX processor instead.


Why not just edit the previous post?
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3
December 4, 2012 1:57:45 PM

I would like to propose that a metric be included that is based on the storage capacity, rather than just the storage performance. You could base the metric either on space available for data (re: recent lawsuit against MSFT for Surface 32 GB only having 16 GB of available storage space after SW), or on overall space, and since needs differ the latter might make the most sense. Then a system such as this with 320 GB storage would compare favorably against an enthusiast machine with only a 256 GB SSD, insofar as this metric is concerned, because it would have more storage space.

This would help level the playing field for HDD vs. SSD as well as for low-cost (but high $/GB) vs. mainstream (low $/GB) and high-end (high $/GB) drives.
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2
December 4, 2012 2:03:02 PM

@EzioAs: Good question. Answer: 1) Can only edit from forums, and wanted to post correction quickly. 2) wanted THG to know that there may be a minor bug in their website. 3) Wanted other posters to be aware so that they could avoid that bug.
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5
December 4, 2012 2:04:01 PM

Solid build. As a couple others have already mentioned though, if you went with a B75 Mobo you could have picked up a 7850 2gb. The CPU isn't a bottleneck by being a dual core, just the clock speed. Good read.
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2
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 2:26:49 PM

Coming back to it, there's nothing to moan about here at all. If anything, this build could now be done with a 500GB drive, and I've seen some 8GB RAM kits for $30 (in fact I just bought one). I'm one of those who is very glad you stuck to the budget (+ less than 1% isn't busting the budget). I'd be happy to win this PC, even though I'd likely be giving it to a family member.
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0
December 4, 2012 2:39:41 PM

Fantastic job paul, one of your best 500 dollar sbm builds yet. The 1gb 7850 has to be the bast bang for the buck gpu out there.
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3
a b 4 Gaming
December 4, 2012 3:10:30 PM

americanbrian said:
Did you try disabling windows AERO to see if this was the cause of the high IDLE power? I suspect it could be something to do with it...
I thought Microsoft ditched Aero in Win8?
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2
!