It's Time To Vote For Best PC Builds!

News
By Tom's Hardware Community
published

The Tom's Hardware Best PC Builds (formerly BestConfigs) is roaring on! Our community has submitted its builds and they have been judged. Now it's time to hear what you say.

Our judges whittled down the entries to the top five in every category. Our polls are now up and open for you to choose from the cream of the crop. You can go to our Systems section in the forum to vote!

You'll be able to vote in each of our eight categories until 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday, November 23.

Best PC Builds will provide a great resource to our community, showing off some of the best parts for their next build at any price. It's because of your votes and activity in the community that Tom's Hardware continues to be the Authority on Tech! See the polls below:

  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $500
  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $750
  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $1000
  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $1250
  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $1500
  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $1750
  • Poll: Best Gaming Build Under $2000
  • Poll: Best Steam Machine Build Under $600
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7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • lun471k
    Oh yes! I was eagerly waiting for that poll. Time for some new hardware!
    Reply
  • atheus
    Wow. Just 1 Fractal Design case in the whole lot and it's in the sub-$500 section. Crazy.
    Reply
  • RedJaron
    This time it was decided that the Best Builds had to be sourced from Amazon. If your particular favored component is not on any build, it's likely Amazon doesn't carry it, or Amazon's price for it is higher than other comparable products.
    Reply
  • atheus
    16973618 said:
    This time it was decided that the Best Builds had to be sourced from Amazon. If your particular favored component is not on any build, it's likely Amazon doesn't carry it, or Amazon's price for it is higher than other comparable products.
    Hmm, while that's understandable to an extent, it puts a sort of weird bias on the chosen builds. It's not really about the best parts for the money in the US market, just the amazon market, with some parts randomly blacklisted regardless of how appropriate they may be. I'm guessing that means that amazon itself must stock it, making amazon marketplace items disallowed?

    This claim seems to be a bit damaged by this eccentricity:
    Best PC Builds will provide a great resource to our community, showing off some of the best parts for their next build at any price. It's because of your votes and activity in the community that Tom's Hardware continues to be the Authority on Tech!

    Is this article sponsored in some way by Amazon.com? Why not just use the price finding feature in pcpartpicker.com and really open it up to the way users shop for computer parts when they're trying to squeeze every bit of performance out of each dollar spent?
    Reply
  • cloudonsky
    I don't wanna say that my builds were good, but there are other nice builds that should be in the polls.

    Can you explain me who and why pick that build?
    http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WhgNMp

    I am really disappointed with what you did...
    Reply
  • RedJaron
    16977291 said:
    I don't wanna say that my builds were good, but there are other nice builds that should be in the polls.
    There were a LOT of submissions that are not in the final polls for a variety of reasons. There was also a LOT of overlap in proposed part lists, as would be expected when you're asked for a gaming PC at a particular budget. It's not easy to whittle down 30+ similar submissions to the five best ones. When near identical builds were submitted, preference went to which submission was posted first.

    16977291 said:
    Can you explain me who and why pick that build?
    http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WhgNMp

    I am really disappointed with what you did...
    Perhaps you ought to read Damric's notes when he first posted that build list.
    I am assuming that a more powerful PC in the house is doing the rendering and streaming to this "Steam Machine". This machine will also have enough storage for media content.

    Techy also left a note in the Steam Box voting thread.
    QUICK NOTE to the "Sub $600 Streamer", it is designed almost exclusively for streaming from your main gaming PC. I can see why you all are not voting on it because you think it needs to run it's own games on it's own power. However, it doesn't need to, it uses another PC for streaming your games to your steam machine. Steam machines were designed to use in house streaming also which I personally think is a nice feature by Valve.

    The only thing I think it's lacking is a BD-R drive so it can act as a full-fledged HTPC that can also stream games from your more powerful desktop. It's an intriguing idea to do it this way rather than trying to pack massive performance ( and heat ) into something the size of a cable box when you already have one gaming machine in the house.
    Reply
  • Spirillum
    Glad to see more Phanteks cases out there.

    I can't say enough about my Enthoo Primo, and their less expensive cases offer some of the best value out there at the moment.
    Reply