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Tom's Hardware's 2012 Gift Guide, Part 1: For System Builders
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1. Our Favorite Parts Inside Your PC

Ah, 2012. It was quite the roller coaster, wasn't it? We could think of no better way to send off the year than with a Tom's Hardware tradition: the holiday gift guide featuring some of our favorite components, modeled by a stunning trio of California dreamies.

Gone are the ornaments and elf outfits of years past, though. We strip right down to the essentials, gear and girls, and have 23 items lined up for you in this first of three gift guide installments. Our focus is on the components you'd use to build up your next box, regardless of budget.

2. Entry-Level APU: AMD A10-5800K

In this first gift guide installment, we're focusing on three basic configurations you can use as a rough guide for your holiday shopping list. Our first platform is the most budget-friendly. 

AMD's Trinity APU Efficiency: Undervolted And Overclocked demonstrated a number of improvements that impressed us, including better performance in x86-based apps, improved graphics performance, and a comparable thermal ceiling. At $130, you can put the chip in an affordable motherboard and get by without discrete graphics if you want. 

Operating at 3.8 GHz, Turbo Core technology is able to ramp the A10-5800K as high as 4.2 GHz in lightly-threaded workloads. The dual-module APU outperforms Intel's similarly-priced Core i3s in taxing desktop metrics and every measure of gaming. The addition of OpenCL support promises a speed-up in optimized software, too. Particularly compared to the Llano design that preceded it, our model Ashley is holding onto quite a bit of compute muscle in the A10-5800K.

3. Motherboard: ASRock FM2A75M-DGS

Where might you want to plant that Trinity-based chip? Look no further than Hannah’s little ASRock FM2A75M-DGS, which is currently selling for just $50 on Newegg.

This micro-ATX board sports AMD’s A75 (Hudson D3) chipset, complete with a host of 6 Gb/s SATA, eSATA, and USB 3.0 connectivity. Thanks to Dual Graphics support, the ASRock board also lets you combine an A-series’s APU with a discrete Radeon HD 6000-series card. The result is a CrossFire configuration that allows the integrated and add-in graphics engines to render cooperatively, should you desire additional performance.

Loaded with enthusiast features beyond its price band, the FM2A75M-DGS is a worthy platform that won’t strain your wallet.

4. Graphics Card: Gigabyte GV-R667D3-1GI

And which card would we recommend for a Dual Graphics setup, should you decide to spend a little more on this build's 3D performance? Ashley bares her true feelings for Gigabyte’s Radeon HD 6670-based GV-R667D3-1GI.

Armed with 1 GB of DDR3 and a 128-bit memory interface, this roughly $70 card hits a value spot in AMD’s portfolio. Well-balanced to complement the A10 (and not overpower or inhibit it), you get an 800 MHz core, 1600 MT/s memory, and 480 ALUs manufactured on a 40 nm fab process. Gigabyte gives you VGA, DVI, and HDMI, and the ability to output to two screens independently. Just make sure your power supply can accommodate a 400 W load.

True story: All men, especially married editor-in-chief Chris Angelini, were banned from the set for several of this year’s gift guide product shots, including this one.

5. Heat Sink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

For its performance, the A10 imposes a fairly high 100 W thermal ceiling. Overclocking it pushes power consumption (and, as a result, heat output) even higher. If you want any hope of pushing the unlocked -5800K higher than its stock speeds, you're going to want to replace AMD's bundled cooler right away.

For about $30, Cooler Master's Hyper 212 Plus is almost more than model Vanessa can handle. Compatible with all current AMD and Intel processor interfaces, except for LGA 2011, the easy-to-install 212 Plus specifies a 600 to 2000 RPM fan speed, automatically adjusted according to processor temperature. You're looking at acoustics between 13 to 32 dB(A).

The Hyper 212 Plus is a fairly tall heat sink, so you'll need to mind its nearly 6.25" height. Fortunately, it's not particularly heavy, weighing in at 626 grams. You can clip on a second fan if you'd like, but it's probably not necessary.

6. SSD: 128 GB OCZ Vertex 4

If you were soured by early Vertex 4 reviews, take heart. Diligent firmware updates from OCZ have allayed our concerns, leaving us with a truly impressive mainstream 128 GB SSD. Priced at $130, that's almost exactly $1 per gigabyte.

Boosting sequential reads as high as 560 MB/s and sequential writes that top out at 430 MB/s, this MLC-based drive is rated for up to 120 000 IOPS under optimal conditions. It hosts an Indilinx Everest 2 controller, 6 Gb/s SATA interface, and two-million-hour MTBF. Now that’s an SSD you can curl up with at night.

Looking for more information on the Vertex 4 and OCZ's most recent improvements to it? Check out OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB: Revisiting Write Performance With Firmware 1.5.

7. Mid-Range CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K

When it comes to a processor with viable mainstream graphics performance, AMD's A10-5800K is today's clear winner. But as your budget starts getting a little more flexible, and your eyes wander to more potent discrete graphics options, Intel's Core i5 steps in as our favorite.

The $220 -3570K features a 3.4 GHz base operating frequency that scales as high as 3.8 GHz under the influence of Turbo Boost technology. Its four cores are complemented by 6 MB of shared L3 cache and an HD Graphics 4000 engine running at 650 MHz (but capable of scaling up to 1.15 GHz).

Intel manufactures the Core i5-3570K using a 22 nm process, which is partly responsible for a 77 W power ceiling. Should we mention that its ratio multiplier is unlocked? You don’t get vPro or Hyper-Threading support, but this is still a roaring fast chip sure to cleave through the most demanding workloads.

8. Heat Sink: Noctua NH-L12

Is it chilly out? Your processor might think so if it’s sitting under Noctua’s down-draft cooler. Unlike most popular heat sinks, such as our vertically-oriented Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus, the NH-L12 manages to sandwich its horizontally-oriented aluminum fins between 92 mm (bottom) and 120 mm (top) fans. This yields a total height of 93 mm. If you’re working in a smaller HTPC-style case, removing the larger fan up top gets you down to just 66 mm.

We'd caution you against dropping this cooler on top of a particularly hot chip, like on of AMD's 125 W FXes or a 130 W Core i7. However, on our Core i5-3570K, the match-up is a good one. On a per-inch basis, the NH-L12 delivers some of the best Intel and AMD platform cooling around. If you want the numbers behind our recommendation, check out Three Down-Draft Heat Sinks: The Last Of A Dying Breed?

9. Motherboard: Biostar TZ77XE3

That Core i5 processor needs a home, and Biostar has the door of its LGA 1155-equipped TZ77XE3 open and waiting. Supporting CrossFire and SLI, this Z77-based board boasts additional enthusiast-class features like 100% solid capacitors, Lucidlogix's Virtu GPU virtualization software, 13-phase power, PCI Express 3.0 support, and Creative Labs-spawned THX TruStudio Pro sound enhancements. 

Selling for $130, the TZ7XE3 recently won an Approved award in Seven Sub-$160 Z77 Express Motherboards, Reviewed, hence its recommendation here today.

We especially like the support for Intel Smart Response Technology (SRT), which allows the user to configure a small SSD for caching frequently-accessed data. This is particularly handy if you can't afford a larger SSD to use in front of a large disk drive. Fortunately, we're planning to use an SSD with quite a bit of room on it...

10. SSD: 240 GB Corsair Force GS

By now, we’ve learned that it's all well and good to buy a 60 or 80 GB SSD for your operating system. But that's just not enough space for all of the other apps on your desktop.

Prices on flash-based storage have come down far enough that, in a mid-range machine, we really like the 240 GB capacity point. And Corsair's Force GS 240 GB seems like quite the steal, selling for $211 (that's less than $.88/GB, by the way).

This SSD isn't some value-oriented slowpoke, though. It's driven by a second-generation SandForce controller and backed by Toggle-mode NAND. Corsair claims sequential read speeds as high as 555 MB/s and writes of up to 525 MB/s. Four kilobyte random writes scale as high as 90 000 IOPS, too. With a drive like the Force GS, you can put the pedal to the metal and really, um, step on it.

11. Graphics Card: MSI R7850 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC

Every month we make it a point to recommend graphics cards at a number of different price points in Best Graphics Cards For The Money. Right now, AMD's Radeon HD 7850 is one of our favorites. 

Because we've seen several cases where the 1 GB 7850s get choked up at higher resolutions and with anti-aliasing enabled, we're happy to spring for a 2 GB model in today's guide. 

There are several cards selling for as low as $190. However, MSI's R7850 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC currently goes for $220 with a $15 rebate, bringing its price down to $205. For that small price premium, you get an overclocked Pitcairn GPU operating at 900 MHz (rather than the reference 860 MHz) and 2 GB of GDDR5 at 1200 MT/s. The company's bundled Afterburner tuning tool, a favorite of ours, gives you the freedom to explore the card's overclocking flexibility, too.

Perhaps more important, though, is MSI's Twin Frozr cooling solution, which employs a pair of fans and a beefy heat sink to simultaneously bring down temperatures and and acoustics. Given the issues we've had with some of AMD's reference cooling solutions, we can really appreciate MSI's effort to keep the GPU running coolly and quietly. The card provides one dual-link DVI, one HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort outputs, all of which can be used at the same time.

12. Hard Drive: Western Digital Green 3 TB

Before we jump into our high-end config, let’s fill in some gaps. We've presented you with a couple of SSD options already, but what about a repository for user data? We're already being particular about our flash-based drive, so we don't need our disk to be the fastest one around. We do need it to be cool and capacious, though.

Western Digital's 3 TB Green drive, selling for $150 on Newegg, contains 64 MB of cache and a 6 Gb/s interface (which we know doesn't really matter, given modest sustained transfer rates). More importantly, the Green has an active power draw of 6 W, a 5.5 W idle specification, and standby/sleep consumption as low as 0.8 W.

The drive employs a sub-6000 RPM rotational rate, and that’s fine. Like we said, we're looking for a nice, big place to stash movies, music, and pictures. When we need speed, we'll use the SSD. Every desktop should have a disk, so this one applies across the board.

13. Memory: Patriot Viper 3 Series 8 GB DDR3-1866 Kit (PV38G186C9KRD)

Reliable, fast memory doesn’t need to masquerade behind fancy heatsinks...but a little aluminum bling doesn’t hurt, either. Our 2 x 4 GB Viper 3 kit, which sells for less than $50, is made up of two 1866 MT/s sticks set with 9-10-9-27 timings. However, the modules also support XMP 1.3 profiles for faster performance on Intel platforms. 

Regardless of whether you're using the AMD A10-5800K or Core i5-3570K we've already recommended, you need a solid dual-channel kit. We think 8 GB is the mainstream sweet spot right now, and 1866 MT/s gives you a good balance between bandwidth, response, and the ability to run at 1.5 V. However, if you'd rather optimize for latency rather than data rates, Patriot also offers a DDR3-1600 variant with 9-9-9-24 timings that sells for $39 ($29 after a $10 rebate on Newegg). 

14. Case: NZXT Phantom 820

Case choice is very personal. However, there are certain features we see on enclosures that are universally appreciated by enthusiasts. NZXT's Phantom 820 includes a number of those considerations.

For instance, the $250 chassis features customizable interior LED lighting. It sports a side panel with a 200 mm fan attached. And there's a six-drive removable cage that takes 3.5" disks and 2.5" SSDs. From six top-mounted USB ports (two of which support USB 3.0 transfer rates) to four rubberized holes in the back to accommodate water cooling, so much of what NZXT did with the Phantom clearly reaches out to power users. Toolless assembly? Rubberized vibration dampening? Gobs of under-tray cable management? Capacity for up to nine fans or two full-size radiators? They're all part of the package.

Keep an eye out for our review of this one. The team over in Germany finished up with their evaluation a little while ago, and we're bringing that one over shortly.

15. Water Cooling: Swiftech H2O-220 Edge

With all of that room for a radiator in NZXT's Phantom 820, why not take the plunge? For that matter, check out Four ATX Cases For High-Capacity Water Cooling, Reviewed for our opinion on four other water cooling-ready enclosures.

Swiftech is one of the top names in customizable liquid cooling, and the H2O-220 (a $230 kit) represents the company’s latest high-water mark. If you’re wondering why that dual-120 mm radiator on Ashley’s thigh is so large, it’s because the unit also integrates a reservoir and pump, making installation so much easier than comparable multi-piece kits. If you need even more cooling, the H2O-320 builds three 120 mm fans onto an even larger radiator for $270.

Along with the bundled Apogee HD CPU water block, the -220 ties to the motherboard’s PWM function for less power draw and noise under low demand. Tack on a 10-year warranty, and what more could you ask for?

16. Closed-Loop Liquid Cooling: Corsair Hydro H100i

Full-blown water cooling kits aren't for everyone. If you don't need the flexibility of Swiftech's solution, but still want cooling and acoustic benefits of a liquid-based solution, then check out Corsair’s H100i for $120.

This all-in-one design ships with the water block and pump already connected to a radiator armed with two 120 mm fans. Corsair uses more flexible, evaporation-resistant rubber tubing with a slightly larger diameter than prior models (OD 14.3 mm). Better yet, the water block integrates a micro USB port, enabling you to control and monitor various Hydro features through profiles in the CorsairLINK 2 app.

You can find single-fan all-in-one water solutions for half the price, but the H100i is all about the performance, convenience, and control to set your system apart. Look for a complete review of the H100i in the days to come.

17. Power Supply: Corsair AX860i

If you’re on-board with Corsair’s CorsairLINK 2 app, then check out the company’s $250 AX860i as well. Far more than just another 860 W power supply, this fully modular model offers a communications port that ties to your motherboard’s USB header, enabling more management and tweaking profiles.

Of course, that’s just icing. We love to see 80 PLUS Platinum-certified power supplies that guarantee at least 92% efficiency at 50% load. Corsair adds a self-test switch, over/under-voltage and over-current protection, and a 140 mm double ball bearing fan. Under full load, this unit's cooler tops out at less than 30 dB, and at 50% it barely whispers at 20 dB.

Budget allowing, this is one of the best sub-1 kW PSUs you’ll find, and a great complement to the high-end configuration we'll be discussing shortly.

18. Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 550 W

If you don't have a stack of hard drives or high-end, overclocked CPUs, Corsair's AX860i may be overkill. And that could actually be a recipe for less efficiency.

A more moderate, cost-effective model might be Thermaltake’s Toughpower 550 W, which sells for $110 and boasts 80 PLUS Gold certification, assuring 87% to 90% or better efficiency, depending on load.

We like that this Toughpower can output up 504 W on its +12V, peaking at 550 W of continuous output. You also get short circuit, over-temperature, and over-power protection, along with six SATA and four 6+2-pin PCIe connectors. For mainstream systems like the AMD A10- and Intel Core i5-3570K-based platforms we're recommending, the Toughpower is a great fit.

19. High-End CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K

Although we confidently recommend the Core i5-3570K in our mid-range configuration, the Sandy Bridge-E-based Core i7s are still great high-end CPUs thanks to copious memory bandwidth from a quad-channel controller, as many as six physical cores, and 40 lanes of 8 GT/s PCI Express. 

And while the $1000 Core i7-3970X is currently Intel's top-end model (see Core i7-3970X Extreme Review: Can It Stomp An Eight-Core Xeon?), we don't think you need to spend that much money for great performance. The Core i7-3930K might not be Intel's fastest part, but for close to half of the price, it still gives us the specifications we're looking for.

It's the most affordable six-core desktop chip Intel sells, for one. Its 3.2 GHz is modest, but not particularly meaningful when you consider that an unlocked multiplier gives you access to frequencies in excess of 4 GHz (usually, 4.4 or 4.5 GHz is a fairly safe bet). Intel does not bundle the Core i7-3930K with a cooling solution, so you'll need to pick your own and add it to the cost of this $570 CPU. Nevertheless, we still stand by the award we gave the Core i7-3930K last year in Intel Core i7-3930K And Core i7-3820: Sandy Bridge-E, Cheaper

20. Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi

A screaming fast Intel Core i7-3930K demands a top-shelf motherboard, and we’ve found none better than Gigabyte’s X79S-UP5-WiFi, which sells for somewhere around $330 ($310 after a rebate from Newegg).

It’s not enough that Gigabyte builds on twin gigabit Ethernet ports for networking. The company also tosses in a twin-antenna Bluetooth/802.11a/g/n PCIe card.

Fundamental features include eight DDR3 DIMM slots to exploit the processor's quad-channel controller, four PCI Express slots that enable three-way CrossFire and SLI, and SAS storage support, which comes from the C606 chipset on-board. By using C606 instead of X79 Express, Gigabyte also allows the board to host a Xeon E5 processor, like the 150 W Xeon E5-2687W we used in our Core i7-3970X Extreme review.

21. Heat Sink: Thermalright Archon SB-E X2

Armed with an exceptional pair of large (151x140 mm) fans, Thermalright’s $80+ Archon SB-E X2 gives upright air cooling a slightly new look. The tan-colored, thin bezel is both sleek and conservative, while, sandwiched between them, eight 6 mm heatpipes feed into the aluminum fin array.

Larger blades allow for slower PWM-controlled speeds (900 to 1300 RPM), with noise output topping at a mere 21 dBA. A maximum 74 CFM airflow is plenty impressive, but what about this cooler isn’t? Intel's Core i7-3930K doesn't include a heat sink anyway, so this is a great option for aggressive overclocks that don't result in a lot of noise.

22. Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z-Series 32 GB DDR3-1866 Kit (F3-14900CL10Q-32GBZL)

We need a capable quad-channel memory kit to go along with Gigabyte's X79S-UP5-WiFi motherboard (even though it actually hosts a C606 platform controller hub, the board is still technically very X79-like).

G.Skill has long supplied our labs with its memory, and we continue to lean on the company for its fast, dependable kits that hit the data rate ceilings we need in order to test scaling and overclocking. The ponderously-named F3-14900CL10Q-32GBZL kit, which sells for $170, gives us 32 GB of capacity spread across four slots.

These DDR3-1866 modules employ relatively loose CAS 10 timings. But because they're used in a quad-channel config, you're able to get huge bandwidth from them. And with all of that capacity, it's possible to set up very fast RAM drives to work from, leaving plenty of memory for the system. Naturally, this kit supports Intel XMP, and if you’ve ever suffered from DIMM-related stability issues, you’ll appreciate G-Skill’s qualified motherboard list.

23. Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 690

If you’ve got a grand to drop and your gaming demands the most elegantly-designed card on the market, our pick is EVGA's GeForce GTX 690. As mentioned, the most affordable version of this board sells for $1000 on Newegg. But when you consider that two GeForce GTX 680s in SLI would cost close to the same price, plug up four expansion slots, and use quite a bit more power, the 690 amazingly becomes the more practical choice.

EVGA's board sports twin GK104 GPUs running at a base clock of 915 MHz, and they're accompanied by 4 GB of total memory clocked at 1502 MHz. That's more than 7 billion transistors delivering more than 3000 shader units. 

In Radeon HD 7990 And GeForce GTX 690: Bring Out The Big Guns, we discovered that the couple of dual-Tahiti-based boards (call them Radeon HD 7990 or 7970 X2, whichever you like, can be a bit quicker than the GeForce GTX 690 in certain situations. However, the fact that this EVGA card is nearly as fast, a dual-slot (rather than a triple-slot) board, quiet, and more power-friendly led us to appreciate its implementation all the more. If we were to ask for one graphics card in 2012, this would be it.

24. SSD: 256 GB Samsung 840 Pro

Samsung finishes off Part 1 of this gift guide with its new flagship SSD, the 256 GB 840 Pro, selling for $270. Based on eight-channel architecture, a triple-core ARM Cortex-R4 controller (300 MHz), and up to 512 MB of LPDDR2-1066 cache, this drive flies with second-generation Toggle-mode MLC NAND.

Sequential reads and writes at a queue depth of 32 run up to 540 and 520 MB/s, respectively, and random reads push 100 000 IOPS. We love that the new controller also enables on-drive AES-256 encryption. In fact, we dubbed the 840 Pro “the fastest, most efficient SSD we’ve seen to date” in Samsung 840 Pro SSD: More Speed, Less Power, And Toggle-Mode 2.0.

And that's a wrap for our component-oriented coverage. Wave goodbye to Ashley, Hannah, and Vanessa. But don't worry, they'll be back in Part 2, where we cover some of the monitors, mice, keyboards, notebooks, network storage, and printers you'll want this holiday season.