System Builder Marathon, December 2009: The Articles
Here are links to each of the four articles in this month’s System Builder Marathon (we’ll update them as each story is published). And remember, these systems are all being given away at the end of the marathon.
To enter the giveaway, please check out this Google form, and be sure to read the complete rules before entering!
Day 1: The $2,500 Performance PC
Day 2: The $1,300 Enthusiast PC
Day 3: The $700 Gaming PC
Day 4: Performance And Value, Dissected
Introduction
Constant advancements in technology mean that, at least every few months, we can say “it has never been a better time to build a PC,” and really mean it. Yet, the popular catch phrase means a little more today. That’s because we haven’t seen a graphics release as stunning as ATI’s Radeon HD 5800-series in a very long time. For gamers, this really is a phenomenal time to build a PC.

Past System Builder Marathons (SBMs) have reviewed awesome technologies such as 3-way SLI, CrossFireX, and Core i7 in systems costing up to $4,500, but because of ATI’s advancement, today’s $2,500 build likely overpowers them all. What’s true in game performance applies to average performance, simply because the expected improvements to our gaming suite are so large. Yet this big improvement comes at such a price that we were forced to select some components that definitely do not fall under the high-end category.
| $2,500 Performance PC Component Prices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | Gigabyte P55-UD4P LGA 1156 Chipset: Intel P55 Express | $170 |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-860 2.80 GHz 4 Cores, 8.0MB L3 Cache | $280 |
| Memory | 2 x Crucial 4.0GB DDR3-1333 Dual Channel Kit 4 x 2.0GB (8.0GB Total), CAS 9-9-9-28 | $168 |
| Graphics | 2 x Diamond HD 5870 (CrossFireX) 1.0GB GDDR5-4800 Per Card Radeon HD 5870 GPU at 850 MHz | $860 |
| Hard Drives | 2 x WD Caviar Black WD2001FASS (RAID 1) 2.0TB, 7,200 RPM, 64MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s | $600 |
| Optical | LG WH08LS20 BD-RE 8x BD-R, 2x BD-RE, 16x DVD±R | $190 |
| Case | Lian-Li LanCool PC-K7B | $90 |
| Power | Corsair CMPSU-850HX Modular 850W ATX12V 2.2, EPS12V 2.91, 80 PLUS Gold | $180 |
| CPU Cooler | Xigmatek HDT-S1284EE Cooler Plus Crossbow ACK-I5363 Bracket Kit | $47 |
| Total Current Cost | $2,585 | |
Regular readers can point to the loss of liquid cooling and SSD drives as huge steps backwards compared to our most recent $2,500 build, although the above list doesn’t represent the actual price paid. Increases in memory, graphics, and optical drive prices have pushed the build cost upward by $88 compared to the day when we ordered our parts. On a more positive note, the $10 discount reduction for our case was replaced by a $20 discount on our power supply.
Rather than get sidetracked by recent price shifts, let’s take a look at the machine that our $2,497 purchase produced.
- Our Most Powerful Build Yet?
- Graphics And Power
- Motherboard, CPU, And RAM
- CPU Cooling And Case
- Storage
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And Fallout 3
- Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2 And H.A.W.X.
- Benchmark Results: World In Conflict
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: Synthetics
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Uncompromising…Compromises?
Wait, you want Tom's Hardware to add $200 in hard drives, buy more expensive RAM, and add a $200 water cooler, and still keep the system under $2500? Your math needs work.
Programs start faster but with the exception of Crysis at super-high resolutions and PCMark, the SBM benchmark set doesn't show noticeable performance gains.
First of all, there WASN'T ENOUGH MONEY to do that. The options were, $600 to buy 160GB worth of X25-M SSD's, OR two 2TB Caviar Blacks OR a single 80GB X25-M and a single Caviar Black. 80GB isn't enough to hold all the programs, 160GB isn't enough for long term storage, so two 2.0 TB drives were picked to at least add the redundancy option.
Next time try being honest about prices. A cheaper-but-adequate option would have been two 1.0 TB drives where the left over money could have been put towards something else.
At least you were honest here, but to hell with full towers. Mid-towers are beter. OH, but maybe I jumped the gun on calling you honest, as the article specifically stated that there were no other large coolers available at the time the purchase was made.
Cpus are almost identical in price, wich leaves only the MB.
UD4P - 170
UD3R - 188
I think in my book it would have been worth the $18.
The other thing thats a bit overpriced is the HDD as mentioned. At $300 for 2TB, thats $150/TB. 1.5TB drives cost that much, put in 3 drives and save $150 and have .5TB more space.
Aside from that, good build.
Tom's.
I am disappoint.
Aside from that, the build is nice, and I can't wait to see the other ones.
The $860 dollars spent on video cards and $600 for hard drives is a waste. This system should have went with one 2TB WD Caviar Black hard drive for storage and then a 160GB SSD hard drive as the main drive. For a video card, one Radeon 5870 is more then enough, the money saved by not buying a second 5870 should have gone to buying a good full tower case and better CPU cooler.
Yes I was thinking just that.... an SSD for the master, and a 1tb or a 2tb for backup slave drive.... then a 5970. That would have been ideal as this is considered high end.....
Yes we know you're a disappointment. Geez you're worse than kevin parrish.
$300 for a 2TB drive? Are you insane? How can you possibly justify not getting 2 x 1TB Caviar Blacks for $200 total and then getting an SSD?
2 X 5870 for $860 over 5970 for $650? How much of a performance difference can you possibly expect with Crucial CAS 9-9-9-28 over CORSAIR XMS3 9-9-9-24 which costs $90 for 4GB?
No water cooling on a system that costs $2500?
This is the worst build I've ever seen at this price point.
did you even read the final page?
Programs start faster but with the exception of Crysis at super-high resolutions and PCMark, the SBM benchmark set doesn't show noticeable performance gains.
First of all, there WASN'T ENOUGH MONEY to do that. The options were, $600 to buy 160GB worth of X25-M SSD's, OR two 2TB Caviar Blacks OR a single 80GB X25-M and a single Caviar Black. 80GB isn't enough to hold all the programs, 160GB isn't enough for long term storage, so two 2.0 TB drives were picked to at least add the redundancy option.
Next time try being honest about prices. A cheaper-but-adequate option would have been two 1.0 TB drives where the left over money could have been put towards something else.
At least you were honest here, but to hell with full towers. Mid-towers are beter. OH, but maybe I jumped the gun on calling you honest, as the article specifically stated that there were no other large coolers available at the time the purchase was made.
Wait, you want Tom's Hardware to add $200 in hard drives, buy more expensive RAM, and add a $200 water cooler, and still keep the system under $2500? Your math needs work.
How about building a $4000 or $5000 COMPLETE SYSTEM which includes the monitor(s), speakers, keyboard, mouse and other accessories?
More:
Most of the parts are the same as a system I was considering (I decided to wait on NVidia). The main difference was a single WD 2TB, a second 1TB green WD and an Auzentech sound card. I do appreciate the reasons for your build as a "Power" system as well as price constrainsts to keep it in your $2500 build goal.
As for a future build for yourselves (and myself) the big question concerns NVidia's new DX11 cards. And for that, we'll just have to wait and see.
If the Gulftown CPU was $600 or lower (yeah, right) I'd probably end up with something like this:
- Intel Gulftown CPU (6C/12T, 32nm)
- NVidia 2xSLI of their new flagship single-GPU DX11 graphics card
- 6GB DDR3
- 2TB WD hard drive etc
I know I'll likely go with the i7-920. I did want the 860, however the graphics bandwidth prevents much more than 2xHD5870's; it's my understanding that two of these cards are very close to maxing out 16xPCIe 2.0 (I wish PCIe bandwidth was on the video card box). On the other hand this system is so powerful by the time I upgrade a new system would likely be in order. It's also very possible that this is my last PC. I think the future is Gaming Consoles. I'll buy my first one in 2012. I also think this generation of Console will mark the slow death of PC gaming especially if they really support switching between an HDTV setup and a monitor setup (including keyboard and mouse). This is another story but it is a factor in how much upgradeability I want in my next PC.
SSD's are about two years away from being the quality, size and price I want.
Other considerations:
- LucidLogix Hydra technology (more motherboards and testing needed but it looks promising on MSI's Big Bang)
- Pros and Cons of NVidia vs ATI (Idle power consumption, PhysX, Price, game optimizations, CUDA etc)
- audio
- NVidia, bring back Hybridpower for 0W idle!
(It's interesting to note how many people didn't read the article fully before commenting which is evident due to the nature of complaints about the parts chosen.)
Thanks for the comments. There were a few problems with the build and a few comprimises over the lack of available parts at order time, but much of what was learned had to be learned by experience. Thanks also for noticing the list of alternative choices in the conclusion.
Sorry about the confusion concerning the recent Vista vs Win7 article, but that one focused mostly on launch times. While launch times are important to daily use, the only place it shows up in the SBM benchmark set is in PCMark. PCMark scores aren't even used in the final performance tally, so the difference between Vista and Win7 is basically zilch. See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-performance,2442.html?xtmc=benchmarking_windows_7&xtcr=1
Put in 2x ssd and get a lot of performance. Its that simple, you see in the graphs that you don't need more to get enough frames on even 2560 x1600. Also the 8gb seems to do very little and imho still pretty useless except for some very special tasks no ordinary person uses. But getting stuff started faster and snappier is a lot better then 10 frames extra on a framerate of 60+.
Also try and get some games that use dx10/11 for the comparisons, that would make it a lot more interesting. Using windows 7 is very good I like you people made that switch fast! kudos!
As for the rest of the build, my choice exactly, the midrange limit cpu and mobo provide the stuff we need.
To stow means to hide. The case has a place to hide (stow) cables
I hope the next will be better with ssd, better graphic and for god's sake a better looking case!
by the way, good job toms