System Builder Marathon, June 2010: $550 Gaming PC

Features
By Paul Henningsen
published

Case, Power Supply, And Optical Drive

Case: Cooler Master Elite 330

The Cooler Master Elite 330 is a well-built Mid Tower case with an attractive appearance and equally attractive price. It includes a mesh front bezel, washable air filter, and room for an optional 120 mm intake fan.

Read Customer Reviews of Cooler Master's Elite 330

Sporting a single 120 mm rear-mounted exhaust fan, the Elite 330 will not match the air flow of the Antec Three Hundred Illusion previously used in our March $750 Gaming PC. While shorter in height than the Three Hundred, the case is deeper front-to-back, allowing use of a 12” graphics card without the need for modifications. The case features a tool-free mechanism for each drive bay and expansion slot, but alternatively allows for the use of conventional screws as well.

Power Supply: Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-A3

Read Customer Reviews of Cooler Master's eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-A3

Besides the added cost of a second graphics card and a motherboard with CrossFire support, our previous $750 build used an $85 Antec EarthWatts 650W power supply. For the June build, $85 turned out to be the exact amount left over in our original budget to cover both our case and power supply together.

This Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500W was priced at $40, with a combined 30A rating for the two +12V rails. Sporting just a single six-pin PCIe power connector, this isn’t a power supply meant for beastly graphics solutions, but is adequate for this miserly system.

Our alternate choice, also at this same price, would have been the familiar Antec EarthWatts 380W unit, with a 28A combined +12V rating. We've successfully overclocked a Core 2 Duo E8500 and Radeon HD 4850 with this power supply, but here I wanted to try something new, and liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build.

Optical Drive: Samsung Black 22x DVD Burner SATA Model SH-S223C

Read Customer Reviews of Samsung's Black 22x DVD Burner

This OEM 22x SATA DVD burner has served our optical needs well in the past, and comes at a price we could easily afford.

Paul Henningsen
99 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gkay09
    ^ I dont like the idea of using the CM eXtreme power PSUs...
    You could get a EA 430W for about $49 @newegg...
    Just a thought - you could save money on the mobo by going with TOM's favorite brand ASRock board with the 770 Chipset...So with the money saved, getting a better PSU would have been a good idea...
    Reply
  • adbat
    I plan to build a similar machine so it's nice to see the numbers :-)
    Again unlocking was successful the 50-50 chance do not apply to your tests.
    But no surprise this is a just enough machine.
    Reply
  • archange
    Buying the same components here, online, gets me to ~800 USD. That, including my 3% Diamond Customer discount at my favorite e-tailer. Granted, the Power Color was out of stock, which led me to Sapphire and i also had to exchange the RAM for Kingston HyperX CL7.

    People in the States have way to much... fun :P
    Reply
  • Crashman
    gkay09you could save money on the mobo by going with TOM's favorite brand ASRock board with the 770 Chipset...Wait, Tom's has a favorite brand? I've heard rumors in the past that Asus got all of Tom's Hardware's attention...and Gigabyte has been getting a lot of awards so maybe them...where does ASRock come into all of this favoritism, from its use in previous low-cost SBM machines?
    Reply
  • zooted
    I like this build much better than the $1000 one
    Reply
  • noob2222
    This one and the $1000 show some pretty impressive efficiency and power savings over the previous, more expensive builds. Save some dough now and in the long haul. Imo thats pretty important on a tight budget build, you don't want it costing more over its lifetime than what you saved in building it.
    Reply
  • skora
    and liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build.CrashmanWait, Tom's has a favorite brand? I've heard rumors in the past that Asus got all of Tom's Hardware's attention...and Gigabyte has been getting a lot of awards so maybe them...where does ASRock come into all of this favoritism, from its use in previous low-cost SBM machines?
    No, this month its Coolermaster.

    "and liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build."

    No shame, we all have bills.

    Very well balanced system. Very helpful to see a working system with just 2 gigs ram and break the stereo type that 4 is required.
    Reply
  • tacoslave
    ah i miss the days when you could buy 4 gigs of ram for $20. But now that only buys you about 1gig.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    skoraand liked the idea of incorporating a $100 Cooler Master trio in the build.No, this month its Coolermaster. No shame, we all have bills.Very well balanced system. Very helpful to see a working system with just 2 gigs ram and break the stereo type that 4 is required.
    You're reading that completely out of context.
    Reply
  • ta152h
    At this price range, I think an Athlon II x2 or Pentium E6500 system would probably do better for pure gaming.

    Both have more cache, the Pentium dramatically so. The Athlon II x2 would almost certainly over clock better, since stock speed is much higher, and most sites show them generally able to get to 3.8 GHz at roughly 1.4v or lower with a stock heat sink. On top of this, they use less power. So, more cache, 250 MHz more with stock heat sink (maybe more with a better one), and more cache against an extra core. Probably for games it would be better, but not always.

    The Pentium E6500 is probably better still. Getting it to around 4 GHz wouldn't be too hard, especially with an upgraded heat sink, and is generally faster clock per clock compared to an Athlon II x2. Power use is significantly lower too.

    Neither are clearly better though. I would rather have a faster two core than a slower three core, but the latter certainly have advantages too.
    Reply