
System Drive: Crucial m4 128GB SSD
Fellow editor Andrew Ku finally talked me into ditching my striped pair of 64 GB SSDs in favor of a single, faster drive. Crucial’s 128 GB m4 topped the list of somewhat-affordable models based on its excellent performance reputation.

Read Customer Reviews of Crucial's m4 128 GB
Storage Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5 TB
Pining for the days when a 2 TB drive cost only $80, we spent $180 dollars to get a big drop in capacity as an unfortunate result of the recent production issues affecting the mechanical drive industry.

Read Customer Reviews of Western Digital's Caviar Green 1.5 TB
Anyone who questions the money spent on added storage is probably missing the point that this is not a pure gaming system, but instead a general performance machine that plays games well.
Optical Drive: LG WH12LS38 BD-RE
For a mere $70, LG’s basic BD-RE drive allows users to back up 50 GB of data at 12x speed, though single-layer media still provides the best cost-to-capacity ratio.

Read Customer Reviews of LG's WH12LS38 BD-RE Drive
While this drive could also be used to view Blu-ray movies, it doesn’t include the software needed to do so. We’re usually pleasantly surprised to find free software with our bare drives, and would have probably spent an extra $10 on a different model if we knew we weren’t going to get it with this one.
- A Bigger Budget For A Better PC
- Motherboard, CPU, And RAM
- Graphics, Case, And Power
- SSD, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
- The Build
- Overclocking
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And F1 2010
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 And Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Are Liquid-Cooled Graphics Cards Worth The Extra Expense?
Also, as much as I understand the frustration with sacrifices, IMHO that's where the best lessons are.
Fun to read, yes, but just not practical. Hmmm, I guess that means the downvoting is about to begin...
Also, as much as I understand the frustration with sacrifices, IMHO that's where the best lessons are.
Fun to read, yes, but just not practical. Hmmm, I guess that means the downvoting is about to begin...
So, I wait until tomorrow to enter?
No, you're good today. It should start with today's story. I'll see if I can get that changed.
Its also half the price.
Toms needs more current benchmarks, some of these games were talking are ages old. And need i say we need a RTS game in this mixture. I am a bit disappointed that the 3930k wasn't in this build along with a nice X79 board. Not that a 2600k processor isn't fast enough but you never know. I would rather pick up my six core but thats just me, and most likely it could be a waste. But like i said you never know, i remember SupCom came out and that required some CPU multi core power. Not sure how many cores were needed but a Quad was definitely better then a Dual core.
Considering the price of the 2 gtx580s, 3 hd6950s might offer better value - as long as the game allows multi-gpus.
You can compare the two by using another article by Thomas Soderstrom that also utilizes the i7-2600k but is looking at SLI/Crossfire scaling.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865.html
In the 3 games that the two systems both had shared benchmarks, the 3x 6950 was the clear winner.
Toms, can we get some reviews on how the computers from each bracket compare year over year as a general summary to end the year out? I would love to see what $2000 gets you in 2010 vs 2011, and even 2009. My bet is that there would be some decent changes over the last 2 years as everything has droped in price with the exception of those peskey hard drives.