Build Your Own - Page 59
FollowIf you ever plan to build your own PC, Tom's Hardware’s System Builder Marathon is a must-read. Our editorial team builds, tests, and evaluates PC systems at varying costs, using the components that we think maximize value. These components include motherboards, cooling devices, CPU platforms, chipsets, memory, cases, hard drives, networking and graphics cards and power supplies. For each build, we include performance benchmarks that include 3D games, audio and video compression, graphic design, image manipulation, and video editing. Our testing includes each configuration in its stock form and overclocked. Feel free to build along with us or watch patiently from the sidelines, because, remember—each of these systems are given away at the end of the marathon (don’t forget to enter!).
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With prices of just about everything except computer components increasing, we stretched our budgets out a little...
We build the highest-performance PC that $1,000 can buy, and prepare it to fight some upcoming System Builder Marathon competitors.
In the second article in this series, we focus on the hardware required to run a desktop PC, including monitor, with solar cells 24/7. The PC consumes a world-record low of only 61 Watts!
Last year we assembled an entry-level gaming PC for around $500. It did the job well. Our new machine, with AMD and Intel CPU options, doubles the performance of its predecessor.
Tom's drives a desktop PC including monitor with solar cells 24/7. In the first part of this project we focus on the technical foundations that underlie solar energy. After that, we dig into the necessary...
Next-generation platforms are a year away. Upgrading certain components can help a two-year old system remain viable until then.
Performance still is the most-important factor, but energy efficiency is getting more attention when it comes to component decisions. We scan low-power options that are available.
ABS shipped us its latest CrossFire system and it came to play! It clearly provided all of the performance of the big guns but at less than half the cost.
Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes) are essential items to boost uptime and data protection. But how do they work? We looked at three affordable entry-level models from APC, Belkin and Eaton/Powerware.
Now that we've tested them, it's time to compare our three overclocked systems. How does performance stack up when compared to price?
We look at what components make an ideal budget overclocker's system. With a few bucks and some guts, you too can have a low-cost rig that runs with the big boys.
The "High-End" build from our first System Builder Marathon is ready to show its overclocking stuff. We show you the results and present our overclocking recipe.
Over the next 3 days we overclock Dell's factory-overclocked XPS 720 H2C, our high-end System Builder Marathon PC and a new budget build. We pull it all together on Friday.
We look at some of the inspired ideas submitted for the iRobot Create Challenge.
The last day of Computex brought us GPS devices, a supercomputer-in-a-box, perfect HD video applications, DTX cases without suitable motherboards, and the first true DYI notebook.
This time we analyze the impact on power consumption of RAM speed and timings, graphics card generation, hard drive type and form factor and of typical add-on cards.
You don't have to buy the latest energy-efficient PC hardware to save energy and reduce heat dissipation. Small steps already can make a difference.
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