Your Top Picks: Tom's Hardware Forums' Q4 2013 BestConfigs

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Have you ever come up with your own idea for a killer rig? Don't forget to tell us about it on the Tom's Hardware forums. The following ten setups were configured by forum members and chosen as winners in the Q4 2013 BestConfigs Poll.

Budget AMD-Based Gaming PC

The Budget AMD-Based Gaming PC was narrowed to five entries from the forum this quarter. Community members voted to pick their favorite from there. 

Dendrotoxin Deluxe took a commanding lead in the polls, earning a 54-percent majority. The second-place finisher was back at 15 percent. It appears that the community has a bit of an issue with the definition of budget, as the Dendrotoxin Deluxe is $400 less than Zared619’s Q1-winning Red Storm.

Congratulations to Dendrotoxin Deluxe on being picked by the Tom's Hardware community this quarter!

AMD’s Vishera-based triple-module CPU, the FX-6300, once again powers this quarter’s AMD budget gaming rig. Due to the self-imposed price drop, the Dendrotoxin Deluxe lacks an aftermarket cooler, which some gamers will lament.

Asus’ M5A97 LE R2.0 pulls the Dendrotoxin Deluxe together. This standard ATX board has all the modern features, including USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s and a UEFI firmware.

A pair of 4GB DDR3-1600 modules from Team Group’s Vulcan Series fill two of the motherboard’s four DIMM slots.

An MSI Radeon HD 7950 with 3GB of GDDR5 brings the graphics muscle, and the full ATX board leaves a little room for future upgrades.

Due to the lowered system cost, there was no room in the budget for an SSD. Instead, the Dendrotoxin Deluxe sports a single 1TB, 7200RPM Western Digital Blue hard drive. Corsair's CX500 provides 500W of 80 PLUS Bronze-certified power.

The Dendrotoxin Deluxe is wrapped in the Zalman Z12 mid-tower chassis, which sports tool-less, side-loading drive trays, a bottom-mounted PSU and interior paint. Lite-On manufactures the DVD writer for this build.

The total price of Dendrotoxin Deluxe when originally configured was $585.58. The current prices of Dendrotoxin Deluxe can be found in the BestConfigs shopping tables.

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Adam Overa
27 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Dark Lord of Tech
    That's a nice budget build.
    Reply
  • antemon
    now I'll admit that I'm no expert, since I'm not in any way shape or form, but wtf?

    The office PC has a better GPU than the HTPC? Flashy case for office use. I get that the CX430 is used here since it's a solid PSU, but branded memory?

    1000USD for 'budget' gaming builds? you should at least aim to be a little closer to console prices since we're talking about budget gaming
    Reply
  • Hutchinman
    The total for the budget based AMD gaming system is wrong. There is no way in hell Amazon is selling the MSI Twin Frozr 7950 for $105.

    Your system mistakenly links the Amazon page for the MSI AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB. Fix your system Tom's.
    Reply
  • budget creep strikes again.

    Is it still a budget PC if it can max out every game you own at 1080p? if it costs a lot of money (relative to the gaming market) and places well in the top 10% of peers?
    Reply
  • lancelot123
    What in the hell happened to the prices for the Intel Office PC? Says it was originally built for $500, but now it is saying $714. That is a HUGE difference. Not even sure what would be discounted, especially by that amount, unless the CPU was free.
    Reply
  • Drejeck
    Office PC like that impacts a lot on power consumption, assumed your office goes a lot away from just excel, java-browser administration tools, powerpoint and the likes. That AMD office build is more like a budget multimedia machine with gaming purpose. The HTPC obviously suffer from the case price and thus goes with a lower performance videocard.
    All builds underestimated SSDs and had just an HDD.
    Ok, I get this. There are a lot of hardware prejudices.
    DVD burners in 2013? From what country are you? I spent 4000 euros on my PC and the Asus BD usb3 I got came 6 months later...
    Reply
  • Sangeet Khatri
    In the Bugdet AMD Based Gaming PC. I would have the || Asrock Extreme 3 board + Corsair 300R + 128GB SSD with a 3GB 7970 || from my build as compared to the || Asrock Pro 3 + Rosewill Case + No SSD with 770 2GB ||

    Also most games now are starting to push more than 2GB VRAM. Hence this is where the extra 1GB RAM of the 7970 would be much more useful.

    Just an opinion..
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    MixroATX gaming section:
    40% people chose "AMD" Radeons build... wich happens to use.... an INTEL! :D.

    Toms is starting to be my favorite humor page.
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    12078455 said:
    The total for the budget based AMD gaming system is wrong. There is no way in hell Amazon is selling the MSI Twin Frozr 7950 for $105.

    Your system mistakenly links the Amazon page for the MSI AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB. Fix your system Tom's.

    Ha ha! Now's my chance!

    12079601 said:
    Also most games now are starting to push more than 2GB VRAM. Hence this is where the extra 1GB RAM of the 7970 would be much more useful.


    2GB seemed to be fine for 2550x1600 in the gtx 770 review.

    'Grats on your entries, BTW!
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    An office PC would rather have a discrete Video card than an SSD or some HDDs in RAID 0 or 1? For real?

    Other than that, pretty standard choices, which makes them good choices, I guess.

    Cheers!
    Reply