System Builder Marathon: $1,250 Enthusiast PC

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Motherboard, Cooler, And Memory

Motherboard : DFI LANPARTY DK X38-T2R

While it was tempting to grab a bargain-bin motherboard in the interest of saving some money, we decided it wasn’t worth the risk. The System Builder Marathon has a large overclocking component and we didn’t want to take the chance of messing around with something that might disappoint us in the final analysis. Besides, a $1,250 machine deserves a board with a solid reputation.

Read Customer Reviews of DFI’s LanParty X38-T2R


We chose DFI’s offering once again because of its established overclocking ability paired with the great X38 chipset, as well as a reasonable price. At $175, this might not be the cheapest board, but considering that it offers solid features coupled with well-known overclocking prowess, it’s certainly not a bad deal. You can definitely spend a lot more for the same strengths that the X38-T2R offers.

Cooler : Xigmatek HDT-S1283 and ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket

Read Customer Reviews of Xigmatek’s HDT-S1283


With all of the critical feedback about our decision to water cool the $1,500 System Builder Marathon machine last month, we looked for the best-performing CPU air cooler we could find that didn’t break the bank. We ended up choosing Xigmatek’s reasonably-priced HDT-S1283.

The HDT-S1283’s name might not roll off the tongue, but it offers the thermal and acoustic performance of much more expensive CPU coolers for a mere $35—including the 120 mm fan ! We opted to pay the extra $7 more for the ACK-I7751 retention bracket, yielding a bit more peace of mind. Now we don’t have to worry about the large HDT-S1283 over-stressing the motherboard with its considerable weight.

Memory : 4 GB PNY XLR8 PC2-6400

Read Customer Reviews of PNY’s 4GB XLR8 DDR2-800 Memory Kit


For only $60, PNY offers 4 GB of its XLR8 memory. With low 4-4-4-12 timings, this is great stuff for the price. In fact, it’s the cheapest CAS 4 memory we could find.

Our choice of 4 GB should be ample for this system and two sticks of the stuff will let us run the board in dual-channel mode to increase memory bandwidth.

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Summary
  1. System Builder Marathon: The Enthusiast's System
  2. CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
  3. Motherboard, Cooler, And Memory
  4. Hard Drive And Case
  5. Power Supply, Optical Drive, And Video Card
  6. Assembly And Overclocking
  7. Test System And Benchmarks
  8. Benchmark Results: Synthetics
  9. Application Benchmarks: Media Encoding
  10. Application Benchmarks: 2D and 3D Rendering
  11. Application Benchmarks: Productivity
  12. Game Benchmarks: First-Person Shooters
  13. Game Benchmarks: Real-Time Strategy
  14. Conclusion
About the author
Don Woligroski
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  • WINTERLORD
    yea for that kind of money i would definatly be buying a entry lvl core i7 920 setup with ddr3 1333, 3gb memory. for gaming, maybe go with a 4870, but in my opinion a geforce 260 or 280 would be better, because it's powerfull with games and you can use CUDA. cuda is really taking off tmperg has a video encoding software withat uses the graphics card, and it gives you a +400% to rendering video and such. such as bluray- and DVD encoding
  • theblade
    Nice build, good performer for the price, looking forward for the next article.
    It would be great to see an article in which several options of cooling would be compared to see which one gives a better overclock using the 8500 or 8600, including air and water cooling, this chips are awesome to do some OC.
  • craig hallworth
    I'd be interested to see the GTX 260 (216) in SLI on the mid range build as the price for two is a bit more but still comparable with the 4870x2 and, from what I've read, should be more powerful than the radeon card.

    I don't know that you can consider the i7 a mid range platform when you have to spend ~350-400 bucks on the montherboard alone. I'd certainly use the i7 for the high end build though.

    Thank you for your efforts.
  • gallesol
    There are some of us who who receive a great deal of disconfort thinking of Intel as the only microprocessor manufacturer around. If for no other reason than to maintain some competition in this critical industry, please include an AMD based system.
  • marraco
    [the typical user isn’t typically going to see a big real-world performance jump with a RAID array anyway]...
    It look like you never waited crysis to load.

    ... and the power is far overkilling. It could be saved money on it
  • Rifte
    Would of liked to see a direct comparison to the $625 build in all but the gaming benches. Is the more expensive mobo, ram, cpu combo worth it?
    Put the 4850 in the $1250 system then do some game benches or put the 4870x2 in the $625 system.
  • derek_c
    I would definitely like to see a Core i7 configuration next time.
  • Rifte
    $276 vs $467 for a 5-8% increase in performance?

    direct comparison

    $1250 $625 %dif
    Itunes 00:49 00:52 +6.1%
    lame 01:30 01:36 +6.6%
    TMPGE 04:46 05:04 +6.2%
    Xvid 02:26 02:52 +17.8%
    Mainconcept 03:04 03:17 +7.1%
    Photoshop 01:12 01:15 +4.2%
    3d Studio 00:45 00:49 +8.8%
    Average +8.1%
    Price diff for cpu,ram,mobo +69%
  • 3lvis
    For the next build I would like to see an i7 920, a gigabyte extreme x58 board, 6GB of Gskill DDR3 1333 PC 10666 with cas 7, a pair of 4870x2's water cooled and 2,3,and 4 64GB Gskill SSD's in raid 0. As the price of SSD's comes down, my interest in how a bunch of them in Raid 0 perform goes up(inversely proportionally).
  • radguy
    I think I would have picked up a cheaper p45 board and used the extra cash to pick up a couple of fans to help with the cooling issues. Otherwise pretty nice gaming build. I don't know if Enthusiast is the name I would use with 530 bucks going to graphics but thats me. Appreciate the info. Nice to kinda be able to compare the E2180 E5200 E8500 and Q6600 all at stock and oc'ed. Core i7 would be nice to add to the list as well as phenom in your upcoming builds.
  • doomsdaydave11
    good job th. way to listen to the readers :)
  • clownbaby
    An i7 comparison would be nice. It looks like alot the the i920's are pushing 4ghz on air.

    A recommendation to save some scratch for a video card:
    Go with a dual channel DDR3 set instead of tri. The difference in performance will be negligible, and you can save a ton of money to put towards a video card.

    With the extra $$$ go for a gtx280, or perhaps 2xgtx260s in SLI. And don't waste money on the 216 core versions, as there's almost no performance increase over the 192 core, and you can save quite a bit on the combo.
  • Crashman
    gallesolThere are some of us who who receive a great deal of disconfort thinking of Intel as the only microprocessor manufacturer around. If for no other reason than to maintain some competition in this critical industry, please include an AMD based system.


    Unfortunately, these are "bang for the buck" builds and while AMD typically saves money, their products also often reduce performance. This is especially a concern since most of our benchmarks, just like real world users would expect, are limitted to the number of threads they support. Further, overclocking simply burries AMD under Intel.

    Tom's hadn't the opportunity to try the new AMD cores, and these certainly weren't available in retail when the article was set up. The same goes for Core i7, which was released the middle of this month while the articles were set up the end of last month.

    Remember that yours is just one voice, and imagine the flood of responses had Tom's used a slow AMD processor that didn't overclock well and relied on 3 or 4 thread apps to beat Core 2 Duo, with these dual-thread and single-thread benchmarks.
  • slomo4sho
    Good write up, I would have chosen a P45 board and used the saved money for a water cooling system.

    I would like to see a E7200 make it in the next $625 budget build.
  • V3NOM
    omg graphics cards arent like cpus >< they dont need sub 60/70 degree temps.
  • zodiacfml
    the build is good,the case,powersupply,memory. though i'm still puzzled on the temperatures made by the dual core on 1.4 volts.

    but, i don't agree a lot of points in the conclusion.
    water cooling is still too expensive and complicated, why not get a thermalright heatsink if you think you could have gone higher speeds, yet i still doubt it even if you watercool,maybe additional 200MHz.
    i know, you know that a single 4850 is more practical than a 4870x2 since it as though we're paying for a dual card setup just to improve gaming only in Crysis or Farcry and other games don't give noticeable difference.
    yet, that core i7 system you're planning is quite interesting. could lose a couple of FPS from this $1250 system but miles apart in rendering and encoding tasks.
    around this budget, an overclocked quadcore makes more sense since this system won't differ much in performance compared to $625 build that also has a 4 GHz chip on it.
  • WheelsOfConfusion
    Now see, this is a much more realistic build. I even like the selection of case! That didn't hurt TOO much, did it? :)

    I'd like to see what kind of performance the 4+ GHz dual-core and 4870x2 can do against the last SMB's mid-range system.
  • chavy
    Please build the I7 system as soon as possible. I return from Iraq in January 2009 and what to build a I7 system like the one mentioned.
    Also is there any way you can start adding a monitor in with the system price since you need one to use the system.
  • kitsilencer
    This is a very realistic bang-for-the-buck build. Thanks for a great article.
  • MingoDynasty
    You said the typical user isn't going to see a difference with a raid 0 setup. But I thought you also said this is an "enthusiast" build?
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