Your Top Picks: Tom's Hardware Forums' Q1 2013 BestConfigs

Round-ups
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So you like our System Builder Marathon? 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 in Q1 2013 BestConfigs Poll.

High-End AMD-Based Gaming PC

Five entrants were chosen to compete in this quarter’s High-End AMD-Based Gaming PC.

The choosing of this quarter’s AMD enthusiast system was a heated battle. But every battle has a victor, and in the end, g-unit1111’s Build smoked rival Mjmj’s No Microstutter AMD Rig by a single vote.

Congratulations to forum member g-unit1111 for having his recommended build picked by the Tom's Hardware community this quarter! 

With a budget of $2,000, forum member g-unit1111 was making it rain over at Newegg. Naturally, any top-of-the-line AMD rig is built around the Vishera-based FX-8350, the company’s current flagship CPU. Keeping this octo-core chip cool and ready for heavy-duty overclocking is Noctua’s NH-D14, a behemoth of a heat sink that smashes all but the priciest liquid-cooling systems in thermal performance.

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The choice of motherboard hammers home the overclocked theme of this build. As an enthusiast platform, Asus' Sabertooth 990FX has a BIOS loaded with every option an old-school overclocker could want.

While this build only has 8 GB of G.Skill Ares DDR3-1600 memory, additional RAM isn’t really necessary for gaming.

A pair of Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards from Sapphire brings a ton of graphics horsepower, though the motherboard leaves room for yet another set of cards.

The OCZ Vertez 4 acts as a 256 GB boot and application drive, while a 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint serves as a spacious-enough data disk. Keeping this collection of hardware running stably is PC Power & Cooling’s Silencer Mk II 950W 80 PLUS Silver PSU.

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OCZ Vertex 4

The entire build is enclosed in the iconic white NZXT Phantom 410. In a somewhat refreshing change of pace, g-unit1111 chose a Lite-On DVD writer for the optical drive.

When originally spec’ed out, this rig rang up to $2,006.84. The current prices of g-unit1111’s Build can be found in the BestConfigs shopping tables.

Adam Overa
72 Comments Comment from the forums
  • k1114
    Congrats to everyone!
    Reply
  • echondo
    That is not a "budget" AMD system...
    Reply
  • EzioAs
    10451168 said:
    That is not a "budget" AMD system...

    Still within a certain budget. Just not on the lower side for a gaming PC.
    Reply
  • nevertell
    Why do all the builds use poser ram ?
    Reply
  • nordlead
    A good thing I don't use these "forum best configs" as guides. It looks like every single one of them was built by a power hungry gamer rather than an economical engineer that builds to meet specific requirements.

    The NAS chosen here has WAY to much space dedicated to the OS drive (driving up costs), and all the benefits of the SSD are lost (you won't be loading new programs off the SSD) except for the low power. But that can be achieved for much less cash with a CF or SD card (or even a USB stick, but I don't care for those since they can easily be unplugged). You also don't need 4GB of RAM in a NAS, nor do you need a fancy case with a window when it will be stuck in a closet. I could shave $150-200 off of that machine no problem and cut the electrical costs, all while serving files via NAS to multiple machines at the same time without missing a beat. Heck, my Atom D525 does all of that at a measly 30W (measured at the wall) along with online backups, and serves web pages at a decent clip for myself and my close friends. Since I'm sure the intent of the 3x 3TB hdds was for RAID 5, you could put that $ towards a 4th and do RAID 10. Or you could put it towards actual backup instead of redundancy.
    Reply
  • samwelaye
    budget AMD gamer: 1000$. budget intel gamer: 500$. wth is going on here. sure 1000 IS a budget by the definition of it, but this is by no means a "budget" build
    Reply
  • internetlad
    nevertellWhy do all the builds use poser ram ?
    And what RAM would you suggest, Mr. RAM Expert? What's wrong with brands like Mushkin and G.Skill? They're incredibly popular.

    Honestly, does brand even make a difference in RAM besides warranty? You put it in and it works or it doesn't. As long as you have enough RAM to accomodate what's running, and it doesn't BSOD, I don't really care about the brand.
    Reply
  • s3anister
    Interesting builds and over all decent. Can't say I agree with the choice of Motherboard and PSU for the High-End Intel build, though. Would have gone with the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH or a similar Asus mobo and a Seasonic PSU myself.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    The name of my AMD Office PC was a quote from Bill Lumbergh from Office Space. "Yeah I'm gonna have to ask you to work on Saturday, Sunday too. We lost a lot of people over the weekend and we need to play sort of catch - up. If you could get here around 9:00, that'd be greaaaaaaaaaaaat."
    Reply
  • Nintendo Maniac 64
    Why would you use the 5800k over the 65w 5700 for a mere office machine? Not to mention the mobo chosen for it has no VRM heatsinks and therefore cannot reliably overclock anyway, making the aftermarket cooler pointless in the first place.
    Reply