System Builder Marathon, Q4 2012: $500 Gaming PC
CPU And Cooler
Processor: Intel Pentium G850
Intel’s Sandy Bridge-based Pentiums deliver amazing performance for budget-minded gamers right out of their boxes. But their overall potency is capped by two processing cores, a locked multiplier ratio, and a lack of value-added extras like Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading.
Although it's a slap in the face to many enthusiasts, what you see here is what you get. At least the 2.9 GHz Pentium G850 offers great performance per clock, low power consumption, 3 MB of shared L3 cache, and DDR3-1333 memory support. More important still, its $70 price tag freed up resources we could spend on other system components.
Read Customer Reviews of Intel's Pentium G850
Cooler: Intel's Boxed Heat Sink And Fan
Intel's boxed cooler consists of a familiar orb-style aluminum heat sink, a low-speed PWM-controlled fan, and a push-pin mounting bracket. It's quiet, which we like, and wholly sufficient given this platform's complete inability to overclock.
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Crashman killerchickens$501 Plus $100 for a copy of windows 7.Run Linux, this is a hardware shootout.Reply
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killerchickens CrashmanRun Linux, this is a hardware shootout.Reply
Linux for a gaming desktop I dont think so.
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jerm1027 Our best alternative remained the quad-core Phenom II X4 995 Black Edition for $95. But we chose not to revisit this old favorite, figuring that adding a Radeon HD 7850 would have taxed our budget.
What about the Phenom II 965? It's only $75 at TigerDirect. -
EzioAs 9539399 said:I personally feel that they could have gone with H61 and gotten a 2GB 7850 instead.
I think they'd be better off with a B75 motherboard, 4GB RAM and an i3-3220. -
mayankleoboy1 I am not very comfortable using windows8 in these benches. Reason : Drivers have not yet matured for win8. I would have waited for the next quarter SBM before using win8.Reply -
killerchickens Windows is free and we use Linux in are gaming Machines what are we in Soviet Russia .Reply