Holiday 2010 System Builder's Guide
by AnandTech Staff, edited by Jarred Walton on November 19, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
- Systems
- Holiday 2010
| Balraj's Intel Budget System | ||
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| Processor |
Intel Core i3-550 Clarkdale 45nm (Dual-core + HTT, 3.2GHz, 4MB L3, 73W) |
$130 |
| Motherboard | ASRock H55M/USB3 R2.0 (Intel HM55 MATX) | $85 |
| Video | HIS Radeon HD 5450 1GB (H545H1G) ($10 MIR) | $45 |
| Memory | Corsair 4GB DDR3-1333 (CMV4GX3M1A1333C9) | $57 |
| Hard Drive |
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB (7200RPM 16MB Cache WD5000AAKS) |
$47 |
| Optical Drive | LG 10X Blu-ray/DVDRW Combo (UH10LS20) | $70 |
| Case/PSU | Athenatech A100BB.350 | $75 |
| Total System Price | $509 | |
When tasked with putting together a "bang-for-buck" system, the challenge is trying to find where you're willing to compromise the most. For me the motherboard and CPU take precedence over everything else. Storage and RAM are easy future upgrades, while graphics mileage varies. My target budget was $500 for the base system, though you can certainly spend less if you're willing to drop features and performance.
Starting with the processor, I thought it was best to stick with Clarkdale here with a goal of staying under $150. This sent me down the Core i3 route, so unfortunately I'd have to sacrifice Turbo Boost. Usually I value this extra clock speed headroom, but the cheapest way into a boosted Clarkdale is the Intel Core i5-650 that runs at 3.2GHz and can boost up to 3.46GHz. However; $180 for a mere 266MHz gain (8.3%) is far too rich for me. The recently released Intel Core i3-560 will run all day at a very nippy 3.33GHz for $150, butmy decision was made thanks to a 15% discount bringing the similarly spec'd Intel Core i3-550 down to $130. This dual-core, Hyper-Threaded CPU balances good multi-threaded capabilities with plenty of clock speed (3.2GHz) to get through single and multi-threaded tasks (media encoding I'm looking at you).
Now we need a motherboard with an LGA1156 socket. Keeping costs in mind, the Intel H55 chipset is going to be the way to go as the lack of native RAID and dual graphics card support isn't really an issue on a budget system. With a budget system, it's important to be able to grow as time goes by and more money comes your way. It's also important to try to be somewhat future-proof. I mean what's "budget" about spending another hundred bucks to upgrade in a few months time? Therefore, my board of choice is the ASRock H55M/USB3 available for $85 with USB 3.0. Sure, Sandy Bridge will still require a new mobo and socket, but at least you have USB3.0 until you upgrade.
Graphics is something that really depends on what the system is going to be used for. For me the integrated Intel GMA is always best avoided; it works, but I'd like a few more features thankyouverymuch. With this in mind I wanted a slim, capable, quiet card to handle media and basic gaming. I settled on the HIS Radeon 5450 card available for $55, or $45 with a mail-in rebate. While not a gaming card, it should comfortably handle any media tasks thrown at it. If you'd rather save the $45, you can leave out the card and try to live with the Intel HD Graphics, but I'm not willing to do so.
RAM isn't the place to be paying premium prices for a couple of ticks less latency when you're on a budget. Fortunately, I found this recently reduced Corsair 4GB DRR3 stick for $57, leaving another slot free on the board for a future upgrade. (Since we're dealing with a two DIMM slot motherboard, I thought it best to leave the option to go to 8GB when/if the need arises.)
Perhaps Anand's praise of SSDs is rubbing off, because I was initially going to liven up this boring money-pinching system with a 30GB SSD in there; unfortunately, $80 for a decent Kingston drive made me reconsider. A lot of superstition goes into hard drive purchasing, and since I've never had a Western Digital drive fail on me (yet), I settled on a WD 500GB 7200RPM Caviar Blue drive for $55. You can always add an SSD down the road when you get the funds, and perhaps waiting for the next round up SSD controller updates is warranted. For optical drive duties, I'm probably going to draw some flak here, but in my opinion every $500 home desktop PC these days should come with a Blu-ray player/DVDRW combo drive. The problem is once again cost, naturally, but I had aspirations with my budget system here and blew $50 on an LG Blu-Ray drive $70 on a Samsung BD-ROM combo drive. [Ed: Sorry, the other LG is out of stock; I had to replace it with a more expensive model, unfortunately.] (Save the $45 or so if you really don't want Blu-ray support.)
Wrapping things up—or enclosing them—means I needed a case and PSU for all of these components. There's a lot of personal preference that goes into choosing a case, but splashing out on a proper GPU and Blu-ray drive left me ultimately choosing a case and PSU which let me scrape into my budget (just!). There are better power supplies out there, certainly, but I like the look of the Athenatech design and wanted a decent MicroATX case. You can add an upgraded high-efficiency PSU if you'd like, but for my budget build I'm probably already overshooting. Blu-ray or efficiency? You'll have to decide for yourself, but short-term you can use the included PSU and then upgrade to a better unit when you can afford it. $10 more will get you the Antec PSU and Cooler Master case from Dustin's build if you prefer that look.
This basic system will come in just over $500. For me the CPU, graphics card, Blu-Ray drive, and USB 3.0 support should make this a more than capable PC with serious gaming being the only real stumbling block. To put it into perspective, this Pentium-powered machine with integrated graphics was what we could put together for roughly the same price in February—what a difference 9 months makes! Perhaps next year I'll finally be able to recommend an Intel PC without a dedicated GPU, especially if early Sandy Bridge testing is anything to go by.
If you like comparisons, while some of the features are clearly different (i.e. Blu-ray, case, etc.), this Intel setup checks in at $40 more than our AMD build looking just at the motherboard and processor. It's true that Intel has plenty of less expensive processors, but rather than pitting Pentium G6950 against the Athlon II X4 645 we decided to go with the more capable i3-550. AMD's budget parts easily win in multi-threaded tests, but the Core 2010 architecture does very well in other areas. In other words, neither choice is always "right" but instead you need to decide what tasks are most important for your workload.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
112 Comments
View All Comments
StormyParis - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
htpc should fit into a stereo cabinet. you're trying to build a NAS + HTPC + desktop into one machine, which makes no sense at all. Split the thing in 3, with a real, small, silent HTPC, a NAS, and a mini-itx desktop, and you're much better off, for pretty much the same price.ajlueke - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
While it is somewhat a matter of personal preference, I admit, some people really hate giant cases in the living room. I love having everything built into one system, and using it to serve the rest of the house and play Starcraft II on the big screen. The real downside, is then you are using a high end rig to serve you other computers as opposed to a NAS, and a NAS is going to have far superior numbers in the power consumption department.Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Good job on the builds everyone, great idea of getting several members of the AT's team to work together on this.Here are my opinions, suggestions and things that I'd personally change:
Dustin's AMD Pure Budget System:
Hard Drive: Actually, if you shop on Amazon instead, you can snap a Spinpoint F3 500Gb for about $46 and a 1TB for $53, without needing to find any coupons.
Power Supply: I'd mention that the Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D 380W doesn't include a power cord in its package. Not a big deal for most of us, but still good to knowi f you don't have a spare cord.
DVD Burner: Why go with an IDE based model, which is out of stock by the way? Because the motherboard comes with a single SATA and a single IDE cable? Hardly a reason if you ask me.
Might as well get a SATA model that can be used for years and years, if you upgrade the system down the road. Going by customer's feedback on NewEgg, ASUS 24x SATA DVD Burner is one of the most reliable model available, for only $20: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Balraj's Intel Budget System:
The one stick of RAM is an interesting trade off, sure you lose dual-channel but you gain the ability to easily upgrade RAM down the road. Then again, a motherboard with 4 RAM slots would allow for both options.
Blu-Ray: The Samsung SH-B083L/BSBP has pretty bad reviews on NewEgg, I'd get the Samsung SH-B123L instead, which costs $20 more, but is also faster (12x vs 8x).
Power Supply: I cannot skip this: you really want to avoid using a low-end, generic power supply, for reliability purposes and to protect your components. You do not want to cut corners on a power supply.
Jarred's AMD Budget Gaming System:
You mention Crossfire support, but go with a motherboard that has the PCI-Express 16x slots running at 16x and 4x, which would bottleneck performance?
For a similar price, the ASRock 870 EXTREME3 comes with two PCI-Express 16x slots at 8x/8x, which are well spaced to allow both cards to "breath".
125W CPU, with a stock cooler? Sure, it's "adequate" for cooling in most cases, but that stock cooler is going to be heard from miles away when you game for hours and/or during hot summer nights if you don't have an AC. Not much of an issue if you play with headphones, but still, I'd get at least a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler.
"Gaming depends primarily on your GPU" "You could even go with a cheaper CPU like the Athlon II X4 645 or the Phenom II X4 810"
Agreed for most games, but there are games that will be CPU bound (Think RTS like SC2, or MMORPG like WoW), where you'll want a powerful CPU that allow the GPU to flex its muscles.
Also, while the X4 645 isn't a bad CPU, losing the L3 cache and the lower frequencies are going to hurt performance quite a bit for video games.
Vivek's Midrange Intel System:
Once again, Crossfire is mentioned, but the second PCI-Express slot runs at 4x...
An ASRock P55 EXTREME4 will fix that and if you want USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s at the same time as Crossfire 8x/8x, you'll want an ASUS P7P55D-E Pro, which features a PLX chip, making it one of the few P55 boards that can run SATA 6.0Gb/s, USB 3.0 and Crossfire 8x/8x all at once, unlike most boards where USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s will fall back to USB 2.0 and SATA 3.0Gb/s due to the lack of bandwidth (lack of PCI-Express lanes, thanks to the P55 chipset).
PSU: OCZ don't exactly make the most reliable PSUs, with the biggest issue being that reliability varies from a model to another, since they use various manufacturers for their PSUs. You get what you pay for with a PSU and a solid Corsair or Seasonic PSU will serve you much better IMO.
Raja's Midrange AMD Overclocking System:
I actually agree with all your choices and like how you didn't strictly stick to NewEgg. Way to go.
Raja's Midrange Intel Overclocking System:
I'd avoid the ASUS Maximus III GENE like the plague. I used to recommend it, until I'd hear back from so many readers that had issues with it (Read some review on NewEgg) that I had no choice but to stop recommending it, because it's so unreliable.
Ryan's High-End Gaming System:
Way to go for keeping noise somewhat under control. Once again though, an IDE DVD Burner in a 2k+ system? Really?
Also, the sound card is priced at $100, not $75, unless I missed something here.
Brian's Intel Dream PC:
Hahaha, now you're talking! Couldn't agree more on the motherboard, which is a one of a kind.
Just one thing though: You forgot CPU Coolers, since Xeon CPUs don't come with any.
Also, why ECC RAM? ECC seems kind of futile for a Gaming PC.
Keyboard: Yes! Mechanical keyboards are the best. I personally recently got a Filco with MX Cherry Blue switches and that keyboard helped me increase my WPM typing speed tremendously. The feedback and noise is also great for gaming.
Mouse: I've always been a fan of the Logitech MX-518, which remains excellent years after its release and offers a great bang for your buck too.
Don't have much to add to the HTPCs, they make sense and quite frankly, it's a matter of personal tastes too.
Except for a few things mentioned above, great job all on the builds. Although I'm a bit sadden to not have seen any Workstation build.
P.S. For those who wonder about my experience building PCs and the like, I’m a computer enthusiast with 10 years of experience in building, fixing and modifying computers, who has been writing about/offering PC Builds of all kinds (Gaming, HTPC, Workstations, etc.) at various price points on my own blog (www.hardware-revolution.com) for over two years and a half now.
Cheers,
Mathieu
Ben90 - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I agree completely on the inclusion of a mechanical keyboard, they are the SSDs of the keyboard world. Once you try to type on rubber domes again it feels absolutely horrible.Personally I am a Cherry Black guy as I like the linear travel for gaming, but for typing its impossible to beat Cherry Blues unless quietness is a metric.
bji - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
How do you feel about scissor switch keyboards? I like them as I find them to be much less mushy than rubber dome keyboards, but alot quieter and with less key travel than mechanical keyboards. I use the Kensington "Slim Type Keyboard" (that's what it says on the bottom, I can't remember the exact model number) and highly recommend it.Tom_S - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Concerning keyboards etc. I *have* been living under a rock and had not heard of the DAS keyboard that sounds interesting, but while under the rock I have been using my Northgate and Avant keyboards (made by CVT Inc) which were always the gold standard in mechanical keyboards. I looked at the site, and it appears that the lesser of the Avant kbds is not available right now, but the Stellar is.http://www.cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/menu.htm
I concede that these are old fashioned - not USB without an adapter, no USB hub, but they have been around since the 1980's and are noteworthy. To further date myself, one of their features has been to remap the left ctrl and caps lock keys (moving ctrl next to the "a" key), for those of us still used to old terminals and editors/programming environments that use control keys.
strikeback03 - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Are the current Samsung HDDs any good? A couple years ago I bought a Samsung HDD recommended on this site for a build for work. First one wouldn't allow an OS install. RMAed it, got a replacement. That one died a few months later. RMAed that, bought one from another brand, and after testing the third Samsung to be sure it could be formatted when we got it just kept it on the side for emergency use. Can't say I'm anxious to try again.Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Samsung HDDs are some of the best drives on the market in my opinion. Their F3 and F4 (The 7,200 rpm 320GB model that is) line-up offer some of the best throughputs rates in MB/s, are very reliable and emit very little heat.For the average latency time, the Western Digital drives tend to be better, although they run hotter and have slightly lower reliability. For Gaming, I'd say that WD drives are the best, but quite frankly, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a system equipped with Samsung or WD drives.
Also, keep in mind warranty: W.D. offers 5 years on their Black Caviar line-up, as opposed to 3 years on their Caviar Blue and 3 years for Samsung drives.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
I did try to price-check everything using our internal pricing tools (Dynamite-Data is an AnandTech affiliate of sorts), so where I could find clearly better prices from other than Newegg I went that route. Obviously, 10 systems or whatever makes it a bit difficult to get every little detail, which is why some IDE DVDRW drives slipped in. Oops!The CrossFire/SLI issue on lower end motherboards (i.e. P55 with x16/x4) was another one that I wracked my brain on for a good long time. I'd really like to go the Biostar route on Vivek's setup (or the overclocking board), but truthfully I'm a bit gun-shy with Biostar. I've had decent boards in the past from them, and other boards that sucked hard. Price is another item that I kept running into -- I don't want to recommend an expensive Intel board when SB is coming so soon.
I'll try to go through and update the optical drives to be SATA, though. Shame on my fellow writers for being so lazy! :-) Thanks for the comments.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 19, 2010 - link
Okay, I made some updates and added some additional commentary where appropriate. But I chose to disagree (or let the editors disagree at least) with some of your comments. IMO, there's no need for aftermarket cooling on CPUs if you don't intend to overclock, so I left my build without one.The other big issue is Newegg reviews; they're just not reliable by any stretch. We've had motherboards that our guys loved that get mediocre scores at Newegg because of idiot users. "Gee... my memory isn't working and I plugged it in, never looked at the BIOS, never updated the BIOS. What's wrong with this board!?" Likewise, some items get 5 eggs not because they're the best but because a lot of buyers think they're a great value... and they wouldn't know quality if it walked up and punched them in the nose. So, while I generally avoid stuff that gets 3 eggs or less, the 4/5 egg stuff may be decent, good, or great depending on the user. Plus, people with problems are about 10X more likely to post as people where everything worked fine.
Anyway, thanks for the corrections/suggestions.