Midrange System Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on September 11, 2012 12:35 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
- AMD
- Intel
- Ivy Bridge
- Radeon HD 7000
- NVIDIA
Closing Thoughts
All four systems in this guide represent a lot of value in terms of how powerful they are relative to their costs. Two things strike me as particularly noteworthy: the high-mid range gaming system includes the most powerful single-chip GPU available on the market today, and the workstation is extremely well-rounded with top (or nearly) top of the line mainstream components. In other words, a tremendous amount of capability is available to midrange buyers. Spending more than about $1,000 today is mostly necessitated by niche purposes.
Compared to our last midrange guide, the gaming systems outlined here are substantially more capable due to much faster video cards, with better SSDs and overall lower power consumption. The workstation in this guide is about 15% less expensive than last year's workstation, while including a faster CPU and SSD, as well as offering more storage capacity. It will be interesting to see how developments from Intel's upcoming Haswell CPU architecture along with AMD's Piledriver and Trinity architectures affect the midrange market. Trinity in particular appears as though it will shake up at least the lower midrange market segment. AnandTech will, of course, be covering Trinity upon its mainstream retail launch; expect a full Trinity buyer's guide at that time.
The systems in this guide are ready to go as they are outlined, but once you start spending around $1,000 on a computer, you might be interested in more customization—that's the point of doing it yourself. There are a variety of options with pros and cons for any change, and while you're always welcome to ask for help in our article comments, we have other resources avaialble. In particular, our forums are full of computer enthusiasts who can help you research which components are best suited to your purposes. General Hardware is a good place to start, and you can also save money by checking the Hot Deals forum.
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bitoolean - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
Oh, and I worked at a Foxconn factory recently, and I can't say they are very concerned with quality but neither do they ignore it.Impulses - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Do we really expect either of those to shake up these systems by the time your next guide is up? I'd imagine they'd be more relevant to lower end systems that actually depend on the iGPU... Or laptops.DanNeely - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Trinity is available for OEMs now; but is still MIA for building your own system. I suspect it will be only meaningful at the budget gaming level since the 7850 has nearly three times as many cores as the A10.Haswell is expected in 2013Q2; from there figure a few months to shake down across all pricepoints so it'll probably be similar to IVB in this one.
bradcollins - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Why suggest an M4 at $110, an 830 at $100 and an Intel 330 at $103 when they are all in the 120/128gb class?Couldn't a single SSD be settled on in the 120/128gb class?
ATC9001 - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
I agree, and why not the Vertex 4 which appears to be the fastest and cheapest at 99 bucks right now at newegg?adadad - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Because every sane person will know to stay away from ocz unless his time isn't valuable.dishayu - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
I would agree with you but i am convinced that Vertex 4 is different as it uses a Marvell conroller and they've had a pretty solid reputataion as far as reliability goes. So, although i wouldn't be too skeptical to recommend a Vertex 4 drive. I personally will still be conflicted if i want to buy one or not.piroroadkill - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
I'd say controller regardless, they've had some dodgy practices in the past, and with the Samsung 830 at competitive prices, I find it impossible to recommend anything else.redchar - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
regardless of controller or firmware what you should give ocz is time. time to prove to you that their non-sandforce drives aren't as unreliable as the rest.dgingeri - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
After owning 7 OCZ SSDs going back to my 60GB Apex, and having 3 (two Vertex 4s and an Agility 4) in my current main system right now, and all of them still functional, I find your characterization of OCZ off base. They've been great to me. Even when my dual Vertex 2s quit responding because Windows 7's default sleep settings (what idiot in MS decided everyone wants their system to go to sleep?) they provided immediate support and helped me get them back up and running in a few hours, then directed me to the firmware update that would prevent it from happening again. OCZ drives have been the greatest in both performance and reliability in my experience.