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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Grok42 - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Wow, fantastic sub-thread. While I think TegiriNenashi didn't strike a very good tone in his first post, he still had some good points and then hit it out of the park with his 2nd post. It is absolutely ludicrous, possibly even redonkulous, that *NO* manufacture for *ANY* price offers a mATX or mITX case that fits a 9" video card without also having external 5.25" and 3.5" external bays. These front bays won't be used by many and will soon be used by no one. They completely mess up the airflow of the case and they take up room better used for internal 2.5" or 3.5" drives. Heck, a small disco ball would be more useful than a 5.25" optical drive that only holds 4GB of data. I have a USB thumb drive the size of my pinky nail that holds 32GB and costs less than a DVD drive.pattycake0147 - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Why was this guide not delayed until the impending release of GK106? Seems to me that those cards would fit in the guide perfectly.MxxCon - Saturday, September 15, 2012 - link
Or at least updated post-release.. :(It seems like Nvidia 660 significantly changed the landscape..
ExarKun333 - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Switch to a 7970 and keep both the SSD and HDD options.JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
We mention the 7970GE as the alternative to the GTX 680 (and the stock 7970 is basically covered there). Personally, though, I'd be more inclined to go with the GTX 680 unless I was specifically running some GPGPU stuff that worked better on the 7970. There are just enough things I prefer with NVIDIA right now that I feel at the top-end that's the way to go.Anyway, it comes down to $480 for the recommended GTX 680 (with a free copy of Borderlands 2), $430 for the HD 7970GE, or $430 with a $20 MIR for a stock HD 7970. The 680 uses around 25W less power under load compared to the stock 7970, or 65W less than the 7970GE. More importantly in my book, the GTX 680 generates 5dB less noise than the stock 7970 and 10dB less than the 7970GE. Even 5dB is a big difference; 10dB is crazy.
DanNeely - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
I'm surprised the upper mid range build didn't come with one of them; the extra headroom from not worrying about what to install on the SSD as often is a huge boost as games get bigger.just4U - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Hi Zack,With His RadeonHD 7870GHZ ED. IceQ sitting at 220 and 199 after rebate It's somewhat pointless to go with a 7850. I picked up one of those this weekend and it's very comparable to a GTX580.
Patflute - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
Why didn't you wait a couple days for the 660 non-TiQuizzical - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
An Antec Neo Eco 400C is a decent enough power supply for a low budget, low power computer. But you're going to run a Radeon HD 7950 (200 W TDP by itself) and a Core i5-3570K off of it? That strikes me as unduly risky. And then you give a stronger power supply to the workstation that won't need to deliver half as much power because it's running integrated graphics?casteve - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 - link
For everything but the 200W TDP gpu build and if you really want to spend this little on a PSU, I'd go with the Seasonic G 360W. $60 and 80+ Gold. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...