Tuesday, September 2, 2014

TR's July 2014 System Guide: GPU price cuts, Pentium AE, and Crucial's MX100

TechReport.com has a July 2014 system guide available.  Check it out!  I'm surprised their sweet spot hasn't yet moved to a Core i7 CPU nor beyond 8GB RAM.  For a GPU, the Sweet Spot is using the EVGA GeForce GTX 760 while the high-end build uses an XFX Radeon R9 290 Double D.

Also, if you haven't seen it, check out Alienware's funky new A51 system featuring a new triangular tower design that seeks to make it easier to access the "front" and "back" panel connectors, improve airflow, and apparently strengthen branding.  The skeptic in me would suspect there were overheating issues when they tried to use the components in a traditional tower.  Here's a video from c|net.
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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Catching Up

It has been a long time since I made a post here.  No time to write up an analysis but figured I'd post some recent system build links:

Your Very First HTPC? But Where do You Start?:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=94199
From which Group do you belong!?:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?pid=843683%23pid843683#post843683

Ars Technica system guide: Bargain Box April 2012:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/04/ars-bargain-box/

TR's Summer 2012 system guide:
http://techreport.com/review/23204/tr-summer-2012-system-guide

Midrange System Buyer's Guide (AnandTech):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6229/midrange-system-buyers-guide

TechSpot PC Buying Guide:
http://www.techspot.com/guides/buying/

Sharky Guides:
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Comparison of $2,500 Core i7 System Builds from Alienware, AVADirect, and Cyberpower

Tom's Hardware challenged gaming system building companies Alienware, AVADirect, and Cyberpower to go head to head in a challenge to build the best custom systems possible around the Intel Core i7 processor with a budget cap of $2,500. Extensive benchmarks were then conducted comparing the three systems. CPU speed vs. GPU speed design considerations taken into account by each of the three companies lead to no clear frontrunner (in my opinion); which vendor you choose very much depends on the intended primary use of the system.

In the market to buy one of these systems? Please note that this System Builds blog has links to Alienware, AVADirect, Cyberpower, and many more custom system building companies at the top right of the page!
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Tom's Hardware: Best Graphics Cards For The Money: March '09

Tom's Hardware has posted their March 2009 GPU comparison guide.

Best PCIe Card for ~$70:
  • ATI Radeon HD 4670
Best PCIe Card for ~$85:
  • Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT
Best PCIe Card for ~$100:
  • ATI Radeon HD 4830
  • Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT /9800 GT
Best PCIe Card for ~$130:
  • ATI Radeon HD 4850
  • Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
  • Nvidia GeForce GTS 250
Best PCIe Card for ~$180:
  • ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 (Core 216)
Best PCIe Card for ~$260:
  • Radeon HD 4850 X2 1 GB
  • 2x Radeon 4850 in Crossfire Configuration
  • 2x GeForce 9800 GTX+ in SLI configuration
  • 2x GeForce GTS 250 in SLI configuration
Best PCIe Card for ~$330:
  • 2x Radeon HD 4870 512 MB in CrossFire Configuration
Best PCIe Card for ~$360:
  • 2x Radeon HD 4870 1 GB in CrossFire Configuration
  • Radeon HD 4870 X2
  • 2x GeForce GTX 260 (Core 216) cards in SLI Configuration
Best PCIe Card for ~$500:
  • GeForce GTX 295
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

090309 - eWeek - Building a Virtualized Test Bed on the Cheap

A multi-part article at eWeek covers building a FrankenBox and FrankenNAS to be used as a virtualization test bed.

"The recession is putting pressure on IT administrators to cut costs at the same time that demands from the business side continue to grow. Using mostly free software and a collection of out-of-date hardware lying around, eWEEK Labs built a flexible (albeit somewhat underpowered) virtual machine test bed. Below, we offer the steps we took to build an OpenFiler iSCSI NAS server and a VMware ESXi bare metal virtualization instance, plus the settings to get the two working together."
Enjoy!
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Monday, March 9, 2009

090305 - ExtremeTech - Build a Home Theater PC

ExtremeTech has published a guide to building an HTPC capable of Bluray, HDDVD, and DVD playback via HDMI.  Considering Digital OTA (over the air, or antennae) HD?  Looking to cancel your monthly Satellite TV or Cable TV fees with Internet a-la-carte programming?  This might be the article for you.

For just under $1,900, Loyd Case has assembled a very capable HTPC system.  Personally, I still can't decide between an XBox360 or a new gaming rig, but I should note that this HTPC build is probably not what you'll want if you are a serious PC gamer.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

090210 - Tom's Hardware Guide - $625 Gaming PC

Tom's Hardware posted a new guide:

It's interesting to see what can be done with $625 dollars, but this isn't a system I would ever consider buying, as it would quickly be a $600+ dollar obsolete waste! From the article's conclusions: "The E5200 failed to keep up with the HD 4870 in two of our games, and in World in Conflict, the frame rates made the title unplayable. In Crysis and Supreme Commander, performance jumped quite a bit, but it still took overclocking to approach playable frame rates.". If I am reading the article correctly, even with overclocking, this system would not play games that are nearly a full year old with full eye-candy enabled. What's the point?

My non-scientific conclusion is that the cheapest price point for a gaming system that I would be happy with it still somewhere between $1,250 and $1,700, a conclusion that hasn't changed since early 2007. I expect at least 2 to 3 years out of any system that I build, and I want to be able to play any new game that comes out during that time period without upgrading. I don't have $600+ to waste. Why not buy a Wii AND and an XBox360 and stick to your old system for surfing the web and running office apps?

I'll pass on this one, Tom and Co. Of course, Tom would call me names and remind me that the point of the article is squeezing as much GPU power as possible out of just over $600.
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Monday, March 2, 2009

Playing Catch-Up; Long Time No Post

No new posts here in quite a while! I figured I'd play a bit of catch up, since everyone should be buying new computers they don't really need when the economy is doing so poorly... right? I am just doing my part as an irresponsible American. So let's see. My last post was in July of 2007. I'll work my way forward from there as it is interesting to see how components and prices have changed over time.

I'll start with my favorite; ArsTechnica.com:
I am also a huge fan of the guides from TechReport.com, espeically their "Buy this complete system as Newegg" links. I buy most of my hardware from NewEgg.com, as I gather do most technology enthusiasts.
From the love-to-hate-them category (for instance, finding these guides on their website was extraordinarily difficult), here are the recent guides from TomsHardware.com.
More system builds can be found at ExtremeTech.com. Here are their recent builds:
I'd promise to keep this up to date, but we all know that is not likely to happen. In any case, enjoy, and have fun building!
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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

[TR] July 2007 System Guide



The July 2007 System Guide has been posted at the Tech Report.

Their add to your newegg.com cart feature makes life easy for all you lazy system builders that don't like doing the research.

The guide includes their Econobox ($538.44), Grand Experiment ($1061.89), Sweet Spot [my personal favorite] ($1362.82), and Double-Stuff Workstation ($3144.89) systems.

There are also alternative suggestions for each system and a peripherals section that covers things like monitors, mice, speakers, and keyboards.

As usual, I must mention that you would be doing yourself a disservice by ignoring comments posted in response to the article.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

[ARS] June 2007 System Guide


The ARS Technica folks have released their 2007 Guide, once again bringing us their recommendations for a Budget Box ($741.99), the Hot Rod ($1,521.28), and the God Box ($10,228.30).

Be a good system build archive reader and pay close attention to the alternate recommendations and reasoning behind their exclusions, and most importantly, don't forget to read the forum responses!

I am having a really hard time not pulling the trigger on that Hot Rod box plus a few upgrades, like two 500GB SATA drives, 4 GB of RAM, and a 24" flat panel or two.

I keep telling myself that I have no time for gaming, and that there aren't enough good new games out there to make this worthwhile. Blizzard's Starcraft 2 was pushed back to last year.

I do wish I had a 3D-capable system lying around so I could try out Ubuntu Feisty Fawn with all its desktop effects enabled.
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Tuesday, June 5, 2007

[THG] Six P35-DDR3 Motherboards Compared: No Winner?

Tom's Hardware benchmarked six of the latest-gen Intel motherboards and was unable to pick a winner. The motherboards, all sporting Intel's P35 Express chipset, "offer support DDR3 memory and the next generation of FSB1333 Intel Core 2 processors."

Why should a fellow System Builder care about this article? In their conclusion, it is stated that all of the motherboards "were so close in performance that benchmark results can't accurately determine a winner, because the differences are smaller than the benchmark's degree of accuracy.... And that's why I can't pick a board for you. Each buyer must determine which "killer feature" set best suits his or her needs."

This is one less component requiring a great deal of research. Seems like a quick look at the features of a few boards sporting the P35 Express chipset will help you pick your winner.
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

[THG] Spring HDD Guide

Tom's Hardware has posted a Spring Hard Disk Drive Guide. Their component guides tend to contain good charts comparing the performance of the latest and greatest devices. Knowing which HDDs are the fastest/coolest and most reliable on the market is something an avid system builder should know. Slow disk IO can cripple even the fastest combination of CPU, Ram, and Motherboard, so we want to do everything possible to ensure our HDDs are performing at their top capacity.

THG also recently posted their Dads and Grads buyers guide, in which they are pushing some cool gadgets, gear, and software as Graduation and Father's Day gifts. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to someone sending me a Matrox DualHead2Go and two Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP 24" monitors to go along with it.
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Thursday, May 10, 2007

[THG] System Builder Marathon

Tom's Hardware Guide has completed their three day, three build marathon. Day one was a $525 USD low-end system. Day two was a very capable $1,255 USD mid-range system. Day three was a top-end, mindlessly blow your $3,590 USD build. $1,200 - 1,400 seems to be the current sweet spot.

They've also used day 4 to do performance benchmarks and compare each system.

Don't forget to leech off the minds of the THG forum dwellers. They do a pretty good job of keeping the author and THG team in check:

Forum Responses to Day 1
Forum Responses to Day 2
Forum Responses to Day 3
Forum Responses to Day 4

One of the posters directs viewers to another noteworthy forum thread: Sanji's Guide to Gaming PCs on a Budget.

[THG] maintains an archive of their how-to DIY articles, which includes, but is less specific than their previous system building guides.
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[TR] March 2007 System Guide

The Tech Report seems to post a new system guide every 2-3 months. The March 2007 System Guide covers five builds, and discusses alternative configurations for each. A nice feature allows you to click a link to add every component of the build you are reading about to your NewEgg.com shopping cart. This is great for all of you lazy bastards that know what you are doing but choose not to price-hunt. I suppose this is also greatly beneficial for you 1st time builders.

Always remember to read the comments after reading the article! There are a lot of smart people sharing useful information that have too much time on their hands.

Also, [TR] maintains an archive of their previous system guides.
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[CM] Building an Affordable Gaming PC

The Corsair Memory team has written an excellent article detailing how to build and overclock a PC from start to finish. They show BIOS screenshots and how to test your overclock. Don't forget to read though the article discussion in their forums for extra tips and advice.
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[ARS] May Budget Box and March Guides


The ARS Technica team recently released their May Ultimate Budget Box Guide. The readers responded.

The March System Guide gives us 3 Builds in typical ARS fashion: The Budget Box, The Hot Rod, and The God Box. The readers responded here.
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[Various] Older Links

I'll try to keep the earliest post updated as friends and other readers give me their "I found this link helpful when starting on mine: (insert old link here)" recommendations:

1. ExtremeTech's Build-It Section contains various builds and is somewhat regularly updated.
2. [H]ardOCP Holiday 2006 Buyers Guide
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Welcome!

I've always thoroughly enjoyed keeping up-to-date with the latest and greatest PC components. A long time ago, I realized that it is not too difficult to build your own monster rig. If you are looking for more power than a low-budget system, and you consider the time investment to do the research as a hobby instead of a cost, building your own system can save you hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, of dollars. The more top-of-the-line power you are looking for, the more you will save by building your own.

Since I enjoy finding and reading guides about building systems, I'll keep track of everything I find here. Maybe I can save some of you that may be on the fence about building your own enough research time that you decide to give it a go! By the way, I take no responsibility for fried parts and mangled data that may result from you doing so. Building your own does not get you a warranty, but if you are worried about warranties, you probably shouldn't be rolling your own system in the first place!

Have fun and enjoy!

By the way, for those of you who do not know what a top-of-the-line system costs or where to buy one off the shelf, take a look at these options (when you see the prices, you'll understand why I build my own):

1. (Dell) AlienWare
2. (HP) VoodooPC
3. Falcon Northwest
4. Hypersonic PC
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