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System Builder Marathon, May '09: $2,500 Performance PC

07:10 - Monday 25 May 2009 by Thomas Soderstrom

1. Hot Tips For A Cool System–Or Vice Versa?
2. Case And System Cooling
3. Motherboard, Graphics, And Power
4. CPU, Memory, And Drives
5. Hardware Installation
6. BIOS And Overclocking
7. Test Settings

8. Benchmark Results: Crysis, Far Cry 2
9. Benchmark Results: Clear Sky And World In Conflict
10. Benchmark Results: A/V Encoding
11. Benchmark Results: Productivity
12. Benchmark Results: Synthetic
13. Power And Heat
14. Conclusion

System Builder Marathon, May 2009: The Articles

Here are links to each of the four articles in this month’s System Builder Marathon (we’ll update them as each story is published).

Day 1: The $2,500 Performance PC
Day 2: The $1,300 Enthusiast PC
Day 3: The $600 Gaming PC
Day 4: Performance and Value Dissected

Introduction

Tom’s Hardware looks to your feedback in article planning. One of the most frequent of many System Builder Marathon (SBM) themes you’ve proposed in our comments section is that of the “gaming cube,” and that's why all three of this month's configurations attempt to maximize the performance potential available with portable enclosures.

Forget the term small form-factor cases (SFF) when thinking of Micro-ATX cubes, since “form factors” are dimensional standards that apply to internal components. SFF originated with the two-slot designs of Shuttle barebones PCs, so the insistence of some manufacturers on using the term to describe much larger and completely incompatible Micro-ATX parts only serves to confuse inexperienced builders.

With portability our first priority, we tried to stuff as many high-end parts as our budget would allow into the most portable Micro-ATX case we could find. Here’s what we came up with:

$2,500 Portable PC Performance Parts Prices
Motherboard	DFI LANParty Jr X58-T3H6 Micro-ATX Intel X58/ICH10R, LGA1366	$220
Processor	Intel Core i7-920 Four Cores, 2.66 GHz, 8 MB Cache	$289
Memory	Mushkin 998679 6.0 GB DDR3-1600 3x 2.0 GB, CAS 7-8-7-20, 1.65 V	$138
Graphics	2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 295 in SLI 1,792 MB GDDR3-2000 Per Card 576 MHz GPU, 1,242 MHz Shader	$1,058
Hard Drives	2 x Western Digital RE3 WD50002ABYS (RAID 0) 500 GB, 7200 RPM, 16 MB Cache SATA 3.0 Gb/s	$180
Optical	LG GGC-H20LK Blu-ray Disk/HD-DVD ROM 6x BRD, 3x HD-DVD ROM, 16x DVD±R	$100
Case	Silverstone SG04B-H Micro-ATX Mini-Tower	$170
Power	Corsair CMPSU-1000HX Modular 1,000 W ATX12V 2.2, EPS12V 2.91, 80-Plus Certified	$240
Intake Fans	2 x Scythe S-Flex SFF21F 120 mm, 1,600 RPM, 63.7 CFM at 28.0 dBA	$28
Exhaust Fan	Silverstone RL-FX121 Cross Flow Blower 3,000 RPM, 14 CFM at 26 dBA	$17
	Total Cost	$ 2,440

While we stick to the above price list as our recommended configuration, a serious shortage of GeForce GTX 295 boards forced us to buy the only model in stock at ordering time, resulting in some visually-different but functionally-identical replacement products. We’re fairly certain that the lucky winner of today’s build will be pleased with the overall result.

Ed.: Wait, what was that? The lucky winner? That's right folks. We're going to be giving away this system, plus the two machines to follow tomorrow and the day after. Once the SBM series has run its course this week, look for a contest page to go up on the front page of the site. You'll need to answer one question about each of our configurations and will then be entered into a drawing for one of this month's three SBM builds!