Tom's Intl. $750 Cheap Computing Challenge
Table of contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. CPU, Cooler, And Motherboard
Many computer enthusiasts have the funds to build cutting-edge machines, but the majority are probably faced with the same financial pressure being exerted worldwide right now. Naturally, picking PC components that offer the best price to performance ratio is a smart play. As evidenced by all of the “green” and “energy-saving” marketing going on, an increasing number of power users are setting aside their need for speed in favor of protecting their pocketbooks.
Thus, we were presented with a challenge to start off 2009: build a desktop PC for less than $750. Achieve the best performance possible while using the least amount of power, yielding optimized performance per watt. The challenge was not only to the US team, but also to the Tom's Hardware Germany, France, and Italy, making this a bit of a competition.
With each of the three criteria weighted equally, winning wasn't going to be an easy task, though. Finding the best blend of speed and power consumption would mean any component chosen must not increase energy usage at a higher ratio than it increases performance.
Keeping this goal in mind, we set out to gather the best components for this challenge. We felt the key to success would be striving for performance, but avoiding quad-core CPU’s and dual-GPU graphics cards, suspecting that neither would shine consistently enough to justify the added power consumption. Let’s take a look our selected components, and then we’ll follow up with a closer look why each was chosen.
| USA System Components | ||
|---|---|---|
| Component | Model | Price (USD) |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16 GHz | 188 |
| CPU Cooler | Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro | 19 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L | 100 |
| RAM | G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) | 50 |
| Graphics | Sapphire 100245L Radeon HD 4850 512 MB | 150 |
| Hard Drives | Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32 MB cache | 110 |
| Sound | Integrated HD Audio | 0 |
| Network | Integrated Gigabit Networking | 0 |
| Case | Antec Three Hundred | 50 |
| Power | Antec EarthWatts EA 380 380W ATX12V | 40 |
| Optical | LITE-ON 20X DVD±R SATA Model iHAS120-04 | 22 |
| Total Price: | $729 | |
- 1 / 2
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Thanks for the review.
George
http://unblockprox.com
yet again Toms Hardware couldnt be bothered pulling their finger out and converting to Sterling......
SORT IT OUT!!!!!
@ PT88 cant you read? it tells you the source is international & comes from Toms US it's not a Toms UK article.
Are you too lazy to convert it for yourself or something, what a bone idle little world you must live in go sort your own lazy arse out.
+1 for the sterling! I'm beginning to think there's no UK office!
where's the price of the operating system, the review mentions using vista ultimate and if that was priced in it would add another £130 or whatever the dollar equivalent is..
also is a 1TB harddrive really needed, there's no tv tuner card included in the price so the machine isnt destined for a life of tv recording in which case a 500gb would be a better balance imho
this review is just another exercise in overclocking at a price point. easy for the reviewer to do as when the same chip was a top dollar (pound) model he probably wrote a review on overclocking it then too..
How about a euro price? Sterling is hardly worth qouting is it? lol
lol e8500 is 240€ here...
Well, what relevance does a 750 dollar Computing Challenge have to do with a .co.uk site
Whats the point in posting a US article on a UK site, if i want to see a US article, i go to www.tomshardware.com
My gripe is with Tomshardware not being assed to write .co.uk articles. For instance, the hardware in this review where American based prices, the prices the hardware vendors sell this for in the UK will likely be more than in the US
So this article has no relevance to the UK Market, so why post it on the UK site
Tomshardware are just being bone idle, as i said before, SORT IT OUT!!!!!
agree with person above, would it be too hard for the uk team just to get us the ukl prices for that? it would onlyput the article back for a week still a good read
and before people shout at me saying am i just to lazy, (well yea but XD) Uk prices are not the same as euro prices, and they are definatly not the same as us prices (i hear of peeps piking up 9600's for around 50 dolars while over hear they are around 75 quid, big diffence)
UK is RIP off land! please NEWEGG Y wont u ship to uk!
So I have a bit of time to kill, those prices are fairly consitent with the euro price on komplett.ie... so all you english speaking people in euro land dont worry this article translates easily.... (and if i am not mistaken sterling and euro are almost at parity (what with the british economy going down the shitter) so maybe you British people can get these things even cheaper...) some items were slightly changed due to availabiltiy
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=344771 €185.76 CPU
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=361819 €102.00 Mobo
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=365213 €134.00 4850
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=391606 €95.00 HDD
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=354717 €53.00 Case
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=316722 €61.01 PSU
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=343952 €21.59 Optical Drv
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=338133 €19.08 Cooler
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=338074 €50.00 Ram
Total: €721.44
The UK articles are still to come, did you guys up there read any of the article before posting?
I'd consider an AMD-based rig, on the basis of cost (much less than what you shelled out for that blue chip), and overall energy-consumption. The cost of energy in the UK has sky-rocketed, and an AMD 780-based chipset would be the ideal solution in my opinion, along with a low-power version of the A64x2. The saving might allow for a better graphics card, although those things tend to be over-priced here compared to the US.
Still, hindsight is always easy. Thanks for the article, it gives some good pointers on what components to get from a performance perspective.
p.s. that RAM deal looks fantastic.
Thanks for the great article TomsHardware,
but can you please tell how much watts did the system you built use in default and overclocked settings (especially the E8500 overclocked) when running in 3D mode? I have an 80+ 400watt PSU and I'm hoping to upgrade with an HD4850 and one of the new Phenom II (maybe a 910 2.6ghz) but I'm afraid the PSU won't handle it. Will there be any problems w/out overclocking the system?
Thanks!
I was going to post a long winded rant about THG.co.uk being nothing but a front for THG.com...but whats the point. Bookmark deleted, DNS entry forced to localhost. Never comming back.
BTW, wasn't this place a great source of information BEFORE they added tomshardware.com...
ENGLISH PRICES - we have to pay VAT remember 15% extra cost ( i'd hope all the sites are working at the current 15% vat rate, if they arnt it was 17.5% for people who dont know)
- not shopping around here but aria is ususally alright on price, so i get most from there (links at bottom)
E8500: £139.99 + VAT = £160.99
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO: £11.95 + VAT = £13.74
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3LR: £88.95 + VAT = £102.29
G.SKILL PI Black: 4GB£54.87 + VAT = £63.10
Sapphire 100245L Radeon HD: £106.04 + VAT = £121.95
Western Digital caviar 1tb: £82.83 + VAT = £95.26
Antec Three Hundred: £45.95 + VAT = £52.84
Antec Earthwatts 380: £34.47 + VAT = £39.65
Lite-On IHAS120 20x: £14.77 + VAT = £16.99
TOTAL = £579.82 + VAT = £666.81
i tried to get all components as exact as possible as in the article although the model no on the dvd drive dosn't quite match up.
Admittedly the price would change if you got all the items from one site getting the best bits from them that they offered - it seems ebuyer has gone up in my opinion for stocking alot more stuff than i thought they did
its not super cheap but its still cheaper than alot. its about the kind of money i would spend on a new pc.
\/ LINKS \/
E8500:
Arctic Cooler:http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Fans%2C+Heatsinks%2C+Coolers/CPU+Coolers/Arctic+Cooling+Freezer+7+PRO+(Socket+LGA775)+?productId=20729
Gigabyte Mobo:
G.SKILL PI Black 4GB:
Sapphire 100245L Radeon HD:
Western Digital Caviar 1TB:
Antec Three Hundred:
Lite-on DVD drive:
lols forgot about links
E8500: Here - Aria
Arctic Cooler: Here - Aria
Gigabyte Mobo: Here - Aria
G.SKILL PI Black 4GB: Here - MemoryC
Sapphire 100245L Radeon HD: Here - Ebuyer
Western Digital Caviar 1TB: Here - Ebuyer
Antec Three Hundred: Here Aria
Lite-on DVD drive: Here - Ebuyer
400 watt power supply is to low for a modern video card. look into a 630 watt which will not only last you for this build it should supply enough power for 3 years from now when you stumble across a HD 4870 for $50
Never skimp on the power supply as you only really want to buy a new one every 5 years or so.
Got a 700 watt power supply from newegg at Christmas for only $40 after sale price and rebate. think it was a raidmax
As for why the article was not including a AMD cpu? well the lost cost does not make up for the fact that AMD really don't offer much room for overclocking and thus the value is low which is why the cost is low.
Save $30 and purchase a E8400 cpu instead and run it 4.2 ghz and use a smaller hard drive. think WD has a 500 gig for $59
those 2 changes alone account for a $70 reduction and what fool spends $40 for a 380watt power supply? even more room for savings on the psu
this might be a reasonable setup but i agree a E8400 would have been better for its price. and a reasonable powersupply would have been needed something as raptoxx or yellowdragon or xilence would have gotten away perfectly only costing about 40 euro so i agree that you must be a true fool if you spend 40 dollars on a crap 380watt powersupply because these are worthless for 4850 and i can garantee you it wont even boot stable and it would hung and reboot even before you enteret windows. but for the same price you could have an AMD quad core build anyway. sure for some games dual core still preforms awsome but i can garantee you AMD's Phenom would do great in windows 7 based games because of the 64-bit and extensive use of multicore technology. most games are still capped to single or dual core but when you like to do more at the same time quad core is just better, BTW even the Phenom 9950 overclocks good. but for a mere $20 more you get a phenom 920 black edition so dont borther and stick with that if you want a great system in this price range.
When you switch over to an AMD quad core you are raising the cost for the cpu as well as lowering the speed significantly. also you now have to search for a motherboard possibly costing even more.
And lets face it AMD don't over clock all that well which is a major negative factor since they come out of the box a whole lot slower to begin with. The reason for going Intel is that whatever you purchase will run a lot faster once you tweak the settings.
Only one reason to go AMD and performance is not in the equation you go AMD because you really want a shiny new PC but don't care if it runs as slow as 2 year old Intel