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Forums - PC - May be building a PC - Suggestions for budget under $1,000 USD?

Garcian Smith on 02 April 2010
mrstickball said:
Can anyone care to explain why the i5-750 is better than a Phenom II X4 965 when Passmark.com rates the Phenom higher on its user benchmarks? Curious to understand why...

Generally, "synthetic benchmark" is a euphamism for, "useless piece of crap."

Here's a graph comparing the two in Photoshop:

And in Excel:

And in WinRAR compression:

And finally, in Far Cry 2, one of the most CPU-bound games out there:

(Source)

Right now, the Phenom is like $180 on Newegg, while the i5-750 is $195. In case those real-world benchmarks aren't enough to persuade you, you'll also note that the i5-750 consumes much less power at both idle and load, so you'll easily make up that difference over time in your electric bills.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

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Squilliam on 02 April 2010

1) If you're going to spend $160 on a quad-core Phenom, then you might as well plunk down the extra $40 to get an i5-750. It's a much faster CPU thanks to the turbo mode that does an on-the-fly low-level overclock when less than four cores are being used, and it's a stellar overclocker as well. That said, you won't see much drop in performance if you decide to go with a much cheaper Athlon II X3 435 or X4 630 instead.

The cheapest motherboard which supports the same features is $40 more expensive, so for a marginal upgrade he would have to pay 1/3rd more overall, not counting the MIR.

2) Not a knock against your build, obviously, but you definitely don't need more than 4 GB RAM unless you're running some sort of really RAM-intensive apps on a regular basis. If you have to ask whether you need more than 4, then you probably don't.

Its simply tidier to use 2x2GB and cheaper to support 4GB. Also it gives the option of upgrading even if its never taken up.

3) The Sonata 3 is a decent case with an equally decent bundled PSU, but if your budget permits it I'd advise going with a 550W Corsair or SeaSonic, an Antec P180 Mini (the best price:performance case on the market right now), and a Micro-ATX mobo.

Unfortunately budget doesn't permit.

4) The SSD is a nice idea that will give you faster boot/load times on games and productivity apps, but I'd recommend going with an 80 GB Intel X25-M instead. There's nothing wrong with the OCZ, but the X25-M is slightly faster, can hold 20 GB more stuff, and is only slightly more expensive. But again, only fit this in if you can afford it.

That could be worthwhile, they both score very highly on the AMD SSD bench. Its definately swingable if the OS is downgraded to Windows 7 Home premium and the extra 20GB of space yields more flexibility.

5) The biggest factor in HDD speed is something that isn't usually advertised on Newegg or elsewhere: The number of platters. One or two high-density platters means faster seek and write times, and the 750 GB Caviar Black has three 250GB platters - not exactly ideal. Look for a Caviar Blue or Black (or Spinpoint F3, if you can find them) that's either 500 GB or 1 TB, whatever your budget and needs permit, and Google a couple of reviews to check how many platters it has before buying.

Good point, I forgot about that. A WD Caviar Blue 500GB might be a good idea for $55 and it saves $15 which along with a downgrade to the Windows will allow the larger 80GB SSD. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073&cm_re=caviar-_-22-136-073-_-Product

Can anyone care to explain why the i5-750 is better than a Phenom II X4 965 when Passmark.com rates the Phenom higher on its user benchmarks? Curious to understand why...

I don't think its worth the price relative to the phenoms, see first quote for the $80-90 price differential.

 



Tease.

Garcian Smith on 02 April 2010
Squilliam said:

I don't think its worth the price relative to the phenoms, see first quote for the $80-90 price differential.

 

The one that you quoted in your first post is actually the Phenom II X4 955, which sits at 3.2 GHz instead of the 965's 3.4. The 965 is $183.99 on Newegg right now, in comparison to $194.99 for the i5.

Also, here's a quality LGA 1156 mobo from MSI for $100 that should have everything you need. It's also Micro-ATX, which allows you to use a P180 Mini case, which is - need I reiterate - one of the best cases currently on the market and still on sale for only $65. The only major disadvantage over the AM3 board is that there's only one PCI slot, but in my experience most builders just toss a video card in the PCI-E X16 slot and never even touch their other expansion slots.

That's a $26 difference if you count the MIR for the mobo that you linked, which still tilts in the i5-750's favor due to its much lower power consumption



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Squilliam on 02 April 2010
Garcian Smith said:
Squilliam said:

I don't think its worth the price relative to the phenoms, see first quote for the $80-90 price differential.

 

The one that you quoted in your first post is actually the Phenom II X4 955, which sits at 3.2 GHz instead of the 965's 3.4. The 965 is $183.99 on Newegg right now, in comparison to $194.99 for the i5.

Also, here's a quality LGA 1156 mobo from MSI for $100 that should have everything you need. It's also Micro-ATX, which allows you to use a P180 Mini case, which is - need I reiterate - one of the best cases currently on the market and still on sale for only $65. The only major disadvantage over the AM3 board is that there's only one PCI slot, but in my experience most builders just toss a video card in the PCI-E X16 slot and never even touch their other expansion slots.

That's a $26 difference if you count the MIR for the mobo that you linked, which still tilts in the i5-750's favor due to its much lower power consumption

I guess Intel wins. I just noticed your links, and I picked up on my own mistake with the speed rating. Also that P180 is better than what I suggested which leaves room for an even better PSU and the lower power consumption is a must in a more enclosed space.



Tease.

mrstickball on 02 April 2010

Okay, so here is what I am thinking. Newegg has some nice combo deals which cut the cost by 10% or more in some cases:

  • Combo #354210 with: 
  • NZXT LEXZ Mid Tower
  • ASUS Mobo
  • OCZ PSU
  • Intel Core i5 750
  • G.SKILL Ripjaw DDR (4GB) @1600mhz (2x2GB)
  • Seagate 1.5TB HDD (7200RPM)
  • For $589.99 (saves about $70 off of regular MSRP)

Add on:

  • Radeon HD 5770 ($169.99)
  • Windows 7 Home Premium ($150 from Amazon)

That would put me at $908....What else would I need?



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

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Garcian Smith on 02 April 2010
mrstickball said:

Okay, so here is what I am thinking. Newegg has some nice combo deals which cut the cost by 10% or more in some cases:

You shouldn't do this. Newegg combo deals are generally 50% quality components and 50% complete junk that they bundle with the good components to get rid of it. You'll actually be losing "bang for your buck" that way.

Instead, go for:

-Core i5 750

-That MSI mobo that I linked above

-Antec Mini P180 White (the $65 one)

-SeaSonic SS-550HT PSU

-4 GB of whatever's the cheapest DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600 RAM you can find

-1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 (perhaps the speediest 1TB HDD out there; ideal for your needs since you've apparently decided against the SSD)

-XFX Radeon 5770 ($10 cheaper than the one you were looking at, and XFX's customer support rocks)

-A DVD-RW drive from Samsung, Sony, or Lite-On (protip: don't pay extra for LightScribe support)

-Win7 Home Premium OEM

According to a quick calculation in my head, that should come out to a little over $900 before shipping.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Soleron on 02 April 2010

@Garcian Smith

That's a little selective. In the TR review I linked there were plenty of benchmarks where the 965 BE is ahead. For instance, while it is behind in Winrar it is ahead in 7-zip.

My personal choice (as an AMD fan) would be the i5 750 due to lower power, but it's not at all clearly winning against the 965 in benches.



fenderlove01 on 02 April 2010

Well thats not to hard of a build because like you said you definitely don't need a fancy gpu, and you can buy a simple mobo because you obviously won't need any special features such as overclocking features. To be honest you don't really need to spend $1000 bucks if you are just going to be using stuff like word processor. Now if you are going to be using video/audio editing software or similar applications then yeah that might be a good idea. But if you really want to i would just go with a intel i7 920, that is probably what you need, not to expensive but you really don't need anything more then that. I would get a really cheap gpu just in case, maybe like a gtx 8800, maybe even something cheaper like a GT 220. With ram you probably don't need anymore then 4gb with simple applications that you will be using, personal for your use i would go with ddr2 but if you want get ddr3, but its more expensive. I would just get a cheap mother board that supports what you need and just go ahead and get a 1tb hard drive just in case you have any large projects. But like I said i wouldn't spend $1000 bucks if you aren't going to do anything major.



ZenfoldorVGI on 02 April 2010

Hey, I don't know whether to ask this here, or in another thread, but this has made me want to ask you guys to build me a gaming rig. I've got about 1500 max, don't need a monitor, and would love some future proofing. :)

BTW, Squilliam has given me some excellent build advice in the past, and helped me purchase my last rig.



I don't need your console war.
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor.
You're power hungry, spinnin' stories, and bein' graphics whores.
I don't need your console war.

NO NO, NO NO NO.

Squilliam on 02 April 2010

My refined options are:

  • Antec P182 (link earlier in this thread)
  • Antec 500W Earthwatts $69 (25 MIR)
  • EVGA MATX $89 (10 MIR) It comes with 8 USB 2.0 ports.
  • i5 750 (link in thread)
  • Same DDR3 I linked
  • Windows 7 Home premium
  • 500GB/1TB HDD as linked in thread.
  • Either SSD drive
  • DVDRW I linked earlier.
  • Any HD 5770 which strikes your fancy.

Which in all nets a computer which has even better performance, is cooler/quieter and uses less power with high quality parts.



Tease.