PC Hardware buying guide [Q1 2013]

By Muhammad Farrukh
in Hardware Hangout

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Grand Master

rajputwarrior

Posted
Posted

No, no no we cannot be having this. The dual core i3 obviously beats all of the quad/hexa/eight core processors :p. It is also so much cheaper (even though the motherboards are more expenisve).

at least that way you are forced to get a good mobo, not the crap suggested in the OP.

Collaborator

Site Lab

Posted
Posted

Here is my AMD + UK Price recomendations:

This is for the full machine, PSU + Case and the lot.

APU Build

?327.70 inc VAT + Free Delivery

Budget Build (General office work, internet browsing, flash games)

?209.67 inc VAT + Free Delivery

Mainstream (Medium settings, office work, photoshop.etc)

?388.04 inc VAT + Free Delivery

High-End (High settings, photoshop video rendering.etc)

?610.57 inc VAT + Free Delivery

Ultimate (Maximum settings, Video Rending, Extreme power!)

?1201.80 inc VAT + Free Delivery

This build could do with a lot of changes, for example the PSU costs nearly as much as the processor :o. I chose corsair because it is a reputable brand and 850W is more than enough juice for this :p

  • Muhammad Farrukh
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Veteran

CentralDogma

Posted
Posted

I haven?t looked over all your builds, Site Lab, but it seems like you?ve just thrown in AMD processors for the sake of it, regardless of their performance.

In your APU build by including a discrete graphics card, you?re negating any value you would get with the AMD 3870K. I?m not sure it would be able to outperform the Pentium G850 in the budget build which is cheaper($87 vs $139). We don?t have a low cost HTPC build, and that?s probably where an AMD APU would shine, using integrated graphics.

In your high end build, an Intel i3-2120 ($127) is going to outperform that FX-6100 ($149) according to that chart I posted on the last page. Hell, it looks like even the Pentium G850 will out perform at less than two thirds the price.

And, I don?t know how you can honestly recommend the AMD FX-8150, which is underpriced and outperformed by the Intel i5 2500K, for any build, much less an ?extreme power, money be damned? build.

  • Muhammad Farrukh
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Collaborator

Site Lab

Posted
Posted

but it seems like you?ve just thrown in AMD processors for the sake of it, regardless of their performance.

I haven't. There is reason why I have chosen each setup. These aren't meant to beat intel, but where they do they are quite good machines for the prices.

In your APU build by including a discrete graphics card, you?re negating any value you would get with the AMD 3870K. I?m not sure it would be able to outperform the Pentium G850 in the budget build which is cheaper($87 vs $139). We don?t have a low cost HTPC build, and that?s probably where an AMD APU would shine, using integrated graphics.

Ok, the reason i including a discrete graphics card with the APU is because of the crossfire performance when combining a 6670 and the intregated graphics in the GPU. Since I cannot find any benchmarks with the crossfire here in question, I turned to Youtube. For example here we have:

<- Battlefield 3 running on this setup with 40FPS on medium/high settings.

Infact, change that just found one.

game05.jpg

60 FPS on Dirt 2 on medium, which is more than playable for the price of the system.

Here is Saints Row 3 running on the same setup -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIYeRy2nQlc

For the price, this is quite an excellent budget gaming system, this is why I chose this setup.

In your high end build, an Intel i3-2120 ($127) is going to outperform that FX-6100 ($149) according to that chart I posted on the last page. Hell, it looks like even the Pentium G850 will out perform at less than two thirds the price.

Here, the i3-2120 will probably beat the FX-6100. (If a Phenom X4 970 or X6 1090t was available, I would have chose that but I chose the next best thing due to reviews/ratings on ebuyer itself...).

According to PassMark benchmark scores, the FX-6100 scores 5,616 and the i3-2120 scores 4,200. Plus the FX-6100 has more cores than the i3. (Six cores vs Two)

However, lets look at what a similar system would cost on the same website:

Total price is now: ?643.16 compared to ?610.67. For ?32.49 extra you are basically getting 4 less cores, a bit more performance in gaming and less performance in multi-tasking/other stuff.

And, I don?t know how you can honestly recommend the AMD FX-8150, which is underpriced and outperformed by the Intel i5 2500K, for any build, much less an ?extreme power, money be damned? build.

Course the i5 2500k may be cheaper, but "money be damned" like you said :p

Anyway, the reason i recommended the FX-8150 in the AMD category is because it is the fastest AMD CPU available and actually offers more performance than the i5 2500k.

In passmark the FX-8150 scores 8244 whereas the i5-2500k scores 6743. Also, the FX-8150 has 8 cores compared to the 4 in the i5-2500k. (Not that will be much of an improvement for most applications).

In DIRT 3:

http://www.hardwares...php?image=39558

The FX-8150 offers 7 MORE FPS! (Such a MASSIVE improvement *sarcasam*)

http://www.hardwares...php?image=39556

In Cinebench 11.5 the FX-8150 comes closer to the i7-2600k (which is dearer than the FX-8150.)

In photoshop CS5 the FX-8150 takes less time than the i5-2500k:

image014.png

However, in 3d Max the i5 does beat the FX-8150 by a small margin :(

image015.png

41713.png

IN Civilization the FX-8150 gains an additional 4 fps.

41708.png

In Dirt 3 here, Il admit the i5-2500k is faster.

41705.png

In Metro 2033 it is 0.5fps slower. (Not that much)

41706.png

At 1920x1200 it is 2.5 slower.

41704.png

In the Rage vt_benchmark the FX-8150 takes less time to transcode textures.

41695.png

In multi-threaded benchmarks the FX-8150 beats the i5-2500k, however in single threaded the i5-2500k wins.

41698.png

The single most important benchmark. ITS FASTER IN 7-ZIP THAN THE I5!!!!!

41697.png

Renders faster.

41693.png

Its faster in EXCEL as well.

Lets see at the price though:

Quote

With intel options of:

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor ?168.46

AND Asus SABERTOOTH P67 R3 P67 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard ?148.83

The price comes to: ?13 dearer.

Veteran

CentralDogma

Posted
Posted

Ok, the reason i including a discrete graphics card with the APU is because of the crossfire performance when combining a 6670 and the intregated graphics in the GPU. Since I cannot find any benchmarks with the crossfire here in question, I turned to Youtube. For example here we have:

Battlefield 3 running on this setup with 40FPS on medium/high settings.

Infact, change that just found one.

60 FPS on Dirt 2 on medium, which is more than playable for the price of the system.

Here is Saints Row 3 running on the same setup ->

For the price, this is quite an excellent budget gaming system, this is why I chose this setup.

You're right, it's not easy to find a benchmark that pairs the AMD 3870K with discreate graphics against an Intel CPU with the same. If there were, these would be a lot clearer issue.

Here, the i3-2120 will probably beat the FX-6100. (If a Phenom X4 970 or X6 1090t was available, I would have chose that but I chose the next best thing due to reviews/ratings on ebuyer itself...).

According to PassMark benchmark scores, the FX-6100 scores 5,616 and the i3-2120 scores 4,200. Plus the FX-6100 has more cores than the i3. (Six cores vs Two)

However, lets look at what a similar system would cost on the same website:

Total price is now: ?643.16 compared to ?610.67. For ?32.49 extra you are basically getting 4 less cores, a bit more performance in gaming and less performance in multi-tasking/other stuff.

The Asrock P67 EXTREME4 V3 is a bad deal (at least in comparison to the Gigabyte GA-970A-D3). If you go with the Asus P8Z68-V LX, you end up saving ?16 and getting a better system.

Course the i5 2500k may be cheaper, but "money be damned" like you said :p

Anyway, the reason i recommended the FX-8150 in the AMD category is because it is the fastest AMD CPU available and actually offers more performance than the i5 2500k.

Lets see at the price though:

Quote

With intel options of:

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor ?168.46

AND Asus SABERTOOTH P67 R3 P67 Socket 1155 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard ?148.83

The price comes to: ?13 dearer.

Sure, if we're buying on value, you can make an argument against an i5 2500k. But if you're comparing performance (and this build is suppose to be the ?extreme performance? machine) the i7 3930k (or any i7 for that matter) will win handily.

Plus the FX-6100 has more cores than the i3. (Six cores vs Two)

?

Also, the FX-8150 has 8 cores compared to the 4 in the i5-2500k. (Not that will be much of an improvement for most applications).

I'd just like to point this out since you've compared the number of cores. Much like it was a bad idea to compare MHz during the Pentium 4 days (when AMD was thoroughly out preforming them at a lower clock speed), so too is it to compare cores. They are two different architectures and your performance in the real world will vary as a result.

Secondly, AMDs Bulldozer?cores? are not cores in the traditional sense. A Bulldozer ?module?, a pair of core, is what is a traditional core. Each ?core? has it's own integer logic, L1 cache, and 128-bit floating point logic. However each pair of ?cores? (one ?module?) shares early pipeline stages (eg. fetch, decode), L2 cache, and 256-bit floating point logic. The result is something in between 2 traditional cores and 1 traditional core, that works well at integer heavy workloads and less so at floating point work. I hesitate to liken it to Hyperthreading because they are two wholly unrelated technologies.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

With Ivy Bridge launching in like a week these AMD to 2500K comparisons are kind of pointless. Anyone thinking about buying a system right now would be waiting to see what happens with Ivy Bridge as Intel will be unleashing a full compliment of i7 and i5 processors in all price ranges.

And even if someone wasn't interested in the new Ivy Bridge chips the older Sandy Bridge processors will still hold their own and be significantly discounted.

Grand Master

Muhammad Farrukh

Posted
  • Author
Posted

SiteLab, you are partly right about APUs, but not, at all, about the Phenoms and Bulldozers.

Here is a read you might find interesting.

Of course, its concentration is mainly on gaming, but also, in other benchmarks, Bulldozer can't compete with i5, in some even i3, obviously not in multi-threaded apps.

Vice, I agree, about the IvyBridge part.

Thing is, that there are people who can't wait for the next gen tech. I personally have built 2 PCs in the span of last 2 weeks.

I will update the processors lines, when IVyBridge is available in masses

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
Mentor

Blaine

Posted
Posted

Hey guys, is the AMD 6870 still the best card for under $200 USD?

Or would the Nvidia GTX 560

or something not on the list?

I'm trying to help a friend pick the best card for under 200.00, and since I've completely switched to a mac, I've lost touch with the PC hardware scene. :s

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...
Grand Master

Kami-

Posted
Posted

Half of the system specs above are missing hard-drives, other half have hard-drives listed & priced.

No consideration for optical drives.

Also, I don't (personally) agree with a number of your proposed specifications; I can either build better for less on the budgets or better for similar on the higher end specs (assuming USA only websites).

Wasted my time opening this thread, let alone reading it - very disappointed.

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
Veteran

YounGMessiah

Posted
Posted

How often is this updated? Just curious, I'll be in the market in a few months, will probably just post a thread for all of your thoughts when that occurs but I like the idea of this thread.

What do you want to know?

  • 2 months later...

Guest

Posted
Posted

What the hell is this 'guide'??? Seriously... this is total crap.
I haven't looked at the PC hardware market since 2006 so reading something to get me up to speed would've been perfect. Being given example builds with NO explanation whatsoever is just crap. Then obviously you get people disagreeing with that build....

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I've custom-built all my own PCs and servers since the 90s, and this is the first time I have had to put a NAS together. Even if the actual base ZimaBoard 2 was already a completed build, it still feels pretty custom. I just wish that IceWhale Technology included a getting-started guide in the box for the Start Kit, which would have really completed this kit. Instead, I had to search for the official video on the YouTube channel to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. So who is this for? Definitely the hobbyist who is comfortable building their own PC and servers. It also has a much smaller footprint than its nearest equivalent (in terms of specs), like the Beelink Me Pro, which is another NAS I will be testing soon. Although the Beelink does not come with the PCIe 3.0 X4 expansion, the ZimaBoard 2 Starter Kit suddenly looks to be a great bargain, even if it only offers the two 3.5-inch bays over the four in the other example. It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N150 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the ZimaBoard 2 is intended for, media streaming and backup. It also looks like the IceWhale Technology staff are quite active in the official forums helping people with issues they come across with ZimaOS and the devices, peer support seems to be good as well, I was quickly able to find why I was not able to create a new Storage Pool in ZimaOS v1.6.1 even though that is quite a serious bug, hopefully it will be fixed in the next update. If you are comfortable with the command line and Docker, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. This was my first time with ZimaOS. It seems a bit barebones in comparison to the likes of Synology DSM, TOS, and UGOS, but it has a ton of apps to get you started with your home or small business NAS. Where to buy As of publishing, IceWhale Technology is running a discount of up to 5% for the Starter Kit. If you opt to get just the ZimaBoard 2 itself, it does come with a SATA Y-Cable, so you will be able to connect up to two 3.5-inch HDDs to it. ZimaBoard 2 1668 Starter Kit for $534.50 on Amazon US (was $548.60) ZimaBoard 2 832 Starter Kit for $372.88 on Amazon US (was $390.60) Zimaboard 2 1668 (16GB+64GB) for $419.90 on Amazon US Zimaboard 2 832 (8GB+32GB) for $359.90 on Amazon Disclosure: IceWhale Technology provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Good to know The Amazon link is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. 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