We all know that , generally mouth , buy the newest top - end part have you the most carrying into action . But in most lawsuit , the premium you compensate for that part covers a whole lot of other stuff as well that has no bearing on inning rate or video encoding times . We ’re babble about the add together price of covering research and exploitation , product merchandising , lowly production output , etc . That high price also include a vanity tax , if you will - the supererogatory charge receive by folks who simply want to have the latest computer hardware , hot off the fab , for brag rights .
splash out on the very latest geartrain is all well and good , if you ’re roll in cabbage . But for most of us , the problem of choosing what part to purchase is much more nuanced . The physical object is to find the hardware that offers the great value - the good Mary Leontyne Price - to - public presentation ratio .
That ’s our objective here - to prove each of the major PC part categories , execute the relevant benchmarks where warranted , and zero in on the desired honeyed spot . What we ’ve arrive up with is a list of parts that are open of meeting a distinctive enthusiast substance abuser ’s needs for the good Mary Leontyne Price possible .
CPU
Pay for the threads you need , not the threads you want
Make no error , we love heart and soul and togs . But when you set off speak about bang for the buck and sweet spots , eight - essence and six - core central processing unit do n’t fit into the equation ( well , unless you considerAMD ’s Bulldozer , but that ’s another matter ) . As tycoon drug user who like to on a regular basis fell in new CPUs , we have a personal fondness for theLGA2011platform , but frankly , LGA2011 carries a price premium that the vast absolute majority of users do n’t need to pay .
Really , when you talk about bang for the buck , it very much gets into the complicated interrogation of just what variety of bang you ’re after . Are you a 100 per centum gamer ( a rare duck , in our book ) or someone who spends most of his or her time pushing pixels professionally ?
Since you pay for every train of thought in your system , you need to verify they ’re actually working for you . Take a gander at our benchmark chart , which compares a six - inwardness Core i7 - 3930 super acid to the quad - kernel Core i7 - 3820 . To see what impact threads have on the benchmark , we become Hyper - Threading on and off for both processors . The economic value of the screw thread are there - but only if you have multithreaded apps that can apply them . For the most part , today ’s apps are optimized for musculus quadriceps femoris - heart and soul or lower .
This quad part propose Ivy Bridge performance and is unbarred for overclocking .
Based on our train of thought experiment , we trust we can make a case for Intel ’s $ 230 quadrangle - core 3.4GHz Core i5 - 3570 K crisp sans Hyper - Threading . Ivy Bridge offers at least a 10 percentage performance advantage over Sandy Bridge and the 3570 K is unbolted . Keep in mind , if you track down thread - heavy apps such as encoding or 3D interlingual rendition , you should make up for Hyper - Threading or move up to a six - sum part , but the sweet spot today persist four core .
We used an Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard , 8 GB of DDR3/1333 , a GeForce GTX 690 , and OCZ Vertex 3 SSD , and 64 - bit Windows 7 Professional for testing both processor configurations .
Videocard
It ’s a pie-eyed wash but this relative newcomer have the jacket
When you begin to equate price / performance ratios of GPUs at the high end of the graduated table , you typically see diminishing return once you go beyond about $ 300 . That ’s rarefied air up there , where 5–10 extra frame per second will be you an extra $ 100 or so . The genuine struggle for frames , frags , mind , and dollars exists below that monetary value peak , as the GPUs loitering in the mid-$200 realm offer very good performance for literally half the price of the flagship videocards . This is the sweet spot - typically around $ 250 or so - where you’re able to find oneself 1080p gaming at 60fps for the least amount of money possible .
Do n’t let its size and single 6 - pin power connexion saphead you - the GTX 660 is a serious gaming weapon system .
After canvas the card game in this pricing segment , as well the cards in the pricing segment above it , we ’re granting the brand - new Nvidia GTX 660 best - bang - for - the - buck status . At just $ 230 , this GPU is faster than the more or less more expensive ( or same - priced , depending on where you shop ) AMD HD 7850 by a respectable margin , and even beats the pricier $ 280 Radeon HD 7870 in some of our tests , have it the fastest GPU under $ 250 by a wide margin .
So , why not drop $ 70 more and get a GTX 660 si ? Looking at the bench mark chart , you’re able to see that extra money nets you some performance gain , but in our judgment you do n’t get enough of a return on that investment . The GTX 660 Ti cost roughly 25 percent more than a GTX 660 , and yet offer an norm of 15 percent performance betterment in most tests . When you tabulate price - per - Federal Protective Service , the GTX 660 also has the vantage over the GTX 660 Ti in the majority of tests we go , making it the time value leader . As icing on the bar , you only need one 6 - pin connector alternatively of the two that big card postulate , so you ’re saving money in the PSU section , as well .
dependable scores are bolded . Our test seam is a 3.3GHz Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P797X Deluxe motherboard with 16 GB Corsair DDR3/1600 RAM and a Corsair AX1200 PSU . The OS is 64 - mo Windows 7 Ultimate . All secret plan were run at 1900×1200 with 4x AA unless otherwise noted .
Motherboard
It does n’t be much to go from strippo mobo to feature - rich
When it comes to motherboards , you may seemingly expend as much as you want or as small . So , do you need a bells - and - whistles add-in like Asus ’s ultimate Z77P8Z77 - V Premiumwith its Thunderbolt and PLX chips for four - style GPUs , or is a $ 90 Z77 strippo board good enough ? We find the sweet spot for a price - conscious major power user to be right about $ 190 . surely , you could get a microATX Z77 board for under $ 100 , but it ’s unremarkably ransack down to the au naturel of essentials , with thermal on the VRMs as an afterthought . It ’s like getting a new car with curlicue - up windows and manual locks . We believe that by stepping up to about $ 190 , you get such worthwhile amenities asVirtu intercrossed - graphics support , multi - GPU support ( both CrossFireX and SLI ) , and ports galore . Some good deterrent example of knock - for - the - buck boards areAsus ’s P8Z77 - VandGigabyte ’s Z77X - UP4 TH . Both are feature film - deep yet do n’t give out the $ 200 mark .
Solid-State Drive
400MB / s reads , 250MB / s writes , less than $ 200
Right now the fresh spot for solid - state drives is a 6Gb / s SATA SSD in a capacity near 256 GB ( 240 GB for a SandForce - based drive ) . Why 256 ? 256 is big enough to lay in your o , course of study , and several games , and many modern controllers are optimized for that capacity - SandForce SF-2281 controllers , for model , have 16 lanes , and a 240 GB drive has 16 NAND modules . Best of all , thanks to this yr ’s monumental cost drop , SSD prices are under a dollar per gigabyte : you’re able to get a 256 GB Samsung 830 Series , one of our favorite SSDs , for under $ 230 .
Not the newest nor the firm , but upright speeds for a just terms .
So , which SSD offers the best value ? Crucial ’s M4 SSD is a favourite of scheme builders for its comparatively good functioning and low-down cost . It ’s not the fastest 6Gb / s SATA SSD , but it ’s enough tight by any banner , and it ’s attractively price . For $ 180 at the time of this writing , you’re able to get a drive with sustained reads over 400MB / s , sustain writes over 250MB / s , and good random - read and -write performance , as well . For $ 20 more you get theOCZ Vertex 4 , with reads and writes in the 440MB / s range and higher random IOPS , and for $ 50 more than the M4 you may get a Samsung 830 Series drive , with 500MB / s - plus sequential reads , 400MB / s writes , but depleted random IOPS - which is okay , unless you ’re running a really active database server .
The specific drive you get will look on current pricing , and ( as is the case with most components ) you may get a great cause for a small more than the cost of a very good drive , but right now we think the Crucial M4 is the sweet spot to beat .
Hard Drive
The adept ride is also the best value
It ’s weird to say this , but the mellisonant - smirch hard drive is the same as theBest of the Best gruelling drive . The 3 TB Seagate Barracuda is the best combining of price , functioning , and capacity , whether you ’re using it as your only drive or as the backup for a boot SSD . Its sequential read and spell speeds of over 150MB / s make it the flying 7,200rpm drive we ’ve ever test , and its price of $ 140 means its per - G price is only 4.6 cents , work it the effective economic value on the market right now . By contrast , 2 TB “ Green ” driving , which gyrate at around 5,900rpm , are around $ 120 from WD and Seagate right now . Why pay more per gigabyte for irksome memory board ? Cost - per - gibibyte goes way up as size of it buy the farm down , too , specially for any drive under 1 TB .
At 4.6 cents per gigabyte , you ca n’t afford to pass off up the Barracuda 3 TB .
If your budget ca n’t stretch to $ 140 and you do n’t have an SSD , you ’ll want to prioritize performance over capacity . Get a 2 TB Barracuda ( make indisputable it ’s one of the two - phonograph recording 7,200rpm one with 64 MB of cache ) . At $ 100 , that ’s 5 penny per G . 2 TB WD Caviar Black drives , on the other hand , are over $ 200 at press time .
If you do have an SSD and you only have , say , $ 85 or $ 90 , get the 1.5 TB Barracuda Green from NCIX US . It ’s one of the few driveway over 1 TB that are under $ 100 right now , though we hope that change as the industry recovers .
Whether Seagate is engaged in a price state of war or it just fared better in the Thailand floods of last year , its driving force prices are
unbeatable at press metre , and the 3 TB Barracuda is by far the most uproarious business deal .
Case
There ’s no want to pay more for a substantial enclosure
There are people who say that the display case does n’t count , that the seraphic spot for showcase is “ as cheap as you could maybe get . ” These multitude are tough and they should feel bad . The sweet spot for vitrine is decently around $ 100 . At $ 100 , you may get a great mid - tower or full - tower case with unanimous build quality , plenty of fans or fan mount options , front - panel USB 3.0 , toolless thrust bays , and a overnice paint job . Below that you ’ll forfeit build timber or feeling , and above that you go getting fancy , with water - cool down mounts , backing for giant motherboards or a half - dozen fans , or premium materials , but $ 100 will get you a character with proficient zephyr cooling that you could be proud of .
Our favorite cases at $ 100 are theFractal Design Define R4and the NZXT Phantom 410 . The Define R4 is the more flexible of the two . It ’s more of a silent microcomputer by design , with its acoustical froth on the inside of the side venire and its unused sports fan holes covered with sound - damping material until hit to impart fans . The Phantom 410 looks stunning , especially in blood-red or gray , and comes with much more fan supporting and more fans , flat out .
These are n’t the only cases at $ 100 and below that are worthy of retainer , but they ’re two of our preferent mid - towers and they both happen to be around the $ 100 angelic spot .
RAM
8GB DDR3/1600 or DDR3/1866
The unfermented home to be is in three-fold - channel modal value
How much random-access memory do you need , how many channel , and what speed ? From our experience , and based on today ’s random-access memory prices and capacities , we recommend 8 GB of DDR3/1600 . Everyone knows that 2 GB is not enough RAM today . And while 4 GB is o.k. , why stop there when 8 GB is n’t much more ? At press time , 8 GB of DDR3/1600 fetched some $ 40 while 4 GB is about $ 30 .
Should you buy more Aries than that ? Only you may answer that motion . If your applications are RAM hogs or you lean to multitask , extra RAM ca n’t hurt .
8 GB is truly the raw 4 GB when it comes to RAM .
There ’s one more irritating trouble , though : How many storage channels do you really take ? Is it deserving paying the supererogatory surcharge for a quad - line frame-up or is dual - television channel enough ? To find out , we took our trustworthy LGA2011 - establish zero - point , set it to osseous tissue - stock clock amphetamine and examine it with 8 GB of DDR3/1333 in space - channel , dual - channel , and , well , unmarried - groove , using various benchmarks . Some of the benchmarks are GPU - limited and others are CPU - limited to make a point that memory bandwidth wo n’t make a conflict in many of your coating . Stepping from quad to dual does n’t hurt much , but run to exclusive will in spades take a bite out of carrying out , although not as much as you would distrust . In fact , upping the remembering speed from DDR3/1333 to DDR3/1866 actually erased the difference in the apps that seem to like bandwidth the most : encoding .
Why does memory board bandwidth make nary a difference in the Brobdingnagian majority of apps ? Thank the huge caches in today ’s processor . The only time you really need to go all - out on memory bandwidth is when you ’re intending to game with integrate art .
We used an Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard , 8 GB of DDR3/1333 , GeForce GTX 690 , OCZ Vertex 3 SSD , and 64 - bit Windows 7 Professional for try both CPU configurations . We used an Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard , 8 GB of DDR3/1333 , GeForce GTX 690 , OCZ Vertex 3 SSD , and 64 - chip Windows 7 Professional for testing both central processing unit configurations .
Air Cooler
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
The undecomposed cooler - for - the - coin we ’ve ever tested
There are many unsolved enigma in life-time , such as who build up the pyramids , where socks go during laundry , and how is it potential that the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo costs only $ 35 . It just does n’t make any sentience . This simple cooling gadget has bested the legal age of our skyscraper tank since it was reexamine in January 2012 , and yet it has be less than almost every unmarried one of its competitors , making it a rare jewel in the man of personal computer components .
What about body of water cooling ? We ’re not run short to go there , plainly because even though the all - in - one designs have radically simplified the installment and maintenance of cooling loops , their price - to - functioning ratio is still not as good as what ’s uncommitted from a solid air cooler . In fact , in some cases the big air coolers do better than their smooth brethren while cost less , so the sweet spot for now is definitely on dry land .
All temperatures in degrees Celsius . good scores bolded . All trial performed using an Intel Core i7 - 3960 at 4.2GHz , on an Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboard with 16 GB DDR3/1600 , in a Thermaltake Level 10 GT with strain fans set to High .
PSU
grease one’s palms just enough PSU for your needs
Our normal advice for an enthusiast constructing a organization is to think long term , overbuild because you do n’t be intimate what part your machine will terminate up with , and consider how heavily your PSU is working on those swelter days of summer . And if we were making a recommendation for someone using our guidelines , we ’d say grease one’s palms a Corsair TX 750 V2 or Thermaltake Smart 730 . Both are about $ 100 , give you a gracious long five - yr warranty , and declare oneself four 6 + 2 connectors for future buirdly - GPU support .
But this account is about bang for the buck , and with today ’s sweet - stain GPUs offering pretty wonderful big businessman envelope , we surprise even ourselves by stepping down in PSUs . Corsair ’s $ 70 CX600 V2 offer 600 watts and two 6 + 2 GPU power connector . The PSU has plenty of power to run a single - GPU machine , no job , and even SLI if you keep the system properly cool . Be cognisant , if you design to change from our sweet - billet GPU , the TX 750 V2 is recommended instead .
Best Box for the Buck
When you put all these great - value parts together , you end up with one mellisonant PC
1 . The NZXT Phantom 410 easily accommodates all our theatrical role , with room to save for expansion . The Gunmetal key job look hella tough , too .
2 . With an Intel Core i5 - 3570 K onboard and the cool down prowess of the Cooler Master 212 Evo , you ’d be a fool not to overclock .
3 . The GTX 660 let us connect to a 1080p panel and get 60fps with all preferences maxed out .
4 . Gigabyte ’s Z77X - UP4 is SLI - well-disposed , so commence saving your shekels for that second card .
Proof positive you could get a set of bang for 1,200 bucks . preeminence : toll reflect NewEgg and Amazon prices at pressure fourth dimension .
Sweet Spot Hall of Fame
They captured our warmheartedness with a combo of boot - As performance and killer cost
At the Bang - for - the - Buckers reunification , there will always be a seat reserved for Intel ’s Celeron 300A. The “ Celery ” 300A ’s call to fame was an almost guaranteed overclock from 300MHz to 450MHz . You barrack today , but that conflict get you get execution similar to a $ 670 450MHz Pentium II , but for only $ 150 .
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
How groovy was the $ 250 GeForce 8800 GT ? It was faster than the next card up the ladder and damn near as fast as the one a round above that . It was so popular that Nvidia will still mention to a new card in its card as the “ GeForce 8800 GT ” of the bedding .
We ’re drop dead to break form here by declaringAMDCPUs bang - for - the - buckers . Which one ? Just pick any , because nigh all of them characterize . Yes , AMD is out of the hunt properly now , but in general its chips have always been incredibly price militant and have sustain Intel ’s price far more reasonable .
proved that an excellent tank did n’t have to be a claw and a tendril . The astonishing affair is that the $ 25 Hyper 212 Plus was as upright as 90 percent of the pack that cost double as much , and it came jolly darn close to the just performers , too .
You ’re believably spoiled by today ’s $ 100 enclosure , but years ago , all a hundy would get you was a razor - sword - shaped boxwood made from recycled roller skate . The P900 gave you unbelievable bang for the dollar and nearly a full set of fans instead of the typical 10 - exhaust - ports - but - just - one - fan routine .
Dual - proc homo ( and char ) have always gotten gouge on price - you literally had to pay for the perquisite of running two processors . Abit ’s BP6 shattered that price lock by giving you a treble - proc dining table that let you run and overclock two Socket 370 Celerons - a config the Celery was never speculate to support !
Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200
Before the GeForce 8800 GT , there was the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 . The 4200 ’s authentication was that despite Nvidia intentionally Nerfing the card to keep it from competing with higher - closing plug-in , circuit card marketer snub the clock - velocity directive and sell boat loads of them , all but kill its sibling , the Ti 4400 .
The angelical berth in C.P.U. always seems to be near the $ 250 mark . At $ 266 , the 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 was exactly the same as the $ 1,000 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800 in hoard and front - side - omnibus amphetamine . Oh , and it overclocked just fine , thank you .
Note : This article was taken from the December 2012 number of the magazine .
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