PC Hardware Buyer's Guide, January 2011
Posted on 19th Jan 2011 at 11:05 by bit-tech Staff with 55 comments
As you can probably tell from the format of this article, we won’t be publishing our usual buyer's guide for the month of January. This is largely because there's a heck of a lot of cool stuff around the corner, and if we put something up this week it will be out of date by next week anyway.
At the top of this list is a not-so-secret graphics card launch that we’re expecting early next week, which promises to make most cards in the £150 to £220 price bracket seem utterly archaic. Add to this the pile of new LGA1155 motherboards that are currently taking over our labs, and it's clearly premature to recommend anything concrete right now.
That said, we don’t want to leave you totally in the dark, so below is the system we would build right now if you put a gun to our collective head. The core of the PC consists of the mind bendingly overclockable Intel Core i5 2500K seated in the excellent Asus P8P67 motherboard. This combination will keep just about everyone happy, but if you simply have to get a dual-GPU setup, then you should opt for the Pro version of the P8P67 or the MSI P67A-GD65, both of which support SLI and Crossfire.
We’ve also answered the question of graphics with the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. These cards can be had for just a smidgen over £130 at the moment, which is a steal for a card that can play most modern games at up to 1,920 x 1,200. However, if you’re desperate for more gaming grunt, then swapping this out for a GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB will do you proud.
Meanwhile, we’ve used a Gelid Tranquillo cooler to tame our 2500K CPU. Of course, you could opt for something a little flashier, but LGA1155 CPUs put out relatively little heat, so it’s not absolutely necessary. The case we’ve chosen is the Xigmatek Utgard, as it has great build-quality and a and a well-rounded feature set for an affordable price. However, if you’d like something a little more distinctive or specialised, perhaps for a large water-cooling system, then there are plenty of other options to consider. Other good cases on offer include the Silverstone FT02 and RV02, the Fractal Design Define R3 and the Cooler Master HAF 912.
As for the rest of the kit, we’ve added a healthy 1TB of storage to the build, along with 4GB of branded 1,600MHz DDR3 and a standard SATA DVD-RW optical drive. You could, of course, also complement the 1TB disk with an SSD if you’ve got the budget for it. If so, we recommend the C300 range of drives from Crucial.
We hope you'll agree that getting a fully-fledged Sandy Bridge system for a shade under £700 is pretty reasonable, especially when you consider that the build will offer performance near to an LGA1366-based system.
We'll be back to our normal monthly buyer's guide at the start of February, so check back then or ask in the forums if the above build doesn't quite match your needs.
At the top of this list is a not-so-secret graphics card launch that we’re expecting early next week, which promises to make most cards in the £150 to £220 price bracket seem utterly archaic. Add to this the pile of new LGA1155 motherboards that are currently taking over our labs, and it's clearly premature to recommend anything concrete right now.
That said, we don’t want to leave you totally in the dark, so below is the system we would build right now if you put a gun to our collective head. The core of the PC consists of the mind bendingly overclockable Intel Core i5 2500K seated in the excellent Asus P8P67 motherboard. This combination will keep just about everyone happy, but if you simply have to get a dual-GPU setup, then you should opt for the Pro version of the P8P67 or the MSI P67A-GD65, both of which support SLI and Crossfire.
We’ve also answered the question of graphics with the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. These cards can be had for just a smidgen over £130 at the moment, which is a steal for a card that can play most modern games at up to 1,920 x 1,200. However, if you’re desperate for more gaming grunt, then swapping this out for a GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB will do you proud.
Meanwhile, we’ve used a Gelid Tranquillo cooler to tame our 2500K CPU. Of course, you could opt for something a little flashier, but LGA1155 CPUs put out relatively little heat, so it’s not absolutely necessary. The case we’ve chosen is the Xigmatek Utgard, as it has great build-quality and a and a well-rounded feature set for an affordable price. However, if you’d like something a little more distinctive or specialised, perhaps for a large water-cooling system, then there are plenty of other options to consider. Other good cases on offer include the Silverstone FT02 and RV02, the Fractal Design Define R3 and the Cooler Master HAF 912.
As for the rest of the kit, we’ve added a healthy 1TB of storage to the build, along with 4GB of branded 1,600MHz DDR3 and a standard SATA DVD-RW optical drive. You could, of course, also complement the 1TB disk with an SSD if you’ve got the budget for it. If so, we recommend the C300 range of drives from Crucial.
We hope you'll agree that getting a fully-fledged Sandy Bridge system for a shade under £700 is pretty reasonable, especially when you consider that the build will offer performance near to an LGA1366-based system.
We'll be back to our normal monthly buyer's guide at the start of February, so check back then or ask in the forums if the above build doesn't quite match your needs.
55 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyOh damn, you got in just before I fixed that!
1) Removable Utgard hard drive cage is pig. Quite tricky to get the HD in (think keyhole surgery to screw HD in), but more importantly the HD cage conflicts with the edge mounted SATA ports of theP8P67 mobo. This means that you can't install / remove the hard drive without removing the mobo (and guess what I put the mobo in the case before the HD). Don't think I was doing anything wrong, but maybe I missed a trick
2) Shipping BIOS for this mobo (0402) is a bit rough. For example didn't want to let me install Win 7 on the 1T Samsung F3 (new UEFI partition structure). THere is a work around. Also seems to want to run my 2*4Gb Corsair RAM at 1066 rather than the rated 1600. Need to play with the BIOS/UEFI, as I guess there is an answer there, but plan on a BIOS flash instead/first.
This said though 2500K @ 4GHz (for now) + GTX 460 1GB + the rest of this shiny stuff is a really nice PC. My OC'd C2D is now out to pasture.
will 560>570?
sounds stupid but I think it will
Otherwise, well, we'll have to wait once more. I'd have kicked myself if I'd have bought a i/-950 system one week before sandybridge. :D
I don't suppose the "new to be announced card" will move to top-end graphics, but we'll see.
Also, I'm looking forwards to a ton of MoBo tests
What's February's guide going to be cancelled for? A super new motherboard that gives a 5% increase/decrease in performance/energy use?
May-June is usually the quiet area hardwarewise
Like sp4nky, I am always nervous of the delay strategy (always something better around the corner in PC tech), but I'm glad I waited a couple of months for Sandy Bridge - I nearly bought a i5 760 ~Nov. I also wouldn't buy a GTX 460 now, so I was glad that I upgraded this seperately when it came out, and had one to carry over to my new build. Phased upgrade may be the answer vs. waiting for all the stars to align (i.e. all the cool new components to come through together). Used in this way regular Hardware guides are really useful.
Maybe you missed this article?
Both the GTX460 1GB and HD6850 1GB can be had for around the same price it seems(around the £130 mark).
I had skimmed that article, but it seems more about speed than size of memory. The last line says >4Gb if heavy multitasking, but the Tomshardware article talked about other benefits, e.g. general smoothness, GFX memory is better fed leading to less HD driven stutters and objects appearing in view at longer distances rather than popping up when you get close.
Ahh I see, I haven't read that article actually - I'll go have a quick flick though it.
When bit-tech tells me to hold off I trust the advice because it's usually due to something signifianct and it hasn't let me down so far.
Since we can safely assume that the 560 release will shake things up in that pricerange, I'm wondering if it's going to affect the higher end market segment.
If people settle on 560s more, will the prices of 570s and 580s come down slightly to make them more attractive, or will nVidia be content to just shift boxes of 560s and keep the 570/580 at premium prices?
Supply vs Demand is what dictates the prices. Even if nVidia decides to keep the price of the GTX570 GPU and the AIB partners follow suit, the retailers will simply stop stocking up, and eventually lower the prices themselves, when the demand goes out the window. Sure, they'll sacrifice profits, but it's better to minimize losses than to be stubborn. In turn, nVidia will have to cave in and either lower the 570 (and maybe 580) prices or introduce something to fill the gap, say, 565.
THANK YOU!!!!! Seriously Bit-Tech, if you guys put off a buyer's guide every time there's something new around the corner, you're NEVER GOING TO HAVE A BUYERS GUIDE AT ALL. Just publish a "What's best this month" with a disclaimer about what's coming soon. There are people out there who aren't in a position to wait and would like the info. Either that or just postpone your buyer's guides until Quantum Computing becomes a reality and stop f&$king with us.
An ebay page? Ha ha!
"a not-so-secret graphics card launch ....which promises to make most cards in the £150 to £220 price bracket seem utterly archaic"
BUT WILL IT PLAY CRYSIS? ...and more to the point ...WILL BT TEST IT IN THAT GAME TO PROVE THAT IT CAN ...OR CAN'T???
The GTX460SE,ie, GTX460 Smart Edition has less shaders than a normal GTX460 1GB.
I'm seriously tempted by the latter, but then I've always been on the ATi side of the fence.
I could also be tempted by a 560 or 1GB 6970, depending on the price/performance of both.
Nope.
Also, bit-tech were right to delay the guide. The games they've chosen for graphics testing on the other hand........
I agree this is stupid, instead of waiting for the GTX560 just put a Radeon HD6870 in the build instead.
(oh, and it's lovely and sunny here near bristol today. Freezing, but sunny.)
wonder how close to 570 it will get!
Best motherboard so far is the Asrock Extreme 4. 8x8 dual GPU and all the overclocking futures you will need for a price even cheaper than the P8P67. I'm hopeful that you guys will agree. Ultimately I think Intel will dominate the motherboard arena but they are a bit behind schedule for now.
If you had the money or needs to build a rig now then buy their recommended base unit or go back to November for differing budgets.
If you can wait a couple of weeks then I'm sure you will benefit from it.
SandyBridge appears to be a no brainer, it's just the GFX releases that will be the key and team green appear to be the preferred choice there. Let's wait and see.
The 480 to 580 upgrade was done by unlocking some SMs and increasing the clocks, leading to a performance increase of about 20%. The same changes made to a 460 will put the 560 somewhere in the gap between the 6850 and the 6870, though closer to the 6850. A 35% increase would put it on par with the 6870, 40% would put it somewhere between the 6950 and the 6970.
I would be surprised to see more than a 30% increase on the 460's performance with what they've done to the card, so the chances are this new card is going to replace the GTX 470, which is old, hot and noisy now. A nice cool, quiet NVidia card is needed around that performance level. The 570 is similar to the 480, so it makes sense that the 560 will match the 470, or more likely beat it a little bit.
As for overclocking, I don't see how the headroom will have increased on the 560 compared to the 460. Yes the 460 could be overclocked by a large percentage, but that's because it had relatively low stock speeds. The 560 starts with higher clock speeds so if they've not done anything significant to the card to change how high it'll clock it's not going to go much beyond what the 460 could do. Based on that, it's possible that while at stock speeds the 560 will beat the 460 by about 30%, it might drop to below 20% when both cards are overclocked.
Time will tell I suppose!
Although having seen the price of that perhaps they are aiming for the 6870-6950 gap. It's not a big gap, so fancy versions like this will be between the 6950 and 6970 instead. I'll stick by my 30% performance increase for the stock cards, though perhaps I should be updating that to 35%.
Even if an overclocked 560 matches/exceeds the 6950 performance at the right price, wouldnt the fact that you can flash a 6950 BIOS to a 6970 still make it a poor choice?
And if the same is true of the imminent 6950 1GB, it should be an interesting fight. Definitely worth waiting a week to find out.
Bear in mind some people have had stability issues flashing up to a 6970. They were probably resigned to 6950 duty for a reason, after all.
What was the point of that link?
Very true, although I cant say I've read of many stability issues.
There are rumours that AMD are revising the 6900 series to put a stop to this. They wouldnt bother if people werent having some success.
Nope, most people have a tendency to really overpower their PSU's :D
The stability issues all seem to relate to the differing memory timings between the HD6950 and the HD6970. A way around this is to flash the card with a unlocked HD6950 bios which gives you the shaders but keeps the clock speeds (and timings) of the HD6950 intact.
I wasn't aware of this, have some rep!