In the affordable, wouldnt a Phenom 840 and AM3+ board be a better and cheaper option? AM3+ = more future proof than Intel's flavour of the week sockets, and the Phenom 840 (even w/out l3 cache) performs pretty much equally as well as the core i3 2100, and is a quad core?
Buyers guide looks good this time around. Bit have finally adjusted the pricing on the affordable all rounder to better reflect the GPU and memory pricing.
One critism though is the PSU. It might be excellent but £75 is too much for a 525w PSU especially considering the excellent Corsair TXV2 650w can be had for £10 less.....
It is also too expensive considering the build it is going in (£500 all in). If you dropped the PSU to something like the BeQuiet L7 530w (~£42) and dropped the cpu cooler entirely you could squeeze a Core i5 2500k in the system. Increase the budget a small amount and the cpu cooler can also be added back.
Originally Posted by confusis In the affordable, wouldnt a Phenom 840 and AM3+ board be a better and cheaper option? AM3+ = more future proof than Intel's flavour of the week sockets, and the Phenom 840 (even w/out l3 cache) performs pretty much equally as well as the core i3 2100, and is a quad core?
Yes, but not as future proof as the intel option. With this one, drop in a 2500k when you have the cash and you're nicely upgraded. In fact, add another 460 for £120 and you've got a very good gaming machine.
Originally Posted by Sentinel-R1 Yes, but not as future proof as the intel option. With this one, drop in a 2500k when you have the cash and you're nicely upgraded. In fact, add another 460 for £120 and you've got a very good gaming machine.
Or, with socket am3+ (like i said in my post) you have at least a year, maybe two of upgrade life..remember bulldozer is coming out soon?.. intel changes sockets like they change their underwear
The Vertex 3 (and other Sandforce 2281 SSDs) are too unreliable for a boot drive. They have a BSOD bug that has yet to be fixed (even after months of trying). I really wanted to buy a Vertex 3 but I cannot justify it (especially after browsing the OCZ forums).
The Intel 510 240GB is MUCH more reliable and equally fast as the Vertex 3 in most tests. The 510 costs a bit more but I cannot risk losing my system to BSODs.
Micro-ATX boards don't have enough PCI slots for me. So I think I will get the P8P67 Pro R3.1 instead.
Nice and informative. I'm sure my x58 system can last till November, though. Also I like how you use the Xigmatek Elysium which is excellent value for money. Best £150 I've ever spent.
Looks better that last month I must say. Only thing that caught my eye was a 75 pounds PSU for a budget build. Reducing that to a 450 corsair could allow alot of people to squeeze in a quad core
Originally Posted by confusis Or, with socket am3+ (like i said in my post) you have at least a year, maybe two of upgrade life..remember bulldozer is coming out soon?.. intel changes sockets like they change their underwear
Don't get me wrong, I'm not wholly disagreeing with you. We've yet to see how Bulldozer will stand up to a 2500/2600K - but realistically, I think AMD will have a tough fight to top those two CPUs, therefore I think they're spot on with their recommendations and a Sandybridge gaming system will last a lot longer than 2 years before it needs upgrading again.
Originally Posted by xaser04 Buyers guide looks good this time around. Bit have finally adjusted the pricing on the affordable all rounder to better reflect the GPU and memory pricing.
One critism though is the PSU. It might be excellent but £75 is too much for a 525w PSU especially considering the excellent Corsair TXV2 650w can be had for £10 less.....
It is also too expensive considering the build it is going in (£500 all in). If you dropped the PSU to something like the BeQuiet L7 530w (~£42) and dropped the cpu cooler entirely you could squeeze a Core i5 2500k in the system. Increase the budget a small amount and the cpu cooler can also be added back.
Thankyou for your post :) - Looking at dropping the price a tiny bit myself
Originally Posted by Article This month weve made a couple of significant changes to the spec of our Affordable All-Rounder. First of these is a change in motherboard, as we (rightly) took some stick in the comments thread of our last buyer's guide for recommending an H67-based motherboard. This was done to keep the price of the build down and the chipsets lack of overclocking didnt matter too much, given that were also recommending a processor that cant overclock. Realistically, though, using an H67 board overly limits your upgrade options, as youll never have the option to slap in a K-series CPU and go overclock happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaverickWill At the risk of coming across as slightly arrogant, I think the ball has been somewhat dropped by the Bit-Tech boys, with regards to the Affordable All-Rounder. Changing out the Pentium for the i3-2100 is a bit of a sideways step (I'd normally stick to overclocking-friendly parts on budget builds to eke out that lovely performance), but understandable if an upgrade path is desired.
And then it gets a swift kick to the chops by using an H67 motherboard. Really, guys? You recommend an upgrade path through LGA1155 with ZERO chance of using the i5-2500K? To add insult to injury, you take one of the most frugally-powered desktop chips on the planet, and attach a Freezer 7 Pro. For the extra £15, you could have a P67 motherboard, right?
It might not be significant, but I've managed change faster than Obama. Yeahhh!
Just me, or do these setups get more expensive every month?
The All rounder has gone from £445 - £465 - £500 Getting past the point of been the "affordable" one, no?
I know prices change, but seriously, you just seem to replace stuff with more expensiv stuff for no reason in each build.
price of all rounder has gone a bit high. £3-400 is more like most peoples budgets in this market.
£2100 for a pc at premium player is beyound what id consider premium its more like money no object, And unless your running 3 screen gaming ( in which case the pc would cost around £3000 ) its totally overkill for every gamer on the market.
re bsod issue in the ssds they have been fixed now in latest firmware.
Judging by the release of this bulldozer must perform pretty badly as its less than a week away acording to most sources so is this bit tech jumping the gun or have you actually got the performance stats that show it is not a great success.
or is it just hugely overpriced for the performance it offers which would be a huge shock.
Originally Posted by rollo Judging by the release of this bulldozer must perform pretty badly as its less than a week away acording to most sources so is this bit tech jumping the gun or have you actually got the performance stats that show it is not a great success.
or is it just hugely overpriced for the performance it offers which would be a huge shock.
If one of the Intel rigs were to disappear in favour of a Bulldozer rig:
1 - We could reasonably interpret performance based on what it does and doesn't replace, which would probably be cutting any NDA quite finely
2 - There's no actual retail price for them yet (merely the occasional RRP), so it's tough to tell where retailers will price them.
3 - You can't get hold of them yet. B-T never retroactively updates its guides, and doesn't include future purchases that may or may not be in the lab. Read the reviews once they land, and see what the conclusion says.
My honest-to-goodness guess is AMD are banking on the strength of the integrated GPU to sell millions of low-end processors, but that won't quite cut it against the top-end that Intel has to offer. And with a discrete GPU in every machine here, the possibility of a replacement coming in is slim.
Originally Posted by confusis Or, with socket am3+ you have at least a year, maybe two of upgrade life..remember bulldozer is coming out soon?.. intel changes sockets like they change their underwear
Given that we don't know how bulldozer will perform we'd be nuts to recommend people buy inferior kit now in preparation for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by murraynt Looks better that last month I must say. Only thing that caught my eye was a 75 pounds PSU for a budget build. Reducing that to a 450 corsair could allow alot of people to squeeze in a quad core
We realize the PSU in the Affordable All-Rounder is a little on the dear side which is why we recommend some cheaper alternatives if you want to reduce the cost of the build. There is a sentence specifically addressing this issue with recommendations on how to get around it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rollo
Judging by the release of this bulldozer must perform pretty badly as its less than a week away acording to most sources so is this bit tech jumping the gun or have you actually got the performance stats that show it is not a great success.
We talk about the Bulldozer launch and whether we have any review samples in the Podcast we just recorded today. If you want to know more about potential Bulldozer performance i'd suggest you give it a listen - it should be up in the next few days, probably at the start of next week.
only real gripe i had was the 590 recommendation. and the psu's on a couple of builds...but hey, they are owned by a publishing company and, well, you can see where the advertising dollars are coming from...don't get me wrong....completely agree on the intel chips...but the gpu recommendations are a little puzzling. but i am basing this off of US prices, so....
Comments 1 to 25 of 109
ReplyOne critism though is the PSU. It might be excellent but £75 is too much for a 525w PSU especially considering the excellent Corsair TXV2 650w can be had for £10 less.....
It is also too expensive considering the build it is going in (£500 all in). If you dropped the PSU to something like the BeQuiet L7 530w (~£42) and dropped the cpu cooler entirely you could squeeze a Core i5 2500k in the system. Increase the budget a small amount and the cpu cooler can also be added back.
I`m ok with the cheaper ones, it`s open for discussion, but the 590 is just such a bad example of manufacturing. Defect rate is through the roof, because of the bad conceived VRM. How can that failure be a recomended video card?
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo-1VFMcbc
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/3/30/nvidia-geforce-gtx-590-deaths-continue/
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/747-39/maj-dossier-cartes-graphiques-degagement-thermique.html
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ro&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Flab501.ro%2Fplaci-video%2Fnvidia-geforce-gtx-590-studiu-de-overclocking%2F12
This last one being the most interesting, it shows the miniscule VRM Nvidia put on the 590.
And don`t tell me you didn`t know about this.
Yes, but not as future proof as the intel option. With this one, drop in a 2500k when you have the cash and you're nicely upgraded. In fact, add another 460 for £120 and you've got a very good gaming machine.
Or, with socket am3+ (like i said in my post) you have at least a year, maybe two of upgrade life..remember bulldozer is coming out soon?.. intel changes sockets like they change their underwear
The Vertex 3 (and other Sandforce 2281 SSDs) are too unreliable for a boot drive. They have a BSOD bug that has yet to be fixed (even after months of trying). I really wanted to buy a Vertex 3 but I cannot justify it (especially after browsing the OCZ forums).
The Intel 510 240GB is MUCH more reliable and equally fast as the Vertex 3 in most tests. The 510 costs a bit more but I cannot risk losing my system to BSODs.
Micro-ATX boards don't have enough PCI slots for me. So I think I will get the P8P67 Pro R3.1 instead.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not wholly disagreeing with you. We've yet to see how Bulldozer will stand up to a 2500/2600K - but realistically, I think AMD will have a tough fight to top those two CPUs, therefore I think they're spot on with their recommendations and a Sandybridge gaming system will last a lot longer than 2 years before it needs upgrading again.
I would post which ones, but I'm about to lose signal so shall do it later :p.
Thankyou for your post :) - Looking at dropping the price a tiny bit myself
It might not be significant, but I've managed change faster than Obama. Yeahhh!
Still on 4GB RAM? :|
+1
Title needs to be corrected, like this: "Intel and NVidia PC Hardware Buyer's Guide September 2011" .
P.C. Golden rule: The adds on site you see, the recommended config you get.
Do you see here any AMD add? ;-)
The All rounder has gone from £445 - £465 - £500 Getting past the point of been the "affordable" one, no?
I know prices change, but seriously, you just seem to replace stuff with more expensiv stuff for no reason in each build.
It's getting boring now!
£2100 for a pc at premium player is beyound what id consider premium its more like money no object, And unless your running 3 screen gaming ( in which case the pc would cost around £3000 ) its totally overkill for every gamer on the market.
re bsod issue in the ssds they have been fixed now in latest firmware.
Judging by the release of this bulldozer must perform pretty badly as its less than a week away acording to most sources so is this bit tech jumping the gun or have you actually got the performance stats that show it is not a great success.
or is it just hugely overpriced for the performance it offers which would be a huge shock.
If one of the Intel rigs were to disappear in favour of a Bulldozer rig:
1 - We could reasonably interpret performance based on what it does and doesn't replace, which would probably be cutting any NDA quite finely
2 - There's no actual retail price for them yet (merely the occasional RRP), so it's tough to tell where retailers will price them.
3 - You can't get hold of them yet. B-T never retroactively updates its guides, and doesn't include future purchases that may or may not be in the lab. Read the reviews once they land, and see what the conclusion says.
My honest-to-goodness guess is AMD are banking on the strength of the integrated GPU to sell millions of low-end processors, but that won't quite cut it against the top-end that Intel has to offer. And with a discrete GPU in every machine here, the possibility of a replacement coming in is slim.
Given that we don't know how bulldozer will perform we'd be nuts to recommend people buy inferior kit now in preparation for it.
We realize the PSU in the Affordable All-Rounder is a little on the dear side which is why we recommend some cheaper alternatives if you want to reduce the cost of the build. There is a sentence specifically addressing this issue with recommendations on how to get around it.
We talk about the Bulldozer launch and whether we have any review samples in the Podcast we just recorded today. If you want to know more about potential Bulldozer performance i'd suggest you give it a listen - it should be up in the next few days, probably at the start of next week.
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