|
High-End DIY Computer Buyer's Guide
Black Friday has come and gone. The shopping world is foaming from the mouth at the thought of getting our money. Let's be honest, we're going a little rabid ourselves. After all, computers are practically cheap now. Major manufacturers and OEMs are clamoring to deliver a sub-$500 laptop, Intel and AMD are throwing heavy punches at each other, and prices are going straight down as new territory is being explored in all areas of performance. With that said the time has come for us to give you the straight dope on what's ripe for picking. This is our High-End DIY Computer Buyer's Guide for the holiday season. The following components are elite for someone ready for an exceptionally powerful computer. And as is always the case with building your own, no OEM can really match a deal with the performance you'll get picking parts from this $3200 list. The prices are approximated, as is the shipping, which I've included in the totals. What this guide will not do is pull the trigger. It would be an overstatement to say that one guide could make the right computer for everyone, and as a system builder, you probably have opinions that should be weighed against this. As such, this guide is here to outline not just products, but their features; and based on these it will be up to use to make the call on what's going to end up in your personal computer. If you'd like to just buy the items I recommend, links will be provided to purchase each product for your convenience. Processor Recommend: Any Core 2 Duo LGA775 processor, starting at $180 Recommended Manufacturers: Intel Highly Recommend: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, $310 A Core 2 Duo will outperform a similarly-priced Athlon X2, and an AM2 motherboard will cost about the same. It is for these reasons I cannot, without reservation, recommend AMD. Sorry Team Green, show us what you've got next round. While still not the most extreme of the Core 2 Duo processors, the E6600 is the first of the chips with 4mb of L2 cache, and it's certainly better than any of its real competitors. If you've got the desire and dough for the X6800, at almost a grand, it's just a little ahead performance-wise, and has the coveted unlocked multiplier for overclocking. And yet still more impressive is the QX6700, for $1500. Even assuming $3200 for a computer is just a start, it's hard to recommend a quad-core processor when the world at large has only just considered two cores as a standard; unless you already know you need it, there's little reason for the behemoth. Primary Recommendation: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Alternative Recommendation: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Motherboard Recommend: Intel P965, 975X or nVidia nForce 680i motherboard, $220-$250 or $260 Recommended Manufacturers: aBit, Asus, Foxconn, and Gigabyte for Intel 975X, eVGA and Asus for nForce 680i Highly Recommend: Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 for P965, $210, ASUS P5W DH DELUXE/WIFI-AP for 975X, $230, eVGA nForce 680i SLI, $260 At the top, Intel's mid-range 965 chipsets still deliver, and should not be ruled out. There are a handful that match or beat some 975X motherboards for features and performance. And while it's actually an older chipset, the 975X is a contender. Either will make a fine backbone for the best computers. Both recommended boards support Crossfire. The newest player is nVidia's GeForce 680i. With overclocking to meet and beat even Intel's prized overclocker, the P965, nVidia's expensive alternative is not really matched by Team Blue. While Asus makes a great 680i, eVGA is the only reasonable choice; Asus' motherboards are currently selling for over $400 in some places. If you can wait, Biostar will soon be making their 680i boards available. Because the 680i officially supports SLI, if you're dead set on two of the following video cards, it's the only choice. Primary Recommendation: Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Alternative Recommendation: EVGA nForce 680i SLI Memory Recommend: 2x1024 PC6400, (800mhz) $300-400 Recommended Manufacturers: Corsair, Mushkin, OCZ Highly Recommend: Corsair Dominator, $305, OCZ Platinum, $300 Top-shelf DDR2 is a must for the kind of overclocking you can get away with using this hardware. If you're interested in some automagic overclocking, the 680i combined with EPP memory can do some impressive stuff. Keep in mind that if you don't really have a ceiling when buying this stuff, that you can always buy RAM that's rated above PC6400 for some guaranteed headroom while overclocking. Primary Recommendation: Corsair 2x1GB PC2-6400 Video Card Recommend: nVidia GeForce 8800GTS or 8800GTX, $450 or $635 Recommended Manufacturers: Any Highly Recommend: Any 8800GTS or 8800GTX While ATi delays with their DirectX 10 hardware, nVidia takes the brass ring. And as the GTS beats any other card on the market, the GTX beats any dual-card solution by itself. There's no real competition, or decision to make, if you can afford it. Because all 8800-series video cards are required to have factory clock speeds, there is little to differentiate between them right now. Go with price, if not, brand loyalty, if you need a tie-breaker. Primary Recommendation: NVIDIA 8800GTS Alternative Recommendation: NVIDIA 8800GTX Hard Drive Recommend: 400GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive, $150 or 150GB 10,000RPM SATA hard drive, $225 Recommended Manufacturers: Western Digital Highly Recommend: Two 400GB SATA Seagate 7200.10, $300 or two 150GB SATA Western Digital Raptors, $450 At the top of the stack, two hard drive manufacturers stand out. Seagate, with their perpendicular drives, their 7200.10-series, make amazing 750GB drives for just under $400 and 500GB drives around $200. At a more reasonable price point, their 400GB drives are available for only $150. Western Digital's Raptors are always appealing with their untouchable seek times and data transfer rates. Their prices are dropping, as well, making them available for high-end computing and not just the very elite. With all the motherboards in this guide, as well as most all new motherboards on the market supporting striped RAID, disk arrays are breaking into the mainstream. They are easy to set up and require no real maintenance, and are a great way to improve drive capacity and performance. If you're up for it, buy two drives and try it out, you might never go back to single drives. Primary Recommendation: Seagate Barracuda 400GB SATA Alternative Recommendation: Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA Optical Drive Recommend: Any within price range $80 Recommended Manufacturers: Samsung, NEC, LiteON Highly Recommend: One or two Samsung 18x DVD R. . .with LightScribe, $35 or $70 Having two burners is great. I can't stress how nice it is, and to have a matched set looks fantastic. There's not much sense in buying some of the more expensive drives unless there is a specific feature you can't live without, but there are plenty of times when you'll find yourself wanting two. Get two inexpensive drives, and you won't feel bad when you replace them with High-Definition optical drives. I recommend NEC for custom BIOS support. If you're at all interested in flashing the firmware of your drive to make it faster or slower (slower is important for quiet home theater PCs) there is a huge internet community customizing and tweaking their NEC drives, and sharing what they know. LiteON has a reputation for making workhorse drives with a rock-bottom failure rate. They also tend to have shiny stripes across the front for a little factory-modded styling. Samsung has something else with their 18x speed drives. Aside from plain good looks, they're astonishingly quiet. While media manufacturers aren't making 18x blank DVDs, the drives are fully capable of burning at full speed while making less noise than many hard drives. Primary Recommendation: Samsung 18x DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner w/ Lightscribe Monitor Recommend: 20" UXGA or 24" WUXGA (1920x1200) LCD, 300 nit brightness minimum, 800:1 contrast ratio minimum, 6ms response time maximum, $350-$800 Recommended Manufacturers: Acer, Dell, Samsung Highly Recommend: SyncMaster™ 204B, (20.1") $350 or Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP, (24") $720 Dell still makes some of the best huge displays at competitive prices, but I'd like to toss out Acer's AL2423Wd, which while light on the features, matches Dell's performance and can be found for $700. If you're not ready to jump on the widescreen bandwagon, but still want a nice monitor, it's hard to go wrong with Samsung's 204B monitors, as they are both incredible performers and relatively inexpensive. If you decide to get one of the most powerful graphics cards on the planet, you might as well give it something to strut on; anything less than 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 and people might not think you're serious... Primary Recommendation: Samsung SyncMaster 204B 20.1" LCD Alternative Recommendation: Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Case Recommend: ATX case, $100 to start Recommended Manufacturers: Antec, Cooler Master, Lian-Li, Silverstone Highly Recommend: Any, as long as it's really nice Cases are so personal it's hard to recommend any without knowing who it will belong to and what it will be used for. Case manufacturers, on the other hand, are a little more predictable with their products. These manufactures make incredible high-end cases that cater to all tastes and will not fail when it comes to construction. Primary Recommendation: Cooler Master WaveMaster Power Supply Recommend: 600 Watt, ATX12V 2.0 or later, multiple 12V rails, 80+ efficiency, nVidia SLI certification, Active PFC, $130-$200 Recommended Manufacturers: Antec, Cooler Master, Enermax, OCZ, PC & Power Cooling, SeaSonic, Silverstone, Tagan, Zalman Highly Recommend: Enermax Liberty 620W, $150 or SeaSonic M12-600, $170 Power supplies are not a dime a dozen. They are the blood in your computer's body, and if you're not satisfied with a PSU paired with a case, or don't have it as an option, there is a short list of great manufacturers. SeaSonic is one of these companies, and they manufacture a large percentage of other companies' power supplies. They're an easy recommendation for both great quality and quiet operation. Their M12-series PSUs are modular so that you deal with fewer cables. If you don't care for modular power supplies, Seasonic's S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT comes close to operating at 90% efficiency (most likely on 220VAC) but even at 85%, a more realistic figure, it's going to save you a little on the electrical bills down the road. Primary Recommendation: Enermax Liberty 620W Keyboard and Mouse Recommend: Any within budget, $150 Recommended Manufacturers: Creative, Kensington, Logitech, Microsoft, Razer Highly Recommend: Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Input devices are quite a bit more personal than cases, and that much harder to recommend. And I have my own opinions about what I want plugged into my computer. I like lightweight, responsive controls–two things that stand out with a Razer keyboard and mouse–however everyone should select what's best for them, and all of these manufacturers make great peripherals. Many people stand by their crafted Logitech input devices, and others swear by the sturdy Microsoft products. Primary Recommendation: Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Speakers Recommend: 5.1 surround sound, $150 Recommended Manufacturers: Any within budget Highly recommend: Logitech Z-5300e $145 Speakers can be a vague, practically subjective component. But most will agree that quality trumps quantity, and Logitech has made its reputation selling peripherals that please. If you want lots of sound, and primarily use speakers for listening to music, a good 2.1 set of speakers will work well. If you want precise audio for gaming or for a small home theater, definitely invest in 5.1 audio. In any case, I leave you up to your own discretion and budget. Primary Recommendation: Logitech Z-2300 2.1 Computer Speakers Alternative Recommendation: Logitech Z-5450 5.1 Computer Speakers Conclusion To quip, if you decide to stick a floppy drive into this computer it will surely self-destruct. But aside from that, it's a complete machine, all it needs is for you to put it together. So is this the best computer ever? Nope. There are, of course, more powerful components out there which exceed even a large budget such as this one, but these components will still get you one very powerful PC which will be more than sufficient for almost anything you throw at it. We didn't recommend it, but if you're considering SLI 8800GTXs, do yourself a favor and get a 700-800W power supply. Still got extra cash burning a hole in that tinderbox you call a pocket? Maybe you need a sound card. Ever think about watercooling? Having a hard time pinning down which options are best for you? No matter what kind of computer you're looking to build, if you need any help or would like different suggestions and other options, come chat with us in the forums and we'll steer you in the right direction. Below we have organized a table with all of our primary recommendations to configure a base system. Below that we have picked some of the alternative recommendations to bring us closer to the limits of our high-end system budget and shown the cost of upgrading to those components.
|
Related Articles Recent Reviews Headphones November 21, 2008
Video Cards November 18, 2008
Communications November 13, 2008
Systems November 12, 2008
Recent News Gizmodo Nov. 29, 2008 - 4:35 pm
Extreme Tech Nov. 28, 2008 - 6:14 pm
LiveScience Nov. 28, 2008 - 4:59 pm
Gizmodo Nov. 28, 2008 - 4:15 pm
X-Bit Labs Nov. 24, 2008 - 5:01 pm
SlipperyBrick Nov. 22, 2008 - 7:20 pm
Kotaku Nov. 22, 2008 - 3:57 pm
the Official Gmail Blog Nov. 20, 2008 - 4:27 pm
Recent Affiliate News Bit-Tech Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:57 am
DriverHeaven Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:55 am
Techware Labs Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:54 am
PCStats Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:51 am
HotHardware Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:50 am
DriverHeaven Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:50 am
BurnOutPC Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:48 am
Bit-Tech Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:47 am
I4U Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:46 am
DigitalTrends Aug. 24, 2008 - 2:45 am
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
