The $1500 PC Thread

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Heres my current build for ~$1500 (all from Newegg you may save a bit mixing and matching from other etailers but I prefer one big shipment)

DVD Burner http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Coolermaster Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Hard Drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Video Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Sound Card (onboard)
Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Memory http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
Processor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

Comes to $1330 after rebates.

Updated with newer hardware.. Faster VideoCard, Faster Proc, swaped to Abit P35 based motherboard.

Case is awesome.. just be warned its HUGE!.

What no windows Vista?

Yeah that was a joke

Drop Videocard down to one of the new 8600GTS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
and your price is around $1100

HardOCP was drooling over this card in their review yesterday. Have you actually had a chance to get your hands on one GG? If so any impressions?

Mayfield wrote:
Drop Videocard down to one of the new 8600GTS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...
and your price is around $1100

HardOCP was drooling over this card in their review yesterday. Have you actually had a chance to get your hands on one GG? If so any impressions?

I got one on order for my $1000 Shuttle Build.. going to do some Vista impressions on a ~$1200 Gaming PC.

I almost bought that 8800 GTS yesterday, but decided not to pull the trigger. Glad to see that I wasn't off base thinking it was a good card.

Thanks for this -- it validates a lot of the choices I made in my build a month ago, although now i'm salivating for SLI, curse you.

Dare I ask how many PCs you have sitting around the GuruPad?

rabbit wrote:

Thanks for this -- it validates a lot of the choices I made in my build a month ago, although now i'm salivating for SLI, curse you.

Dare I ask how many PCs you have sitting around the GuruPad?

not nearly as many as I used to.. currently I'm at

1 8800GTX SLI PC
1 Mac Pro
1 Dell XPS M2010
1 Shuttle PC.

I have my HTPC that I dig up and attempt to use every now and then.. but more and more I'm loving my Apple TV.. it just works and is supremely easy to use and silent.

Toms showed some rather bad benchmarks for the 8600 series with the 7900GTX(although not dx10) better in a lot of cases.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/...

maladen wrote:

Toms showed some rather bad benchmarks for the 8600 series with the 7900GTX(although not dx10) better in a lot of cases.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/...

Thats not suprising.. the 7900GTX was the previous 8800GTX and SHOULD still be better in most games than a mid range new card. Its usually a second cycle where the mid range outperforms the previous gen's flagship card.

Yeah the 7900GTX is still double the price of the 8600GTS. Not much of a point comparing the two.

The only worthwhile complaint I've heard about it so far is that it doesn't outperform the X1950XTX to a reasonable degree and the XTX can supposedly (I've not checked this myself) be had for about $190 if you're careful about where you buy, versus the $200-$220ish for the 8600 card.

That said, you're a bit better prepared for the future with DX10 support and the price is pretty close.

I put together a system very close to the one you recommend. Also purchased it from Newegg.com. I have put many computers together and everything seemed to be going well. However, when I went to install windows it would make it to the part right after you choose where to install and it reboots. It would then lock up and reboot. No matter what I did, no matter which components I switched out it kept rebooting. I am fortunate enough to have an entire computer worth of parts to switch out, so I methodically switched every component out until only the Motherboard remained. I ordered another Motherboard, because in my experience and according to all the "experts" if the CPU was messed up it wouldn't even post or boot up. I switched out the MOBO and nothing... same problem. So I finally sent the CPU back even though Newegg and Intel insisted it couldn't be the CPU. Put the new CPU in and it worked like a charm. One frustrating week later I finally got my PC working.

I guess the warning I have is when you are putting a PC together yourself, think of it as a Lego kit its really not that hard. However, with CPU's nowadays having massive amounts of cache you can't go by the old notion that if a CPU boots up that is must be OK... everyone suspects the RAM immediately but these CPU's can have corrupted RAM as well. Maybe it was a very rare thing, but if my experience can help anyone then... there you go.

Good Luck to you all.

Like I've said in the budget thread, I don't see why anyone would buy an E6300 when you can take an E4300, drop the multiplier down and copy the E6300's FSB setting, and you've got the same thing for cheaper. (Or do the same without dropping the multiplier and get a free bump up to 2.4GHz). I would stick with the E4300 if it was $50 more, let alone $50 less. The 9x multiplier makes all the difference in the world (and the ability to lower it lets you run it exactly as an E6300 or E6400 if you want to be very conservative)

YOu can get a 8800GTS PNY vid card at buy.com right now for $225 AR and $15 coupon. Search for the deal at slickdeals.net.

E4300 cpu dropped to $139 at Newegg.

Newegg also has a great deal on 2gigs of pc6400 memory for $109.99. GSkill.

Based on what I've read, not a big fan of the 8600 gts. I believe it doesn't do as well in DX9 games as the X1950 pro which Newegg has for $135 AR and it's priced too close to the much faster 8800 gts.

trip1eX wrote:

Based on what I've read, not a big fan of the 8600 gts. I believe it doesn't do as well in DX9 games as the X1950 pro which Newegg has for $135 AR and it's priced too close to the much faster 8800 gts.

I used to be really high up on the 8600 but based on what i've seen at Tom's and Anandtech I think that the best bet is still the 8800 gts.
My favorite benchmark is Oblivion (Mostly because I still play it religiously) and the 8800 performs almost twice as well as the 8600 in their high end benchmarks. That's a 100% increase in performance for a 50% increase in price. Sounds like value to me. Results may vary with other games.

Still, if you're looking for a card under 200$, there is absolutely no reason to not get a dx10 compatible 8600 over a non-dx10 card at an equivalent price.

I'll hold off on ultimate judgement until I see how well the 8600 oc's but right now i'm still targeting an 8800 gts for my next upgrade (due soon, my 6600 gt has seen better days)

You'll be able to get an 8600GT for $150ish soon enough.. I agree at $220 its not a value enough in comparison to a $260 8800GTS 320MB.

at $150 is a really good value though.. I think we're seeing an artificially high price due to the recent launch. Oblivion will be murder on mid range cards for at least another year.

Hell.. its even rough on the 320MB 8800GTS.

Like I've said in the budget thread, I don't see why anyone would buy an E6300 when you can take an E4300, drop the multiplier down and copy the E6300's FSB setting, and you've got the same thing for cheaper.

True.. but I'm not really banking on most people to want to overclock at all. But the E4300 is a fantastic deal in any case.

there is absolutely no reason to not get a dx10 compatible 8600

Aren't the NVidia drivers kinda sucking right now, though?

Malor wrote:
there is absolutely no reason to not get a dx10 compatible 8600

Aren't the NVidia drivers kinda sucking right now, though?

For the first time in two months nVidia finally updated their drivers for Vista this past week. They still say beta, but they should be reaching the point of being nearly or completely stable (I couldn't say first-hand), but not yet offering peak performance potential. They're kinda like the plague "victim" in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "I'm not quite dead... I'm feeling better... I think I'll go for a walk!"
--Todd

ubrakto wrote:
Malor wrote:
there is absolutely no reason to not get a dx10 compatible 8600

Aren't the NVidia drivers kinda sucking right now, though?

For the first time in two months nVidia finally updated their drivers for Vista this past week. They still say beta, but they should be reaching the point of being nearly or completely stable (I couldn't say first-hand), but not yet offering peak performance potential. They're kinda like the plague "victim" in Monty Python's Holy Grail, "I'm not quite dead... I'm feeling better... I think I'll go for a walk!"
--Todd

Windows update had new Nvidia drivers (101.70 I think they were) a week or so ago that solved a lot of my problems in Vista. April 17 Nvidia put out driver 158.18/158.19 beta which I not tried out yet.

What is odd is the 101.70 drivers are not beta I believe because you get them from windows update but Nvidia seemed to never post them on the driver page and went right to the the 158 drivers.

So basically drivers still not the best but Nvidia is actually making some decent progress now.

I have no clue how well this translates to the XP expereince as I am a Vista 64 user so take with a grain of salt more then you normally would.

I suppose I could install these drivers on one of my other 3 PCs in the house but none of them are running the 8800 series cards so not sure that would be a valid test for the driver performance in XP and I am too lazy to really do that.

TheGameguru wrote:

True.. but I'm not really banking on most people to want to overclock at all. But the E4300 is a fantastic deal in any case.

On the one hand, I understand that. But on the other hand, I wouldn't even call it overclocking. It's more like a chip that's "underclocked" by default thanks to Intel setting the FSB to 200 instead of the 266 of all the other Core 2 Duos. Setting the FSB back to 266 gives you a chip at 2.4 GHz that doesn't even begin to push the higher end of the "safe" range of C2D temperatures at full load. Running this core at 1.8 GHz is like refusing to shift a Ferrari above 3rd gear.

I think anyone that can put together a computer can handle switching the FSB setting in the BIOS (and lowering the multiplier if you want to be crazy conservative). Unless it's like the first computer they've ever built.

I think anyone that can put together a computer can handle switching the FSB setting in the BIOS (and lowering the multiplier if you want to be crazy conservative). Unless it's like the first computer they've ever built.

I was actually pretty scared of overclocking my AMD64 for a while, mostly because I couldn't afford to replace the processor if it fried, I had value ram (which oc's poorly) and the guides I saw seemed complicated. Now that I put in the legwork over christmas (when I had some free time) it doesn't daunt me anymore, but I can see why a newbie might be afraid. Is OC'ing the Core 2 Duo's much easier than the 939 AMD 64's?

As for the "why buy a 6300 when you can just OC a 4300 to it's specs", well.....what if you wanted to OC the 6300 past it's own specs and match those of an even higher chip? Does the 4300 really OC that much better?

Well what makes the 4300 a good overclocker is that you don't need to buy expensive RAM to overclock it. pc5300 will get you to 3 ghz.

I've been looking into building a new PC lately and all of this is definitely helpful. I've also been looking at different parts and I was wondering If this RAM is as good as it seems.

Dysplastic wrote:

As for the "why buy a 6300 when you can just OC a 4300 to it's specs", well.....what if you wanted to OC the 6300 past it's own specs and match those of an even higher chip? Does the 4300 really OC that much better?

E6300 has a 7x multiplier. E4300 has a 9x multiplier. That makes all the difference in the world. It means you can hit higher frequencies with the E4300 without having to start pushing the FSB to funky speeds, or high speeds. Like trip1eX says, that means, for one thing, you don't have to have the expensive RAM that's rated for high speeds. It means you get up higher before you have to start going off into weird odd FSB speeds.

The E4300 also runs cooler, thanks in part to having the extra 2MB of cache completely off the chip, rather than present but disabled like on the E6300. Having it not there at all generates less heat.

The E6300 is clocked (ever so slightly) higher than the E4300 by default, but that does not mean that it has a higher "ceiling" to its potential clock speed.

Renji wrote:

I've been looking into building a new PC lately and all of this is definitely helpful. I've also been looking at different parts and I was wondering If this RAM is as good as it seems.

I suspect that depends *a lot* on which motherboard/chipset you plan to use it with. With some of these motherboards/chipsets it's not just choosing DDR2800, unfortunately. I've been trying to do my homework for a new PC build for the past week or so and choosing the chipset/RAM combo has been the most difficult part to decide on. For example, the Intel-made motherboard that uses the g965 chipset pretty much requires you get memory that runs with timings of 5-5-5-12(?) and 1.8V (and most of the memory I browsed at newegg runs higher than 1.8v). Boards based on the nvidia 6xx chipset line seem to want RAM that runs in the 2-2.2V range. (I'm probably kludging this explanation a bit, but hopefully you see my point.)

I'd say choose your motherboard first. Once you know that poke around the manufacturer's website for a list of tested and approved memory modules. Intel and Asus both have them (though they're not the easiest pages to find), and I'd bet the other mobo makers do as well.
---Todd

*Legion* wrote:
Dysplastic wrote:

As for the "why buy a 6300 when you can just OC a 4300 to it's specs", well.....what if you wanted to OC the 6300 past it's own specs and match those of an even higher chip? Does the 4300 really OC that much better?

E6300 has a 7x multiplier. E4300 has a 9x multiplier. That makes all the difference in the world. It means you can hit higher frequencies with the E4300 without having to start pushing the FSB to funky speeds, or high speeds. Like trip1eX says, that means, for one thing, you don't have to have the expensive RAM that's rated for high speeds. It means you get up higher before you have to start going off into weird odd FSB speeds.

The E4300 also runs cooler, thanks in part to having the extra 2MB of cache completely off the chip, rather than present but disabled like on the E6300. Having it not there at all generates less heat.

The E6300 is clocked (ever so slightly) higher than the E4300 by default, but that does not mean that it has a higher "ceiling" to its potential clock speed.

Thanks a lot for the heads up on this! I'm a total Intel Nublet as I've been running AMD systems for years, wasn't that well versed in the differences between their products. I didn't realize that
A) The default difference between the 4300 and the 6300 was rather small; and that
B) The multiplier difference was there.
You're right, that difference is HUGE.

Renji wrote:

I've been looking into building a new PC lately and all of this is definitely helpful. I've also been looking at different parts and I was wondering If this RAM is as good as it seems.

I guess it depends on your budget. Personally on my rigs I've never really seen a big performance gain (hell I've never noticed a performance gain) by going with ram that has faster timings. And over the years a few benchmarks I've seen (where they tested this difference) seem to have shown little or no performance gain.

So I recommend you get the cheapest ram possible on newegg. I don't usually go with brands I've never heard of, but if the unknown brand has a bunch of good comments then I might try it if it respresents a significant savings. $5 ain't enough. $20 though I'm tempted.

So imo if you need pc6400 then I would go with the Gskill 2 gigs that are going for closer to $110.

The thinking too is that the ~$50 savings is better applied elsewhere like upgrading your gpu or cpu.

OH I saw 2 gigs of pc5300 for $90 shipped at newegg. Nice dealio for those wanting a fast yet inexpensive intel dual core 4300 machine.

Nice. I just ordered another 1GB of RAM from NewEgg. Just like I had planned.

I've had bad memory a couple of times, always with the offbrands. Well, I had one pair of Corsair bite the dust, but that was my stupidity -- it was a watercooled case, with no airflow, and they got cooked. So, not their fault.

I generally try to go for Crucial, Kingston, or Corsair. This last time around I went Mushkin; I think they're a fairly good Tier-B, better than Patriot or G.Skill, but not built to the Tier A standards. They were SO much cheaper, though, than my usual Tier A choices that I felt forced to do it. So far, everything's running nicely.

In benchmarking, I notice that there's apparently really major memory-speed differences between the Intel chipsets and the NVidia ones... Sandra claims that the NVidia chips have wildly higher memory bandwidth. Is that just a paper advantage, or does it translate to any kind of real world performance?

Intel is set to cut prices for its Core 2 dual and quad-core products next week, online retailers have already taken the plunge. The chip giant also launched the Core 2 Duo E6320 and E6420, now with 4MB of L2 cache. Intel prices the new E6x20 models the same as the E6x00 models. Under the new pricing structure, Intel offers its Core 2 processors starting at $113 per unit, in 1,000 unit quantities.

Intel Core 2 Model - Core Frequency - Q2'07 Pricing - Newegg - ZipZoomFly
Q6600 - 2.40 GHz - $530 - $659 - $559.99
E6700 - 2.66 GHz - $316 - $485 - $340.90
E6600 - 2.40 GHz - $224 - $235 - $234
E6420 - 2.13 GHz - $183 - N/A - $199
E6400 - 2.13 GHz - $183 - $196 - $194
E6320 - 1.86 GHz - $163 - N/A - $175
E6300 - 1.86 GHz - $163 - $176 - $175
E4400 - 2.00 GHz - $133 - N/A - $149
E4300 - 1.80 GHz - $113 - $135 - $129

Despite the mild Q2'2007 price cuts, Intel plans to aggressively cut prices on its complete lineup in Q3'2007, with the exception of the recently launched Core 2 Extreme QX6800. Under the Q3'2007 pricing, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 falls to $266 per unit, in 1,000 unit quantities. Intel also plans to release refreshed Core 2 Duo processors with 1333 MHz front-side buses ranging from $163 to $266 per unit, in 1,000 unit quantities.

Quad Core falling to $266 in Q3?

Yowsa.

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