Hardware PC Hardware Buyer's Guide - March 2010

For our March 2010 PC Hardware Buyers Guide we've seen a few subtle changes in among our recommendations, but most notably we've had to accommodate price fluctuations in places. How has this changed our five PCs? Check in to find out.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2010/03/09/pc-hardware-buyers-guide-march-2010/1

 

HTPC please...

 

copy and pasting a bit much aren't we?

 

prices seem to be on the rise for most products

6months ago i got what was the premium rig now - the 930 for under £1200 now its 1650 thats a massive price rise for same hardware. ( i know a few peaces might be dif but i dout its a huge dif)

still seems to be for gaming that you may as well mod the budget gamer to your needs. drop in a higher powered psu and a high powerd graphics card and that system is a beast ( 5850 ) is the i750 that much faster in gaming than the amd250 if you give both the exact same hardware otherwise? ( 3-4 fps isnt worth £200 )

no game yet still uses quad core.

 

We want to say the same things and the products don't change, so what else would we do?

I do re-read the entire article and spend a considerable amount of time pricing things up and re-reading reviews.

 

@Bindibadgi

perhaps write an article, or put the new bit in bold so we dont have to re-read the old stuff?

 

I'm with Tonyd223 here and would like another run through on a HTPC build. I think the last one was AMD based so it would be interesting to see if the i3 530 makes an appeance. Also the excellent Windows 7 version of media centre as it has a few more tricks under it's sleeve.

 

I managed to find the HD 5850 on amazon for under £200. I have to wait 2 weeks, but I'm meant to be working at the moment, so 2 weeks will probably work out nicely, and let me get work done!

Also, I see memeroot's point, but writing a new article each month and essentially just re-wording is a waste of time... I'd suggest each build page having clearly defined content areas with nice big headings: Motherboard, Case, GFX, Mem etc etc. These you can copy and paste each month, same as now. Then at the top of the page, in that table of components you can highlight any changes, green for a new product, orange for an alteration (price change, advice etc).

Just my 2p

 

Yeah, as much as memeroot's idea would make it easier for us to scan for changes, the facts are that the guide is intended for people who don't really read up on this kinda thing. Having it simple and explained (and neatly laid out, the way it is) makes it infinitely easier for them to understand. I like it the way it is - only one alteration I can suggest. In the Gamer build, you talk about how a good P55 motherboard is cheaper than it's X58 alternative, and as an example give the UD3R, which you don't recommend any more (is that intentional, BTW?).

Equally just my $0.02, but thanks for the tests!

 

What?

 

You could add some kind of a benchmark. I do realize there are plenty of benchmarks out there. This however would give a nice overview of how much you are getting going for a more expensive option.
But I guess you often don’t have the exact hardware you recommend at your disposal.

Best,
m.

 

Roll on April so we can see if the Fermi cards are worth their salt and get included...

 

Quote:

still seems to be for gaming that you may as well mod the budget gamer to your needs. drop in a higher powered psu and a high powerd graphics card and that system is a beast ( 5850 ) is the i750 that much faster in gaming than the amd250 if you give both the exact same hardware otherwise? ( 3-4 fps isnt worth £200 )

I'm about to buy a new PC for gaming and am by no means an expert. Is this above correct? Just buy the budget PC and swap in the 5850? Thanks for any help guys! What would the fps hit be?

 

How about a fileserver build? Large storage and RAID with a low power consumption...

 

Well, the 930 wasn't available 6 months ago.

Bad Company 2 certainly seems to be pushing all my cores to half load (i7 920 D0).

 

Gameserver maybe?

 

Good to see that the i5 750 is still king of my price bracket. Shame it still too expensive though
Must earn moar.

 

Aye you're correct we do not have all the hardware to hand. It's a buying guideline to point people in the right direction and budget not a "you must get this". We base our product recommendations on our own reviews anyway which we often link to throughout the article - each one has its own performance and conclusion inside that article. People simply have to click through

We've been through specific builds before and it doesn't work well. People want too much personalisation from them and it never really applies. There's enough forum threads dedicated to specific stuff like HTPC and File Servers too

 

The Silverstone Raven 2 has 8 expansion slots

 

i disagree with your folding rig, 18,000 ppd on those 4 card at best. build a i7-920 or 930 GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R a couple sticks of memory or your choice. will work just fine with 2 sticks. cheap hard drive. cheapest video card you can find. overclocked to 4.0ghz with a corsair h50 maybe a hair more. its worth 17,000 ppd running smp. its cheaper and uses less power at the wall.