Hardware PC Hardware Buyer's Guide February 2011

Our monthly PC building guide to getting the best components for your PC, whatever your budget.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2011/02/10/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-february-2011/1

 

"When it comes to PSUs, our sister mag Custom PC..."

I hadn't realised that Custom PC was feminine. Is it on newsagents shelves next to Hello! and such?

EDIT: By the way, nice to see the PC guide back after its Christmas break

 

The recommendation of the Corsair cx 430W made me cringe. Corsair's refusal to give them out for review, coupled with the number of DOA units I've heard of recently just makes it looks like a horrible POS PSU...
I'd much rather go with a cheaper case (one of the smaller CM elite cases for example, or a Xigmatek Asgard) and get a better PSU for the price difference (say, a Seasonic 430W)

 

I have few doubts about the Premium Player rig:

1. GTX580; this card costs 40% more than GTX570 and offers cca. 16% more performance (at 1920); if the game is not playable with GTX570 it's not with GTX580. for AAA games, that have such high demand, a GTX570SLI would prove better (SLI drivers support most popular games).

2.Premium is also about noise; a Corsair AX or Seasonic Gold PSUs provide much better noise quality at idle or everyday work.

3.X58 platform; I would appreciate a test comparing this motherboard versus AsusP8P67Pro with 2xGTX580(SLI). I think it would give an indication of the situation in November when the new 28nm Nvidia Kepler and AMD Southern Islands hit the shops. Nobody wants a premium rig that it's not upgradable in 6 moths time.

 

I thought the Premium Player rig was about having what's best right now, not speculating about what's going to be best in six months time.

 

synalar they never recomend sli either

 

there is a rather large difference between gtx 570 and gtx 580. you may find for premium players that has high resolution D) games are only playable on gtx 580. such generalization is foolish.

gtx 580 is the fastest single GPU card at the moment, there is absolutely every reason to use it in premium player. most people spending that amount of money (£300+) on graphics department doesn't want to be bothered by drivers.

 

We'd actually intended to change that, but we hit the Publish button too quickly. It's changed to the Antec Earthwatts 380W:

 

got to admit I like having 3 screens to much to have just one graphics card (and want 3d) so 2 nvidia cards are a must.

however since moving to 2 570's I cant seem to get them to run 3 monitors at present without them rebooting the computer... so its not plug an play perfect yet.

with the issues over SI I'm suprised that you didn't hold off a month but I guess some readers might explode lol.

 

You can find it in the Womens Monthlies section...

/gets coat.

Yup, the CX430 has a bad rep, which is a shame as the Builder CX400 (it's predecesor) was a great unit in it's class.

 

premium player is an interesting one this week, didnt see an i7 recommendation coming at all! Although if i was buying a new rig now i'd just wait until march

 

I'd have expected 8GB RAM "Gaming Workhorse" rig, and find the jump between the mid-range GTX560 and the Top-End GTX580 rather high.
Also, while the SB Chips are undeniably great once the current problem has been solved, it would have been nice to at least mention chips-and-boards that come without errors.

 

Yikes!!!....clean sweep for Intel on the CPU front.

AMD....Bulldozer cant come soon enough.

 

Going to hold out for z68 and still take the Sandbridge route still i think. Will have to wait till Q2 though

 

Counting chickens before they've hatched me thinks.

 

Hurray! A much better option in my opinion!

Very true, the old CX400 was light years ahead of this low-end stuff.

 

Why on earth don't they recommend the Athlon II X3 for the gaming build????
Also - a Phenom II X4 + mobo is quite a bit cheaper than the Intel equivalents, allowing for a bigger GPU - why is this not considered?

Perhaps bit-tech is just an Intel shill.

 

A couple of points on the Affordable all rounder:

1) Drop the Antec 300 in favour of the confusingly named but superior Antec 100. The latter has far better asthetics and cable management facilities (well it actually has cable management....)

2) Where are you getting your memory prices from? DDR3 PC12800 (1600MT/s) is easily available for sub £35 (and in some cases sub £30).

3) Drop the G6950 for the i3 540. It is only a few £ more but offers HT and a higher stock clock frequency to counter (thus more performance clock for clock).

4) Put back in the HD6850 1GB or replace it with the GTX460 1GB. Realistically looking forward 768MB of memory isn't enough for future games at 1680x1050. Heck, current games can easily blow past that limit at 1680x1050 with some AA & AF (something either the HD6850 or GTX460 are perfectly capable of).

 

With the price of memory so low, theres no reason for anything except the budget build to have less than 8GB of RAM. 6GB is ok, but lets face it, if your paying for x58, then $145 (/w 15% promo code) US$ (Its the same price for me in canuckastan) for 12GB 1600mhz (3x 4GB) is easy money to spend for such a large epeen expansion.


With apoligies to you UK folks who seem to pay a premium on everything and then VAT on top of that, just to add insult to injury.