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DIY 4 GHz Dual Core Gaming Rig For $720
Tom's Hardware has posted the detailed results of their recent quest to build a beefy gaming rig without a visit to the poorhouse. The trick it seems is to find a processor with 'cores designed for a much faster clock than their nominal rating at a speed of up to 4 GHz without problems.' They provide shopping lists for both a 'budget version' and a 'top flight version'.
By the time I got to page three, Toms Hardware was reeeaaallly slow.
Maybe try using a Coral Cache version so other folks get a chance to see the article.
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Now minesweeper will REALLY rock!
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Before you even get past the first component they mention that you can't get it at the price they got it anymore.
"we purchased a stock processor at the prevailing retail price. Since then, demand for this CPU has spiked, and prices have also gone up."
I always see these "Build a super system for no money!" articles, but when *I* try to price the components, it never seems to add up.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
I love the idea of a dual-core 4ghz processor, but the memory and video card selections on that rig are pretty shabby.
Most game programmers optimize their engines around video cards these days, not the CPU.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
what's interesting about this is the unique
Just a
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*next*
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visit to
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*next*
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the mother-
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*next*
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fucking adhouse.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
for those who dont want to browse through n pages http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/12/your_diy_ga ming_rig_for_720/print.html
And for those of you who will complain about the article being split into so many pages, here is the print version. Coral Cache Directly No ads and one page. Enjoy.
Okay, notice on the first page, there are 2 systems, a cheap one and a $1200 one. The $1200 one was what they actually built and OC'd. Several things here will limit their OC. First, cheap "550W" power supply that puts out ~350w at the most and likely has unstable rails. All power supplies that come with cases are shit unless they're Antec Enlight Enermax or Fortron. Second, noname motherboard. Bad, bad, bad idea if you want a anywhere near stable system. For the more expensive system,who in their right mind would pick Gigabyte for an overclocking mobo? DFI, Asus, or MSI would all be far better choices.
Next, that X1300 is godawful. Lastly, I disagree with water cooling. A thermalright XP-120 with a ~80 CFM fan and decent thermal grease would provide very similar thermal performance, albeit louder.
Lots of us don't read Digg since it's mainly targeted at retards and young children. I know this is a lot to ask of a Digg reader, but please at least try to think before posting.
but if you read their article on overclocking the Intel chip in question, you'll see that the thing draws over half a kilowatt at full load, and around 300W idle. Yikes! You will get a bargain on the machine and pay through the nose on your electricity bills over the subsequent months.
The table of contents has an entry Stable Power Supply: 400 Watts Is Plenty, but the page says "...which is why we chose a 550-Watt unit." Huh?
4GHz means virtually nothing to me these days. All it says is that the CPU is cycling at 4 billion times per second, but it doesn't say how much work is being done per cycle. Comparing GHz is apples and oranges. Real life testing is where it's at. Give me hard data.
The article seemed to be written from the point of view of
"how cheap can we make a rig that is based around the Pentium D 805"
rather than
"what is the best rig we can specify for ~$700"
When a huge amount is spent on exotic cooling (plus a 12" fan on the case, lol) because the processor gets so hot when overclocked and you want to still hear the gameplay, and sucks down nearly half a kiloWatt of juice, you know something isn't right. The video card is the obvious casualty in this situation, nullifying the entire worth and purpose of the article.
It's a typical THG article, written with a certain bent that almost seems as if it is sponsored, rather than having any real use to the reader.
You missed one:
:P. DIY at it's worst. Next article, how to install a mp3 deck in your car only using chewing gum, spare change and a couple paper clips.
Heatsink: Mounted with piece of 2x4. Super Crap.
Seriously I'd be embarassed to have this computer. Chipset fan mounted with twist ties and a heatsink held in place with a piece of 2x4? That is ridiculous. I stopped reading the article as I was afraid I'd find out they mounted the harddrive with some chicken wire
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
My $800 system from 3.5 years ago would beat this in most games with justa a $100 video card upgrade.
...block of wood and the twist ties? I scoured newegg and pricewatch and came up with nothing.
First of all, a few comments about the article itself... The article mentions that the $720 rig is "sufficient for non-gamers". I think they're considering it more for high-end video editing... this also explains the choice of RAID 0. I'm somewhat puzzled with their choice of using 3G/s discs on a 1.5 G/s SATA board, however. I suppose this could be for economic reasons -- those Samsungs could be about the cheapest disc on the market at the moment.
Moreover, since when is Dual Core really a gaming solution to begin with? Sure, if you want to make big downloads or burn CDs in the background while gaming, there might be some benefit. Other than that, we have a handful of games that actually support dual core. I guess it makes sense to include dual core for the sake of future releases, but what's the point of installing something that's basically bleeding edge (as far as gaming is concerned) on a budget system? It seems to me that your other components are going to be horribly dated well before most game releases are really supporting dual cores.
Am I wrong here? Have games started secretly taking advantage of two physical cores while I wasn't looking? Are we in the future yet?