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We all know that, generally speaking, buying the newest top-end part gets you the most performance. But in most cases, the premium you pay for that part covers a whole lot of other stuff as well that has no bearing on frame rates or video encoding times. We’re talking about the added cost of covering research and development, product marketing, lower production yields, etc. That high price also includes a vanity tax, if you will—the extra charge incurred by folks who simply want to have the latest hardware, hot off the fab, for bragging rights.
Splashing out on the very latest gear is all well and good, if you’re rolling in cabbage. But for most of us, the job of choosing what part to buy is much more nuanced. The object is to find the hardware that offers the greatest value—the best price-to-performance ratio.
That’s our objective here—to examine each of the major PC component categories, run the relevant benchmarks where warranted, and zero in on the coveted sweet spot. What we’ve come up with is a list of parts that are capable of meeting a typical enthusiast user’s needs for the best price possible.
Pay for the threads you need, not the threads you want
Make no mistake, we love cores and threads. But when you start talking about bang for the buck and sweet spots, eight-core and six-core CPUs don’t fit into the equation (well, unless you consider AMD’s Bulldozer, but that’s another matter). As power users who like to regularly drop in new CPUs, we have a personal fondness for the LGA2011 platform, but frankly, LGA2011 carries a price premium that the vast majority of users don’t need to pay.
Really, when you talk about bang for the buck, it very much gets into the complicated question of just what kind of bang you’re after. Are you a 100 percent gamer (a rare duck, in our book) or someone who spends most of his or her time pushing pixels professionally?
Since you pay for every thread in your system, you want to make sure they’re actually working for you. Take a gander at our benchmark chart, which compares a six-core Core i7-3930K to the quad-core Core i7-3820. To see what impact threads have on the benchmarks, we turned Hyper-Threading on and off for both processors. The value of the threads are there—but only if you have multithreaded apps that can use them. For the most part, today’s apps are optimized for quad-core or lower.
This quad part offers Ivy Bridge performance and is unlocked for overclocking.
Based on our thread experiment, we believe we can make a case for Intel’s $230 quad-core 3.4GHz Core i5-3570K chip sans Hyper-Threading. Ivy Bridge offers at least a 10 percent performance advantage over Sandy Bridge and the 3570K is unlocked. Keep in mind, if you run thread-heavy apps such as encoding or 3D rendering, you should pay for Hyper-Threading or move up to a six-core part, but the sweet spot today remains four cores.
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3.4GHz Core i7-3930K with Hyper-Threading Enabled |
3.4GHz Core i7-3930K with Hyper-Threading Disabled |
3.6GHz Core i7-3820 with Hyper-Threading Enabled |
3.6GHz Core i7-3820 with Hyper-Threading Disabled |
|
| Thread Count | 12 | 6 | 8 | 4 |
| Price | $583 | $583 | $294 | $294 |
| 3DMark 11 | X5,794 | X5,703 | X5,730 | X5,669 |
| 3DMark 11 Physics | 11,299 | 8,974 | 8,901 | 7,090 |
| x264 HD 5.0 Pass 1 (fps) | 85.8 | 51.9 | 62.8 | 51.6 |
| x264 HD 5.0 Pass 2 (fps) | 19 | 15.6 | 13.4 | 11.2 |
| ProShow Producer 5.0 (sec) | 1,553 | 1,500 | 1,565 | 1,546 |
| Stalker Day (fps) | 181 | 182 | 184.2 | 184.9 |
| Stalker Night (fps) | 206.5 | 211 | 206.5 | 206.5 |
| Stalker Rain (fps) | 240.7 | 238 | 240.7 | 236.4 |
| Stalker SunShafts (fps) | 159.2 | 158 | 161.2 | 160.4 |
| Stitch.EFx (sec) | 906 | 969 | 962 | 1,057 |
| Cinebench 11.5 (score) | 10.2 | 8.35 | 7.72 | 5.85 |
| Valve Particle Benchmark (fps) | 249 | 186 | 181 | 146 |
| 7Zip (MIPS) | 29,748 | 21,655 | 21,122 | 15,767 |
We used an Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard, 8GB of DDR3/1333, a GeForce GTX 690, and OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional for testing both CPU configurations.
It’s a tight race but this relative newcomer takes the crown
When you begin to compare price/performance ratios of GPUs at the high end of the scale, you typically see diminishing returns once you go beyond about $300. That’s rarefied air up there, where 5–10 additional frames per second will cost you an extra $100 or so. The real battle for frames, frags, minds, and dollars exists below that price point, as the GPUs loitering in the mid-$200 region offer very good performance for literally half the price of the flagship videocards. This is the sweet spot—typically around $250 or so—where you can find 1080p gaming at 60fps for the least amount of money possible.
Don’t let its size and single 6-pin power connector fool you—the GTX 660 is a serious gaming weapon.
After examining the cards in this pricing segment, as well the cards in the pricing segment above it, we’re granting the brand-new Nvidia GTX 660 best-bang-for-the-buck status. At just $230, this GPU is faster than the slightly more expensive (or same-priced, depending on where you shop) AMD HD 7850 by a respectable margin, and even beats the pricier $280 Radeon HD 7870 in some of our tests, making it the fastest GPU under $250 by a wide margin.
So, why not spend $70 more and get a GTX 660 Ti? Looking at the benchmark chart, you can see that extra money nets you some performance gains, but in our judgment you don’t get enough of a return on that investment. The GTX 660 Ti costs roughly 25 percent more than a GTX 660, and yet offers an average of 15 percent performance improvement in most tests. When you tabulate price-per-fps, the GTX 660 also has the advantage over the GTX 660 Ti in the majority of tests we run, making it the value leader. As icing on the cake, you only need one 6-pin connector instead of the two that bigger cards require, so you’re saving money in the PSU department, as well.
| Gigabyte GTX 660 OC Version | XFX Radeon HD 7850 | EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 | XFX Radeon HD 7870 GHz | MSI GTX 660 Ti Power Edition | |
| Price | $230 | $245 (street) | $250 | $280 (street) | $310 |
| 3DMark 2011 Perf | 6,935 | 6,075 | 6,295 | 7,001 | 9,118 |
| 3DMark Vantage Perf | 27,858 | 24,584 | 25,523 | 27,953 | 31,575 |
| Unigine Heaven 2.5 (fps) | 36 | 31 | 31.8 | 33.2 | 39.8 |
| Shogun 2 (1080p, fps) | 53.7 | 47 | 43.1 | 62.2 | 71.1 |
| Far Cry 2 / Long (fps) | 119 | 103 | 112.4 | 112.7 | 133.3 |
| Dirt 3 (fps) | 75.7 | 50 | 68.8 | 82.4 | 95.1 |
| STALKER: CoP DX11 (fps) | 42.8 | 34.7 | 38.4 | 42.6 | 49.9 |
| Just Cause 2 | 60.3 | 51 | 55.8 | 59.6 | 68 |
| Batman: Arkham City (fps) | 76 | 60 | 64 | 72 | 80 |
| Metro 2033 (fps) | 22 | 23 | 22.6 | 24.2 | 22.3 |
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.3GHz Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P797X Deluxe motherboard with 16GB Corsair DDR3/1600 RAM and a Corsair AX1200 PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. All games were run at 1900x1200 with 4x AA unless otherwise noted.
Click the next page to see the bang for your buck motherboard and SSD.
Comments are closed on this article
MarthaGray22
February 17, 2013 at 4:29pm
upto I saw the bank draft ov $4352, I accept that my brothers friend was like actually bringing in money part-time from there new laptop.. there mums best friend started doing this 4 less than eleven months and recently cleard the morgage on there home and bourt themselves a McLaren F1. go to, Fox76.com
Ordly
February 14, 2013 at 6:51pm
This is a Great gaming Rig for future games. Games of tomorrow will use more features that Nvidia has to offer. More detail and attention are add to games like AC III or Hawken. If you like to play lite games like plants vs Zombies, surf the internet, watch movies, and word processing you can build a cheaper PC with AMD APU 2nd gen chip for under 700 dollors. So this computer bang-for-your-buck is built for the long run like 3yr it is still good at 500 dollors yearly. From a person who builds computers every 5yrs for myself and have a budget of 1500 dollors this is Perfect.
LGA1156
February 13, 2013 at 2:12pm
I bet every reader of this article had a rig with the q6600 that was the Go to until the i7 920 came out
maldo
February 13, 2013 at 11:31am
More intel marketing dept BS.
The FX8350 is $50 cheaper and much faster. Insane that it is not given much deserved credit here.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3570K+%40+3.40GHz
davelray
February 15, 2013 at 6:22am
They chose it because it is the best overall bang for the buck.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-vs-AMD-FX-8350
limitbreaker
February 15, 2013 at 8:34am
That's the worst comparison I've honestly seen. Even by their own admission the 8350 has a better value. The algorithm used to make the conclusion is completely flawed. It equates single core performance to be as important as multicore performance when that is a completely subjective view and I don't know how the i5 gets a better overclocking score than the Vishera... I easily overclocked mine by 23% and could get more with better cooling.
davelray
February 15, 2013 at 9:09am
You are limiting the scope of what you are looking at. I could care less which can be overclocked better. I don't overclock. The 8350 slurps up power at nearly twice the wattage under load as the core i5. So in the long run, the 30 bucks (not 50, and more likely 20) you saved on your processor is eaten up in power usage. Not to mention, the 8350 needs a more powerful power supply, so there's more money. I'm not saying the 8350 is a bad processor by any means. It's AMD's best desktop level processor and deserves it's due. I've been using AMD processors for over 10 years exclusively. I only recently upgraded from a 965 BE to a core i5 Intel build. Not because i5 is better (though it is I grudgingly admit,) but because I got it nearly for free. I personally use whatever I get at the lowest price. But if you mostly gaming or doing normal work, the 8350 is wasted. Only a handful of software out there right now can make use of the 8 cores. As stated in the article, pay for what you need, not what you want. So between that, and it's power consumption rate, the i5 winds up being the better bang for the buck. But that's for right now. The problem with a best bang for the buck build, is in another six months, you have to rethink every single component all over again. This build is a big picture build. You are singling out one component. Look at the bigger picture.
limitbreaker
February 15, 2013 at 9:37am
First of all, my message was about that link about cpuboss so your reply is built upon amiss understanding. Things have changed since even a year ago and not many applications only use one core, most users like my self will run numerous applications in the background while gaming and single core performance starts to matter a lot less. I like flexibility and I like to multitask so the 8350 starts to look a lot more attractive at that point. As for power consumption I think your point is redundant because the difference may be 2$ a year for me. Both processors use about the same Watts while in idle, its only when you're heavily pushing them that they show a real difference. As for big picture cost of the build, this is where AMD truly wins no matter how you want to concoct the cost, you don't just save 20 or 30$, you save on the motherboard too which usually accounts to over 100$ together for a similarly capable board and not to mention that the socket type will last several generations leaving you with a hefty upgrade in the future without changing the entire build.
Ordly
February 14, 2013 at 6:53pm
Intel Chips have more features than AMD thats why more bang-for-your-buck
Mediziner
February 13, 2013 at 7:14pm
The 8350 FX wasn't available at the time they designed this rig and the 8150 just did not deliver against the 3570K.
wumpus
February 12, 2013 at 11:40am
When did they have to finish this to publish it on dead trees in December (late October was the old rule, but pdfs probably changed things a bit. The dying of the magazine industry probably isn't helping)? It still seems reasonably accurate, meaning we might as well pack up and only drop by once every few months...
I find the lack of AMD chips sad, but justified. You pretty much need a specific niche (either massive parallelism that won't justify an i7 or a budget at the trinity level) to want one. They earned there spot on the hall of fame.
One thing to remember about the Celery300A is the Celery535A was pin compatible and used the same trick to go to 800MHz (doing it again over 1GHz required minor hardware hacking).
Hey.That_Dude
February 12, 2013 at 10:39am
I'd like to see how much that power costs you over the life of your PC. You want to shoot for Idle power draw around 40-50% of your total PSU as most of the time your system will Idle. And since almost every PSU is designed to be most efficient around 50% you end up with a "future proof" component that saves you money on your energy bill as well.
Mediziner
February 12, 2013 at 8:02am
This article is old so they didn't have the Vishera chips at that time.
Gauntylgrym
February 12, 2013 at 6:42am
I found this article quite validating, as nearly all the parts I'd planned on buying to build my wife's content creation PC are on this list. Even better, I didn't know what case to buy, so this article helped a lot on that front. Much thanks!
mix0plix
February 13, 2013 at 12:23pm
COOLER MASTER HAF 912 is a WAY BETTER CASE and its $59.00, I have built 5 comps with this case TWO of them high end gaming rigs, that NZXT is sauce
Mediziner
February 13, 2013 at 7:16pm
I prefer the aesthetics of the NZXT cass over the HAF and the HAF's interior isn't even painted. Please elaborate on how it is better.
mix0plix
February 14, 2013 at 3:37am
Build the Best Bang for the Buck PC is the name of this post that's why...a painted interior wont make your PC run any faster and at $99.00 the HAF at $59.00 I'll take the HAF912 and use the extra cash for parts that matter more, I'll bet money the air cooling temps are lower in the HAF also just because the plastics cool looking and its got nice colors doesn't mean the case is better I'll take a functionality and practicality over gimmicky flashy esthetics any day the NZXT doesn't offer me ANYTHING more that matters to me than the $59.00 HAF don't that's why
mix0plix
February 14, 2013 at 3:41am
AND I'm not knocking NZXT at all I built My computer in a NZXT case sorry but the more bang for the buck here happens to be the HAF 912
Mediziner
February 14, 2013 at 7:59am
The HAF has no USB 3.0 ports, no side window, you have to remove pone of the 3.5" trays to mount the really long graphics cards, etc.
The NZXT also includes a build-in fan controller.
limitbreaker
February 12, 2013 at 7:31am
For a content creation PC you're much better off with a AMD CPU, most of that kind of software are well multi threaded and push the 8 core to their limits making a 190$ 8350 as fast as an i7 and 90$ would get you a great motherboard like the M5A97 LE.
mix0plix
February 13, 2013 at 12:26pm
agree, I could have built a comp that smokes this thing for under $1000.00, in fact I am doing it as I post this
frozenchaze
February 12, 2013 at 5:30am
How much exactly will this setup cost? Sorry for being a noob, but i've been following this site for quite some time and just made an account to comment on this article ..
I want to build a gaming PC which can play BF3 at 60 FPS while recording :) Any help would be appreciated :D
Hagame
February 14, 2013 at 10:02am
Battle Field 3 is one of the most CPU demanding games out there, so you might want to consider a Decent CPu and a GPU, if you want to experience all that Battle Field 3 has to offer. I suggest a i5-3570k with a GTX 650 ti or better.
frozenchaze
February 12, 2013 at 11:46pm
That's way out of my budget .. plus I need to add a monitor and a keyboard too :[
Anyway, I took some advice from here and from BF3 forums and this is what I got {:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Dev6
Mediziner
February 13, 2013 at 7:22pm
Meh, here you go:
https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=18680551
The CPU is just a placeholder for another CPU I'm getting that's also $100 and from AMD but is not sold from newegg (Phenom II X6 1045T) (best bang for buck @ $100 now for a CPU).
It's a computer I'm building for a person named Charlie. His budget is also under $1000.
satrain18
February 12, 2013 at 1:43pm
It's a little under $1400 if you buy them from NewEgg. OS and DVD-RW included, of course.
iplayoneasy
February 12, 2013 at 7:23am
Everyone will call me an idiot but here it goes. Buy an AMD FX 8320 or a 6300 CPU. Here's the logic. BF3 and nearly all other modern games use only 4 CPU cores at the most. With this in mind an 8 core CPU is at 1/2 capacity regarding load. Personally with my FX 6300 recording with traps causes no frame rate drop because of the extra 2 cores with my 6 core CPU. As far as performance is concerned. I have 2 gtx 480s in sli. My buddy also has 2 gtx 480s in sli. The only difference is that he has a 3570k and I have an FX 6300 CPU. I get average 72 fps in BF3 yet he averages at. 76 fps. Yet the issue he gets is when running traps he gets frame drops occasionally while I done. With this in mind I would recommend the high core count AMD chip. There's a few videos on YouTube of guys testing streaming and they get the same results as I do. As for motherboards I'd recommend the Asrock 970 for a 6 core and the gigabyte ud3 if you get the 8 core. Also these are really cheap on Microcenter.com. Like $149.99 for the 8 core CPU and $59.99 for the motherboard if you buy them together. Also as far as power consumption if you game for 12 hours each day the amd will cost you an extra $12 in power for the whole year. Just change a bulb in your house to a florescent one and you can ignore the extra wattage consumption.
frozenchaze
February 12, 2013 at 9:14am
With everything you suggested, how much exactly will it cost? And I never before assembled a PC before, so I'm pretty much a noob overall [:
And also I forgot to mention my budget which is 700$-1000$ ..
Anyways I was derpin around on pcpartspickr.com and I selected some pieces. I need to reduce the price so if anything is suggested, I'll be sure to consider that.
Link -- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CnjG
limitbreaker
February 12, 2013 at 10:54am
With that budget you'll spend under 350$ for your motherboard/CPU/ram 250$ for your video card 150$ for your case/psu and 180$ for a 250GB Samsung 840 ssd.
limitbreaker
February 12, 2013 at 10:42am
First off, avoid getting that 60$ motherboard because it's an older chipset and it's very limited in features compared to a 90$ board like the ud3 he mentioned or the M5A97 LE (not good for sli) which has the best bang for buck and is current gen.
frozenchaze
February 12, 2013 at 12:53pm
updated link -- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/D5Sd I still need to remove or downgrade some more parts if anyone could suggest!
limitbreaker
February 12, 2013 at 3:12pm
You're making a big mistake by getting a 3x2gb ram, 6GB isn't very much and you'll occupy your ram channels in an uneven way. Opt for 2x4gb.
frozenchaze
February 12, 2013 at 11:47pm
Okay so, I've updated some things and added a monitor and keyboard to fit my budget .. How's this?
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Dev6
limitbreaker
February 13, 2013 at 7:51am
The setup you've picked isn't great for overclocking so why pay a premium for a 3570k? Try looking for the i5 3570 (no k) instead and use the extra money to get a better power supply, I'd feel uneasy with only 500 Watts. You want atleast 650 or more.
frozenchaze
February 13, 2013 at 8:38am
Are you sure I don't need an overclocking system?
Is the setup enough to play both Planetside 2 and Battlefield with atleast low settings at 60+ FPS?
limitbreaker
February 13, 2013 at 9:28am
I'm guessing that you don't have a proper heatsync lying around. The stock cooler that comes with your CPU isn't capable of doing Much more than its stock settings. Its really up to you, overclocking does take some know how but you may want the 3570k if one day you decide to upgrade to a heavy heatsync. But I can assure you that you don't need to overclock for any game. Any quad core CPU including Intel or AMD can easily push your graphic card to the max, Intel chips generally give 1 or 2% more fps and are better for gaming as long as it doesn't affect your video card budget that can give you much more than 2% more performance. Just check Out some benchmarks for your video card if you want to know what fps you'll get in bf3.
Hagame
February 14, 2013 at 9:56am
"But I can assure you that you don't need to overclock for any game"
I disagree. A Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo only costs about $35 dollars, and just replacing the heat sink will extend the usable life of a PC significantly. And as games become more demanding in CPU power (see Battle Field 3 64-player Map) you will need to over clock to get the performance you need.
limitbreaker
February 14, 2013 at 11:29am
Thank you for your comment but you didn't answer within context, the person that I was replying to is buying an i5 which is more than sufficient for any game and I'm sure it can handle bf3 just fine. He has no experience with overclocking and is trying to fit an Intel on a tight budget. What you're proposing will cost him over 50$ more.
frozenchaze
February 12, 2013 at 11:49pm
Haha, I have been following this site for almost 1 and half years but never made an account. Recently I won a giveaway for BF3 on youtube. Obviously needed to upgrade to a desktop. Plus I played some planetside 2 in the beta. It was awesome back then but no it is not optimized to work on my laptop. My laptop keeps overheating on both games. :(
AETAaAS
February 11, 2013 at 10:46pm
I'm surprised AMD's 8350 didn't make the list or even honorable mention. It has good all around performance and you can clock that thing like a mad [redacted]. :p
Part of the consideration of bang for buck is also how long you can run its allied parts. Intel is moving away from socket 1155 to 1150 with Haswell and socket 2011 when Ivy Bridge E comes out. However, AM3+ socket will be good for at least another generation IIRC.
Hagame
February 14, 2013 at 9:58am
They did mention AMD chips.
"We’re going to break form here by declaring AMD CPUs bang-for-the-buckers. Which one? Just pick any, because nearly all of them qualify.
Warrior247
February 11, 2013 at 8:41pm
Vanity tax or idiot tax? Who would brag about buying a $1000 part to play a $50 console game?
Hagame
February 14, 2013 at 9:44am
Because on PC's, you can actually handel maximum quality gaming with all the texture and graphic settings to the Max, and Because PC's can actually handel DirectX 11 and PhysX. I would Rather brag about a $1000 computer that CAN, rather than a $350 box that has PC hardware from 2007
