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$1500 Gaming PC Buyer's Guide -- November 2009

Norman Chan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:00:00 -0600

It's that time again! This month, we've priced out an amazing $1500 gaming PC. If you recall from our Dream Machine feature, the $1500 "Budget Surplus" of mid-2009 was powered by a Core i7-920 and Radeon 4870 X2. Today--a few months later--we're able to make a few adjustments to upgrade to a Radeon 5870-based machine. The introduction of Intel's Lynnfield processor and the final retail release of Windows 7 also forced us to reevaluate our spending priorities, but we're very pleased with the outcome. As gamers, this is a system we'd be proud to build ourselves--it will play any game released in the foreseeable future.

Read on for our parts picks, and let us know what you think!

*All prices are as of November 13th and do not include rebates, sales, clearance, or whatever else makes computer parts really cheap these days.

CPU

Core i7-860

$290, www.intel.com

Let's start off with the CPU. We've said this many times before: Intel's Lynnfield is Nehalem for the masses. Sure, the Bloomfield-based Core i7-920 is almost exactly the same price as this Core i7-860 we've picked, but going the Bloomfield route means you'll still have to buy a pricey X58 motherboard. The i7-860, based on Lynnfield, actually runs at a higher clock speed than the i7-920 (2.8GHz to 2.66GHz), and its performance tops the 920 in many gaming benchmarks. The absence of tri-channel DDR3 and dual X16 PCI-E2.0 support is almost a non-issue--the 860 makes up for that by being more easily overclockable to the 3+GHz range. The only reason to go with a Bloomfield system is the upgrade path, but Intel has vowed to keep up support for both 1366 and 1156 socket processors.

Motherboard

Asus P7P55D Deluxe

$220, www.asus.com

Our $1000 PC used an Asus P7P55D motherboard, but this time around, we have enough cash for the Deluxe version. We definitely sympathize with PC builders when it comes to confusing branding schemes--Asus has no fewer than six different versions of the P7P55D motherboards (LE, stock, PRO, EVO, Deluxe, and Premium). The Deluxe version comes with four 1.5V DIMM slots, two gigabit ethernet controllers, two PCI-E X16 slots, and is incredibly stable for overclocking. In fact, this board is specifically designed for overclocking. Asus has bundled a "TurboV Remote" with the system to use for manual overclocking (an easy 20% boost), and there are even three switches to let you override BIOS limits on RAM, memory controller, and CPU voltage.

CPU Cooler

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

$30, www.coolermaster.com

Even without a $1500 budget, it would be foolish not to pick up an aftermarket CPU cooler, especially if you're planning on overclocking. The decision is made even easier with Cooler Master's recently released Hyper 212 Plus cooler, which isn't just the best air cooler we've tested, but also one of the cheapest. The previous champ, the Thermalright Ultra 120E, sold for $70, and this cooler is less than half the price of that. The skyscraper design isn't particularly innovative, but we can't argue with the performance numbers. A stock cooler heats up to 61 C on a full load, while the Hyper 212 Plus keeps its cool at 43 C.

Memory

Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3/1600

$92, www.corsair.com

Well, it had to end sometime. The era of ridiculously cheap memory may be over. In the summer, you could buy 6GB of DDR3 memory for under $80. Today, you'll be lucky if you find 4GB for under $100. Of course, you're not going to want to skimp out on RAM quality for overclocking, so we're recommending a pair of rock-solid DIMMs from Corsair. Other performance memory makers will also suffice (Patriot, Crucial, OCZ, etc), but you'll want to stick with name brands for reliability and a decent warranty.

Videocard

HIS H587F1GDG Radeon HD 5870

$400, www.hisdigital.com

Things get really interesting with our videocard pick. ATI's Radeon HD 5870 is the new GPU champ, and it doesn't look like Nvidia will have a rival released to market anytime soon. We toyed with the idea of going with a lower-clocked 5850, but decided to make some cuts in other categories to go all-out on the GPU. Even at $400 (which is $20 higher than the launch price, due to high demand), its much more reasonable pricing than flagship videocard launches in the past. Unfortunately, the card is in a bit of short supply, so you'll have to hunt around to find it in stock. There also really isn't much difference between the 5870s released from HIS and other makers, so you'll be fine with one from Sapphire or PowerColor. Just make sure to read the fine print in the warranty before you buy!

Optical Drive

Samsung SH-S223

$31, www.samsungodd.com

This is starting to get a little embarrassing. Samsung's SH-S223 DVD burner hasn't faced a challenger worthy of its blazing read and write speeds, so it remains our pick for best optical drive for yet another month. Its price has gone up a little since the summer, but $30 for a fast and reliable (and did we mention fast?) 22x drive is well worth the money. Unless you're willing to dish out the bucks for Blu-Ray (and deal with HDCP hassles), you'll be fine with a DVD burner.

Hard Drive

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB

$100, www.westerndigital.com

We decided to go for a 1TB drive (instead of the 1.5TB Seagate in the Budget Surplus) this go-around to save money for other components. But while we sacrificed a bit of capacity, we definitely didn't want to skimp on speed. The Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB is as affordable as it is functional. As a WD Black drive (as opposed to Western Digital's Green lineup), its emphasis is on performance over power conservation. And that promise is delivered--it's one of the faster 3-platter terabyte drives we've tested, delivering truly impressive random-access speeds. Sure, you can buy a two-platter terabyte drive these days, but the price premium makes that jump difficult to stomach. With modest specifications and an abundance of storage room for the average computer user, the WD Digital Caviar Black 1TB is totally worth a Benjamin. And if you have the dough, an awesome 2TB Caviar Black drive is also available.

Power Supply

Corsair 850TX

$140 ($120 after rebate), www.corsair.com

The Corsair 850TX is the same power supply we chose for our $1500 Dream Machine, and it'll the do the trick for this build. It's $15 cheaper than when we last priced out a system (with $20 rebate), and you'll need the wattage to keep your system stable through overclocking on a hot summer day. There's enough juice to power the efficient Lynnfield processor and 5870, with enough left over to add a second video card if you want to upgrade to Crossfire in the future.

Case

Antec 900 Two

$120 ($95 after rebate), www.antec.com

We've long recommended the Antec 900 as the go-to mid-tower case (the NZXT tempest was just a 900 clone, after all). But it's time to finally put the original to bed and move up to the 900 Two. This successor shares many of the great features of the 900 that make it easy to build in, but its emphasis is on usability. Cut-outs and tie-downs on the motherboard tray help with cabling, and the chassis fans' speed knobs are mounted directly onto the front bezel. These modest improvements make it a more viable case than the 900, and we're glad that its price (after rebate) still squeaks in under the $100 mark.

Operating System

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition

$105, www.microsoft.com

You know our position on Windows 7: it kicks ass. So much so that we've recommended it as a primary OS since Microsoft released the public Release Candidate. But since we can't get away with recommending the RC version anymore, the OEM version is the way to go for your new PC, since it's the cheapest way to get a full copy. If you're truly a penny pincher, you can also just buy an upgrade copy of Windows 7 and run it as a fresh install (Check out how with this guide). We're also recommending the 64-bit edition, so you can utilize all 4GB of memory. Since our last price guide, the OEM version of Home Premium has dropped by 3 dollars. That's 300 pennies saved!

Price Breakdown

So how does it all break down? First, let's look at the specs for the last $1500 machine we built this past summer:

Part:	Model:	Price:
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-EX58	$189
CPU	Intel Core i7-920	$280
Memory	Patreot 6GB Viper DDR3	$79
Cooler	Thermalright Ultra 120E-1366	$70
Video Card	Diamond Radeon HD 4870 X2	$389
Optical Drive	Samsung SH-S223	$25
Power Supply	Corsair 850TX	$135
Case	Thermaltake Element S	$120
Hard Drive	Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 Barracuda	$130
OS	Windows 7 RC	$0

Below is the $1500 we've spec'd out today. The biggest difference lies in our decision to go with a Lynnfield processor instead of a lower-clocked Bloomfield, even though we actually spent more money on the processor/motherboard of this new machine. The video cards are similarly priced, but performance is far from comparable--the Radeon 5780 absolutely stomps the 4870 X2 of last year, and its a single-GPU card, to boot. Of course, we had to spend a small amount of the budget on operating system, but that's $105 well spent. $1500 is a magic price point for enthusiasts building a new system, and we're amazed at what you can get for the price.

Part:	Model:	Price:	(Price after rebate)	Newegg Link
Motherboard	Asus P7P55D Delue	$220		Link
CPU	Intel Core i7-860 (Lynnfield)	$290		Link
Memory	Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3/1600	$92		Link
Cooler	Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus	$30		Link
Video Card	HIS H587F1GDG Radeon 5870	$400		Link
Optical Drive	Samsung SH-S223A	$30		Link
Power Supply	Corsair 850TX	$140	$120	Link
Case	Antec 900 Two	$120	$95	Link
Hard Drive	WD Caviar Black 1TB	$100		Link
OS	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit	$105		Link

Total: $1527 ($1482 after rebates)

Agree with our choices? Have a better configuration for a $1500 gaming PC? Post your thoughts in the comments below!

Fujitsu Says New Rig with "German Ultra Clocking" Will be "Fastest Ever"

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:31:31 -0500

Fujitsu is said to be working on the “fastest rig on the planet.” While it is very common for car ads to heap praise on German engineering, the same is not true when it comes to PCs. But a slide (see below) related to the upcoming “fastest rig on the planet” is a laconic ode to German engineering.

The slide credits “German ultra clocking” for making Fujitsu’s mysterious gaming rig the fastest in the world. It also mentions that the rig features the very best “hand selected components”. Fujitsu posted a link to a teaser video - which miraculously doesn’t make even a thickly veiled reference to the gaming rig – on Twitter.

Image Credit: PC Launches

Price, Specs of EA's Affordable Crysis Warhead PC Revealed

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:00:03 -0500

Games like Crysis prove to be an acid test for game hardware because of their insatiable hunger for computer resources. Although these hi-fi games are a visual treat, they are at times blamed for hastening the demise of PC gaming by making it an expensive hobby.

But Crytek, EA, Nvidia and UltraPC have joined hands to build a Crysis Warhead-ready PC – capable of running the upcoming game in high spec at a smooth 30 frames per second, which will help them debunk the notion that one needs to spend thousands of bucks on a gaming PC.

The Warhead PC will feature an Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 @2.66GHz, Nvidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB graphics card, G31 mATX, 2GB memory and 250GB hard drive. The price of the machine has been revealed to be a very reasonable $699. All said, the aesthetics are bland and might not appeal to eclectic gamers.

Interested parties can sign-up for updates, and subsequently, pounce on the rig when it appears along with the game on September 16th, 2008.

Image Credit: Tiger Direct

HP Blackbird 002

Michael Brown — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:00:55 -0500

Label us Luddites for resisting Windows Vista, but there’s no arguing the point that the new OS currently offers very little you can’t get faster with Windows XP. That goes double for games, which is why we’re baffled by HP’s decision to run Vista Ultimate on the groundbreaking Blackbird 002 gaming rig it sent us.

We’re equally surprised that HP sent us a machine it knew would blue-screen when going into suspend mode (and then leave it to us to discover this). Those two decisions are unfortunate because nearly every other facet of the Blackbird is utterly brilliant. Here’s proof that HP’s acquisition of VoodooPC was much more than an opportunistic move (by a company that many gamers dismiss as stodgily conservative and more appropriate for middle-aged newbs) to glom on to the cachet of a high-profile boutique PC vendor.

Actually, we’d argue that HP shed its old-fogey image months ago when it shipped the superbly designed TouchSmart IQ770 (reviewed April ’07). Although that desktop system is also limited to Vista, the embedded 17-inch touch-screen LCD justifies the decision (and you wouldn’t play games on it anyway).

The Blackbird is a different story. Although HP tells us consumers will be able to order machines with either XP or Vista, we review rigs as they are sent to us. As for the blue-screen issue, HP says it’ll have it fixed before you read this review.
Those issues aside, HP and Voodoo deserve high praise for building an exciting and innovative personal computer while using industry-standard parts for every key component. One glance at the all-aluminum case reveals that it’s highly customized; nonetheless, it will accommodate any ATX motherboard and any standard power supply.

Swinging open the side access panel, which easily lifts off its smooth-as-silk hinges, reveals an Asus Striker Extreme motherboard. In a ballsy move, HP adjusted Nvidia’s nForce 680i SLI BIOS to allow a pair of ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT cards to run in CrossFire mode—tweaking the noses of AMD and Nvidia in the process.

Removing the Blackbird's access panel reveals beauty that's more than skin deep.

Each of the Radeons is outfitted with 1GB of DDR4 RAM and cooled by an Asetek LCLC liquid-cooling system. The LCLC also wicks heat away from the 3GHz Intel QX6850 (Core 2 Extreme quad core), which HP overclocked to 3.76GHz. You can order a Blackbird with an X-Fi soundcard and an Ageia PhysX card, but our unit had neither (relying on Analog Devices’s Integrated Digital SoundMax HD Audio for sound, installed on a riser card to escape electrical noise on the mobo).

The Topower Computer TOP-1100W DVT power supply is rated to deliver 1,100 watts (the 2900 XTs, you’ll recall, are insatiable power hogs). The PSU is mounted at the bottom of the case, which is elevated by a large aluminum foot to allow cool air to enter the case from the bottom as well as the sides. Cable management is simplified by modular power plugs, but there’s more to it than that. The SATA cables for the hard drives, for example, are routed to a set of sockets mounted on an internal backplane. The drives are mounted on trays that slide into a rack and plug into this backplane.

Two vertically mounted slot-fed DVD burners are hidden inside the case’s heatsink-like grill, with only LED-lit eject buttons revealing their presence. The case can accommodate a third (tray type) optical drive next to the other two. An equally well-disguised pop-up module on top of the case harbors a 15-in-1 media-card reader, jacks for a headphone and mic, two USB ports, and a FireWire port.

Close this swing-out panel and its spring-steel strips will push installed PCI Express cards firmly into their slots.

We’re excited about many of the Blackbird’s innovations, but HP’s decision to send us a Vista PC severely undermined the machine’s gaming benchmark numbers (including a Quake 4 performance that was slower than our aging zero-point rig’s). “What about DX10?” you ask. “Pretty much irrelevant for now,” we say. And while we applaud the company’s decision to enable CrossFire on an nForce motherboard, our experience has been that Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra are both faster than the Radeon HD 2900 XT (although the GTX’s edge evaporates when running Vista).

Buy this machine and you won’t care which camp wins the next skirmish in the GPU wars because you’ll be covered either way—as rightly you should be. That’s just one of the features that endow the Blackbird 002 with such potential for greatness. Yes, this PC deserves so much better than Vista.

Project War Machine M1 Elite

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:26:55 -0500

Sometimes you go to war with the hardware you have, not the hardware you’d like to have, and that’s what newcomer Project War Machine does with its M1 Elite, making controversial trade-offs in the name of stability.

Although it may look like yet another Cooler Master CM Stacker, the M1 Elite’s case sports a number of accents that set it apart, including a menacing skull-and-gear logo that’s laser cut into both side panels and the front door and a skull under the machine’s power button.

The company told us reliability was of top concern, so the rig uses air cooling instead of water. While air is more reliable, it lacks maximum cooling power, so overclocking was kept to a minimum. The new 1,333MHz FSB Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 is bumped from the stock 3GHz to a mere 3.33GHz. That’s a pretty conservative overclock. The builders also ditched RAID 0 in favor of a single Raptor drive and a 750GB Seagate.

The M1 Elite’s strong suit is graphics; it sports a pair of “superclocked” EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra cards in SLI that pushed all DirectX 9 games we tested at any resolution we desired. The problem with the superclocked cards, however, is the massive heatsinks on the backsides of the PCB, which prevent inserting an X-Fi card into the PCI slot; this forced the company to equip the M1 Elite with onboard audio. Project War Machine’s rationale for onboard audio is that most gamers use headphones anyway. That may be true, but the onboard RealTek audio part isn’t our first, or even third, choice for onboard sound.

Despite the reliability message PWM is promoting, our PC rebooted whenever we tried to copy benchmark files to it from a USB drive. We traced the problem to the Corsair Dominator RAM, which was clocked at a whopping 1,142MHz (stock is 800MHz). For this review, we ran the RAM at 800MHz.

The M1 Elite didn’t break any records, but it was very competitive with the latest crop of PCs we’ve reviewed. The M1 Elite loses to Digital Storm’s 3.46GHz quad box (reviewed in July) in our CPU-intensive tests by about 5 percent and takes a bigger hit in Photoshop CS2 due to the lack of RAID 0. In gaming, however, the overclocked Ultras are more than a match for the Storm’s GTX cards—FEAR ran 8.6 percent faster and Quake 4 came in 4.5 percent faster on the M1 Elite.

Although it is 5 to 10 percent slower than the recent quad-core boxes we’ve reviewed, it is considerably cheaper—about $5,000 less than the Falcon Northwest Mach V (reviewed in June) and $2,500 less than the Overdrive Core2.SLI (reviewed in August). But is it a good deal? We’d be OK with losing X-Fi if the board had competent onboard sound, but we can’t stomach RealTek. We were also a bit concerned that the company couldn’t immediately solve our problem with the RAM. It’s a pretty obvious sign that these builders are still a bit green.

October 2005 - Next-Gen Windows Comes Together!

The Maximum PC Staff — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0500

In the PDF archive of the October 2005 issue, you can find:

We reveal Vista, the Revolutionary successor to WinXP
Memory Buyers Guide
Tweak your Videocard!
Pentium 4 Chipset Battle
15 Awesome Reviews
Ask the Doctor
Rig of the Month
The Watchdog
And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

June 2005 - Stream your: Music - TV - Movies to Every Room in your Home!

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0500

In the PDF archive of the June 2005 issue, you can find:

Dual-Core Processors First Benchmarks
Which micro-size MP3 player reigns supreme?
Next-Gen Wi-Fi Reviewed
How To: Build the Ultimate Entertainment PC
Flash Storage Tech Guide
Ask the Doctor
Rig of the Month
The Watchdog
And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!