Project: Bang for Buck ??

Mr. May

Mr. May

Mr. May

Soldato
Joined
23 Apr 2009
Posts
3,473
Location
Derby
Hi all and welcome to my build log

This rig i have assembeled for a freind and i have put this together out off the most powerful parts i could find regardless of make second hand or new for the budget so her goes


The budget: around £500


so i felt on this budget i felt i would have to second hand to get any really power and these are the second hand parts i have found all prices are with postage and for MM

PII X2 550 BE proven unlocker £68
2x2gb G-Skill Ripjaws 2000mhz/9-9-9-24 £70
His HD4870X2 2056mb stock cooling £108
Corsair TX650w PSU £45
Akaska Freedom cpu cooler £22


for the rest i though it would be best buying 1st hand as i wanted 6/gbs sata for the rig so bought the following off ocuk

Asus M4A88TD-V Evo/USB3 880G £94
WD 1TB Black 6/gbs OEM £72
Xigmatek Asgard Case £26
2x Samsung 22x Sata DVD-RW £26

Total £531


these are the parts i ordered for him as he wanted 2 ODD's which has bought the price up from £518-£531 but then when i had a good speak to him he didnt really want high end graphics card so i swapped it for the HD4870 512mb i had in my HTPC and refunded him £55 but for the time being iam sticking to the above spec just to see how much power you can really get for around the £500 mark so some pic's off the build its self

To start with the componants them self (you may noticed that a couple off things are missing ie graphics and cpu cooler as the gpu didnt arrive till today and cpu cool still has not turned up)






now a to start striping the case down for a budget case i was rather impressed with the quality off this and the tooless design has been slated but personally i found them better than the zalman one in the z7 plus build i done last week (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18187486) as they hold very tigh and are a very simple idea big thumbs up on that and the pci holders were worlds better than the zalman one as the ones in the zalman just kept coming lose so i ended up using screws in the end so her goes some pics of the case

the extras (lots of bits for cable managment didnt even get bits like this with my RV01)



now some off the case



internals are very well though out clips on the back cable routes in place and motherboard cpu retension bracket hole




now i started with putting the fans in (found a old akaska amber which i though would go well in this case) ODD's and HDD's then mobob with cpu and memory followed by psu





was rather impressed with this mobo very good packaage 2x 6gbs sata cable's and 2x sats cable ide and genrally a very good looking board only grip is the sata should be side mounted insted of faceing up but for £90 who can gruble lol (btw in the pic the mobo looks a kinda of black brown but this is due to the flash in person its a very deep gloss black)





never use a corsair psu was impressed with the packaging and the braiding put the unit it self felt a lot lighter and flimsy compared to my thermaltake toughpower 650w considering that these cost nearly half as much again but then again it has got a 5 year warrenty compared to 3





only waiting on the cpu cooler now




time to put some benchmark programs plus extra requested files and overclock it see how much perfomance can be got from this will update as soon as there complete

 
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okay then i've been overclocking this cpu got it to a quad at 3.4ghz so X4 965 speeds this is still with the stock cooler but its saying ita an am2+ insted off a am3 but this might be due to the extra unlocked core's heres cpu-z print screen



whilst i've been on i though i would test the HDD so got a trail of HD Tune Pro and tested it to see if the 6/gbs made a diffrence in todays tech



compared to the 3/gbs i took off a review site



an extra 13mb/s isnt a bad improvment and the burst rate has raised a lot as well now on to 3d mark vantage bench
 
they defo are dont seem all that great for cooling though just having some problems with the x2 atm stuck in 2d mode all the time but once i've got that sorted ill post some bench marks compared to my i7 build and do a price vs performance :)

lol i know the cpu-z seems a bit messed up but the speed is correct :D and the voltage is 1.42v i think it would be dead at 3.8 ln2 couldnt even cope with that :D
 
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I know iam rather impressed with it for sayin for ocuk its £26 posted if your a member here any way back down to buissness :D got the x2 to play ball and i've done a run at stock 965 speed's and stock on the 4870x2 and got this



which isnt to bad i thought the cpu score was a bit low as i done my i7 score before had but double checked it on 3d guru and it was couple of hundred better than the x4 965 they tested so iam happy with that for saying a X2 550 should only about 5000 just waiting on a the cpu cooler and iam sure ill be able to get 3.8 out of it :D but the gpu was abit of a let down as i thought a 4870 was faster than 260 and the 275 is only a bit faster then that so was exspecting such a big gap so anyway here is the i7 score with 275's in sli (with physx off btw)



now here's me my question to you, bare in mind that a basic i7 package ie cpu mobo ram and a good cooler which the i7 needs to get over 4ghz will set you back what this whole rig has cost so is it worth all that extra cost for 1/2 again the performance (proberbly a lot less in games) ? bare in mind you will more than spending x2 as much ?

now iam going to test my HTPC which cost me just a little over £250 for the componants and consists off

[email protected] ghz £20
Asus Rampage X48 £50
2x2gb Corsair Dominator 1066mhz £55
Zalman CNP9700 £15
Sapphire HD4870 512mb £60
Thermaltake Toughpower 650w £30
Zalman Z7 Plus £42
WD 250gb 7,200 sata £10
18x Philips DVD-RW IDE £5

Total £287

there all the parts i bought but bare in mind i have add 5 more used HD's to it and some old fans if you want to count them in but that is a working system with the above which iam now about to run the same test on and we'll see what that score's brb :)



well i know 3dmark aint the best benchmark in the world but this really does show that when you spend your money well you really do get what you pay for as showen below

Budget performance performance/price ratio

£250 P8896 35.584
£500 P14277 28.554
£1000 P21377 21.377

but still the more you spend the less you are gettin back in performance so i ask you what would you say is the perfect point for best bang for buck ? (bare in mind i've still got to overclock the x2 550 more when the cooler arrives )
 
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chipps101 said:
i'm glad the cpu and memory are performing as well for you as they did for me :) (pity about the raptor :( ) once you get the new cooler i'm sure that chip will go higher :)

unlocking the cores on it sent core temp and cpu-z a bit nutty with me also so i used hwinfo instead.

did the mobo automatically put the vcore up to that or did you set it manually ? as i only needed 1.4v in bios for 3.4 ghz.
Click to expand...

i know i've got another raptor in my main rig so i am going to look at upgrading that to an ssd and putting that in my main machine its just an odd fault on it as if you only tested it quickly it would pass the error but then after a while the seek speed would really drop and and atm i've got it set to 1.4 for 3.4 as a quad with just the stock cooling so iam hoping for a good 3.8 and then ill run some more benchmarks hope you've enjoyed the thread
 
lol well i've decided to put the single 4870 in for the x2 as the op requested and do some benche's in my machine and see how it goes thanks for reading still going to see whats the most iam going to get out off the cpu tommorrow and ill post results
 
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