Rather than buying your core components
individually, why not see if you can find some bundles for less? These kits
contain a chip, some RAM and a motherboard, and they may even be
pre-overclocked. Utopia Computers (www.utopiacomputers.co.uk)
and OCUK (www.overclocks.co.uk) both
have some great deals running at the moment, suiting both value oriented and
enthusiast-grade PC systems!
Website www.utopiacomputers.co.uk
The best for less?
Although the PC we used for our
step-by-step guide is undeniably powerful, you can get a system that’s going to
be almost as fast for nearly $1,500 less, even when playing the latest games.
The six-cored chip is an unnecessary luxury when most applications fail to use
more than two cores and you can get just as much performance from the cheaper
and more overclockable i5 2500K. The Asus P9X79 Pro is a great board, but its
key next-generation features like USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA are also provided by
the ASRock Z68 Pro 3 Gen 3 for a fraction of the price. 16GB of RAM only
provides extra performance for those that regularly need more than 8GB and a PNY
GTX 560 Ti is arguably the best bang-for-buck video card on the market right
now. Lovely though the Fractal Design Define R3 case is, $120 is a lot to spend
on a chassis when a still-good Cooler Master chassis can be had for less than
half the price.
So how much does spending two and a half
times as much on your PC get you in terms of actual performance benefits?
Sysmark 2007 may not paint the six-cored chip in the most flattering light, but
it is quite representative of what many of us use our systems for on a
day-to-day basis; the difference here is only 9%. In our gaming tests the GTX
580 flexes its muscles over the GTX 560 Ti but still the differences are
relatively slight, with a maximum difference of 35% and an average across our
four games being a more subtle 24%. Considering the saving of nearly $1,500,
we’re pretty amazed at the small subjective differences in performance between
the two rigs!
|
Original Spec (Prices from Overclockers
UK)
|
Our Spec (Prices from Overclockers UK)
|
|
Intel Core i7 3930K CPU @ 4.4GHz
|
$750
|
Intel Core i5 2500K @ 4.8GHz
|
$250
|
|
Asus P9X79 Pro X79 Motherboard
|
$340
|
ASRock Z68 Pro3 Motherboard
|
$125
|
|
Thermolab Trinity Cooler
|
$55
|
Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Cooler
|
$25
|
|
16GB Corsair PC2-12800 RAM
|
$120
|
8GB Corsair PC2-10666 RAM
|
$55
|
|
PNY GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB GPU
|
$525
|
PNY GeForce GTX 560Ti 1GB GPU
|
$260
|
|
Fractal Design Define R3 Case
|
$120
|
Cooler Master Elite 370 Case
|
$55
|
|
Corsair TX 750W PSU
|
$150
|
Corsair 500W PSU
|
$60
|
|
Samsung Blu Ray Drive
|
$70
|
Sony 24x DVD-RW Drive
|
$20
|
|
120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD & 1TB HDD
|
$325
|
1TB Samsung HDD
|
$130
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Grand total
|
$2,455
|
|
$980
|
Website www.overclocks.co.uk
|
|
Ultimate PC Spec
|
Affordable PC Spec
|
% difference
|
|
Sysmark 2007
|
288
|
265
|
9%
|
|
Crysis Warhead
|
58 fps
|
46fps
|
26%
|
|
Stalker Call of Pripyat
|
65fps
|
48fps
|
35%
|
|
F1 2010
|
110fps
|
92fps
|
19%
|
|
Mass Effect 2
|
98fps
|
82fps
|
19% |
