Holiday 2013 Buyer's Guide - Full Components List

MystiqThunder · December 5, 2013

It is clear that a lot of people disagree with these builds. Some may not disagree, but that might replace x with y. Now I think it is important to realize that Linus has these up so you could use them as reference. I am sure he does not expect everyone to run and buy these specific parts. Personally, I would make a couple changes but this is as good as it is going to get and Linus did a GREAT job in setting a benchmark for each tier of systems.

TechFan@ic · December 6, 2013

I just thought I should point out a few things that you guys might be interested in with regards to future buyer's guides.
For the $600 build, an FX 6300 would have been a much better choice here especially in modern games like BF4 multiplayer where it can use all the cores and even in older titles where the single-threaded performance is higher due to the L3 cache which the Athlon X4 lacks.

http://gamegpu.ru/ac...4-test-gpu.html

The two additional cores will also mean that it's more future-proof so to speak since both consoles dedicate 6 cores for the game engine, thus games will start using 6 cores as a standard.

The FX 6300 is only $20 more expensive than the Athlon and AM3+ motherboards are just as cheap as FM2 boards.

http://www.amazon.co...eywords=FX 6300
http://www.amazon.co...5&keywords=AM3+

I would also like to point out that the GTX 770 2GB was actually not the best choice, solely because of the amount of memory it has compared to similarly priced cards from AMD, namely the R9 280X
And before you say 2GB is enough, I want you to check out PCPer's podcast.

In PCPer's testing both the GTX 770 and GTX 760 experienced numerous lag spikes that Ryan described as being "very noticeable" in Bioshock Infinite, both in 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, these lag spikes did not exist with an R9 280X, the conclusion was due to the 770 and 760 running out of memory
This time-stamped link will take you to when Ryan talks about it : http://youtu.be/_sl__2PEHRI?t=22m40s

And this issue becomes even more detrimental in SLI because as the game becomes more demanding the higher memory it will require and so you will run into a memory brick wall before you can make use of the additional performance of the second card.

And it's not just Bioshock Infinite, a lot of modern games like Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham Origins, Rome 2 Total War, Skyrim with high-res textures & BF4 in specific multi-player levels & generally in single-player.
These games which can't be considered next-gen, except perhaps BF4 already use over 2.4GBs+ of memory on 2560x1440 and 2GBs+ on1920x1080.

Both the PS3 and the XBOX360 had 512mb of memory available for the GPU, in contrast both the PS4 & XBOX1 have 8GB of memory shared between the CPU & GPU. Game development starts on the consoles and trickles down to the PC, developers only had 512mb of VRAM to work with just two years ago and now they have 6-8 times as much, we'll start seeing much higher resolution textures in games and more memory intensive effects that the developers could not have implemented before, this includes global illumination and other forms of ray-tracing, much larger view distances, more complicated depth of field effects, sub-surface scattering, more tessellation and so on.

I know that you dislike these long-winded messages but I think you guys lack the time to go through some of these details in your regular reading or research especially considering how much you've widened the breadth of the content you cover and unfortunately it results in you giving out inappropriate advice from time to time.

In any case thanks for reading.

Ruaille · December 16, 2013

I would also like to point out that the GTX 770 2GB was actually not the best choice

Well, its going to be different for different people. For example, in my case, I will be picking a 770 over a 280x because the 280x can't offer GPU accellerated rendering in Premiere Pro CS6. (From what I can gather, It works in CC, not in CS6)

In regard to the question you asked at the end about affiliate links vs. paid advertising:

You should do both. You should use the affiliate links and paid advertising to maximise your revenue. If you consider the revenue from affiliate links to be enough, then just be more picky with your paid advertising. That way, sponsorship will be worth more to the companies that sponsor you because they will know that you would choose that product over another for your own personal use (and so will your audience).

Derangel · December 16, 2013

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Newegg)

Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($44.99 @ Newegg)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($44.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($58.98 @ OutletPC)

Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($129.99 @ Newegg)

Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($39.22 @ Mwave)

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Newegg)

Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($16.98 @ OutletPC)

Total: $475.13

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-28 13:12 EST-0500)

<$500 much better than the one you had. I respect you Linus, but next time give it to us in the Build Planning section.

The PSU is massive overkill for that system. You don't need an optical drive in a modern computer. Also, using MIRs to make it "better" is silly. MIRs are, at best, something you wait 3-6 months to get back if you ever get them at all. I hate when people list "after MIR" prices on stuff. List the price paid upfront, not the price you will have paid after waiting up to half a year to see your money.

cjeffcoatjr · December 16, 2013

The PSU is massive overkill for that system. You don't need an optical drive in a modern computer. Also, using MIRs to make it "better" is silly. MIRs are, at best, something you wait 3-6 months to get back if you ever get them at all. I hate when people list "after MIR" prices on stuff. List the price paid upfront, not the price you will have paid after waiting up to half a year to see your money.

The PSU is complete overkill, but at the time it was THIRTY DOLLARS! Thats cheap for a PSU. Without the MIR's it was about $530 (I think) when I put that build. The optical drive is only to install windows. Take it away and it is ~$500.