Hardware Recommendations for January 2008

01.15.08 - 01:58pm

It feels like it’s been half a year since I wrote one of these and chances are that’s very true. That being said, a lot has changed in the hardware industry and even more change will be occuring over the next six weeks. I’ve already included a few of these upcoming processors in my suggestions below but I’ve held off on upcoming GPUs as I haven’t got any definitive performance reviews yet. Enough talk, time to dish out some advice.

This time around I’m doing things a bit differently. You’ll notice I have a few more builds available and I’ve toned down the rigs themselves. I’ve tried to make these builds as realistic as possible so you can fully utilize each setup so rather than having 8 gigabytes of RAM in a gaming machine, I splurged a bit on the graphics card so the system will have more of a punch in the area where it matters. Feel free to ask any questions or offer suggestions, always looking for an opinion.

Budget Office Machine

Despite what hardware vendors would like to say, you don’t need a quadcore processor and a terabyte of harddrive space to interact with Office and surf the web. This machine would do a standup job for the average activities that a non-poweruser would undertake. With a single-core Conroe-L processor and an 80 PLUS powersupply, this little machine will sip power with power consumption that would rival an incandescent lightbulb.

Total: $342

Budget Gaming Machine

If you are looking for a little graphical power to drive that random match of Call of Duty 4 or offhand raid in World of Warcraft than this machine should do the trick. Perfect for gaming at 1280×1024 or lower but within these limits you’ll have a crystal clear picture with the ability to crank the graphics and anti-aliasing.

Total: $700 with $10 MIR

Midrange Gaming Machine

If the budget machine just doesn’t have enough kick in it, bumping up to this next tier should satisfy all but the diehard gamer with a 30″ screen. While playing Crysis at 1920×1600 would be a bit to ask from this setup while at full settings, this setup should scratch that eye-candy itch.

Price: $990 with $28 MIR

Advanced Gaming Machine

You’ll only need this much pixel pumping power if you absolutely must drive a 30″ screen to the limits. This by far isn’t the craziest rig that could be assembled but I feel it’s a balanced compromise between price and performance. There are technically two builds here, I’m skipping SLI considering how Nvidia’s upcoming cards would make it obsolete very quickly however Crossfire HD3870’s should still hold their own with a fantastic price/performance ratio.

Total: $1241(8800GTS) with $20 MIR or $1433(CF HD3870)

Overclocked Benching Machine

Is your favorite game 3DMark2006? Just can’t get enough of Aquamark? Does liquid nitrogen run through your veins? If you answered yes to any of these, then this build is for you. To be honest, if I had the wallet I would own the following rig, all in due time though. Now I was very tentative in suggesting the QX9650 given it costs nearly as much by itself as the advanced gaming machine but the performance that can be pulled from this chip is nothing short of phenomenal. Even on aircooling you are looking at a solid 4.5GHz, astounding performance and it only gets better with sub-ambient cooling.

Price: Base of $1042 with no GPU or CPU. Additonal $586 to $1712 depending on CPU/GPU choices.

Conclusion

That wraps it up and I barely even scratched the surface. Unfortunately I can’t list the thousands of variations that would eventually cover everyones needs. However, feel free to ask questions or simply state a budget and if I have the spare time I can throw something together for you. I’m looking forward to Febuary, the upcoming graphics cards and CPU launches should make this very interesting.

Note: Computer case and CPU cooling costs not included. Stock cooling would work for all builds but I highly suggest aftermarket cooling for both performance and comfort.

Category: Articles, Hardware

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The Conversation {4 comments}

  1. Chris Morrell {Tuesday January 15, 2008 @ 2:00 pm}

    I’ve been slacking off lately as all my PC components are scattered across the garage and I sort of discovered Eve Online, most likely for my detriment. I should have a very interesting motherboard review finished by the end of this week though, for those of you that like screaming CPU overclocks it should satisfy that craving.

  2. Andy Chubb {Wednesday January 16, 2008 @ 12:20 pm}

    Great review, I like the midrange gaming rig. This would be about what I would limit myself to financially. The P35 is a great Mobo for the price IMO.

  3. Chris Morrell {Wednesday January 16, 2008 @ 3:36 pm}

    I’d agree, the P35 chipset in general is phenomenal. I’ll have my first X38 board here tomorrow but I think I’ll forever love the P35 boards with their dirt cheap costs. $90 for a board that clocks like a $200 board is hard to pass up.

  4. Luke {Wednesday January 23, 2008 @ 9:50 pm}

    Any chance you could make a similar recommendations list for laptops? The nature of the list would obviously be different, but, as much as I’d like to fork out for the Advanced, if I’m honest with myself, a laptop is a higher priority in terms of University. ;)

    Also, can you recommend a NewEgg-equivalent site that ships internationally? It’s a bummer that NE is US only.

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