Best Desktops for Under a Grand

Following up on last week’s Best Budget PC Guide, today we have midrange systems with roughly twice the cost. Of all the systems types to configure, the midrange market can be the most difficult. With budget systems you’re often limited in what you can do by price constraints while at the high end the best components are usually pretty clear cut choices; for midrange builds there are many factors to consider. One of the core questions you always need to answer is: what do you want to do with the system? Office PCs will often have a different goal than something for a student, and there are many ways to adapt a particular system to fit the needs of the user. We have two configurations again, one AMD and one Intel, with optional graphics cards for those who want a system capable of handling the latest games. Let’s start with AMD:

Right from the first component choice – the APU – we have plenty of things to consider. I’ve tailored the above build more towards performance than price or power, so the A10-7850K is really the only APU that makes sense. (You can make an argument for an AM3+ CPU like the FX-6300 or FX8320, but considering that platform has been around a while and is basically fading away I’m hesitant to recommend that route.) Besides the quad-core (dual-module) CPU portion of the APU, the 7850K has the full 512 core (eight Compute Unit) GPU. The A10-7800 is an option to consider at its $155 MSRP, but the only place I can find with the part in stock charges $166; for $4 more you might as well just go whole hog and get the 7850K. Dropping down to an A10-7700K will lose two of the GPU CUs and 200MHz off the CPU for $15, so it’s also worth a thought, but if you don’t need faster GPU performance you might as well go for the A8-7600 for $110 at that point.

For the rest of the system, the MSI motherboard has AMD’s latest A88X chipset, we’ve selected DDR3-2133 RAM to provide increased bandwidth for the APU graphics, and the case is Fractal Design’s latest Core 3300 (though you can use the case in the Intel build as an alternative). For storage, we’ve again included both an SSD for the OS and apps with a rather large 2TB HDD for mass storage; you could easily drop the HDD if you don’t need that much storage, but for any modern system I simply refuse to leave out an SSD. The Crucial MX100 isn’t the fastest SSD on the planet, but the price makes it incredibly attractive. Finally, the power supply may be overkill for the base build, but having some power to spare means adding a graphics card is always an option.

Speaking of graphics cards, while the APU graphics will do fine for most tasks and even light gaming, if you want to be able to play most games at 1080p with medium or higher detail settings, a dedicated graphics card is required. Here we’ve listed two options: NVIDIA’s GTX 750 Ti (Maxwell) card and AMD’s R9 270X card. The AMD card is faster and costs more, and it also uses a lot more power; if you want 1080p with high quality settings in most games, that’s the card to get (and it’s reflected in the price of the system with the GPU). NVIDIA’s GTX 750 Ti on the other hand uses less than 75W and doesn’t even require a PCI-E power adapter, and it can still run most games at medium to high settings and 1080p. Either GPU is certainly worth considering, at least if you want to play games – and if you don’t, just get the core system and you can always add a GPU at some future date.

The Intel system this round ends up costing about $50 more than the AMD setup, thanks to a more expensive CPU and motherboard. There are ways to keep the prices closer, but overall the i5-4590 strikes a good balance of price and performance. It’s about $25 less than the slightly faster i5-4690 but only around 3-5% slower, and unless you plan on overclocking it should offer everything you need. As we discussed in our recent CPU State of the Part, looking at overall system performance Intel’s processors make a lot of sense for those that want a faster system.

The motherboard this time comes from ASRock and features Intel’s latest Z97 chipset, and for the RAM we elected to go with a 1.5V kit of DDR3-1866 memory. While faster memory can help with the processor graphics on AMD’s APUs, for Intel’s CPUs the HD 4600 is usually limited by other factors than bandwidth. The same caveats about the storage components apply here as well, but if you’re looking for alternatives the Samsung EVO 840 250GB is generally slightly faster than the Crucial MX100 while costing about $20 more.

The case for our Intel setup is an Antec Three Hundred Two, which is another popular option. Optional graphics choices can add a boost to gaming performance if you need it, but again a faster GPU could easily be added later on. If you’re sure you won’t want to add a dedicated GPU later, you can also save money on the PSU by going with the 300W Seasonic we used in our budget PC guide.

On either system, it’s of course possible to go for a smaller micro-ATX case and motherboard. The prices are typically comparable and these days the only thing you’re really sacrificing are expansion options, but considering many people don’t run anything more than a hard drive and SSD along with a GPU, you really don’t miss much. For mATX cases, you might like the Rosewill Line-M or Silverstone SST-PS07B. As far as mATX motherboards, the ASRock Z97M Pro4 would work well for the Intel platform, or for AMD the Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H will even save you a few bucks compared to the MSI board we listed above.

As before, we’ve elected to leave out the OS, keyboard, mouse, and display; these are all commodity items and most people have existing accessories they can carry over from an old PC. You can always use a free OS like Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux, whereas Windows will generally add $100 to the total. As far as displays go, I’m a sucker for larger displays and I’ve been using 30″ LCDs for most of the past decade – one of the best investments I’ve ever made in terms of computer hardware! For a good midrange display, I’d give serious consideration to the 27″ 2560×1440 panels that start at around $300; if you don’t want something that large (or expensive), there are also plenty of 23-24″ IPS/VA displays for around $150.

Finally, let’s quickly talk about pre-built systems and why I don’t generally recommend them. Really, it comes down to one thing: the refusal of the big OEMs and system builders to deliver a competitively priced desktop that includes at least a good quality 250/256GB SSD (or even a 128GB SSD). $500 will get you a Core i5 or AMD A10 processor, 4-8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and whatever case and power supply the OEM uses. Generally speaking, you get fewer features, lower quality parts, and a less attractive design – but you do get a valid Windows license along with a low-end keyboard and mouse.

We could easily take the above systems and remove the SSD and drop down to a 1TB HDD to save $140. Using lower quality motherboards can shave off another $30-$50. Wrap things up by using a cheaper case and power supply (another $50 saved) and guess what you have: a less desirable system for one, with a base price of $450 or so. Buy a Windows license and you basically have the equivalent of a pre-built system.

It’s not that OEM systems are necessarily terrible, but it’s the age old story: you get what you pay for. I for one would much rather have a decent SSD, motherboard, case, and power supply. You can pay a system integrator to put something together as well, but even then your choice of parts is often limited and the prices are typically higher than if you DIY.

State of the Part: CPUs

Short Introduction to CPUs and Terminology

There are many elements that go into any modern computer: the CPU/APU, motherboard, memory, (optional) GPU, storage, case, and power supply. While some items like the case and power supply don’t usually have an impact on performance, the CPU is one of the core elements and should be carefully selected. The goal today is to give a short overview of the level of performance you can expect across a large selection of CPUs/APUs.

Of course the choice of CPU also limits your choice of motherboard and potentially other components, but that’s a topic for another day. Briefly, both AMD and Intel have several current platforms, and each CPU/APU requires a specific class of platform (i.e. a certain CPU/APU socket). AMD currently has the FM2/FM2+ platforms for APUs, with the AM3+ platform being used for CPUs (though AM3+ is mostly being phased out at this stage); Intel has platforms for sockets LGA1150 and LGA2011, with the latter being a higher performance/higher cost “Extreme” platform that borrows quite a bit from Intel’s workstation platform (and LGA2011 is set to be replaced by a new platform next month).

Before we go any further, let’s take a step back and quickly cover some of the terms we’ll be throwing around. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit, and broadly speaking it handles most of the calculations that a modern PC performs in order to do useful work. APU stands for Accelerated Processing Unit, and it’s AMD’s marketing term for a CPU that also includes a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), with the distinction being that the GPU portion must be able to perform at a minimum a certain subset of calculations. AMD’s APUs all have at least DirectX 11 capabilities, and while Intel now includes DX11 GPUs (called “processor graphics”) in most of their CPUs, in general AMD’s APUs have faster/better graphics than Intel’s CPUs.

Then we come to the processor model numbers. It would be great if higher numbers were universally better, but these days all CPUs/APUs use model numbers that are similar to what you’ll find with many other products (e.g. cars). A higher number can mean many things – better performance, more features, lower power, a newer part, etc. – and both AMD and Intel have several families of processors. There are also differences between generations of processors that can have an impact on performance and features, but again this is a topic to address in greater detail elsewhere.

The short summary is that on the Intel side, in order of increasing performance/features the processor families include the Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7. For AMD, things are a bit easier as their processor models consist of the A4, A6, A8, and A10 APUs, along with FX-series CPUs (i.e. no graphics, though AMD is releasing mobile FX-series APUs now in the laptop market). If you want to know more about the features and specifications of any particular processor, you can use Intel’s ARK or AMD’s desktop APUs and desktop CPUs.

Comparison of CPU and Graphics Performance

With that introduction out of the way, let’s move on to the level of performance you can expect. All of the performance information presented here comes from CPU Bench, but instead of looking at individual charts we have averaged performance across a bunch of tests and normalized the scores relative to Intel’s Core i3-4330. Note that not all benchmarks were tested on every processor, but we selected those tests that were run on most configurations; some of the processors (e.g. i5-4670K) that didn’t have all the benchmarks run on them thus fall further down the charts than expected. The charts below thus represent a high level abstracted overview of CPU performance. We have also tested the integrated graphics performance where applicable, again normalized relative to i3-4330 performance.

There’s a lot of abstraction going on here, naturally, so if you want specifics on benchmark results you’ll need to refer to CPU Bench. The benchmarks used include single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads, along with system tests that will hit storage and memory quite a bit (e.g. PCMark 8 and 7-zip); the graphics benchmarks use five games along with two GPU compute tests. While the i7-4960X may not win every benchmark, and likewise the Pentium G2030 may not lose every benchmark, looking at overall relative performance gives us the above results and provides a good baseline recommendation as to which CPUs are the fastest.

Intel’s Haswell GT2 Die

The above graphs are a great picture of the split happening in the world of CPUs/APUs. On the CPU side of the fence, Intel is virtually untouched by AMD. Our reference i3-4330 is faster than all but the fastest AMD processors, and in fact only the AMD CPUs (i.e. not APUs) are able to surpass the overall performance of Intel’s i3-4330. Of course we also have to look at what the overall scores really mean, and while the fastest CPUs like the i7-4960X are more than twice as fast as the i3-4330, the slowest CPU included in the charts – the Pentium G2030 – still provides 70% of the performance of the i3-4330. For general use cases like surfing the Internet and watching movies, all of the processors in the above chart should suffice, and other elements like storage often have a bigger impact on the user experience.

AMD’s Kaveri Die

Moving to the graphics chart, the tables are turned and even Intel’s fastest graphics solutions (outside of the HD 5000, Iris, and Iris Pro, which we have not includes as they’re limited to laptops and OEM systems) are still slower overall than the AMD A8-5500. You can see from the above two die shots that AMD has dedicated a proportionally larger amount of the chip to graphics than Intel has, though Intel’s Haswell GT3 parts double the graphics portion and end up being closer to AMD in terms of alloted space, while AMD disables portions of the graphics on their A8 and A6 APUs.

We’re missing results from many older/slower processors of course, and adding in even a budget dedicated GPU (i.e. the AMD R7 240 or NVIDIA GT 730) would in most cases deliver better overall performance than even the fastest on-die GPU. While graphics has become more important over time, in practice it’s mostly useful for gaming and a few computationally intensive workloads like video and image processing. That could change and GPU performance could become a bigger element of the overall user experience, and that’s where AMD is trying to go with their talk about Compute Cores, but currently GPU performance isn’t as useful as CPU performance for most tasks.

Performance to Price Ratios

Naturally, there’s one other element that needs to be considered: the price of the parts. Intel holds the crown for the fastest CPU performance, but if we just look at the cost of the CPUs/APUs and how much you pay for a certain level of performance the story is quite different. Not surprisingly, the least expensive processors tend to look the best here. However, processors don’t exist in a vacuum – they’re only a portion of the total system cost – so we really need to add in a baseline price for the rest of a system.

If you purchase a motherboard, RAM, SSD, case, and PSU it will tack on $350-$510. I used the base set of components from the recent Budget PC Guide (minus the HDD), and then chose reasonable motherboards for the various platforms ($75 for FM2/FM2+, $80 for AM3+, $100 for LGA1155, $90 for LGA1150, and $225 for LGA2011 with $10 extra on RAM to get 4x2GB instead of 2x4GB). You could certainly spend a lot more on system components, but while less expensive motherboards exist for some of the platforms, I’m a bit wary of any motherboard priced under $70. The result is that the minimum cost for an entire system ends up being around $425-$500 for the less expensive CPUs/APUs, and $600 for something like the i5-4690K, $670-$705 for Core i7 LGA1150 systems, and as much as $1559 for the i7-4960X. Using the complete system prices (including a $50 discrete GPU on the AM3+ and LGA2011 systems), the performance to price charts look as follows:

Now we’re back to Intel holding on to the top spots, and interestingly it’s the more expensive CPUs that take the lead. AMD’s FX-8320 makes a decent showing, though the need for a discrete GPU drops it to seventh place overall. The difference in relative value between the best and worst processors becomes far less pronounced, on both the CPU and graphics charts, though AMD continues to lead on graphics performance. (Again, toss in a moderate dedicated GPU and it would be a different story.) We’ve also left out any consideration of power requirements, which don’t necessarily match up with the TDPs we’ve listed. In general, the latest APUs from AMD (Trinity, Richland, or Kaveri) and the latest CPUs from Intel (Ivy Bridge and Haswell) all have similar idle power draw, so unless you’re looking at the AM3+ or LGA2011 platforms power isn’t a primary consideration.

If you want a recommendation based on the above information, the short summary is that Intel’s latest Haswell CPUs – the i7-4790 and i5-4690 – continue to be my two favorites, with overclockers getting a recommendation to spend a bit more for the Devil’s Canyon i7-4790K or i5-4690K. If you’re opposed to buying Intel, the price of Kaveri APUs right now is higher than I’d like, and the FX-8320 is still a potent CPU for certain workloads (and it has four modules with eight cores compared to two modules and four cores for the fastest APUs). Even so, unless you specifically need the additional CPU cores, I’m more inclined to go with a Kaveri or Richland APU. The A8-7600 is probably the best balance of performance and price, but if you want the best on-die graphics solution the A10-7800 and A10-7850K are right in the same relative range for relative value.

Update: I modified the charts and improved the system price estimates, and the results are reflected in the above graphs. I also updated the text slightly to reflect these changes. If you want to see the original charts (which had slightly different system price estimates), here are the links: Average CPU Performance, Average Graphics Perfomance, CPU Performance to Price, Graphics Performance to Price, CPU Performance to System Price, and Graphics Performance to System Price.

Best PC You Can Build for Under $500

With yesterday’s launch of AMD’s 65W Kaveri APUs, it seemed a good time to give some recommendations for new system builds. We’re starting out at the budget end of the spectrum, however, and pricing/availability on Kaveri generally rules it out. We’ll keep things short and look at two builds, one AMD and one Intel. Outside of the CPU/APU and motherboard, parts are generally interchangeable.

The Kaveri APUs provide a decent blend of general and gaming performance, but finding one priced reasonably for a budget system is still a bit difficult (depending on your definition of budget, of course). While the idea of an inexpensive system capable of running games is fine, the cost to go from the A6-6400K we’ve selected to one of the Kaveri A10 models is more than the cost of a moderate dedicated graphics card like the R7 250, and the A6-7400K and A8-7600 are hard to find – and when you can find them, they’re priced $15 higher than the MSRP. If you can wait a bit, the A6-7400K and A8-7600 should become more readily available. In the meantime, the A6-6400K will provide similar performance with a slightly slower graphics configuration.

For the rest of the system, the MSI motherboard can support both existing Richland APUs like the A6-6400K we’ve selected as well as Kaveri APUs. Similarly, the DDR3-2133 RAM can provide better bandwidth than DDR3-1600 RAM that would only save you a buck. For storage, you’ve got three options: go pure SSD and have fast storage performance but without a lot of capacity, buy the 1TB HDD and sacrifice performance for capacity, or get both. Personally, I’d go with a pure SSD or the SSD+HDD configuration.

Wrapping things up, the case is a decent looking and not too expensive NZXT Source 210. Cases can be a very subjective topic, and there are plenty of reasonable options, but the NZXT is a good choice for a budget build. You could also drop down to a micro-ATX case and motherboard, and if that’s what you’re after the MSI A78M-E45 would be a good alternative. For the power supply, the small increase in efficiency offered by 80 Plus Gold isn’t really worth the added cost at this price, and Seasonic makes a good 300W unit that will provide good efficiency for a low-power system like this while still allowing for the use of a moderate discrete GPU down the road should you choose to upgrade.

The Intel budget build is going to provide a pretty similar experience to the AMD build overall; single-threaded performance will be a bit higher, but graphics performance will be lower. The price for these two builds is equivalent at around $400 – which includes both a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD, so you can shave off $50 by dropping one or the other storage option. The Celeron G1850 is Intel’s least expensive Haswell option right now, and while budget CPUs aren’t going to win in any performance contests, for normal tasks they’re still plenty fast. Paired with a 128GB SSD they can make for a decent home/office system and the price is certainly appealing. Overclocking isn’t really a goal of either of these builds, and Gigabyte’s GA-H97M-D3H should do fine for stock clocks.

The one other noteworthy change is that we’ve included a slightly more expensive (and perhaps a bit too gaudy for some) Corsair Carbide SPEC-01 case. It has lots of angles and vents, and while Corsair has made some very good cases opinions on aesthetics are still up for debate. It ships with two 120mm fans for cooling, which is going to be overkill for a budget build like this but will give you room to grow. It also has a case window and red LED lighting for those that want to show off a bit.

Of course we’re still missing the OS, keyboard, mouse, and display; these are all commodity items and most people have existing accessories they can carry over from an old PC. Unless you’re running a free OS like Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux, the cost of Windows is going to represent a significant increase in price of nearly $100, putting us at the $500 mark referenced in the title. Adding a 20″ to 22″ LCD will tack on another $100-$140, and a keyboard and mouse will be $25 combined for a basic set. So all told if you want a complete new PC the price will be closer to $650, but $500 for the core system and software is a good starting point. You can also find some mail-in rebates on quite a few parts that might drop the price a bit, but as those change regularly I haven’t included any in the above tables.