Sandy Bridge Buyer’s Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on June 17, 2011 3:20 PM ESTWhat Can You Build for $2000?
There’s certainly a case of diminishing returns as you go up the price ladder. Our budget system checks in at under $500, our midrange build goes for less than $1000, and now we’re moving all the way up to $2000. There are areas where this system will be close to twice as fast as the midrange build, but that’s mostly in games and comes courtesy of the graphics card(s). If you’re looking for all that gaming performance without dropping two grand, take the midrange build and add the GPU(s) and power supply from the list below—you’ll get 85% of the CPU performance and 99% of the gaming performance for under $1400. But there are other benefits to be had; here’s the full list of parts.
| High-End Core i7-2600K System | |||
| Part | Description | Price | Rebate |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge | $313 | |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8Z68-V PRO LGA 1155 | $205 | |
| Memory | Patriot Gamer 2 Series 8GB (2x4GB) PGD38G1600ELK | $85 | -$15 |
| Graphics | EVGA 015-P3-1580-AR GeForce GTX 580 1536MB GDDR5 | $470 | -$30 |
| Primary Storage | Intel 510 Series 120GB SSD | $280 | |
| Secondary Storage | Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB HDD | $60 | |
| Optical | LITE-ON iHAS124-04 DVD Burner | $25 | |
| Power Supply | Corsair Professional Series AX750 750W PSU | $170 | -$20 |
| Case | Corsair Obsidian Series 650D | $200 | -$20 |
| CPU Heatsink | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 CPU cooler | $27 | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit | $100 | |
| System Total | $1935 | $1850 | |
If the Core i5-2500K is so amazingly capable, then why spend almost $100 more on the Core i7-2600K? On the surface, it’s only clocked 100MHz higher at stock, can only turbo 100MHz higher, has only 2MB more L3 cache, and doesn’t have more cores. However, it does have Hyper-Threading, so if you use multithreaded applications—like many video encoding, rendering, and compression applications—you’ll definitely benefit from going from the Core i5-2500K to the Core i7-2600K. For the more typical office and Internet applications, though, the performance difference is negligible. One other thing to note is power consumption—the Core i7 pulls ever so slightly more electricity than the Core i5. That is, even though the i7 is much more capable at certain tasks than the i5, it doesn’t use more juice. You can get a good idea of how the two chips compare, and whether what you do benefits from Hyper-Threading, by looking at our Bench results.
We’ve paired the Core i7-2600K with the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO that we recently reviewed. It sports a plethora of ports along with headers for case front USB 3.0 ports—in addition to the usual front USB 2.0 and Firewire ports. , Like many other high-end Z68 motherboards, the P8Z68 also supports SLI and CrossFire, so whether you choose the AMD or NVIDIA graphics route, the board has you covered for dual-GPUs. However, that doesn’t mean we have to start with two graphics cards, which brings us to the graphics configuration.
In speaking with our resident graphics expert, we came to the agreement that the best overall experience will be had by sticking with a single GPU—at least until you max out that component. You won’t have to deal with CrossFire or SLI headaches, driver updates (and game profiles) become less of a hassle, and everything just works as expected. As such, we’re recommending NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 580 for our high-end setup, currently available with rebates starting at $440. Just to be clear, for a similar price you can actually get better performance by going with dual GPUs, but CF/SLI scaling is never perfect and occasionally has issues with new releases that might take a couple months to get worked out.
If you’d still rather go with CF/SLI, you can pick up a pair of Radeon HD 6950 2GB cards for $460 (after $40 MIR), or you can cut costs even further by grabbing a pair of GTX 560 Ti cards in SLI for $400 (after $60 MIR). You can see how the single GPUs compare in our GTX 560 Ti review, and CF/SLI scaling is generally similar as you can see in our HD 6990 review. The performance edge tends to be in favor of 6950CF, and the 2GB 6950 cards will also have an edge at 2560x1440/2560x1600 and higher resolutions—and really you should have at least a 27” WQHD panel if you’re looking at this sort of graphics setup. But going back to our primary recommendation, the GTX 580 performs nearly as well in current games, it won’t have any CF/SLI idiosyncrasies, and if you’re really looking for a high-powered gaming setup you can always add a second 580 later.
For storage, we’ve gone the SSD+HDD route once more, only with a higher capacity, higher performance, and higher quality Intel 510 SSD this time. We’ve kept the same 1TB HDD for mass storage, but you can always go with a 2TB drive (or additional HDDs) if you need more capacity. We discussed the SSD particulars with Anand before settling on the Intel 510, and again there are some viable alternatives. If you’re after the absolute fastest 120GB SSD, OCZ’s Vertex 3 IOPS MAX is what you’ll want, but retail pricing currently starts at $310 shipped. For $30 less, Intel’s 510 120GB may not be quite as fast, but Intel’s reliability track record is definitely better than SandForce based SSDs. Realistically, outside of extremely taxing storage workloads—workloads most home users will never actually run—any of the latest generation of SSDs will be plenty fast. If the IOPS MAX is the most expensive 120GB, the OCZ Agility 3 120GB is on the other end of the spectrum and comes with a downright affordable price of $200 (after $30 MIR) by comparison. Worst-case performance (i.e. reading uncompressible data) takes a pretty big hit, but otherwise the Agility 3 and Vertex 3 120GB SSDs are very comparable and you save $60 compared to the Vertex 3. You’re still taking more of a risk with SF controllers, but as far as performance goes the SF-2200 drives are the current performance king.
Rounding things out, Patriot offers a solid 2x4GB kit of DDR3-1600 that overclocks well, is in my experience reliable, and has unobtrusive heatspreaders that go well with the ASUS motherboard’s color scheme. Corsair’s Professional Series AX750 outputs 750W at 80 Plus Gold efficiency and it’s fully modular. It’s about as high-quality as a PSU gets for a reasonable price. This PSU provides clean, stable power 
to this gaming-oriented beast of a computer, with room to spare for two GPUs and a heavily overclocked CPU. (If you do plan on adding a second GTX 580, though, make note that we’ve hit 850W under load using an SLI 580 setup, so you’ll likely need to move into the kilowatt range.)
Housing all of these impressive components is the Corsair Obsidian Series 650D. This case has ample room for a CrossFire or SLI setup, as well as great air-cooling for the heat generated by the CPU and GPU(s) during marathon gaming sessions. It’s also very water-cooling friendly, if you decide to go that route. While I’m not usually a fan of windowed cases, this system is simply too awesome to hide away the internals. We’re coming in slightly under budget for a change, especially if you factor in rebates, which leave us room for a decent midrange aftermarket CPU cooler. The stalwart Cooler Master Hyper 212+ isn’t the best CPU HSF on the market, but it’s quiet, effective, and reasonably priced—and it should let you approach a 5GHz overclock on the Core i7-2600K.
The final tally comes to just $1850 after rebates, which means if you’re still looking for other ways to waste spend your money, you could opt for a higher capacity SSD, add in Blu-ray support, toss in a larger HDD, or look for better cooling. We’re very impressed for just how much you can get for ‘only’ $1850, though, and no one would be unhappy running such a system right now.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Fixed. We had initially put 6950 CF in the build, but Ryan talked us out of that. It's still an alternative, though, so now it's "graphics card(s)". :-)Mcgoober - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Umm...problem. The Antec HCG 400 has only 1 pci-e connector. All GTX 460s need 2 pci-e connectors and using a molex adapter on that PS isn't going to work but I'll let you figure out why. Not to mention 400 watts for that build is probably the worst advice ever.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I've updated the text slightly to address your question. You'll need a Molex to PCIe for the second PEG connector, but trust me: you're not going to use 400W with the components we've listed. We already mentioned that adding a second GPU would need a larger PSU, but I was running 5850 CrossFire off of a 450W PSU (using Molex to PEG adapters on the second card) for about a year without problems. So why am I not running that anymore? Simply put, a single 5870 2GB card is proving to be a better experience overall.bl4C - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Jarred, are you a gamer or a casual gamer ?i find it strange that you're almost "recommending" a 450W PSU for a 5850 CF setup ... the total system power draw under full load could/would be well over 450W
maybe you're only a causal gamer ?
in that case you probably won't be stressing you graphic cards that much, but then there wouldn't have been any need to go CF ... and that might explain also why the single 5870 is a better experience for you
anyway, your comment puzzles me, as it is coming from a writer for the (personally respected) Anandtech site ... it sounds almost like an argument from a salesman: "this is a great piece of hardware ... i have one at home myself", trying to pesuade you into buying :D
no offense, but puzzling ... why would you be using a 450 PSU for a CF setup ? (in the context of somebody who works for Anandtech :D ... )
about the article itself, probably the title says it all:
"Sandy Bridge Buyer’s Guide"
it's just that, and if you look it it like that, and beyond the components-price tables (actually read it :) ), it can be helpful for people just wanting to buy a Sandy Bridge system (emphasis on "a")
JarredWalton - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I beat Crysis and Crysis: Warhead, Mass Effect 2, and several other games on the 5850 CrossFire setups. I'm currently playing through Crysis 2 with the 5870 (it's part of why I switched; CrossFire was broken for over a month after release), I play Left 4 Dead 2 on occasion, and I'm working on Dragon Age (never did beat it) so that I can play Dragon Age 2, along with playing Fallout: New Vegas. I've played other games as well (Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds Survivor recently) as well. If that's only a "casual" gamer, well, I'd like you to talk to my wife.Why only a 450W PSU? Because when I'm not gaming, my overclocked Core i7-965 idles at around 170W (and it was around 125W with 5850 CF). Since there are many hours in a day where I'm not gaming, maximum efficiency comes into play. A 750W PSU is generally less efficient at ~150W load than a 450W PSU. Actually, I even have a 750W PSU I'm going to swap in at some point, but only so I can go to 5870 CrossFire. Until I make that upgrade, the current PSU is running perfectly fine.
IMO, there are far too many people who remain convinced that just because NVIDIA and AMD generally say you need at least 650W for SLI/CF, it's true. AMD and NVIDIA need to worry about people buying a cheap 500W PSU and having it die and kill their GPUs and other components because it really couldn't handle a 500W load (or even 400W). My current PSU is actually a Thermaltake LightPower 450W -- not even SLI or CF certified! The horror! Again, I've tested a variety of games and apps, and under load with 5850 CrossFire I never managed to exceed 400W at the wall; as an 80 Plus Bronze PSU, it's likely running at 83-85% efficiency, so the highest load I measured (using a Kill-A-Watt) was 385W, which translates to a PSU output of around 320-325W. I suppose if I were to load up Furmark and run Cinebench at the same time, I could draw more power, but I'm still 125W south of the rated output.
DanNeely - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
Efficiency curves tend to be more or less flat between 20 and 80% load. 1 or 2% variation is negligible. My preference for a PSU that exceeds maximum load by 200-300W is driven by noise considerations. It's only the last few hundred watts of load that cause the PSU fan to spin up above idle, so my overprovisioned PSUs never switch out of all but silent mode. My CPU is water cooled and uses quiet 1350 RPM fans. The GPU is currently an issue; but my planned fall build will include a larger rad so I can bring it into the loop as well.toyota - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
its still a bad idea recommending just a 400 watt psu for that level of pc. 360 watts MAX on the 12v line is not a lot to work with and if you oc that i5 and gtx460 significantly you will be asking for it. it also limits upgrades because if you decide you want something that uses more power you will need a new psu. 500-550 watt psus with around 40 amps should be the recommendation for a system of that level.just4U - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
I think they were making a point with the inclusion of the 400W PSU. Alot of enthusiasts would be surprised at what you can get up and running on 400-500W units if they are of good quality. Most of us are not PSU experts afterall and tend to opt out for beefier units which are more often then not overkill.BernardP - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
"... right now is an especially wise time to buy into a Sandy Bridge system..."I would respectfully beg to differ. If one doesn't absolutely have to buy now, it seems safer to wait at most a couple of months to see what Bulldozer has to offer before buying. We already have credible leaks abour BD pricing, and it should be competitive with SB. Relative performance info is what is missing now.
GullLars - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
A posibble alternative to the 510 is Crucial M4, the 128GB versions of both are different from the 256GB ones performance wise, and it makes the M4 look better. I'd only advice 510 over 320 for scratch-disk duty, or heavy sequential loads. The vertex 3 is also a better choice than 510 IMO for boot drive on such a build, if you're not building it for someone else who require stability without ever getting support from you again.A nice way to waste/spend money past what you have put up there is RAID-0 of 2x 128GB SSDs, be that 510, M4, or Vertex 3. The 67 motherboards have 2x 6Gbps ports, and can handle 1000MB/s of bandwidth and >100K IOPS.