Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2156



Introduction

Welcome back to another edition of the AnandTech Buyer's Guides. The one constant in life is change, and what was once an ultrafast component invariably will be surpassed by midrange and eventually budget parts in terms of raw performance. Sometimes this progression will occur quickly, and other times it may take a couple years, but in the world of computers we will all inevitably need to upgrade. For the past several years many people have been quite happy with their computer's performance; for typical applications (not games, video encoding, 3D rendering, or other professional applications) even moderate Pentium 4 or Athlon XP systems continue to run quite well. The pending launch of Windows Vista may finally change all that, with performance requirements that appear to be quite a bit higher than Windows XP - assuming of course that you want to make the switch to the new operating system.

Most people are still pretty happy with Windows XP performance and features, and particularly in the business world we don't expect a rapid transition to take place. Most are taking a "wait and see" approach to Vista, or perhaps waiting for the expected Service Pack 1 before making the transition. If you like being an early adopter, by all means feel free to take the plunge at the end of this month when Windows Vista launches. We're not ready to recommend such an approach, however, so our Buyer's Guides will continue to stick with XP for now.

It is worth noting that most new systems (and OS purchases) will come with the option to upgrade to Vista for free (or for a marginal fee), but you need to make sure that you get the correct version of Windows XP depending on which version of Windows Vista you want to run. Basically, at this point we do not recommend that anyone purchase Windows XP Home, as you are only allowed to upgrade to Windows Vista Home Basic. The big problem with Vista Home Basic is that it does not include the new Aero Glass interface, arguably one of the main reasons many people would be interested in upgrading to Vista in the first place. We recommend getting Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 or XP Professional instead, as both of those can be upgraded to Vista Home Premium, and the latter can be upgraded to Windows Vista Business.

There's also the 64-bit question that needs to be tackled, as all versions of Windows XP and Vista are now available in either 32-bit or 64-bit packages. While we would love to say that we've seen a benefit to running 64-bit operating systems, the reality is that there are very few applications that actually perform better in 64-bit mode right now, and there are still plenty of driver issues and other incompatibilities that people run into. If you run applications that use a lot of memory and you plan on installing more than 2GB of RAM into your system, a 64-bit OS might be the right way to go, but if you just want the operating system to get out of your way and let you get to work, we recommend sticking with a 32-bit OS (preferably XP) for now. That recommendation may change in the future, but discretion and patience seem to be the better course of action.

With that information out of the way, our Midrange Buyer's Guide continues to cover the most popular market segment, and the available budget leaves a lot of room for flexibility. Our last midrange guide was in September 2006, making it almost 4 months old. You might think at first that a lot of things would have changed in four months, but other than a few price fluctuations our basic recommendations are very similar. Rather than simply rehash what we have already stated in previous guides, we're going to use this midrange guide to tackle several different configuration options, with prices ranging from $1250 up to over $2000. The top of that price range is more of a high-end computer, but we don't necessarily recommend that you purchase every single component from our upgraded configuration. Rather, consider it a list of the various upgrades that you can make, and choose those which make the most sense depending on your intended use. We will also cover options you might want to consider for gaming and overclocking centric configurations, and in the end we will have several different systems from which you can choose.



Basic Midrange Configurations

We'll start with the Intel and AMD options for what we consider a basic midrange computer. These will offer good performance for a variety of tasks, but they are not tailored towards anything in particular. Before we get into the actual component lists, let's take a moment to clarify a few things. First, a lot of people certainly don't need all of the options we are listing below. Dual core processors are faster for some tasks, but there are still plenty of applications that run perfectly well on older systems, and they certainly don't need the processing power offered by a dual core CPU. Not everyone needs 2GB of memory, a discrete graphics card, a relatively large hard drive, etc. However, we are building what we consider to be a good all-around computer, and individualization can still be beneficial. If you're looking to cut costs a bit further, you can find additional information and advice in our last Entry Level Buyer's Guide.

A second topic that we need to address is the question of AMD Athlon X2 versus Intel Core 2 Duo processors. If performance is your primary consideration, there are very few areas where Core 2 Duo isn't faster. Once you reach the Core 2 Duo E6600, it becomes faster than just about any official AMD Athlon X2 processor in overall performance, and the only way you will surpass its performance is with overclocking. When you start overclocking both platforms, however, Core 2 Duo is basically out of reach of AMD's current processor line. So Core 2 Duo is the way to go, right?

In actuality, AMD has done what most companies do when their product does not offer best in class performance: they cut prices, sometimes quite drastically. Motherboards for AMD systems also tend to be a bit less expensive than their Intel counterparts. The net result is that while Intel is undoubtedly the faster processor overall, AMD is very competitive - and perhaps even better - when it comes to price/performance. That goes double if you plan on getting a single core processor, as Intel doesn't offer any compelling single core solutions right now. We're sticking with dual core processors for our midrange and higher recommendations, but whichever way you choose to go the bottom line is that you can get a lot of performance without spending a ton of money, so try to spend your money where it will offer the most benefit.

AMD Mid-Range Base System
Hardware Component Price Rebates
Processor Athlon 64 X2 3800+ AM2 (2x512K 2.0GHz) - Retail $133  
Motherboard DFI Infinity NF ULTRAII-M2 $95  
Memory OCZ S.O.E 2x1GB DDR2-667 (OCZ2SOE6672GK) $221 $30
Video Card PNY GeForce 7600GS 256MB (VCG7600SXPB) $96  
Hard Drive Seagate 320GB SATA 3.0Gbps 7200RPM 16MB (Barracuda 7200.10) $90  
Optical Drive LG Black 18X DVD+R (GSAH22N-BK) $36  
Case Cooler Master Centurion 534 (RC-534-KKN2-GP) $66 $10
Power Supply FSP Group (Fortron Source) 450W (AX450-PN) $62  
Display Acer AL2016W 20" 8ms (1680x1050) $233  
Speakers Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers $74  
Keyboard and Mouse Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 $28  
Operating System Windows XP MCE 2005 (with Vista coupon) $115  
Bottom Line   $1249 $1209

Intel Mid-Range Base System
Hardware Component Price Rebates
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz 2MB Shared) - Retail $185  
Motherboard Biostar TForce965PT (P965 775) $111  
Memory OCZ S.O.E 2x1GB DDR2-667 (OCZ2SOE6672GK) $221 $30
Video Card PNY GeForce 7600GS 256MB (VCG7600SXPB) $96  
Hard Drive Seagate 320GB SATA 3.0Gbps 7200RPM 16MB (Barracuda 7200.10) $90  
Optical Drive LG Black 18X DVD+R (GSAH22N-BK) $36  
Case Cooler Master Centurion 534 (RC-534-KKN2-GP) $66 $10
Power Supply FSP Group (Fortron Source) 450W (AX450-PN) $62  
Display Acer AL2016W 20" 8ms (1680x1050) $233  
Speakers Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers $74  
Keyboard and Mouse Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 $28  
Operating System Windows XP MCE 2005 (with Vista coupon) $115  
Bottom Line   $1317 $1277


For your typical midrange computer, we've gone with a selection of high-quality parts that offer a great price/performance ratio. With either of the above systems, you should easily be able to run all current applications, along with Windows Vista, with one possible exception: games. You can even run all current games, just not at maximum detail settings or high resolutions. The performance edge goes to the Intel E6300 build, but obviously the performance advantage comes with a pricing disadvantage. If you want to spend the same amount of money on both platforms, you could actually put an Athlon X2 4600+ into the AMD system and end up with typically better performance than the E6300. If you don't plan on stressing the CPU a lot, however, even an X2 3800+ on is more than sufficient. If you need more information about the various processors available, you may find it helpful to refer to our Holiday CPU Guide.


The motherboard selections were chosen with an eye towards stability and cost without sacrificing performance. The AM2 motherboard actually uses the older NVIDIA nForce4 chipset, but we have found the performance and stability offered to be beyond reproach in the DFI motherboard. Likewise, the Biostar TForce 965PT is one of the most compelling P965 solutions currently available, offering good performance, stability, and features. Overclocking is also an option on either of these motherboards, and while they may not be the absolute best overclocking options around, they should be more than sufficient for the majority of users. Strictly in terms of features, the edge belongs to the DFI board, as it includes FireWire support. It is possible to get FireWire for socket 775 but it will usually require spending a bit more money than the Biostar board.

Finding good DDR2 memory without spending a lot of money is still difficult, although prices have dropped quite a bit in the past several months. There are a few DDR2-800 offerings available that only cost a bit more money than DDR2-667, but with 5-5-5 timings instead and once you factor in mail-in rebates we feel that the OCZ S.O.E. (that's "Special Ops Edition" if you were wondering) DDR2-667 is probably the best option right now. It runs at 4-4-4 timings with 1.9V and shouldn't have any problem posting at 1.8V, and with a bit higher voltage you should be able to overclock to at least DDR2-800 (if you want to). We wouldn't go beyond about 2.1V for this memory, as that tends to be the safe limit for anything that doesn't use Micron D memory chips.

The choice of graphics card is one of the more difficult decisions, but what is best is going to vary greatly by individual. The GeForce 7600 GS is a good entry level GPU, providing the features and performance necessary to accomplish most tasks. AMD's Radeon X1650 Pro offers a similar level of performance at a slightly higher price. Either one should work well, but if you need more options for graphics cards, check out our recent Holiday GPU Guide.

Choosing among the different storage components these days usually ends up coming down to price as the deciding factor, as the performance offered is very close between the various brands. For the hard drives, we also factored in price per GB, and ended up with 320GB models being the best overall choices. Seagate and Western Digital are the least expensive brands and they both offer good performance and features, with Hitachi, Samsung, and Maxtor (who is now owned by Seagate) being the other major brands. The Western Digital 320GB Caviar SE16 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB both cost around $90 and it's basically a tossup determining which is better. Both brands trade punches in benchmarks, coming in faster in some tests and slower in others; Seagate seems to do better in multimedia applications while Western Digital does better in multitasking scenarios, but in day-to-day use most people likely wouldn't be able to tell the difference.



Basic Configuration - Accessories

All of the components we've discussed so far tend to have more of an impact on overall system performance. What remains are the miscellaneous accessories that may not impact performance at all, but they do influence other areas of the computing environment. Personal preference will play a larger role in many of these components, so as always we would recommend people stick with what they like first and only branch out if you are looking to try something else. Most of the base selections can be used with any of the builds we will be putting together without any difficulty, and we will try to make note of any exceptions.

For optical storage, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are still too expensive to warrant inclusion in a midrange computer, so we return to the venerable DVD+RW. Most companies now offer 18X burn speeds, which are barely faster than the old 16X maximum, and street prices bottom out at around $30. The LG GSAH22N includes all the standard features as well as 12X DVD-RAM support and works well with a variety of media, so it gets our recommendation. We're still waiting for reasonably priced SATA optical drives that can deliver similar overall quality, unfortunately.

The computer case is one of the items that you will see a lot, but you really only have to work with it once or twice during the life of the typical computer (unless you upgrade frequently). Appearance is definitely an important consideration for many people, and what one person finds attractive another will find ugly or boring. Besides the appearance, the choice of case will also impact noise levels, cooling, and ease of installation. The cheapest cases tend to be made of thin steel, which gives them sharp edges internally and also makes them pretty flimsy. They will still suffice for most people, but we prefer slightly more expensive cases. Cooler Master has a large selection of reasonable midrange cases, and most of us find them to be easy to work with and reasonably attractive. Antec, In Win, Thermaltake, Apevia, Lian Li, and others offer alternatives worth considering, and if you are more budget minded the Rosewill brand is worth a look. We like cases that support 120mm fans (at least one) as they will typically offer better cooling with lower noise levels. Beyond that, remember to make sure your optical drive matches whatever case you choose.

Of far more concern than the case is going to be the power supply you use, particularly in some of the upgraded midrange configurations. Getting a case with an included power supply will usually save you some money, and most power supplies rated at 350W or higher are sufficient for a midrange computer. Still, when you consider that you're spending over $1000 on all of the other components, we really hesitate to shave $40 or $50 off the total price by sticking with a low-end power supply. We've selected a reasonably priced 450W Fortron Source PSU as our basic recommendation, and that should be more than enough for any midrange computer, other than for serious overclocking. Fortron Source is a well-regarded PSU manufacturer, and they are often used as the basis of OEM power supplies. The only potential drawback of the AX450-PN is that it only has a 70% efficiency rating, but if you want a higher efficiency power supply you will have to spend more money. We're more concerned about power supply noise levels than efficiency, and while the two are related the 120mm fan used in the FSP helps to keep noise levels down. If you're willing to spend a bit more money and you want the best of both worlds - quiet and efficient - SeaSonic gets a strong recommendation. They tend to cost more for lower wattage ratings, but a SeaSonic S12-330 performs better than most other 400-450W power supplies. OCZ, Enermax, and several other companies also make some very good high-end power supplies, which we will discuss a bit further in the overclocking configuration, but SeaSonic remains one of the quietest (short of purchasing a fanless PSU).

Keyboard, mouse, and speakers are three items where you can either go for the bare minimum cost and functionality, or you can spend a lot of money for extra features. We have selected what we feel are good options for all three areas, and it would be hard to find anything that's truly "better" without spending more money. Our performance configuration will include better speakers, but we didn't feel the need to upgrade the keyboard or mouse on any of the builds. If you want to get a wireless keyboard and mouse, our advice is to spend more money rather than less. The $30-$40 packages generally don't perform as well as we would like, so unless you absolutely want wireless input devices, we prefer to spend the extra money elsewhere.

The last accessory is the display, and as we have said on many occasions we would much rather have a very nice display with a decent computer than to have an excellent computer with a lousy display. LCD prices have continued to drop, although even the cheapest 19" models still tend to cost just under $200. The 19" LCDs are still a good option, but for the extra money we would prefer to get a 20" LCD that comes with a higher resolution. Most of us also prefer widescreen LCDs these days, and although there are a few gaming titles that continue to cause irritation by not natively supporting widescreen resolutions, moving forward WS support should become commonplace. Outside of games, watching widescreen movies is definitely preferred, and we enjoy the extra screen width on the Windows desktop as well. Looking at the various 20" widescreen displays that are available, Acer once again has one of the best price/performance offerings. ViewSonic, BenQ, Samsung, and several other companies make similar LCDs, but they all cost a bit more and it is difficult to say that they actually look much better than the Acer model. For $230, most people will be very happy with the Acer AL2016W.

For the operating system, we selected Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. It only costs slightly more than XP Home, and it allows you to upgrade to Vista Home Premium as we mentioned earlier. The DVR functionality may not be necessary, but it doesn't hurt either, and the only features that XP Pro adds (i.e. hard drive encryption) are not used by most people.



Upgraded Midrange Configuration

We've covered our basic recommendations, but of course there's a lot of fine tuning that can be done. The price bracket that can be defined as being midrange is pretty large; some people feel midrange is closer to $1000 while others feel it's closer to $2000. We would say $2000 is more of a high-end configuration, but as we mentioned earlier you don't need to purchase every upgraded component when customizing your own midrange build. Here then are the upgraded midrange recommendations.

Intel Mid-Range Performance System
Hardware Component Price Rebates
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz 4MB Shared) - Retail $317  
Motherboard ASUS P5B-E (P965 775) $151  
Memory Super Talent 2x1GB DDR2-800 (T800UX2GC4) $268  
Video Card Sapphire Radeon X1950XT 256MB (100186L) $256 $30
Hard Drive Western Digital 500GB SATA 3.0Gbps 7200RPM 16MB (Caviar SE16) $148  
Optical Drive LG Black 18X DVD+R (GSAH22N-BK) $36  
Case Lian Li PC-7B plus II $103  
Power Supply Rosewill SLI 600W (RP600V2-S-SL) $73  
Display Sceptre x22wg-Gamer 22" 5ms DVI+HDMI (1680x1050) $365 $20
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 96  
Speakers Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 280W THX Speakers $159  
Keyboard and Mouse Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 $28  
Operating System Windows XP MCE 2005 (with Vista coupon) $115  
Bottom Line   $2115 $2065

As you can see, we've limited our performance upgrade to the Intel platform. AMD is still be reasonably competitive with the E6600 when using their X2 5000+, but we definitely give the edge to Intel and the prices of those two processors are about the same. A few of the less critical components stayed the same, but we've upgraded almost everything.

The upgraded processor improves clock speed over the E6300 by 28%, and the 4MB L2 cache typically adds another 5% to 15% performance depending on the application. It ends up being about 40% more processor performance for a price increase of 70%, which really isn't that bad in terms of CPU price/performance scaling.

The ASUS P5B-E motherboard isn't going to be noticeably faster than the Biostar 965PT, but it does have some extra features. The ASUS board adds FireWire support, three more internal SATA ports and one eSATA port, RAID 0/1/5/10 support, a slightly different expansion card slot arrangement, and a different onboard audio solution. The ASUS P5B-E is also one of the better overclocking motherboards, especially in its price bracket.

Along with the faster processor and upgraded motherboard, we selected some Super Talent DDR2-800 memory with 4-4-3 timings. The performance benefit of the faster memory probably isn't worth the extra $40 ($70 after OCZ rebate) unless you plan on overclocking, and we will be using this same memory on the overclocking configuration. These Super Talent DIMMs allow for up to 2.2V officially and should come close to matching the performance of many of the $400+ memory kits. Timings will likely need to be relaxed a bit more, but overall they are very good DIMMs.

There are quite a few good graphics cards in the $200-$300 price range, and for the performance configuration we selected one of the faster models. The X1950 XT 256MB is nearly as fast as the full X1950 XTX in most situations, but it's priced about $100 lower. There are a few games and applications that can benefit from having 512MB of memory, but even then the performance difference is rarely more than 10% so the 40% price increase is hard to justify. Anyone interested in running a CrossFire setup would need to choose a different graphics card, as there are no 256MB X1950 XT CrossFire cards right now, but we wouldn't recommend CrossFire or SLI as a reasonable gaming solution unless you are already running at least a GeForce 8800 GTS or faster graphics card.

The hard drive, power supply, and display upgrades all take the same approach: bigger is better! If you're not the type of person to fill even a 250GB hard drive, obviously the hard drive upgrade is unnecessary. The Rosewill 600W power supply is probably overkill, but users who plan on adding multiple hard drives and perhaps a second graphics card in the future probably won't feel too bad about spending an extra $10. Whether or not the Rosewill 600W is really that much better than the Fortron Source 450W is debatable, but most people have been pretty pleased with the midrange Rosewill offerings. Just be aware that they aren't particularly quiet.

The 22" LCD has the same resolution as the 20" LCD in our base configuration, but it does have a few other advantages. The Sceptre x22wg-Gamer boasts a 5ms response time (versus 8ms), but more importantly it includes HDCP support and it also has an HDMI input. Acer offers a couple of similar 22" LCDs that are worth considering, and if you are primarily concerned with image quality we would rate them as being more or less equivalent to the Sceptre (most of the 22" LCDs use the same panel after all). For $50 less you can forget all about HDCP support and just get a standard LCD, or you can save $20 and still get HDCP but drop the HDMI port. Several other companies offer similar LCDs, with prices ranging from $300-$400, but if you want to get something larger than a 22" LCD the next step up will be the 23" and 24" models that cost at least twice as much. We'll save such displays for the High-End Buyer's Guides.

The last two upgrades are a change of case and improved audio, neither of which are truly a critical upgrade. The Lian Li cases do look nice and they are invariably very high-quality designs, and the PC-7B Plus II has been popular for quite some time. Unlike the basic case, the Lian Li features an aluminum construction that reduces the weight and helps to avoid sharp edges on the interior. It also comes with two 120mm fans which should help to provide exceptional cooling for all but the most demanding builds. The drawback of the two fans is that they do tend to create more wind noise, but you can always unplug the front fan if that's a concern.

As for the speakers, the Logitech Z-5300e speakers certainly sound better than the cheaper Logitech X-530, but they also take up more space. The subwoofer in particular is very large (as is the remote), and for many environments the sound output may be overpowering. There's also no point in investing in really nice speakers if you don't intend to use a higher-quality soundcard, which is why we've included the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer. The X-Fi will primarily help in gaming applications, but it does provide cleaner audio than onboard solutions as well. Multimedia enthusiasts might also be interested in adding a TV tuner card, in which case we would look towards either the NVIDIA DualTV, ATI Theater 650, or one of the Hauppauge offerings.

Altogether, the various performance upgrades add almost $800 to the total cost. We do feel that every one of the upgrades is justifiable, but most people probably aren't looking to spend upwards of $2000 on a new computer. This is definitely a high-end configuration rather than a midrange system, but we wanted to give a list of good potential upgrades without drifting off into long-winded debates about which upgrades are the most important. If you want a good start to a high-end computer, you can of course take this list and run with it you will be very pleased. If you want more of a middle ground, the speaker, case, motherboard, and memory upgrades are the first areas we would look to trim costs.



Midrange Gaming Configuration

We've covered nearly all of the component choices necessary for a high-quality gaming solution already. The one major change that we would make would be to cut costs in most areas other than the graphics card, and then spend a large portion of the budget on getting a GPU that's as fast as possible. Here's what we came up with.

Intel Mid-Range Gaming System
Hardware Component Price Rebates
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz 2MB Shared) - Retail $185  
Motherboard Biostar TForce965PT (P965 775) $111  
Memory OCZ S.O.E 2x1GB DDR2-667 (OCZ2SOE6672GK) $221 $30
Video Card eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB (640-P2-N821-AR) $400 $20
Hard Drive Seagate 320GB SATA 3.0Gbps 7200RPM 16MB (Barracuda 7200.10) $90  
Optical Drive LG Black 18X DVD+R (GSAH22N-BK) $36  
Case Cooler Master Centurion 534 (RC-534-KKN2-GP) $66 $10
Power Supply Rosewill SLI 600W (RP600V2-S-SL) $73  
Display Acer AL2223Wd 22" 5ms (1680x1050) $314  
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 96  
Speakers Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers $74  
Keyboard and Mouse Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 $28  
Operating System Windows XP MCE 2005 (with Vista coupon) $115  
Bottom Line   $1809 $1749

We pretty much took the base Intel midrange configuration and made several focused upgrades. The most significant change is going to be the inclusion of a GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card, and many people will be content to stop there. The GeForce 8800 GTS features DirectX 10 support (which of course will require Windows Vista and an updated public driver before it becomes useful) and it uses NVIDIA's new G80 core. We can't really evaluate DirectX 10 performance yet, but in currently shipping games the only single GPU solution that's faster than the 8800 GTS is the 8800 GTX. The GTS isn't a whole lot faster than AMD's X1950 XTX, and there are even a few games where it's slightly slower, but given the relatively similar prices and the improved feature set most gamers will prefer NVIDIA's offering right now.

Besides the upgraded graphics card, we felt most gamers would appreciate moving to a larger LCD. We chose the Acer 22" LCD without HDCP support rather than the Sceptre we mentioned on the previous page, because many gamers really don't care too much about HDCP. We also added the larger 600W Rosewill power supply, and in order to get the most out of games we felt the inclusion of Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi was warranted.

Core 2 Duo generally does very well in gaming benchmarks, and anyone looking at doing even a moderate amount of overclocking will definitely get more mileage out of a Core 2 Duo chip. However, if you spend an equal amount of money on an AMD system, you can get an X2 4600+ that typically falls between the E6300 and E6400 in gaming performance (at stock speeds). Given the number of A-list games that currently benefit from multiple processor cores (all three of them!), you can even take things one step further and pick up a single core Athlon 64 3800+ to save even more money.

That said, we really hope 2007 will finally be the year where dual core processors begin to show more of a benefit in games. With such a high-end graphics card, the CPU could very well become a bottleneck, and several triple-A titles scheduled for the coming year look poised to put more of a strain on the CPU. While it might be interesting to contemplate using a single core processor with a high-end GPU in a gaming system, long-term that may prove to be a limiting solution and we don't recommend it.



Midrange Overclocking Configuration

The final category we have to talk about involves everyone's favorite topic: overclocking. We have shown in recent articles that certain CPUs can outperform processors that cost six times as much once you add in overclocking. A lot of people also like the thought of getting "something for nothing," so we will conclude this Buyer's Guide with some upgrades intended to help you get the most out of your overclocking endeavors.

Intel Mid-Range Overclocking System
Hardware Component Price Rebates
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz 2MB Shared) - Retail $223  
Heatsink Tuniq Tower 120 $55  
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (P965 775) $138  
Memory Super Talent 2x1GB DDR2-800 (T800UX2GC4) $268  
Video Card eVGA GeForce 7600GT 256MB (256-P2-N550 -T2) $131  
Hard Drive Seagate 320GB SATA 3.0Gbps 7200RPM 16MB (Barracuda 7200.10) $90  
Optical Drive LG Black 18X DVD+R (GSAH22N-BK) $36  
Case Antec Solution SLK3000-B $76  
Power Supply OCZ GameXStream 700W (OCZ700GXSSLI) 137  
Display Acer AL2016W 20" 8ms (1680x1050) $233  
Speakers Logitech X-530 5.1 70W Speakers $74  
Keyboard and Mouse Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 $28  
Operating System Windows XP MCE 2005 (with Vista coupon) $115  
Bottom Line   $1604 $1604

So far in this guide, AMD platforms have been a reasonable alternative to Intel's Core 2 Duo platform. They may not be faster in many cases, but at the lower end of the dual core spectrum the price/performance is nearly identical when comparing Athlon X2 and Core 2 Duo. Once you add in overclocking, however, there's no way that we would currently recommend AMD over Intel. There are still some AMD chips that can achieve impressive overclocks - one of our editors for instance is running an Athlon X2 4000+ (2.0GHz 1MB cache stock) at 3.08 GHz - but with many Core 2 Duo overclocks reaching 3.5 GHz and higher AMD is not currently able to match that level of performance, short of resorting to phase change cooling.

Besides the processor, there are several critical components that can help increase overclocking potential as well as providing improved stability. First of course is the motherboard, which almost goes without saying. A great chipset alone can't provide for excellent overclocking, and at the same time the world's best BIOS programmers can't overcome chipset limitations. When you get a great chipset with an excellent motherboard design and the proper BIOS, however, the results can be extremely impressive. There are motherboards that overclock better than Gigabyte's GA-965P-DS3, but with the latest BIOS update and the price of under $150 it is very difficult to beat the DS3. The ASUS P5B-E we mentioned previously is a close second; the DS3 costs a bit less and overclocks a bit further, while the ASUS has a few more features.

Next on the upgrade requirements for overclocking has to be memory. You can get some very respectable overclocks using just about any DDR2-800 memory, but if you want to push into the 500MHz bus speed overclocks and beyond, you'll need memory that can function at DDR2-1000 and higher. As this is a midrange guide, we didn't want to go to extreme on the memory side of things, but the Super Talent memory we mentioned previously can easily reach DDR2-1000 at 2.2V and we feel that's sufficient given our other components. Using a 1:1 memory:bus ratio (which is typically optimal for overclocking), DDR2-1000 means you can run a 500MHz bus. You may have noticed that we didn't select an E6300 processor, and the reason is that we don't want the RAM and bus speed to be the limiting factors. An E6300 with a 500MHz bus would be running at 3.5 GHz, and while that's certainly an impressive overclock we prefer the 8X multiplier of the E6400. It is doubtful that you will be able to run most E6400 chips at 4.0GHz, but hitting somewhere around 3.6-3.7 GHz isn't uncommon.

The last two items that are important when looking at maximum overclocking are CPU/system cooling and the power supply. The stock Intel heatsink performs quite well, but it's still not able to match the cooling prowess of the better aftermarket solutions. As we showed in our recent article, the Tuniq Tower 120 was able to dramatically lower processor temperatures, and it also improved overclocking headroom by about 200MHz. It manages to do this without generating a lot of noise, and for a cost of about $60 it provides a far better long-term overclocking solution than the stock heatsink. In order to overclock most CPUs beyond a certain point, it is necessary to increase the processor voltage. This in turn increases the heat generated by the CPU, so adequate cooling becomes even more critical. Large aftermarket heatsinks like the Tuniq Tower 120 may be a bit more difficult to install, but they are still highly recommended for anyone looking to push their CPU to the limit.

Increasing processor and memory voltages naturally puts a larger strain on the power supply. Several of the other editors have burned through quite a few power supplies during overclocking attempts, especially at the more extreme end of the equation. When we looked at upgrading the power supply to something that would be suitable for intense overclocking, we found that most of the 500W to 600W power supplies really didn't cost much less than the 700W PSU that we selected. The Fortron Source FX700-GLN is essentially the same power supply as the OCZ GameXStream 700W, and it's priced about the same. However, the Fortron Source comes with a two-year warranty while OCZ has a three-year warranty, so the choice is pretty clear.

We stuck with a pretty average GPU on our overclocking system - faster than the base 7600GS, but a 7600GT is by no means a graphics powerhouse these days. NVIDIA cards typically overclock better than AMD offerings, but the 7600GT is already factory overclocked and probably can't get much faster. If you want to get a high-performance GPU with more overclocking headroom, the GeForce 8800 GTS cards appear to be the best bet right now. They're already fast at stock speeds, but overclocking has helped quite a few people reach near 8800 GTX performance levels at 2/3 the cost. As always, your mileage may vary, and we would tend to be a bit more cautious with overclocking GPUs as opposed to CPUs.

So what's the bottom line when it comes to overclocking? For about $300 more, you can most likely get a Core 2 Duo E6400 to run twice as fast as the stock E6300. Individual results will of course vary, as no two processors are identical, but we are reasonably confident that knowledgeable overclockers will be able to hit 3.6 GHz or more with this particular configuration. If you wanted to stick with the basic Intel configuration we listed and simply overclock that, you could probably hit 2.8 GHz before running into the limitations of the memory and motherboard, but you would also end up with a processor that was running somewhat warm. Before you go out and jump on the configuration we just listed, however, keep in mind that the Core 2 Duo E4300 will be available shortly with a lower price, and with the lower base front side bus speed and a 9X multiplier it should be able to reach 9x400 (3.6 GHz) simply by adding a better aftermarket heatsink.

Conclusion

We've covered no less than five potential system builds in this Midrange Buyer's Guide, and still we haven't covered every possibility. However, with the information we've provided, you should now have enough information to get started building your own ideal midrange computer. As always, comments and questions are welcome. There are always new products launching, and some of those will surpass the components we have selected here, but for now these component choices offer some of the best bang for the buck on the market.

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