Because an expensive motherboard does nothing for performance, and if the friend required help to build a PC, he probably won't ever be opening the casing to mess around with the internals. USB3? Check. PCIE3? Check. That's what most people ever need :)
"Because an expensive motherboard does nothing for performance".....................
Really? and they allow you to post, the Motherboard is the most important selection piece and can either make or break overclocks which is ya know in the performance category otherwise OC champions would just buy a foxxcon 40$ motherboard and be done with it, but in terms of performance and world records the Rampage/maximus boards seem to have the best features and performance for the prices.
You're only talking a 5% difference in performance. The money is much better spent on a better cpu or gpu but assuming you are very high end already, sure grt the crazy expensive mb if it makes you feel better. Personally im a fan of Asus Gene boards but i know much cheaper board would do the same thing.
Anything beyond $150 for a motherboard and your value/dollar ratio drops through the floor. For most people, who just go on facebook and use Word and maybe play some flash games, stability is really all you should be concerned with. $70 to $120 is a reasonable range.
People who spend 200+ dollars on a motherboard are just wasting money. So I really hope the only people who do that have money to waste. Overclocking? Yeah, he used the K CPU, but really you should get the 4570S and save $20 up front then a few bucks a year on electricity.
You wont save any money with a S or T series CPU unless you are running it at full load all the time... All of them use the same power at idle... (K series, S, T, plain, etc)
actually he is right. A good quality motherboard is important. A high end motherboard not so much. Most people do not go for extreme over clocking. Lets face it does the average user need a motherboard with LN2 support? If you are only going to run one or two video cards and a mild over-clock and you are good with just about any good name motherboard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeuJAOVRoA0 for some testing to drive the point home.
Actually, the days of EXTREME overclocking are long gone. It was at its peak back when an off the shelf Celeron 300 Mhz would overclock to 450 without premium coolers, MB, or PSU. Back before PSU's became affordable most cheap cases came with a cheap PSU and it was prohibitively expensive (if you were on any kind of budget) to replace the PSU with a good like the early PC Power and Cooling PSUs that were over $100.
i don't have any experience with this particular board, but you can also look at it the other way round: why invest in an expensive mainboard, if you don't need any more features?
it's clear that users who buy more potent CPUs/GPUs/etc tend to also want a more feature packed mainboard, but that need not always be the case, if the chosen board works (more than) good enough.
Well I don't know about spending a LOT of money, but iirc the Asrock PRO models weren't just budget overclocking or anything, they simply had actual problems reporting voltage or had some strange ways of controlling them.
Also, the Extreme4, which is a bit better in multiple ways (and better audio afaik?) is only $120 on newegg... Amazon has a $30 price premium on that pro4 over newegg. Even with 2day shipping, it'd probably be cheaper on newegg :(
Yet paying more to not have to deal with the Newegg Hassle is probably worth the money spent (or the time waiting for Amazon to to match its prices).
Once upon a time, those who knew Newegg'ed. Today, those who know stay the hell away from Newegg. If everything goes swimmingly, you PROBABLY won't notice anything. If something goes wrong, there's a world of difference between Newegg and Amazon in helping you out.
Out of curiosity, what kinds of problems have you had with the egg? I still haven't run into any issues with refunds or exchanges, including on stuff that wasn't supposed to be refundable to start with.
They changed their return policies. NewEgg used to have a straightup, 30 day return window where you could return for a exchange for any reason, and refunds under certain circumstances.
Now NewEgg has tons of return policies depending on the product. Some products come with None, not even a DOA policy, and some come with hefty restocking fee's. Some have 7 day return, some have 14 days. It all depends on what you buy, so make sure you read the product page carefully.
Amazon's policy (products shipped and sold by amazon) is 30 day no matter what for a refund. If your returning defective DOA stuff your eligible for a full refund. If your returning stuff because you did not like it, or it does not fit etc... there is a 15% restocking fee.
Amazon cross ships replacements without asking for credit card numbers for collateral and they pay for return shipping, or they will refund you some money if you pay for the shipping.
Yeah, Amazon is definitely awesome about returns. But like I said, I've never really had issues with Newegg returns either. From my experience, you just might need to call customer support. I've been bit by buying something without a 30 day refund available that I didn't notice at the time. I spoke with support, and they let me return it anyway and paid for return shipping. They've always been good about printing return labels for me, but sometimes I do actually have to spend some time on the phone with them (not begging or anything, just explaining and then they take care of me). And as much as I love Amazon's return policy, I'm not really sure anyone should expect that to be the norm. Most companies can't afford to lose millions of dollars every quarter and stay in business.
NewEgg has been excellent for me. It is even better if your credit card company pays for the Premier Shipping option which gives you 3 day delivery both ways. While there are some things that don't have the 30 day return policy that is no different from Amazon in that you have to make sure it is not an independent seller so it is just a matter of reading the return policies and making sure you know what it is. As for Amazon, it only makes sense if you get the Prime membership which is currently $99 - you have to buy a lot of stuff to make that pay off paticularly because they have tightened up their Prime shipping policies. I still prefer NewEgg for electronics.
I find that statement kind of insulting. First of all, Asrock is considerably better than MSI, Gigabyte or eVGA. I have this same motherboard and have my 4670k overclocked to 4.4GHz and memory clocked at 2133MHz. Completely stable in Prime95 and hours on end in BF4.
The only board I would have taken over the Z87M Pro would be the Asus Z87 Deluxe (which cost $60 more.)
Excuse me asrock is Asus budget brand. Also look around the best overclock results are typically found using a Gygabyte or an Asus board. I've had more success and stability using gigabyte. 4.4ghz is a walk in the park even an air cooled x58 i7 can do it with it beinga black edition. As for psu stable power can make or breake a a good build , I had hdds failing left right and centre because my apparently 1000w 80+ psu was a budget piece of crap the was only managing 700w
ASRock boards continue to impress me in the last year. Have you actually used one or is your obvious bias leading you to make the same old decisions just out of spite?
Their FM2 boards have been at the heart of 3 HTPCs that I've built for friends and their BIOS is just fantastic compared to other out there...cough..Gigabyte...cough..
The integrated CIR header on the board is also something you won't find on many other competitor boards.
Give them a shot and you might just be surprised as to how much has changed!
x2 I have built several, like 6-8, systems on ASRock boards recently and honestly they are my new fav mobo manufacturer. They are great boards and have a lot of features for the price. Excellent overall IMO.
The Z87M PRO4 is a "comparatively low end motherboard". It has standard chipset features, standard audio, the CPU power system is basic and it has none of the high end features which you see in most reviews here (PLX, extra IO, water block on chipset, etc.).
Asrock is just another motherboard company. Many of their products are made in the same foxcon like plants which all the others are. He said nothing about Asrock, you did.
But seeing as you brought Asrock up, some of their products are gimmicks. I bought the Z87 Professional for five features features, all of them turned out to be non functional or useless.
FAN-Tastic Tuning does not work. HDMI-IN does not work. Sniper Key and "Fatal1ty Mouse Port" does not work. Windows OC Tweaker barely works (their BIOS is excellent). The Audio location mini HUD in their advertising material does not exist (and is now removed from their website).
On the plus side, Good Night LED works great, you just have to reset your computer to enable (kind of defeating the purpose).
Maybe it's my fault for attaching decent kit. And I'm saying nothing about the PRO4. But Asrock is no where near where it needs to be in terms of execution to be considered high end.
Yeah I agree, those compo are really good yet the Motherboard is the basic building block and needs to be good to get decent features, your computer is only as fast as its slowest equivalent part, if the mobo is third rate then the system will be.
I think 80plus gold is currently where the price:performance (in this case, performance being power efficiency) sweet spot lies. There are often sales on good platinum units (I'm looking at you, Seasonic 660XP2), but otherwise solid gold (unintended joke ;)) units like Seasonic G series are always a good value.
seeing as PSUs can be used for a while, like 7+ years, it would seem like a $30 more for gold or platinum will pay for itself in about 5 years, which is pretty good.
This depends largely on the longevity of said power supplies. Had a Seasonic in 24/7 behind a UPS, and it died on me after around 4 years or so. 7+ sounds highly optimistic to me, I don't know of any power supply that has lasted this long, and I've bought many, mid- to high-end supplies from a number of vendors.
thanks for the article, those are the little things i'm often curious about!
seems, at least to me, that a more efficient psu should be worth the money for most builds, not only because it saves a couple bucks of electicity, but also for the already mentioned advantages in heat dissipation, noise and general quality, stability and (hopefully) longevity. also i could imagine that "higher tier" PSUs tend to come with longer warranties, which would be another plus.
Your friend appears to have overspent (no offense.) I just put together 3 machines (at work no less)...Core i7 4770s, 16 gb ram, 250 gb samsung 840 evos, radeon 7950s, case, 600 watt ps, dvd rw, etc. $1300 shipped from amazon (each, after tax).
Of course it isn't, but my point still stands, he overspent. He went gpu heavy and CPU light. Even if he had purchased a gtx 780, the price would have been comparable with my config vs his config and he would have gotten helluva more bang for his buck.
Totally disagree. If he has settled on the 4670K and has extra $ to spend, better to plough that into the video card. His performance in gaming will be much better with the 4670K & 780 than an 4770K and a 7950. While he might have been able to find some cheaper prices in general, I don't question his CPU/GPU mix one bit.
Well atleast until we see more than 4 cores making crater holes in the FPS numbers, less than 5 fps isn't really a big deal as the 4670k has no hyperthreading, which in turn may or may not lead to a 4770k upgrade down the line if gaming is the intent.
I seriously doubt Hyper-Threading will ever dramatically improve gaming performance before the 4670K and 4770K are both ready for updating. Most games are struggling to use more than two cores properly, so four real cores is plenty, and having four additional logical cores only really helps in a few specific use cases (like video editing/encoding, 3D rendering, and other computationally intensive workloads).
So you spent 292$ less for a system with a GPU which is 240$ cheaper, and no 80$ HDD? Does not sound like overspending to me.
On the other hand you seem to have overspent a bit, if you combine 300W worth of electronics with a 600W PSU. What exactly is the chance that any of those work computers will be changed to a CrossFire or SLI system later on? A 400W or 450W PSU could have saved you a few $ and probably keep saving because your systems are probably often working in the 100W to 150W range, where a 600W PSU is unlikeyl to meet its peak performance.
Depends on your load levels. If your system is mostly at idle a 600W PSU is overkill. If it's mostly at high loads 600W is around the sweet spot. Efficiency is relatively flat from 20-80% although you might get 1 or 2% more from being at 50% under load; but lose out at idle since you're in the sub 20% load zone. However by overspecing the PSU by 250-300W you get enough thermal headroom in the PSU that it's fan never spins up beyond minimum speed giving a slightly quieter box.
The only issue with using 80 plus ratings is that they're only "at least" ratings, and they don't actually test the units, even if they do test one unit (and they don't even always do that) it's always one hand-picked unit from the manufacturer and some manufacturers have been caught providing better hardware for testing than they actually sell to the channel. This is normally ok if you're buying from reputable suppliers but if you buy from someone like Thermaltake that has a rather checkered history (or worse a one with a horrible reputation like Diablotek) you never know what you're getting without major research in advance.
Not only that, many models of power supply vastly exceed their 80 plus efficiency ratings. You have to be pretty careful when it comes to 80 plus ratings because the're not always accurate.
Not all reviews work like that. German c't magazine is anonymously buying their review samples from shops. Of course they have 30 million € per year of revenue, so they can operate different than most other reviewers.
Its not entirely the right theory to measure. You have missed onto measure the usage of the power while measuring the units. How much power was utilized in each case while running the PSU? In this case if CPU is powered in idle mode and the PSU is powered only 10% then the efficiency will reduce in both the case.
Suppose if i buy 300W power supply unit which has bronze certification and another 1000W with Platinum certification then definately anyday anytime your bronze will give u more savings in ur bills as u wont be running heavy apps and games 24x7.. Which is the case with me.. i leave my pc 24x7 for surfing and streaming... i hardly game or run heavy apps..
Uhhh, lol. He is comparing the same system, same loads, with 2 different 450W PSUs. Of course his findings are only applicable to a system similar like his. He only says that all else being equal (that includes wattage of the PSU), the platinum one will save you electricity.
This is why I used the same system running the same loads with the same size PSU. I leave my system on 24/7 as well, simply because I like all my email to be downloaded and ready when I come to my PC, plus I frequently need to access it remotely (via TeamViewer).
That is why I didn't understand the statement: "For power costs, we’re looking at the worst-case scenario of leaving a system on 24/7, which really isn’t realistic unless you’re talking about a server. " Most people I know leave their PCs on 24/7. Not to mention most company desktops are on 24/7. Just using that the more efficient PS will pay for itself in 3 years.
Wow. No - my company (and any company that keeps track of their wasted expenses) aggressively encourages sleeping your computer when you leave for the night. My building alone has about 300 employees, so using a machine (even at idle) for 8 hours a day (or more realistically 12 hours a day - I'm an American), and sleeping when you leave, that still is a reasonably significant couple thousand dollars a year savings in electricity alone. The nice thing is that since the company has started to aggressively promote that, they're also aggressively tracking how much power is used. At the end of the fiscal year, they spend 1/2 of the savings on a building party. OK, it's not super-awesome, but 1/2 of about 4000 dollars is still some decent cookout food.
I'm too lazy to calculate the average European electricity price, but I'll estimate it at around 0.18€/kWh, which equals $0.25/kWh, or double the price used in this article.
It's still not a huge saving per year, but taking into account that electricity prices will go up, and that a platinum PSU will be used for upwards of 5 years, things aren't that bad as they seem, even if you only look at the costs of electricity. The feeling of safety, knowing that you're using the best, is priceless.
In Denmark it is $0,40/kWh with todays exchange rate, so you can tripple the savings. Side note: we get a little bit better efficiency as we are running 240 volt.
So here it pays to save on energy consumption, which is the original motivation behind the energy taxes back in 1972. And it works, we use less than half the energy pr capita compared to the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_...
Overall energy consumption is one thing, but there is an impact of quality of life included in that mp. What I find even more interesting is energy use normalized by GDP:
Speaking of electricity rate, the quoted electricity supply rate on my bill is 0.10 to 0.11, much like the article. However, if you read further through your bill there are taxes, service charges and administrative fees that are charged per KWH(for me at least). Taking the final bill and dividing it by KWHs used shows it's actually costing me around 0.21.
The savings Jarred is seeing could easily be doubled if he's not looking at the total cost per KWH.
To read this the other way round, people trying to save 30-40$ on a PSU are usually the ones that are on edge of their purchase budgets. For these people, buying a bronze power supply looks 100% wiser choice given that they it will take them about 4-5 years to break even. And even after that the penalty would be a small and steady trickle of ~1$ per month which would go un-noticed.
Of course i'm not thinking from the saving the environment angle, but from an individual's perspective, bronze is just fine.
Well, you're also thinking from a cheap electricity point of view. German prices are about 3 times as high as the 0.12$ used in this article, but obviously even in the US a large percentage of people will actually pay more than the national average.
There is also a potential additional impact: If you are cooling your house/apartment/whatever with an AC, for every kWh of warm that your PC dumps into the room, you add another ~25% of electricity need to remove the heat that your PSU has produced. And then again, electricity prices are rising year by year, so for a 5 year use of the PSU you can probably add another factor of 1.05 to 1.1 for average price corrections.
I think the more important thing here is that even a good 350W power supply would run this system. People are too stuck on having 800+ watts and running it in an efficient manner.
Yeah. I built a system similar to this one this summer (just with the 4770K and a 770) and the highest number I've seen on my Kill-A-Watt was in the 320 range. That was with Furmark and Linpack running, too.
Thanks for the quick and dirty analysis Jarred. I think your cost savings are great validaiton for purchasing a high quality PSU. My thought it that because of the better quality PSU that component itself is nowadays likely to last through multiple builds. Extrapolate this out to perhaps a 5-6-7 window and the cost savings in power will pay for the difference no problem.
I am amazed that a decent i5 + gtx 780 only eats 350W at the wall. the components must be consuming even less, around 280/290W. for single-GPU systems with anything but Titan/R9-290's, it seems any good 400w would be enough.
This makes me more comfortable with my current system: i5-2500 + gtx660 (non-ti). I'm using a mid-range 350w PSU (no bronze, but good) that I planned to update (due to age), but now I will stick to it for a longer time. as long as I don't start to get any BSODs, I won't touch it.
3d mark probably isn't maxing everything out completely. The CPU's TDP is 84W and the card 250W; everything redlined at once is probably 50-100W more than what was measured here.
but we will never use 100% of all hardware at the same time. while encoding videos CPU is high but GPU is low. gaming has high GPU but low CPU. while I burn discs or move big files around I will do nothing else on the system.
not even when gaming I get too high on GPU usage, because I use vsync as it lowers the load - causing less heat and less noise too. I believe outside of benchmarking most systems never use as much power as we think.
I dont get it. You engage in all this quibbling over saving $5 a year on electricity, yet spend $200 on RAM? Who the heck spends $200 on RAM? Hahahhahaha the irony....
Jarred used his friends new system as a testbed for convenience/availability reasons; not because the objective was to min/max returns. The fact that his friend overpaid for a fancy looking ramsink doesn't affect the PSU cost/benefit analysis in least.
PS I'll probably be spending ~$300 on ram for my new box.
My solution is a tad different, 3-6 solar panels on roof with 2 windvayne generators....electric company ends up paying you up to 500$ a month. which in turn renders PSU efficiency redundant, as long as the PSU meets your STABILITY wattage. Yes it has a high buy in but pays for itself relatively quickly if you own your own home ask a contractor to get you an estimate.
The PS07 is basically the same case as the TJ08E. It is on my short list of cases for a mATX build any day of the week. It cools well, quietly and costs less than $100. And I believe that it is physically smaller than the Prodigy. This case and its cousin consistently get good, solid reviews. Even from Dustin :).
Doesn't change the fact that wiring the SSD was a bit of a pain, and the top-rear vent+filter is odd to say the least. It's not a bad case by any means, but it's a bit quirky on those two areas.
I'm far more concerned with the stability aspect of a PSU than efficiency (within reason that is). I got bit by a Thermaltake PSU several years ago. Cost me some. So stability of output concerns me way more than a few dollars a year savings. I use an 80+ Bronze that is putting out very clean, stable energy.
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Drumsticks - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Out of curiosity - why a GTX 780 and 4670k and 16GB RAM, but such a comparatively low end motherboard?But interesting findings. I didn't think that you could get savings that decent off of it. Good to know!
ArmedandDangerous - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Because an expensive motherboard does nothing for performance, and if the friend required help to build a PC, he probably won't ever be opening the casing to mess around with the internals. USB3? Check. PCIE3? Check. That's what most people ever need :)1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
"Because an expensive motherboard does nothing for performance".....................Really? and they allow you to post, the Motherboard is the most important selection piece and can either make or break overclocks which is ya know in the performance category otherwise OC champions would just buy a foxxcon 40$ motherboard and be done with it, but in terms of performance and world records the Rampage/maximus boards seem to have the best features and performance for the prices.
Duwelon - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
You're only talking a 5% difference in performance. The money is much better spent on a better cpu or gpu but assuming you are very high end already, sure grt the crazy expensive mb if it makes you feel better. Personally im a fan of Asus Gene boards but i know much cheaper board would do the same thing.Mr Perfect - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Assuming that someone who needs a PC speced and built for him intends to overclock anything at all.Hrel - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Anything beyond $150 for a motherboard and your value/dollar ratio drops through the floor. For most people, who just go on facebook and use Word and maybe play some flash games, stability is really all you should be concerned with. $70 to $120 is a reasonable range.People who spend 200+ dollars on a motherboard are just wasting money. So I really hope the only people who do that have money to waste. Overclocking? Yeah, he used the K CPU, but really you should get the 4570S and save $20 up front then a few bucks a year on electricity.
extide - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
You wont save any money with a S or T series CPU unless you are running it at full load all the time... All of them use the same power at idle... (K series, S, T, plain, etc)lwatcdr - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
actually he is right. A good quality motherboard is important. A high end motherboard not so much. Most people do not go for extreme over clocking. Lets face it does the average user need a motherboard with LN2 support? If you are only going to run one or two video cards and a mild over-clock and you are good with just about any good name motherboard.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeuJAOVRoA0 for some testing to drive the point home.
trivor - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
Actually, the days of EXTREME overclocking are long gone. It was at its peak back when an off the shelf Celeron 300 Mhz would overclock to 450 without premium coolers, MB, or PSU. Back before PSU's became affordable most cheap cases came with a cheap PSU and it was prohibitively expensive (if you were on any kind of budget) to replace the PSU with a good like the early PC Power and Cooling PSUs that were over $100.Rick83 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
An expensive mother board usually gets decent integrated peripherals, which can the prevent additional spending on a decent NIC and sound card.nafhan - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
If you need those things. For me, this guy, and most other PC users the integrated sound and NIC on this board are just fine.fokka - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
i don't have any experience with this particular board, but you can also look at it the other way round: why invest in an expensive mainboard, if you don't need any more features?it's clear that users who buy more potent CPUs/GPUs/etc tend to also want a more feature packed mainboard, but that need not always be the case, if the chosen board works (more than) good enough.
just a thought :)
1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Longevity, features, warranty, OC abilities as he said ocing would occur on the cpu to extend the life so stability.whyso - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Haswell is so much silicon lottery that buying an expensive board (even for OC purposes) is money thats not terribly well spent.Drumsticks - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Well I don't know about spending a LOT of money, but iirc the Asrock PRO models weren't just budget overclocking or anything, they simply had actual problems reporting voltage or had some strange ways of controlling them.Also, the Extreme4, which is a bit better in multiple ways (and better audio afaik?) is only $120 on newegg... Amazon has a $30 price premium on that pro4 over newegg. Even with 2day shipping, it'd probably be cheaper on newegg :(
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Yet paying more to not have to deal with the Newegg Hassle is probably worth the money spent (or the time waiting for Amazon to to match its prices).Once upon a time, those who knew Newegg'ed. Today, those who know stay the hell away from Newegg. If everything goes swimmingly, you PROBABLY won't notice anything. If something goes wrong, there's a world of difference between Newegg and Amazon in helping you out.
Bob Todd - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Out of curiosity, what kinds of problems have you had with the egg? I still haven't run into any issues with refunds or exchanges, including on stuff that wasn't supposed to be refundable to start with.Morawka - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
They changed their return policies. NewEgg used to have a straightup, 30 day return window where you could return for a exchange for any reason, and refunds under certain circumstances.Now NewEgg has tons of return policies depending on the product. Some products come with None, not even a DOA policy, and some come with hefty restocking fee's. Some have 7 day return, some have 14 days. It all depends on what you buy, so make sure you read the product page carefully.
Amazon's policy (products shipped and sold by amazon) is 30 day no matter what for a refund. If your returning defective DOA stuff your eligible for a full refund. If your returning stuff because you did not like it, or it does not fit etc... there is a 15% restocking fee.
Amazon cross ships replacements without asking for credit card numbers for collateral and they pay for return shipping, or they will refund you some money if you pay for the shipping.
Bob Todd - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Yeah, Amazon is definitely awesome about returns. But like I said, I've never really had issues with Newegg returns either. From my experience, you just might need to call customer support. I've been bit by buying something without a 30 day refund available that I didn't notice at the time. I spoke with support, and they let me return it anyway and paid for return shipping. They've always been good about printing return labels for me, but sometimes I do actually have to spend some time on the phone with them (not begging or anything, just explaining and then they take care of me). And as much as I love Amazon's return policy, I'm not really sure anyone should expect that to be the norm. Most companies can't afford to lose millions of dollars every quarter and stay in business.trivor - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
NewEgg has been excellent for me. It is even better if your credit card company pays for the Premier Shipping option which gives you 3 day delivery both ways. While there are some things that don't have the 30 day return policy that is no different from Amazon in that you have to make sure it is not an independent seller so it is just a matter of reading the return policies and making sure you know what it is. As for Amazon, it only makes sense if you get the Prime membership which is currently $99 - you have to buy a lot of stuff to make that pay off paticularly because they have tightened up their Prime shipping policies. I still prefer NewEgg for electronics.otherwise - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
The biggest problem I've had with newegg recently is we received two packages from them with a roach in the box.fic2 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Did they charge extra for the roach? If not why complain about a freebie?extide - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I don't think he was talking about THAT kind of roach ;)1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Spend the extra 50$ and get a Maximus Gene from Asus.Samus - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I find that statement kind of insulting. First of all, Asrock is considerably better than MSI, Gigabyte or eVGA. I have this same motherboard and have my 4670k overclocked to 4.4GHz and memory clocked at 2133MHz. Completely stable in Prime95 and hours on end in BF4.The only board I would have taken over the Z87M Pro would be the Asus Z87 Deluxe (which cost $60 more.)
mike silk - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Excuse me asrock is Asus budget brand. Also look around the best overclock results are typically found using a Gygabyte or an Asus board. I've had more success and stability using gigabyte. 4.4ghz is a walk in the park even an air cooled x58 i7 can do it with it beinga black edition. As for psu stable power can make or breake a a good build , I had hdds failing left right and centre because my apparently 1000w 80+ psu was a budget piece of crap the was only managing 700wHomeles - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Excuse me, you're ignorant. ASRock is *not* ASUS's budget brand. It was spun off from the company 3 years ago.1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
They have a higher failure rate than MSI, which is bad.creed3020 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
ASRock boards continue to impress me in the last year. Have you actually used one or is your obvious bias leading you to make the same old decisions just out of spite?Their FM2 boards have been at the heart of 3 HTPCs that I've built for friends and their BIOS is just fantastic compared to other out there...cough..Gigabyte...cough..
The integrated CIR header on the board is also something you won't find on many other competitor boards.
Give them a shot and you might just be surprised as to how much has changed!
extide - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
x2 I have built several, like 6-8, systems on ASRock boards recently and honestly they are my new fav mobo manufacturer. They are great boards and have a lot of features for the price. Excellent overall IMO.Not This Guy - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
The Z87M PRO4 is a "comparatively low end motherboard". It has standard chipset features, standard audio, the CPU power system is basic and it has none of the high end features which you see in most reviews here (PLX, extra IO, water block on chipset, etc.).Asrock is just another motherboard company. Many of their products are made in the same foxcon like plants which all the others are. He said nothing about Asrock, you did.
But seeing as you brought Asrock up, some of their products are gimmicks. I bought the Z87 Professional for five features features, all of them turned out to be non functional or useless.
FAN-Tastic Tuning does not work.
HDMI-IN does not work.
Sniper Key and "Fatal1ty Mouse Port" does not work.
Windows OC Tweaker barely works (their BIOS is excellent).
The Audio location mini HUD in their advertising material does not exist (and is now removed from their website).
On the plus side, Good Night LED works great, you just have to reset your computer to enable (kind of defeating the purpose).
Maybe it's my fault for attaching decent kit. And I'm saying nothing about the PRO4. But Asrock is no where near where it needs to be in terms of execution to be considered high end.
ruzveh - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
ram has nothing to do with high end and low end MDB1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Yeah I agree, those compo are really good yet the Motherboard is the basic building block and needs to be good to get decent features, your computer is only as fast as its slowest equivalent part, if the mobo is third rate then the system will be.MadMan007 - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
I think 80plus gold is currently where the price:performance (in this case, performance being power efficiency) sweet spot lies. There are often sales on good platinum units (I'm looking at you, Seasonic 660XP2), but otherwise solid gold (unintended joke ;)) units like Seasonic G series are always a good value.Grandal - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
"and for larger ATX builds I’m quite partial to Corsair’s Obsidian 350D"I thought the 350D was a mATX case... roomy, but still for mATX boards.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
oops... fixed. Was thinking of the larger Obsidian I think.meacupla - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
seeing as PSUs can be used for a while, like 7+ years, it would seem like a $30 more for gold or platinum will pay for itself in about 5 years, which is pretty good.Rick83 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
This depends largely on the longevity of said power supplies. Had a Seasonic in 24/7 behind a UPS, and it died on me after around 4 years or so. 7+ sounds highly optimistic to me, I don't know of any power supply that has lasted this long, and I've bought many, mid- to high-end supplies from a number of vendors.fokka - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
thanks for the article, those are the little things i'm often curious about!seems, at least to me, that a more efficient psu should be worth the money for most builds, not only because it saves a couple bucks of electicity, but also for the already mentioned advantages in heat dissipation, noise and general quality, stability and (hopefully) longevity. also i could imagine that "higher tier" PSUs tend to come with longer warranties, which would be another plus.
eek2121 - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Your friend appears to have overspent (no offense.) I just put together 3 machines (at work no less)...Core i7 4770s, 16 gb ram, 250 gb samsung 840 evos, radeon 7950s, case, 600 watt ps, dvd rw, etc. $1300 shipped from amazon (each, after tax).Sancus - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
A radeon 7950 is nowhere near a gtx 780, these systems aren't comparable.eek2121 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Of course it isn't, but my point still stands, he overspent. He went gpu heavy and CPU light. Even if he had purchased a gtx 780, the price would have been comparable with my config vs his config and he would have gotten helluva more bang for his buck.bznotins - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Totally disagree. If he has settled on the 4670K and has extra $ to spend, better to plough that into the video card. His performance in gaming will be much better with the 4670K & 780 than an 4770K and a 7950. While he might have been able to find some cheaper prices in general, I don't question his CPU/GPU mix one bit.1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Well atleast until we see more than 4 cores making crater holes in the FPS numbers, less than 5 fps isn't really a big deal as the 4670k has no hyperthreading, which in turn may or may not lead to a 4770k upgrade down the line if gaming is the intent.JarredWalton - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I seriously doubt Hyper-Threading will ever dramatically improve gaming performance before the 4670K and 4770K are both ready for updating. Most games are struggling to use more than two cores properly, so four real cores is plenty, and having four additional logical cores only really helps in a few specific use cases (like video editing/encoding, 3D rendering, and other computationally intensive workloads).ShieTar - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
So you spent 292$ less for a system with a GPU which is 240$ cheaper, and no 80$ HDD? Does not sound like overspending to me.On the other hand you seem to have overspent a bit, if you combine 300W worth of electronics with a 600W PSU. What exactly is the chance that any of those work computers will be changed to a CrossFire or SLI system later on? A 400W or 450W PSU could have saved you a few $ and probably keep saving because your systems are probably often working in the 100W to 150W range, where a 600W PSU is unlikeyl to meet its peak performance.
DanNeely - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Depends on your load levels. If your system is mostly at idle a 600W PSU is overkill. If it's mostly at high loads 600W is around the sweet spot. Efficiency is relatively flat from 20-80% although you might get 1 or 2% more from being at 50% under load; but lose out at idle since you're in the sub 20% load zone. However by overspecing the PSU by 250-300W you get enough thermal headroom in the PSU that it's fan never spins up beyond minimum speed giving a slightly quieter box.SunLord - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Should add some cheap unrated and old psu to better show the impactJarredWalton - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Didn't have one handy. I stopped trusting lousy PSUs years ago.1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Same, PC power and cooling, Corsair and seasonic, were pretty much always at some point my go to companies.Flunk - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
The only issue with using 80 plus ratings is that they're only "at least" ratings, and they don't actually test the units, even if they do test one unit (and they don't even always do that) it's always one hand-picked unit from the manufacturer and some manufacturers have been caught providing better hardware for testing than they actually sell to the channel. This is normally ok if you're buying from reputable suppliers but if you buy from someone like Thermaltake that has a rather checkered history (or worse a one with a horrible reputation like Diablotek) you never know what you're getting without major research in advance.Not only that, many models of power supply vastly exceed their 80 plus efficiency ratings. You have to be pretty careful when it comes to 80 plus ratings because the're not always accurate.
ShieTar - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Not all reviews work like that. German c't magazine is anonymously buying their review samples from shops. Of course they have 30 million € per year of revenue, so they can operate different than most other reviewers.ruzveh - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Its not entirely the right theory to measure. You have missed onto measure the usage of the power while measuring the units. How much power was utilized in each case while running the PSU? In this case if CPU is powered in idle mode and the PSU is powered only 10% then the efficiency will reduce in both the case.Suppose if i buy 300W power supply unit which has bronze certification and another 1000W with Platinum certification then definately anyday anytime your bronze will give u more savings in ur bills as u wont be running heavy apps and games 24x7.. Which is the case with me.. i leave my pc 24x7 for surfing and streaming... i hardly game or run heavy apps..
Got it?
Death666Angel - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Uhhh, lol. He is comparing the same system, same loads, with 2 different 450W PSUs. Of course his findings are only applicable to a system similar like his. He only says that all else being equal (that includes wattage of the PSU), the platinum one will save you electricity.JarredWalton - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
This is why I used the same system running the same loads with the same size PSU. I leave my system on 24/7 as well, simply because I like all my email to be downloaded and ready when I come to my PC, plus I frequently need to access it remotely (via TeamViewer).fic2 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
That is why I didn't understand the statement:"For power costs, we’re looking at the worst-case scenario of leaving a system on 24/7, which really isn’t realistic unless you’re talking about a server. "
Most people I know leave their PCs on 24/7. Not to mention most company desktops are on 24/7. Just using that the more efficient PS will pay for itself in 3 years.
erple2 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Wow. No - my company (and any company that keeps track of their wasted expenses) aggressively encourages sleeping your computer when you leave for the night. My building alone has about 300 employees, so using a machine (even at idle) for 8 hours a day (or more realistically 12 hours a day - I'm an American), and sleeping when you leave, that still is a reasonably significant couple thousand dollars a year savings in electricity alone. The nice thing is that since the company has started to aggressively promote that, they're also aggressively tracking how much power is used. At the end of the fiscal year, they spend 1/2 of the savings on a building party. OK, it's not super-awesome, but 1/2 of about 4000 dollars is still some decent cookout food.Pinkynator - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I'm too lazy to calculate the average European electricity price, but I'll estimate it at around 0.18€/kWh, which equals $0.25/kWh, or double the price used in this article.It's still not a huge saving per year, but taking into account that electricity prices will go up, and that a platinum PSU will be used for upwards of 5 years, things aren't that bad as they seem, even if you only look at the costs of electricity. The feeling of safety, knowing that you're using the best, is priceless.
slate_dk - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
In Denmark it is $0,40/kWh with todays exchange rate, so you can tripple the savings.Side note: we get a little bit better efficiency as we are running 240 volt.
So here it pays to save on energy consumption, which is the original motivation behind the energy taxes back in 1972. And it works, we use less than half the energy pr capita compared to the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_...
ShieTar - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Overall energy consumption is one thing, but there is an impact of quality of life included in that mp. What I find even more interesting is energy use normalized by GDP:http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/EG.USE....
Death666Angel - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I ahve ~0.22€/kWh or ~0.30USD/kWh here in Germany. Some pay more, others pay a bit less.Mr Perfect - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Speaking of electricity rate, the quoted electricity supply rate on my bill is 0.10 to 0.11, much like the article. However, if you read further through your bill there are taxes, service charges and administrative fees that are charged per KWH(for me at least). Taking the final bill and dividing it by KWHs used shows it's actually costing me around 0.21.The savings Jarred is seeing could easily be doubled if he's not looking at the total cost per KWH.
dishayu - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
To read this the other way round, people trying to save 30-40$ on a PSU are usually the ones that are on edge of their purchase budgets. For these people, buying a bronze power supply looks 100% wiser choice given that they it will take them about 4-5 years to break even. And even after that the penalty would be a small and steady trickle of ~1$ per month which would go un-noticed.Of course i'm not thinking from the saving the environment angle, but from an individual's perspective, bronze is just fine.
ShieTar - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Well, you're also thinking from a cheap electricity point of view. German prices are about 3 times as high as the 0.12$ used in this article, but obviously even in the US a large percentage of people will actually pay more than the national average.There is also a potential additional impact: If you are cooling your house/apartment/whatever with an AC, for every kWh of warm that your PC dumps into the room, you add another ~25% of electricity need to remove the heat that your PSU has produced. And then again, electricity prices are rising year by year, so for a 5 year use of the PSU you can probably add another factor of 1.05 to 1.1 for average price corrections.
celltech1 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I think the more important thing here is that even a good 350W power supply would run this system. People are too stuck on having 800+ watts and running it in an efficient manner.A5 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Yeah. I built a system similar to this one this summer (just with the 4770K and a 770) and the highest number I've seen on my Kill-A-Watt was in the 320 range. That was with Furmark and Linpack running, too.celltech1 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I meant to say inefficient manner...grrr These 80+ ratings don't even apply until you have loaded up the power supply sufficiently.creed3020 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Thanks for the quick and dirty analysis Jarred. I think your cost savings are great validaiton for purchasing a high quality PSU. My thought it that because of the better quality PSU that component itself is nowadays likely to last through multiple builds. Extrapolate this out to perhaps a 5-6-7 window and the cost savings in power will pay for the difference no problem.Coming from a SeaSonic SS-560KM 80Plus Gold user.
marc1000 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I am amazed that a decent i5 + gtx 780 only eats 350W at the wall. the components must be consuming even less, around 280/290W. for single-GPU systems with anything but Titan/R9-290's, it seems any good 400w would be enough.This makes me more comfortable with my current system: i5-2500 + gtx660 (non-ti). I'm using a mid-range 350w PSU (no bronze, but good) that I planned to update (due to age), but now I will stick to it for a longer time. as long as I don't start to get any BSODs, I won't touch it.
DanNeely - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
3d mark probably isn't maxing everything out completely. The CPU's TDP is 84W and the card 250W; everything redlined at once is probably 50-100W more than what was measured here.marc1000 - Friday, November 1, 2013 - link
but we will never use 100% of all hardware at the same time. while encoding videos CPU is high but GPU is low. gaming has high GPU but low CPU. while I burn discs or move big files around I will do nothing else on the system.not even when gaming I get too high on GPU usage, because I use vsync as it lowers the load - causing less heat and less noise too. I believe outside of benchmarking most systems never use as much power as we think.
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I dont get it. You engage in all this quibbling over saving $5 a year on electricity, yet spend $200 on RAM? Who the heck spends $200 on RAM? Hahahhahaha the irony....DanNeely - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Jarred used his friends new system as a testbed for convenience/availability reasons; not because the objective was to min/max returns. The fact that his friend overpaid for a fancy looking ramsink doesn't affect the PSU cost/benefit analysis in least.PS I'll probably be spending ~$300 on ram for my new box.
1Angelreloaded - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
My solution is a tad different,3-6 solar panels on roof with 2 windvayne generators....electric company ends up paying you up to 500$ a month. which in turn renders PSU efficiency redundant, as long as the PSU meets your STABILITY wattage.
Yes it has a high buy in but pays for itself relatively quickly if you own your own home ask a contractor to get you an estimate.
jtd871 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Jarred,The PS07 is basically the same case as the TJ08E. It is on my short list of cases for a mATX build any day of the week. It cools well, quietly and costs less than $100. And I believe that it is physically smaller than the Prodigy. This case and its cousin consistently get good, solid reviews. Even from Dustin :).
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Doesn't change the fact that wiring the SSD was a bit of a pain, and the top-rear vent+filter is odd to say the least. It's not a bad case by any means, but it's a bit quirky on those two areas.Death666Angel - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I have 0.22 €/kWh here, so efficiency is much more important. Though I also liked that most platinum PSUs have a long fanless operation mode.lucky9 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I'm far more concerned with the stability aspect of a PSU than efficiency (within reason that is). I got bit by a Thermaltake PSU several years ago. Cost me some. So stability of output concerns me way more than a few dollars a year savings. I use an 80+ Bronze that is putting out very clean, stable energy.toyotabedzrock - Friday, November 1, 2013 - link
I leave my PC on 24/7 and let it run programs at night like encoding downloading etc.