What Hardware Should I Buy? - March 2009

Premium Hardware

Ten years or so ago, £2,000 would bag you a truly sucky PC. Thankfully though, things have changed and if you’ve got that sort of cash to blow on a PC these days you’re looking at bagging one hell of a rig. One thing that hasn’t changed though is the importance of taking some time to research what the best kit is to buy which is why we at bit-tech have taken the liberty of doing the hard work for you.

If you’ve just bought that 24" or 30" monitor, surround sound speaker kit and nice comfy leather chair with foot rest (often referred to as the sub), and are looking for some kick-ass performance that won't wait for anyone, this is what we consider the very best hardware in each component class.

Be wary before you unleash the credit card though and really consider if you’re really going to get the most out of this kit. The PC hardware market is one of diminishing returns – the more money you spend, the smaller the improvements between hardware options becomes, and the poorer the value you get as a result.

Graphics Card

First Choice: Powercolor Radeon HD 4870 X2
UK Pricing: £329.97 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $424.99 (ex. Tax)

We're still opting for the 4870 X2 as our premium graphics card choice. The dual RV770 GPU monster card is only getting better and better as ATI's CrossFire drivers mature and the majority of titles now scaling remarkably well. In response to ATI’s re-claiming of the performance crown, Nvidia has pushed out two high-end graphics cards - the GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 295 - but neither of them have proved truly worthy of knocking the HD 4870 X2 off the top spot.

While the GTX 285 provided marginal improvement over its predecessor, the GTX 280 it’s totally outstripped in every test by ATI’s dual-GPU beast. Indeed, even the HD 4870’s little brother, the HD 4850 X2 leaves the GTX 285 in the dust so it certainly doesn’t have a place in our premium hardware table. The GTX 295, on the other hand, is a faster graphics card than the HD 4870 X2 but not enough so to justify the £60 price discrepancy it has over the ATI card.

CPU

First Choice: Intel Core i7 920
UK Pricing: £237.90 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $279.99 (ex. Tax)

The Core i7 920 is now well stocked everywhere, but prices have jumped by around £40 the past couple of months. Intel's Core i7 might not excel in absolutely everything but it's the firm choice for both CPU-intensive games and future proofing. We're currently running a Core i7 920 at 4GHz completely stable in the labs here at bit-tech and over 4.2GHz on air isn't unheard of. You need a solid CPU cooler to hold those sorts of temperatures running stably on air but such an overclock is some very considerable free performance gain.

Motherboard

First Choice: Asus P6T Deluxe
UK Pricing: £224.39 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $299.99 (ex. Tax)

While the MSI Eclipse SLI or Foxconn Blood Rage provide more features out of the box, the fact that we’ve had more success with the Asus P6T Deluxe with its stable BIOS, great overclock and decent price: so it’s the board we’d recommend.

The MSI also offers support for three-way SLI, unlike the Asus P6T Deluxe, however we're recommending the ATI Radeon 4870 X2 here and both have at least two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots for quad CrossFire should you want to go all out graphics crazy.

Memory

First Choice: 6GB Triple Channel Memory Kit - PC3-12800 (1600MHz)
UK Pricing: £113.33 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $132.99 (ex. Tax)

With a Core i7 920 at 4GHz you'll want lots of fast memory to complement it; 1,600MHz DIMMs are par for course and should provide a mammoth amount of memory bandwidth. With memory prices varying almost daily, certainly weekly - our advice is to aim for a 6GB kit of PC3-12800 or 1,600MHz for Core i7. Last month we recommended G.Skill, but this month we have found some OCZ and a Patriot kit that are CAS-8 while maintaining a very low 1.5-1.6V, making it well within Core i7-safe specifications. They all feature a lifetime warranty which should be a key factor in your purchase - all the top memory companies supply this so demand it in your purchase.

Prices have really tumbled for 6GB DDR3 kits in the past couple of months, and at not far over £100, the price of these particular kits soften the blow of the increased CPU and motherboard cost.