Tom's Hardware's 2011 Gift Guide: Part 1, For System Builders

12:00 AM - December 13, 2011 by William Van Winkle Table of contents 1. CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 2. Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD80 3. Memory: PNY XLR8 MD8192KD3-1600-X9 4. Power Supply: SilverStone Strider Gold Evolution 1000 W 5. SSD: Crucial m4 256 GB 6. Graphics Card: Gigabyte GV-R695OC-1D 7. CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K 8. Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme 9. Memory: G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZHD (4 GB x 4) 10. Chassis: SilverStone Raven RV03 11. Zotac Infinity Edition ZT-50102-30P GeForce GTX 580 12. Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 13. Creative Labs Recon3D PCI Express Fatal1ty Professional Edition

Welcome to Part 1 of Tom's Hardware's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide. This first installment is geared toward system builders planning to pool some Christmas cash to build a new performance- or value-oriented system. We have something for everyone this year.

$139.99
www.amd.com

In October, we gave this chip an honorable mention as one of the best gaming CPUs in the $100 to $200 range. Bang for the buck, Intel's Sandy Bridge-based Core i3-2100 may be better for gaming, but when you’ve got multiple apps to juggle, the Phenom II X4’s four cores are likely the better bet. The fact that we’re still considering this processor at the end of 2011

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