Build-A-Rig Round 1: The $1500 PCs and Interviews from Corsair and Zotac
by Ian Cutress on July 8, 2015 5:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Build-A-Rig
- Corsair
- ZOTAC
- Interview
What Happens Now
We have the components for both of these systems in house, ready to build, test and review. This will take a couple of weeks, and we’ve chosen a good array of benchmarks to suit most needs while still retaining the focus of the purpose of this round of Build-A-Rig: a $1500 single monitor gaming machine. Given the responses from both Corsair and Zotac, it is clear that Corsair sees 4K gaming as the future and has designed for it, whereas the Zotac build might struggle at 4K but do great at 1080p/1440p which is ultimately where most gamers are at right now. With features like dynamic scaling resolution coming into the mix, perhaps the resolution of the panel is not the be-all and end-all of gaming.
Dustin Sklavos (Corsair) against Chinny Chuang (Zotac)
We will write up each PC for a full individual review, as well as a build log describing the experience of how the parts fit together. These reviews will be released over the next couple of weeks. Obviously the first one out of the gate gets the top results, but this is only because someone has to be the first tested (anyone remember Harry Enfield in Top Gear S01E01?). We have different editors working on each build as well, so each perspective should shed some light into how building the systems is easy, difficult, or fun to do.
How to Enter
For Build-A-Rig, we are posting the survey link on each piece so users can enter at any time. The final entry date is listed in the survey, and will most likely be a few days after we post our final round-up later in the month.
For the purposes of the giveaways, we should state that standard AnandTech rules apply. The full set of rules will be given in the survey link, but the overriding implementation is that the giveaways are limited to United States of America (US50), excluding Rhode Island, and winners must be 18 years or older.
With apologies to our many loyal readers outside the US, restricting the giveaways to the US is due to the fact that AnandTech (and more specifically our publisher, Purch) is a US registered company and competition law outside the US is very specific for each nation, with some requiring fees or legal implementations to be valid with various consequences if rules aren’t followed. It’s kind of difficult for the rules of 190+ countries/nations worldwide to all be followed, especially if certain ones demand fees for even offering a contest or tax on prizes. We recognize that other online magazines and companies do offer unrestricted worldwide competitions, but there are specific rules everyone should be following in order to stay on the side of the law. That’s the reality of it, and unfortunately we cannot change on this front, even with the help of Purch.
The survey link is:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2209797/AnandTech-Newegg-Build-A-Rig-Challenge-Sweepstakes-Q2-2015
Your Thoughts
Not everyone builds a system the same way in the same budget, and it’s all fine and well for us here at AnandTech to reel off a parts list but it seems to be great fun for everyone involved when the manufacturers of the components actually do it instead. Clearly there are disagreements to be had over which case to use, whether this SSD is better than that SSD and all sorts of things. In our initial Build-A-Rig introduction, one reader (gamer1000k) suggested a full build given the budget, focusing on mini-ITX:
User: gamer1000k
Name: Destroyer of Consoles
Case: Silverstone FTZ01B ITX $130
PSU: Silverstone SX600-G 600W $130
MB: ASRock Z97E-ITX $130
CPU: Intel Core-i5 4690K $240
RAM: G.SKILL Sniper 2x4GB DDR3-1866 $58
GPU: Zotac NVIDIA GTX 980ti AMP! $650
SSD: Crucial MX200 250GB $103
CPU Cooler: Corsair H55 $60
OS: SteamOS or Windows 10 Preview $0
Total: $1501Rationale: Recently I've become fascinated with ITX gaming systems, and Silverstone makes some amazing cases that allow for a tremendous amount of power in a console form factor. This build takes into account not only traditional GPU bound games, but also provides a very fast CPU with a lot of overclocking headroom (courtesy Corsair H55 and 600W PSU) for some of the newer indie games (like Kerbal Space Program) that are actually CPU bound. The potent combination of an overclocked i5 and 980ti should allow for 4K gaming at reasonably high settings. This system is designed to be used in conjunction with a NAS/media server due to the low internal storage, but if the budget were flexible this case has room for another 2.5" and 3.5" drive.
This actually aligns quite well with Corsair’s build, with the CPU and GPU, although takes the mini-ITX route with less memory but some wiggle room due to the use of a ‘free’ operating system. I’d also be wary of the DRAM and storage, as these are difficult things to budget around without dropping capacity significantly.
So do you prefer having two extreme items and upgrading over time, or having a general all-around system every few years? Thoughts and comments on the builds from Corsair or Zotac are highly recommended. If you would take a different build completely (perhaps AMD, or dual GPU), we might loop a group of them into a pipeline post to see how they compare, so any explanation for choosing some parts over others (such as how gamer1000k has above) would be interesting to read.
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coconutboy - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
And oh yeah... if I really had to pick a winner...Dustin and Corsair's The Accelerator. GTX 980ti is the trump card in this gamer rig contest/
needforsuv - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
i shelled out for an i7, 16 gb of ram and a 720 psu in 2012 and right not NONE of it looks dated in fact i am shoehorning in a strix 980 ti and a 612 pwm soonalso i think 1080p is fine when i've yet to see a review truly push everything down to aa and ao and whatnot
Impulses - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Ehh, the $50 in cables and lights might look cool to some, but stock cables are arguably neater since they're easier to route and tug taunt...The whole braided cable trend still goes over my head, back in the day we worked our butts off to fold or cut/round PATA cables so we wouldn't have large flat cables sticking out... Now people go out of their way to even stick combs into individually braided runs so it lays flat and visible.
I'm not knocking the choice in the name of aesthetics, I've done things in that vein that probably seem silly to others too, I just don't personally get why it's fashionable.
Cable braiding started as a trend for individual odd colored cables you couldn't mask any other way (like a fan's), the aftermarket PSU cable replacements just seem like the closest thing to bling inside a desktop.
needforsuv - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
i focused my current build on mainly workstation performance which means good CPU and RAM so normal parts were used mainly because I see nothing wrong with them (yes i have kingmax memory) but the important things had no expense spared:CPU: i7 2600 - should and does give me tons of futureproof upgrade options w/o bottlenecks
RAM: 16 GB 1333mhz - who cares what brand it is if it works...
GPU: GTX 560 1GB (Seems insuffient for me at the time but coming from a 9500 GT I left it)
HDD: 1TB 7200 rpm Primary and whatever else it has accumulated over the years (MANY TB)
CASE: TT V4 Black - not too fussed here
PSU: 720W E720 - I felt the 500 odd watt psu included was not enough, but If it works...
current state:
GTX 560 failed due to I suspect the workloads I've been giving it so GT 730 1GB 64 bit DDR3 is whats in my pc now until my STRIX GTX 980 Ti arrives
Having now accumulated many TB of hard drives I still feel that I am safe with a 720W peak psu
CPU is fine but stock cooler has to go... in goes a 612 pwm
Changes that I would've like:
Maybe a better PSU
A standard ATX MB vs the Micro-ATX that was included
TallestJon96 - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Not to be mean, but Dustin's Build absolutely demolishes Chinny's. I own a 970, but the 980 ti is nearly twice as powerful. Additionally, the i5 is somewhat better. If you guys do benchmarks, I would expect Dustin's to be 60-80% more powerful, and for the same price!GusSmed - Friday, July 17, 2015 - link
I find some of the choices in both builds kind of odd. Namely, storage seems a bit light in both - even the 500 GB SSD. 500 GB is plenty for games, but who among us doesn't us our gaming PCs for other things? In the real world, it's a little crazy not to spend $50-$100 to add a hard drive to the SSD for bulk storage of photos, videos, and music that almost everyone does store, and make the PC a lot more versatile for a very small outlay. Yeah, it cuts into the $1500 budget, but isn't this supposed to be about realistic builds?manweor - Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - link
I personally would spend much less even on a gaming build, but if I wanted good value I would go with:PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pLwX7P
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pLwX7P/by_merchant/
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($176.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($25.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($118.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial BX100 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($83.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) ($242.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) ($242.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic Platinum 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($187.04 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit) ($86.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1404.64 -> $1506 without rebates
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-28 09:35 EDT-0400
Of course crossfire performance might vary, but on average you should get better performance than both their builds. Right now r9 290 are stupidly cheap while still yielding very good performance. Even if CF is not working you still have a really good card, nearly on par with the gtx 970.
If I wanted to stick with Chinni's build I would get an Evo as cpu cooler for 30$, a good seasonic 620 Bronze PSU for 80$, a cheaper MOBO for 90$ and save on those 70$ of niceties, saving 240$ and getting the exact same performance.