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: $1501Rationale: Recently I've become fascinated with ITX gaming systems, and Silverstone makes some amazing cases that allow for a tremendous amount of power in a console form factor. This build takes into account not only traditional GPU bound games, but also provides a very fast CPU with a lot of overclocking headroom (courtesy Corsair H55 and 600W PSU) for some of the newer indie games (like Kerbal Space Program) that are actually CPU bound. The potent combination of an overclocked i5 and 980ti should allow for 4K gaming at reasonably high settings. This system is designed to be used in conjunction with a NAS/media server due to the low internal storage, but if the budget were flexible this case has room for another 2.5" and 3.5" drive.
This actually aligns quite well with Corsair’s build, with the CPU and GPU, although takes the mini-ITX route with less memory but some wiggle room due to the use of a ‘free’ operating system. I’d also be wary of the DRAM and storage, as these are difficult things to budget around without dropping capacity significantly.
So do you prefer having two extreme items and upgrading over time, or having a general all-around system every few years? Thoughts and comments on the builds from Corsair or Zotac are highly recommended. If you would take a different build completely (perhaps AMD, or dual GPU), we might loop a group of them into a pipeline post to see how they compare, so any explanation for choosing some parts over others (such as how gamer1000k has above) would be interesting to read.
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fokka - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
ok, first off, i'm not surprised that dustin's rig comes out ahead, what's surprising though is how far ahead it comes out.squeezing a 980ti into the budget is a great start and i think he's right saying a 1500$ single screen rig should be able to run a 4k resolution. even with throwing almost half the budget on a single component he still manages to include a great CPU, tons of storage, while not really skimping on the rest of the components.
compared to that, the zotac build is almost a joke. a gtx 970 in a 1500 rig seems almost aneamic next to dustin's 980ti and they manage to significantly downgrade the CPU and RAM as well, without saving more than a just couple bucks. but somehow this non-overclocked CPU has to be expensiveley water cooled with a 240mm radiator...
it's also funny how dustin manages to drive a 980ti and an overclocked 5690k with a 650w PSU, while the zotac build throws in an oversized and overprized 750w PSU for a much lesser build.
reading the interview it starts to make a bit more sense, with the zotac marketing guys "not really being gamers" and using tablets and iphones for their everyday stuff.
thinking about it i can still only shake my head looking at the zotac build and unless dustin's rig catches fire, i think we already know the winner of this round.
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
I wouldn't knock Chinny and Buu's rig, they made decisions that went in a different direction than mine but are no less valid.They focused less on absolute performance and more on overall experience. They wanted something that looked great and would run quietly, and I guarantee you their build is quieter than mine. The H100i seems a bit like overkill, but those fans will *never* have to spin up. Likewise, overspeccing on the PSU isn't necessarily a bad thing as again, that PSU's fan will almost never have to spin up.
I also have to give them props for thinking to include a way to actually *install* their copy of Windows, which I missed. ;)
leopard_jumps - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
i5 4460 is absolutely unacceptable for $1500 . The second rig in the article is not balanced at all .leopard_jumps - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
i5 4460 is absolutely unacceptable for $1500 rig . The second rig in the article is not balanced at all .AssBall - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
The Zotac rig is a nice build. Those extra's really sharpen it up, and a 500gb drive is a good choice. That being said, I do like Corsair's CPU cooler and will be looking into that Carbide 200 for my next build.Great write up and fun article, Anandtech. Looking forward to more of these in the future.
PolarisOrbit - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
This looks interesting, I hope to see a bunch of different perspectives on computer builds with different companies representing each build. One thing I don't like about other site build-a-thons is the tendency for the competitors to make unrealistic builds since the winners are based purely on performance. A system where $1000 was spent on GPUs and only $80 storage may benchmark well, but it's completely impractical. Things that don't have good benchmark measures still have practical value to consumers (like the space savings of ITX compared to EATX), and I will be interested to see how Anandtech accounts such things in the competition.echoe - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
As most people are saying, Dustin's system is way more performant. If I were to go for a 970 I'd probably try to get a 5820k in there, something like this:http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jbGDsY
I don't really like the looks of Chinny's system either, though the lower noise is attractive.
BrokenCrayons - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
I personally prefer Chinny's build as a more balanced approach that acknowledges acoustics and cabling, but I admit it's a very tough choice and Dustin's specs are appealing from a performance perspective. For me, it's a wash on CPUs since overclocking doesn't matter at all to me and I think either processor is enough for any modern games. 8GB of RAM is something of a liability that will loom larger in the near future and I admit that I think 16GB is a wiser choice. The GPU is important, but I can't see 4k gaming actually adding value. It strikes me as resolution for the sake of resolution so I wouldn't consider the GPU difference very relevant. What ends up making the decision for me is storage. A 500GB SSD is a ton more useful when games regularly require well over 50GB. I'd rather have to keep the resolution down a little than juggle titles or purchase a some sort of additional storage right away.Impulses - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Dustin's system needs a HDD... But I'm baffled by the sudden notion that all games *must* be installed on NAND flash... (not to pick in your post in particular)There's games where load times don't even change dramatically because the bottleneck is at the CPU/GPU unpacking compressed stuff, and even if that isn't the case, I'd probably put just about everything else over load times (aesthetics, noise, fps, etc) if that's the last thing to get cut on a budget.
That being said, I'm about to replace my 2x128GB SSD for a 1TB (possibly two later) so I can move everything I use with any frequency to flash. :p
Die HDDs die! I just don't think it'd be my priority over most other things, specially since it's one of the easier things to address down the road AND one area where prices are highly volatile. Case in point, the 500GB 850 EVO currently floating over $160...
I'd expect more price drops with everyone else getting into TLC/3D NAND and PCI-E/M2 drives taking over the premium sector.
Wraithtek - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Here's what I came up with: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/R6LnBmIn short: An i5-4690k + GTX 970 system with 500GB SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD and quiet air cooling. Threw in a blu-ray drive and spare 140mm fan. $1501.70 (before $15 shipping). A nice all around system with a bit more storage space.