Build-A-Rig Round 1, Zotac vs. Corsair: The $1500 PC Build Logs
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on July 30, 2015 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Build-A-Rig
- Corsair
- ZOTAC
The End Result
Zotac
For looks and cleanliness, the Zotac system looks significantly better. Aside from the near-black internals accentuated by the lights from the GPU and the DRAM, cable management removes some of the more garish ends of the power supply should someone decide to shine a light in (or the eventual winner uses the LED kit also included in the bundle). A minor concern comes from the extra cable space behind the motherboard tray due to the large extension cables to improve the look, however once installed it becomes a relative non-issue.
Zotac's 'Hey Good Lookin' System (above)
Chinny Chuang and Buu Ly from Zotac (below)
Corsair
In contrast, the Corsair system is the quintessential black-box PC designed to be used, not seen or heard. It can be quite hard to argue with the performance components under the hood, and we expect to see monster performance results, but a box has nothing to show off if the winner wants to take it to LANs or ends up with it on their desk. The danger with a bland machine is putting it on the floor and forgetting about it, allowing dust to build up, whereas a windowed machine at least gets some obvious hint if it needs a cleaning.
Corsair's 'The Accelerator' Build (above)
Dustin Sklavos from Corsair Memory (below)
Performance results are inbound for the final part of Build-A-Rig Round 1, with both of these machines nearing the end of their testing and we will post those results soon.
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 August 1st, as the Build-A-Rig challenge is quickly coming to a close..
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
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Gigaplex - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
Or go with a cheap, quiet cooler like the Coolermaster Hyper 212 range.HiTechObsessed - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
Wow, I'm actually embarrassed by how completely imbalanced this is from AnandTech. You can get IDENTICAL performance, plus more storage, for under $1,000 by using parts that actually make sense.PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xVJ4TW
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xVJ4TW/by_merchant/
CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($71.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($44.49 @ Newegg)
Storage: Corsair Force LS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($72.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card ($329.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($44.88 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHDS118-04 DVD/CD Drive ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit) ($102.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $989.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-31 11:50 EDT-0400
I mean, seriously? A $110 water cooler for a locked Intel CPU? An expensive Z97 board for a locked CPU? $100 for 8GB of RAM that add essentially nothing to performance? An overkill 750w PSu for an overkill $140? Tsk Tsk.
scotto330 - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
You can do better @ Micro CenterCPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($159.99)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($59.99)
Use the savings and upgrade the primary storage:
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III SSD ($104.99 @ Amazon)
I would also swap out the video card from the 970's 3.4GB for same money to:
Gigabyte AMD R9 390 GDDR5 8GB ($329.00 @ Amazon)
I own a Gigabyte G1 Gamming GTX 970....just sayin.
Ian Cutress - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
You do realise, from reading our previous Build-A-Rig articles, that the manufacturers in the competition picked the parts? We specifically interviewed both companies about their choices and the reasons behind them.http://anandtech.com/show/9417/build-a-rig-r1-1500...
Gonemad - Monday, August 3, 2015 - link
I would drop the water cooling, the elaborate ram, add a couple of TB of rust spinners, and perhaps a smaller SSD (60GB? 120GB?) for your specific game of choice. More specifically that game you play most.Achaios - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
@Ryan Smith: I disagree with your description of the PSU in p2. Tom's Hardware PSU List 2.0 has it classified as " Tier 3".QUOTE
Some Haswell compatible, some not (maybe unconfirmed). Still safe to use and stable, just lower quality components. Some capacitors maybe Japanese, but can include Taiwanese capacitors. Not really ideal in serious overclocking or super-high load situations, such as a Bitcoin mining rig or a high end gaming system.
UNQUOTE
So the "CS650M is" NOT "a capable PSU for a straightforward gaming system". It is just a short term solution until the owner of the said system can get a Tier 1 or Tier 2 PSU.
Can't really -still- blame Dustin however. Tier 3 PSU should be barely adequate for moderate overclocking (CPU+GPU).
fokka - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
you will have to do some _serious_ overclocking to even come close to the 650w of the corsair psu with a 88w cpu and a 250w gpu. i think the cm650m is will fare just fine.BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
I have to agree with fokka regarding the PSU as more than adequate for anything the system can demand in an overclocked scenario. PSUs are in the same domain as screen resolutions where the respective industries would like very much for us to purchase based on acquiring higher numeric values without realizing any actual benefit. Most of the power supplies I've used over the past 20 years have been ultra cheap, sub-400 watt no-name supplies generally included in crappy cases as a gimme and I've only owned one that failed. The PSU is one component that I think is very much skimp-worthy when you're managing a budget for a build as premium supplies really don't reward a buyer with much added benefit.Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
Why spend $250 on power and cooling for a 60 watt cpu and a 120 watt video card? Hello? Pass that bong pls.fokka - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - link
exactly what i said when the first article came out. you would really expect more sensible choices from a hardware company.