System Builder Marathon, March 2012: The Articles
Here are links to each of the five articles in this quarter’s System Builder Marathon (we’ll update them as each story is published). And remember, these systems are all being given away at the end of the marathon, including the Bonus Customer Choice PC, which we picked out using the highest-rated components in Newegg's feedback system.
To enter the giveaway, please fill out this SurveyGizmo form, and be sure to read the complete rules before entering!
Day 1: The $650 Gaming PC
Day 2: The $1250 Enthusiast PC
Day 3: The $2600 Performance PC
Day 4: Performance And Value, Dissected
Day 5: Bonus Newegg Customer Choice PC
Introduction
Up until now, we've used Intel’s Core i5-2500K in our mid-range enthusiast builds without ever having been disappointed. We gave AMD’s lower-priced FX-6100 a chance last time around, but that build wasn’t very successful. Despite its impressive graphics subsystem (a powerful pair of Radeon HD 6950 cards in CrossFire), it just couldn't compete.

I suppose we could crawl back to the Core i5-2500K, begging for forgiveness. It's the safe bet, after all. But we're tired of making it, and we're never going to learn anything new if we go down that road again.
No. This time we’ll try something a little different, and we’ll give up some of the processor and platform budget to make room for a shiny new Radeon HD 7970. We think the result has the potential to be a very capable gaming machine.
| $1250 Enthusiast System Components | ||
|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | ASRock P67 Pro3 SE LGA 1155, Intel P67 Express PCH | $95 |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-2400 3.1 GHz (3.4 GHz Max Turbo Boost), Quad-Core, 6 MB Shared L3 Cache | $190 |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper TX3 | $20 |
| Memory | Mushkin Enhanced Redline 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) 240-Pin DDR3-1600 Kit Dual-Channel Desktop Memory Kit | $60 |
| Graphics | PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 3 GB GDDR5 | $560 |
| Hard Drive | Crucial m4 64 GB SATA III SSD 64 GB, SATA 6 Gb/s | $95 |
| Hard Drive | Hitachi Deskstar 750 GB 750 GB, 7200 RPM, 32 MB Cache SATA 3Gb/s | $100 |
| Optical | Samsung TS-H353C OEM DVD Burner | $13 |
| Case | Apevia X-Trooper Junior | $40 |
| Power | Corsair TX650 V2 650 W ATX12V, EPS12V, 80 PLUS-Certified | $90 |
| Total Cost | $1263 | |
Prices haven't changed much between the time we ordered our parts and now, although Crucial’s m4 SSD did go up by $5. The original cost of this box ducked in just over our $1250 budget. Now we're slightly north of $1260.
CPU: Intel Core i5-2400
With our sights set on a $550 Radeon HD 7970 for our $1250 build, we have to cut some corners. And it's not like the $190 Core i5-2400 is a bad CPU. After all, we’ve been recommending it in the sub-$200 space for some time now. Moreover, in our recent sub-$200 CPU gaming comparison, this processor performed very closely to the Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4 GHz.

Read Customer Reviews of Intel's Core i5-2400
Although the Core i5-2400’s multiplier ratio is locked, we’re interested in seeing how much speed this 3.1 GHz model gains when we peg it at its highest available 38x Turbo Boost ratio.
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Pro3 SE

Read Customer Reviews of ASRock's P67 Pro3 SE
We heard good things about ASRock’s P67 Pro3, so we thought we’d give the SE version a try. At $95, it certainly didn’t hurt that this was also the lowest-priced motherboard we could find with Intel's P67 chipset.
On paper, it has everything else we need: DDR3 memory support up to 2133 MT/s and a PCIe x16 slot. Reality turned out to be a little different though, as we suffered from from a BIOS limitation that we’ll discuss in the overclocking section. Know this: if you plan on overclocking, spend a few more dollars on a platform with more complete firmware settings. If you’re not overclocking, you might appreciate the Pro3 SE’s thin footprint, which fit into our mid-tower enclosure with ease.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX3
Read Customer Reviews of Cooler Master's Hyper TX3
We know that there are better coolers out there, but you’ll have a hard time finding one for $20. Given tight budget constraints, we opted for Cooler Master’s low-budget option. It just so happens to be a decent model for the price, and it's significantly better than the solution you get bundled with Intel's Core i5-2400.
Video Cards: PowerColor Radeon HD 7970
This card is the reason that we’re scaling back on everything else in today's build. If you're a gamer, though, the sacrifices are worthwhile.
PowerColor's Radeon HD 7970 is a very fast board with modest power requirements. It's well worth $550 if you're looking for playable frame rates at high resolutions. The company doesn't skimp on bundled adapters, including mini DisplayPort-to-DVI, a mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort, HDMI-to-DVI, and DVI-to-VGA adapters in its bundle. The card also comes with DiRT 3, which happens to be one of the games in our updated SBM benchmark suite.

Read Customer Reviews of PowerColor's Radeon HD 7970 3 GB
Power Supply: Corsair TX650 V2

Read Customer Reviews of Corsair's TX650 V2
We keep waiting for something better than Corsair’s TX650 to come along, but, for less than $100, it hasn't happened yet. As such, we're happy to use this popular $90 power supply once again.
PC Case: Apevia X-Trooper Junior

Read Customer Reviews of Apevia's X-Trooper Junior
Operating within a tight budget, I'll always favor go-fast hardware over a fancy chassis, and I do enjoy giving inexpensive enclosures a shot.
To that end I opted for Apevia’s X-Trooper Junior, a small mid-tower case that costs a mere $40. It is surprisingly roomy inside, with enough clearance for our beefy Radeon HD 7970. Two included 120 mm fans are particularly nice touches, particularly in this price range.
Memory: Mushkin Enhanced Redline 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory Kit
Frankly, I’d be happy with 4 GB of lower-latency memory. But your feedback tells us that you want to see 8 GB in these builds. At $60, this Mushkin Enhanced dual-channel kit boasts 7-9-8-24 timings at a 1600 MT/s data rate.

Read Customer Reviews of Mushkin's Enhanced Redline 8 GB DDR3-1600 Kit
SSD: Crucial m4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64 GB

Read Customer Reviews of Crucial's 64 GB m4
I’m not a fan of restrictive 32 GB boot drives, but Crucial’s M4 64 GB SSD delivers two times that capacity, along with great value and performance.
As with any SSD, remember to check for firmware updates, as it seems many manufacturers (including Crucial) end up fixing stability issues once the drives are on store shelves. We updated our m4 to version 0309 before running any tests.
Hard Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D 750 GB

Read Customer Reviews of Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D 750 GB
Hard disk prices are still much higher than they were last year, and because we’re on a strict budget, we have to make every dollar count.
Now that this system boots from an SSD, we only need a conventional hard disk for general storage. Hitachi’s $100 Deskstar 7K1000.D offers 750 GB of capacity, it spins at 7200 RPM, and includes a 32 MB cache.
Optical Drive: Samsung TS-H353C OEM

Read Customer Reviews of Samsung TS-H353C
We also chose the cheapest optical drive we could find. This particular example is a real-only device, and not a burner. So, if you need to write your discs, you'll want something else.
Samsung's TS-H353C has been out of stock for a while, so simply look for the least-expensive drive to take its place in your own build.

When cost is the primary concern, parts rarely seem to fit together ideally. So, we were really surprised at how easily ASRock's P67 Pro3 SE and PowerColor's Radeon HD 7970 fit inside the Apevia X-Trooper Junior case. It turns out that the small enclosure is extra wide and designed specifically to accommodate long graphics cards. A little bit of flexibility in hard drive mounting makes things even simpler. Also, the fact that ASRock's board is skinnier than more ATX platforms helped quite a bit. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with a case this small that didn’t cause some misery when it came time to pack parts inside.

The Apevia X-Trooper Junior isn’t without its flaws, though. Two of the motherboard standoff locations simply weren’t threaded properly, and I had to use brute force to jam them in. Moreover, a lack of cable management makes routing leads and then cleaning up more of a challenge. Those are the only two issues that keep me from recommending X-Trooper to friends and family.
More unfortunate is that our off-the-shelf ASRock P67 Pro3 SE doesn't work properly, refusing to run in dual-channel mode. The Mushkin Redline kit that we bought isn't on this platform's approved memory list; however, we tried modules from Corsair and OCZ as well. None of them got our board working the way it was supposed to. Increasing voltage didn’t help, and so we’re forced to run our tests in single-channel mode. This probably won’t affect the game benchmarks much, but it almost certainly will have a negative impact on memory-intensive application benchmarks.
Overclocking
The 3.1 GHz Core i5-2400 isn’t multiplier unlocked, but it does have to operate within the constraints of a 38x maximum Turbo Boost multiplier ceiling. This allows us to force all four cores up to 3.8 GHz.
That would have been a reasonable tradeoff, considering the Core i5-2400's relatively low price compared to Intel's Core i5-2500K. But because many vendors are now encouraging overclocking through Turbo Boost offsets, the technology remains on all of the time without an option to disable it. So, despite our 38x multiplier setting, our processor ended up running at 3.6 GHz in fully-threaded workloads and 3.7 GHz in less demanding tests. That's better than default, but not quite the 3.8 GHz we wanted.

The PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 was more than happy to hit the core and memory frequency ceilings imposed by AMD's Overdrive tool. Stock 925 MHz core and 1375 MHz memory clocks jumped up to 1125 and 1575 MHz, respectively. We also slid the power control setting to +20%, lowering the chances we'd see throttling under load. This specimen might have overclocked even higher, but we've been having some trouble unlocking higher clock rates in the latest version of MSI's Afterburner utility.


It will be interesting to see how AMD’s FX-6100 will fare compared to Intel’s Core i5-2400, especially when overclocked since the FX chip has an unlocked multiplier and two extra execution cores. Plus, the FX-6100 system’s dual Radeon HD 6950 CrossFire setup has a theoretical advantage over the Radeon HD 7970 when it comes to raw frame rates, although the single card is a more elegant solution.
| Current $1250 Enthusiast PC Test Settings | ||
|---|---|---|
| Standard Speed | Overclocked | |
| Motherboard | ASRock P67 Pro3 SE LGA 1155, Intel P67 chipset | Unchanged |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-2400 3.1 GHz (3.4 GHz Turbo Boost), Quad-Core, 6 MB L3 Cache | 3.6 to 3.7 GHz @ +0.1 V |
| Memory | Mushkin Enhanced Redline 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) 240-Pin DDR3-1600 Kit Dual-Channel Desktop Memory Kit, CAS 7-9-8-24-2T (run in single channel mode due to motherboard issue) | Unchanged |
| Graphics | PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 3 GB 3 GB GDDR5 @ 5500 MT/s GPU @ 925 MHz | GDDR5 @ 6300 MT/s GPU @ 1125 MHz Power @ +20% |
| Hard Drive | Crucial m4 64 GB SATA III SSD 64 GB, SATA 6 Gb/s | Unchanged |
| Hard Drive | Hitachi Deskstar 750 GB 750 GB, 7200 RPM, 32 MB Cache SATA 3Gb/s | Unchanged |
| Optical | Samsung TS-H353C OEM DVD Burner | Unchanged |
| Case | Apevia X-Trooper Junior | Unchanged |
| Power | Corsair TX650 V2 650 W ATX12V, EPS12V, 80 PLUS-Certified | Unchanged |
| December $1250 Enthusiast PC Test Settings | ||
|---|---|---|
| Standard Speed | Overclocked | |
| Motherboard | Biostar TA990FXE AM3+, AMD 990FX chipset | Unchanged |
| Processor | AMD FX-6100 3.3 GHz (3.9 GHz Max Turbo Core), Hexa-Core, 8 MB L3 Cache | 4450 MHz at 1.476 V, 207 MHz bus |
| Memory | Mushkin Enhanced Redline 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) 240-Pin DDR3-1600 Kit Dual-Channel Desktop Memory Kit, CAS 9-9-9-24-1T | 7-8-8-24 1T @ 690 MHz |
| Graphics | 2 x Gigabyte Radeon HD 6950 1 GB 1 GB GDDR5 @ 5000 MT/s GPU @ 870 MHz | GDDR5 @ 5040 MT/s GPU @ 880 MHz |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex Plus 60 GB SATA II SSD 60 GB, SATA 3 Gb/s | Unchanged |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB 750 GB, 7200 RPM, 32 MB cache SATA 3Gb/s | Unchanged |
| Optical | Sony Optiarc DVD Burner 24x DVD Burner | Unchanged |
| Case | Rosewill Challenger-U3 | Unchanged |
| Power | Corsair TX650 V2 650 W ATX12V, EPS12V, 80 PLUS-Certified | Unchanged |
And here's the list of benchmarks:
| Benchmark Configuration | |
|---|---|
| 3D Games | |
| Battlefield 3 | Campaign Mode, "Going Hunting" 90-Seconds Fraps Test Set 1: Medium Quality Defaults (No AA, 4x AF) Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Defaults (4x AA, 16x AF) |
| DiRT 3 | V1.01, Run with -benchmark example_benchmark.xml Test Set 1: High Quality Preset, No AA Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Preset, 8x AA |
| Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | Update 1.4.27, Celedon Aethirborn Level 6, 25 Seconds Fraps Test Set 1: DX11, High Details No AA, 8x AF, FXAA enabled Test Set 2: DX11, Ultra Details, 8x AA, 16x AF, FXAA enabled |
| StarCraft II | Custom map "Tom's Hardware Guide V2", 60 seconds Fraps Test Set 1: High Details, High Quality Test Set 2: Ultra Details, Extreme Quality |
| Audio/Video Encoding | |
| iTunes | Version 10.4.1.10 x64: Audio CD (Terminator II SE), 53 minutes, default AAC format |
| Lame MP3 | Version 3.98.3: Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min, convert WAV to MP3 audio format, Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s) |
| HandBrake CLI | Version 0.95: "Big Buck Bunny" (720x480, 23.972 FPS) 5 Minutes, Audio: Dolby Digital, 48 000 Hz, Six-Channel, English, to Video: AVC Audio: AC3 Audio2: AAC (High Profile) |
| MainConcept Reference | Version: 2.2.0.5440: MPEG-2 to H.264, MainConcept H.264/AVC Codec, 28 sec HDTV 1920x1080 (MPEG-2), Audio: MPEG-2 (44.1 kHz, 2 Channel, 16-Bit, 224 Kb/s), Codec: H.264 Pro, Mode: PAL 50i (25 FPS), Profile: H.264 BD HDMV |
| Productivity | |
| Adobe Photoshop CS5 | Version 12.1 x64: Filter 15.7MB TIF Image: Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Median, Polar Coordinates |
| Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 | Version 12.0 x64: Space Flyby Mentalray, 248 Frames, 1440x1080 |
| WinZip | Version 15.5 Pro: THG-Workload (650 MB) to ZIP, command line switches "-a -ez -p -r" |
| WinRAR | Version 4.1: THG-Workload (650 MB) to RAR, command line switches "winrar a -r -m3" |
| 7-Zip | Version 9.22: THG-Workload (650 MB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=5" |
| ABBYY FineReader | Version 10.0.102.82: Read PDF save to Doc, Source: Political Economy (J. Broadhurst 1842) 111 Pages |
| Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | |
| 3DMark 11 | Version: 1.0.1.0, Benchmark Only |
| PCMark 7 | Version: 1.0.4 x64, System, Productivity, Hard Disk Drive benchmarks |
| SiSoftware Sandra 2011 | Version 2011.10.17.80, CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic / MultiMedia, Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark |

We kick off our synthetic tests with 3DMark 11, which gives us an immediate first impression of how this quarter's single Radeon HD 7970 compares to last quarter's Radeon HD 6950s in CrossFire.
It’s surprising to see how close these results end up. AMD's Radeon HD 7970 does perform a bit better at lower resolutions. But, at the highest detail setting, our CrossFire setup claims a slight advantage.

As usual, PCMark’s component tests favor Intel's Core i5 over AMD’s FX. Crucial's m4 SSD demonstrates a significant advantage in application launch speed compared to OCZ's Vertex Plus.



The results in Sandra are much closer, as AMD's FX-6100 earns its share of wins in the Arithmetic and Multimedia tests. Note the poor memory bandwidth from our current build, which is easily explained by the single-channel memory configuration we are forced to use due to this platform's uncooperative motherboard. The FX-6100 system's dual-channel bandwidth is much higher than what we reported in last quarter's System Builder Marathon, as an update to the software now properly reports the Bulldozer architecture's throughput.




Intel's Core i5-2400 does better than AMD's FX-6100 when it comes to media encoding, despite the fact that we're stuck with a single memory channel and a modest overclock. Although the FX is specified as a six-core processor, it's architecture isn't that cut and dry. Even at a lower clock rate, four of Intel's Sandy Bridge-based cores simply get more work done.
AMD does take a single victory in HandBrake when its FX-6100 is overclocked to 4.5 GHz.





Productivity-oriented benchmarks deliver another mixed bag of results. The ABBYY FineReader and 7-Zip numbers are close, which is interesting because the former is heavily threaded, while the latter is much less so. Nevertheless, Intel's Core i5-2400 holds onto a significant lead in the WinZip and WinRAR compression workloads.
When it comes to graphics applications, the Core i5-2400 manages slight wins in 3ds Max and Adobe Photoshop at stock speeds, while AMD's FX-6100 takes the lead when we overclock it.
This is actually a little surprising, and it may be that the Intel system's single-channel memory handicap is hurting it. Fair's fair, though, and AMD gets an advantage as a result.







Battlefield 3
Battlefield 3 is a very graphics-dependent game, so the results should come down to the horsepower of our Radeon-based graphics cards.
Whoa. The Radeon HD 6950s in CrossFire from last quarter's System Builder Marathon beat the Radeon HD 7970 at every combination of resolutions and settings, except 2560x1600 at Ultra details.


Skyrim
Unfortunately, Skyrim automatically gets patched through Steam. As we discovered yesterday in Paul's story, a patch that appeared between last quarter (when we ran our comparison data) and today affected performance so significantly that we can't compare our two systems in this title. As such the numbers you're about to see don't mean a whole heck of a lot.



DiRT 3
DiRT 3 is often limited by host processor performance, except at its highest detail settings and resolutions, and that’s what we see here. The Core i5-2400 system and Radeon HD 7970 combo are notably faster overall. But when we apply the Ultra preset and 8x MSAA, the overclocked FX-6100 and Radeon HD 6950s in CrossFire pulls ahead at 2560x1600.


StarCraft II
We've seen that StarCraft II can also be limited by CPU performance when a map is filled with units. But the second generation of our in-house benchmark is less stressful in that regard, and therefore more dependent on graphics performance.
As such, the Core i5-2400 and Radeon HD 7970 combo retains an advantage until 2560x1600 at Ultra quality settings with 8x MSAA applied.



AMD's FX-series CPUs are not known for power efficiency under load (and certainly not when overclocked), so the results we're about to see shouldn't take anyone by surprise. Of course, a single Radeon HD 7970 tells a much more compelling efficiency story than two Radeon HD 6950 cards in CrossFire, so expect to see a confluence of factors impact the final consumption numbers.


The new build’s modest Hyper TX3 cooler isn’t much of a mach for Xigmatek’s Gaia, but it does a decent job considering its less expensive price. The Radeon HD 7970's load temperatures look a little higher than we’d expect, but keep in mind that the Radeon HD 6950 CrossFire setup from the previous build also benefits from non-reference coolers.

Before we wrap this up, let’s consider the aggregate performance data. Keep in mind that we removed the Skyrim results from the following chart because the game's patch altered performance too significantly, rendering a comparison completely invalid.

First up is application performance. On average, the Core i5-2400 does quite well against AMD's FX-6100, especially in light of its motherboard, which artificially hamstrung it with a single memory channel and an inability to specify a constant 3.8 GHz. We did see a couple of benchmark situations where the FX-6100 took a first-place finish when it was overclocked to 4.5 GHz, due to its high clock rate, dual-channel memory, hexa-core architecture, or a combination of the three. In general, though, the Core i5-2400 comes out on top.
As far as game performance goes, the new build's Radeon HD 7970 performs admirably up to the charted resolution of 1920x1080. If we were to focus more intently on 2560x1600, though, the benchmarks suggested to us that the two Radeon HD 6950s in CrossFire would have fared much better.
It’s a real shame that ASRock's P67 Pro3 SE isn't equipped with better BIOS overclocking options, and especially unfortunate that it was unable to run our memory kit in dual-channel mode. We’re not sure how much of an impact this had on the final results, but it's possible that we'll try a Core i5-2400 on a different motherboard next time around just to compare the two platforms.
Regardless, looking at the average performance and power consumption of this quarter's build, a Core i5-2400 and Radeon HD 7970 combo are a better bet than an overclocked FX-6100 with two Radeon HD 6950s. Despite its well-documented flaws, the new build is a powerful little system more deserving of our $1250 budget.
We're especially looking forward to Day 4 of our System Builder Marathon, where Thomas will compare the overall value of our three systems. Not to give too much away, but our top-end machine also centers on Radeon HD 7970, so it'll be interesting to see how much platform alacrity impacts gaming performance.