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Lenovo Erazer X700 Gaming PC Review: Is It As Fast As It Looks?
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1. Is Lenovo's Erazer X700 The Perfect Gaming Workstation?

Lenovo’s products are most familiar to mobile and business users. But the enthusiast segment is tougher to crack. To begin with, many of us prefer configuring our hardware choices, dialing in an optimal balance between complementary components. Those of us with more money than time are typically willing to pay specialized boutiques to build those very custom PCs. But the business strategy that bore Lenovo's Erazer is very unlike those boutiques it needs to contend with.

The X700 we have in our lab isn’t your grandma’s Aptiva, and Lenovo hopes to set it apart from those office-inspired systems with a gaming-inspired exterior. Inside, the Erazer still looks like the IntelliStation that likely hatched her, however, with a workstation-oriented motherboard and processor you would expect to find in the firm’s ThinkStation line. Thankfully, Lenovo complements its gamester chassis with a real gaming graphics card and some headroom for overclocking.

Lenovo Erazer X700 PC Configuration 57316913
Configurable Components
CPUIntel Core i7-3930K (Sandy Bridge-E): 3.2-3.8 GHz, Six Cores, 12 MB Cache
DRAM4 x Hynix HMT451U6AFR8C DDR3-1600 C11, 16 GB (4 x 4 GB)
GraphicsAMD Radeon HD 8950 OEM, 3 GB GDDR5
System DriveSamsung 830 MZ7PC128HAFU 128 GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD
Storage DriveSeagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2 TB, 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Wireless NetworkRealtek RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n single-channel PCIe, 150 Mb/s
Chassis
ModelLenovo X7 series ATX Mid-Tower
Expansion SlotsSeven
Internal Bays4 x 3.5" / 2.5" Trays, 2 x Front-Loading 3.5" / 2.5" Docks
Power BayPS/2, Top Mounted on Rear Panel
External Bay5 x 5.25" (Three Filled), 1 x 3.25" (Filled)
Front Panel I/O1 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0, Headset (Top Panel,) SD/MMC/XD/MS PRO/CF Flash Media Interface (3.25" bay)
Fans1 x 120 mm Intake, 1 x 120 mm Exhaust
Dimensions20.9" (H), 10.6" (W), 24.0" (D), 61.7 Pounds
Motherboard
ModelLenovo 10122: LGA 2011, Intel X79 Express, MicroATX
External Data6 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet
External Audio6 x Analog, Digital Optical, Digital Coaxial
External VideoNone
Internal Ports4 x SATA 6Gb/s, 4 x SATA 3Gb/s, 2 x USB 3.0, 6x USB 2.0
Internal Slots2 x PCIe x16, 2 x PCIe x1
Maximum Memory4 x DDR3-800 to DDR3-1600 (all standard capacities)
Gigabit EthernetRealtek RTL8168B PCIe, 10/100/1000 Mb/s
Audio ControllerRealtek ALC892 DAC, 7.1 + 2-Channel rear/front audio
Other Features
Optical DrivePLDS DH12B2SH 12x BD-R (16x DVD±R)
Power SupplyAcBel FS8003 625 W, 80 PLUS Gold, 2 x Six-Pin / 2 x 6+2-Pin PCIe
CoolingAsetek 120 x 38 mm closed-loop, 60 mm PWM, 40 mm PCH
WarrantyOne Year Standard, Extendable to Three Years
SoftwareWindows 8 OEM, PowerDVD 10, Power2Go v6, TriDef 3D
Price$2300

Observant enthusiasts will note that the Core i7-3930K is really best-suited for work duty, since most games max out around four cores. Less expensive LGA 1150-based processors offer higher IPC (instruction per cycle) throughput, lower power consumption, and fit onto more affordable motherboards. But Lenovo’s platform offers sixteen lanes of PCI Express connectivity to two add-in cards if you’re itching to support upgrades, and its combination of extra RAM and storage could make it the all-around winner that our previous System Builder Marathon $2550 machine tried to be.

2. Getting To Know Lenovo's Erazer X700

The Erazer X700 comes factory-configured to a 3.9 GHz overclock, which is tied to a function button between the power button and front (top) panel ports. Singular USB 2.0, USB 3.0, headphone, and microphone jacks are available in the same vicinity.

Behind the front panel, there’s a USB 3.0 drive dock with an extra power connector. I hoped to find an exact match on the company's website, but Lenovo doesn’t show this angle on any of its external drives. A snap-on cover prevents dust from collecting inside the port, but also keeps the spring-loaded top panel door from closing all the way.

A full view of the back panel reveals how the top door remains partly depressed when dust covers are on the ports. The Wi-Fi card and I/O panel can also be seen from this angle.

The Wi-Fi antenna folds down and rotates 90° to each side. The I/O panel features six analog stereo jacks, optical and coaxial digital audio, six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and a GbE connector.

The Erazer X700 front panel door opens to reveal five 5.25” and one 3.5” bay. The 3.5” bay is filled with a so-called 25-in-1 card reader (multiple versions of five standards), while two of the 5.25” bays include dual-format (2.5” and 3.5”) hard drive trays. Between those, Lenovo adds a PLDS (Phillips Lite-On Data Storage) 12x Blu-ray burner that system documentation mislabels as a Blu-ray reader and DVD writer combo drive.

A multimedia keyboard and programmable-function gaming mouse are included, along with mouse software, mouse weights, documentation, and AMD’s current Radeon HD 8950 gaming bundle certificate.

3. Inside Lenovo's Erazer X700

Lenovo uses a mid-weight sheet steel case and card bracket to prevent damage during shipping, along with extra-thick flexible foam packaging and a double cardboard box.

As a prosumer, I used to get terribly upset when I'd open a full ATX system and find a microATX motherboard inside. Improvements in on-board components have made add-in cards less necessary for most gamers, however.

The biggest problem we spot is that the single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi card must be removed to facilitate a CrossFire upgrade for the included Radeon HD 8950 graphics card.

No amount of packaging can completely protect the motherboard from the impact of a heavy CPU cooler in shipping, so Lenovo uses an unbranded version of Intel’s BXRTS2011LC closed-loop liquid cooler. Both the Intel and Lenovo solutions are manufactured by Asetek, and the 1.5” radiators that accompany them are halfway between Asetek’s 550LC and 570LC factory-configured options.

One problem of liquid cooling is that its remote fans no longer blow onto voltage regulator components. Lenovo solves this issue by adding a standard 60 x 10 mm fan and partial shroud over its PWM heat sink. We’d need something like Antec’s SpotCool to accomplish this task in our own builds.

4. More Erazer X700 Features

Filling the top hard drive tray, Samsung’s venerable 830-series 128 GB SSD offers up to 520 MB/s reads and 320 MB/s writes.

Though limited by rotating disk technology, Seagate’s 7200.14 series Barracuda 2 TB drive offers 64 MB of cache on a 6Gb/s interface to aid transfers to and from high-capacity storage.

Though there are a few exceptions, most X700 models come with 16 GB of RAM. Lenovo keeps its specs open to multiple suppliers, and these DDR3-1600 samples come from Hynix.

The X700 supports Intel’s full range of LGA 2011 processors plus overclocking and dual-card graphics arrays, which is a pretty tall order for typical OEM power supplies. Rated at 625 W, AcBel’s 80 PLUS Gold-certified FS8003 provides two six-pin and two 6+2-pin auxiliary PCIe connectors, and should hold up to most compatible upgrade options. If you need additional leads, you also probably need greater power capacity.

AcBel doesn’t list this part, and it doesn’t appear under the vendor name at the 80 PLUS website. We instead had to look at Lenovo-specific parts to find its 80 PLUS Bronze rated predecessor.

5. Lenovo Software

The Erazer X700’s motherboard includes Reatek’s high-end ALC892 audio codec, but Lenovo doesn’t license DTS-Connect or any of the codec’s other added-cost features. It does include PowerDVD 10, though.

CyberLink’s Power2Go usually comes in a low-cost combo deal with its PowerDVD software, so Lenovo includes that too. Once again, notice that burning software detects the drive of this X700 as a BD-R, even though system documentation does not indicate write capability for this format.

As with most tier-one PCs, the X700 includes a recovery partition to restore its original software state. But Lenovo also includes system recovery software, which lets you back up the entire contents of a drive.

The delivered configuration’s 2 TB of additional storage could come in handy for backing up an SSD, though  you can also pick external storage to back up any of the installed drives.

6. Return Of The Turbo Button

The Erazer X700’s overclock button works with software to modify firmware. The button did not function for us when we tried to make changes using a different system drive. Changing the drive with Overclocking enabled caused it to remain enabled, and changing the drive with Overclocking disabled caused it to remain disabled.

Multipliers range up to 43x, which should be viable at the default overclocked voltage, as long as the mid-sized cooler’s liquid temperature is low. We found power throttling to be an issue, rather than thermal throttling, with the system drawing around 341 watts from the wall while fluctuating between 4.1 and 4.3 GHz.

We collected benchmark data using Lenovo’s default overclock of 3.9 GHz at 1.4 V. These parameters can be changed in BIOS, but the settings don’t stick unless they’re applied by the software application.

We wanted to try a lower overclock voltage to overcome power throttling, but software limitations thwarted that effort. Though firmware allowed increases from 0/256s of a volt and 25/256s of a volt over stock, those settings don't persist through a reboot.

We were also unable to play with RAM settings. The X700's firmware has memory ratios corresponding to DDR3-800 through DDR3-1600, but its timings menu isn’t selectable.

7. Test Systems Configuration
Test Hardware Configurations
 Lenovo Erazer X700ASRock M8 $550 Barebone$1300 Enthusiast PC$2550 Performance PC
Processor
(Overclock)
Intel Core i7-3930K
3.2 GHz, Six Physical Cores
O/C to 3.9 GHz, 1.41 V
Intel Core i7-4770K
3.2 GHz, Six Physical Cores
O/C to 4.1 GHz, 1.08 V
Intel Core i7-4670K
3.4 GHz, Six Physical Cores
O/C to 4.3 GHz, 1.25 V
Intel Core i7-3930K
3.2 GHz, Six Physical Cores
O/C to 4.2 GHz, 1.25 V
Graphics
(Overclock)
AMD Radeon HD 8950: 925 MHz GPU, GDDR5-5000EVGA GTX 760: 980-1033 MHz GPU, GDDR5-6008 O/C to 1200 MHz GDDR5-7200Gigabyte GTX 770: 1037-1089 MHz GPU, GDDR5-7000
O/C to 1239 MHz GDDR5-7500
3x EVGA GTX-760: 980-1033 MHz GPU, GDDR5-6008 O/C to 1130 MHz GDDR5-6680
Memory
(Overclock)
16 GB Hyundai DDR3-1600 CAS 11-11-11-28, 1.5 V8 GB  Kingston DDR3-1600 CAS 9-9-9-24, O/C to DDR3-1600 8-9-8-21, 1.5 V8 GB Corsair DDR3-1600 CAS 9-9-9-24, O/C to DDR3-1800 CL 9-11-11-28, 1.535 V16 GB Mushkin DDR3-1600
CAS 9-9-9-24, Not Overclockable
Motherboard
(Overclock)
Lenovo 10122:
LGA 2011, Intel X79 Express
Stock 100 MHz BCLK
ASRock Z87 M8:
LGA 1150, Intel Z87 Express
Stock 100 MHz BCLK
Gigabyte Z87X-OC:
LGA 1150 Intel Z87 Express
Stock 100 MHz BCLK
ASRock X79 Extreme6:
LGA 2011, Intel X79 Express
Stock 100 MHz BCLK
OpticalPLDS DH12B2SH 12x BDR 16x DVD±RSamsung SH-224: 24x DVD±RSamsung SH-224: 24x DVD±RPioneer BDR-2208: 15x BD-R
CaseLenovo X7 series Mid TowerNZXT Tempest 210Antec GX 700Lian Li PC-9NA
CPU CoolerAsetek 120 x 38 mm Closed Loop Liquid CoolerAMD Boxed CoolerCorsair H50Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 
Hard DriveSamsung 830 MZ7PC128HAFU
128 GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD
Western WD10EZEX 1 TB, SATA 6Gb/s HDDSamsung 840 MZ7TD120BW 120 GB SATA 6Gb/s SSDMushkin Chronos Deluxe DX 240 GB, SATA 6Gb/s SSD
PowerAcBel FS8003: 625 W, 80 PLUS GoldAntec VP-450: 450 W, ATX12V v2.3Corsair 650TX: 650 W Modular, ATX12V v2.3, 80 PLUS BronzeCorsair HX850: 850 W Modular, ATX12V v2.3, 80 PLUS Gold
Software
OSMicrosoft Windows 8 Pro x64Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64
GraphicsAMD Catalyst 13.9Nvidia GeForce 320.49 WHQLNvidia GeForce 326.80 BetaNvidia GeForce 326.80 Beta
ChipsetIntel INF 9.3.0.1026Intel INF 9.4.0.1017Intel INF 9.4.0.1017Intel INF 9.3.0.1026

Many enthusiast builders aren't sure what standard memory is, believing that DDR3-1600 CAS 9 applies. Even though we believe JEDEC should have standardizes that data rate at CAS 9, the council initially took a more conservative approach at CAS 11. Most large manufacturers have stuck with that original spec for backwards compatibility, and its not surprisingly found in this Erazer X700 sample.

By now, you're probably wondering why we never reviewed the Radeon HD 8950. This "new" card follows AMD’s "by any other name" marketing tactic, and is identical to the Radeon 7950 3 GB we reviewed almost two years ago, except for its the name. Even after the rebrand, the performance of AMD’s high-value 7950 is still pretty sweet.

AMD's 7000-series Radeons required DisplayPort for a third monitor up until recently. Though many options exist, StarTech's MDP2DVID DisplayPort-to-Dual-Link DVI adapter gives us the flexibility of resolutions beyond 1920x1080 on that output, and without the need to buy new dual-interface monitors to support those higher resolutions in Eyefinity.

Benchmark Configuration
3D Games
Battlefield 3Campaign Mode, "Going Hunting" 90-Second Fraps
Test Set 1: Medium Quality Defaults (No AA, 4x AF)
Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Defaults (4x AA, 16x AF)
F1 2012Steam Version, In-Game Test
Test Set 1: High Quality Preset, No AA
Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Preset, 8x AA
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimUpdate 1.5.26, Celedon Aethirborn Level 6, 25-Second 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
Far Cry 3V. 1.04, DirectX 11, 50-sec. FRAPS "Amanaki Outpost"
Test Set 1: High Quality, No AA, Standard ATC., SSAO
Test Set 2: Ultra Quality, 4x MSAA, Enhanced ATC, HDAO
Adobe Creative Suite
Adobe After Effects CS6Version 11.0.0.378 x64: Create Video which includes 3 Streams, 210 Frames, Render Multiple Frames Simultaneosly
Adobe Photoshop CS6Version 13 x64: Filter 15.7 MB TIF Image: Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Median, Polar Coordinates
Adobe Premeire Pro CS6Version 6.0.0.0, 6.61 GB MXF Project to H.264 to H.264 Blu-ray, Output 1920x1080, Maximum Quality
Audio/Video Encoding
iTunesVersion 11.0.4.4 x64: Audio CD (Terminator II SE), 53 minutes, default AAC format 
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3: Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 53 min, convert WAV to MP3 audio format, Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.99: Video from Canon Eos 7D (1920x1080, 25 FPS) 1 Minutes 22 Seconds
Audio: PCM-S16, 48,000 Hz, Two-Channel, to Video: AVC1 Audio: AAC (High Profile)
TotalCode Studio 2.5Version: 2.5.0.10677: 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
ABBYY FineReaderVersion 10.0.102.95: Read PDF save to Doc, Source: Political Economy (J. Broadhurst 1842) 111 Pages
Adobe Acrobat XVersion 11.0.0.379: Print PDF from 115 Page PowerPoint, 128-bit RC4 Encryption
Autodesk 3ds Max 2013Version 15.0 x64: Space Flyby Mentalray, 248 Frames, 1440x1080
BlenderVersion: 2.67b, Cycles Engine, Syntax blender -b thg.blend -f 1, 1920x1080, 8x Anti-Aliasing, Render THG.blend frame 1
Visual Studio 2010Version 10.0, Compile Google Chrome, Scripted
File Compression
WinZipVersion 17.0 Pro: THG-Workload (1.3 GB) to ZIP, command line switches "-a -ez -p -r"
WinRARVersion 4.2: THG-Workload (1.3 GB) to RAR, command line switches "winrar a -r -m3"
7-ZipVersion 9.28: THG-Workload (1.3 GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=5"
Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
3DMark 11Version: 1.0.3, Benchmark Only
PCMark 8Version: 1.0.0 x64, Full Test
SiSoftware Sandra 2011Version 2013.10.19.50, CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic / Cryptography, Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark
8. Results: 3DMark And PCMark

The System Builder Marathon $2550 machine was built to excel in both games and productivity applications, so a bunch of its money went towards three-way SLI. It was also overclocked a little further than Lenovo’s Erazer X700, so it makes a clean sweep of 3DMark.

The $1300 PC was configured to be a mid-grade desktop that excels in games, so its budget was also skewed towards graphics. It achieves a higher graphics score in 3DMark, but its Physics score is sub-par, even compared to my own ASRock M8 review.

PCMark is primarily limited by hard drive performance, though this recent version puts a little more emphasis on the rest of the system. The $1300 to $1535 machines still perform well, in spite of lower host processing core counts.

9. Results: SiSoft Sandra

The SBM $2550 PC uses the same CPU as Lenovo’s Erazer X700, yet still outperforms it in Sandra Arithmetic by a fairly wide margin. The X700’s 3.9 GHz overclock performs roughly the same as the $2550 PC’s baseline, with XMP memory as its primary differentiating factor. Some manufacturers automatically enable fixed-ratio Turbo Boost mode when XMP is enabled.

To keep a processor within its rated power envelope, the amount of frequency Turbo Boost applies is supposed to decrease as the number of loaded cores increases. Enhanced Turbo sets a fixed boost frequency at the CPU’s highest rated frequency, which for the Core i7-3930K is 3.8 GHz.

Memory performance coincidentally scales in proportion to price. The expensive systems have quad-channel memory controllers, while the mid-priced builds are stuck with two channels.

10. Results: Battlefield 3

Lenovo’s Erazer series is supposed to be designed for gaming, yet its single Radeon HD 8950 lags behind the $1300 build’s GeForce GTX 770. With a potent Sandy Bridge-E-based six-core, 12-thread CPU, the Erazer X700 instead appears better-suited to general-purpose enthusiast-class computing.

11. Results: Far Cry 3

The $1300 System Builder Marathon machine’s stronger graphics configuration continues to emphasize its gaming theme in Far Cry 3, with Lenovo’s stronger CPU offering little extra performance.

12. Results: F1 2012

F1 2012 applies an easy-to-handle load on nearly every enthusiast-level graphics card, instead getting bottlenecked by processor or memory performance. Higher resolutions and detail levels provide a little more differentiation between systems, but the weakest card in the group is still capable of smooth game play at 5760x1080.

13. Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Lenovo’s high-value enthusiast graphics card continues to struggle against the $1300 PC’s more expensive 3D subsystem in Skyrim. Although this title struggled to scale early in its life, subsequent patches smoothed out processor performance. Nevertheless, The X700's six-core CPU provides little to no benefit over the $1300 machine’s four cores.

14. Results: Audio And Video Encoding

This iTunes benchmark is single-threaded and favors high frequencies and efficient architectures, so the quad-core CPUs found in our $1300 SBM and M8 builds complete the task more quickly. Similarly, LAME MP3 shows that many desktop-oriented workloads still aren't optimized for workstation-class processors (though LAME can be threaded by running multiple transcodes simultaneously).

HandBrake and TotalCode Studio are optimized for multi-core processors, and bestow notable leads on the X700 and $2550 SBM PC.

15. Results: Adobe Creative Suite

Adobe After Effects shines a bright light on the performance of six-core CPUs complemented by plenty of memory, with Lenovo’s Erazer X700 matching our own $2550 System Builder Marathon effort at stock frequencies.

Threaded filters similarly favor well-threaded PCs, though Photoshop’s OpenCL acceleration doesn’t appear to like AMD’s GPU. The application also spurns the $2550 SBM machine’s SLI configuration.

Though it's included in Adobe’s Creative Suite, Acrobat is more of an office application. Perhaps it's fortunate, then, that our PowerPoint-to-PDF print task is only single-threaded, gaining nothing from the added complexity of a six-core CPU.

16. Results: Productivity

Our productivity suite is really well-suited to workstations, and it heavily favors high core counts. We see Lenovo’s Core i7-3930K matching the -3930K used in our SBM project at stock speeds.

The $1300 System Builder Marathon machine stumbles in Visual Studio, showing that there's a very real-world benefit to the Hyper-Threading and additional L3 cache featured on Intel's Core i7 processors, even based on the same architecture.

Six-core processors in Lenovo's Erazer and our $2550 SBM PC enjoy a fairly narrow advantage, though it is worth noting that the more complex CPUs operate at lower clock rates and employ less efficient architectures than the quad-core ASRock M8 and $1300 SBM builds, so their win is still impressive.

17. Results: File Compression

Our 7-Zip and WinRAR benchmarks get only a little boost from the Core i7-3930Ks in Lenovo's Erazer and the $2550 SBM machine, though higher clock rates and more modern architectures in the comparison builds play a role in narrowing the gap.

WinZip results are all over the map so to speak, with clock rate the most consistent advantage across all disciplines. The $1300 PC has the most OpenCL-friendly GPU, but the OpenCL-accelerated workload appears to favor the M8 build’s Haswell-based Core i7.

18. Power And Heat

Quad-core Haswell-based processors consume far less power than Intel's hexa-core Sandy Bridge-E design, even at idle, making the cheaper machines appear more energy-friendly. The $2550 System Builder Marathon system's three graphics cards also consume copious wattage, placing Lenovo's Erazer X700 in the middle of this chart.

The Erazer X700’s closed-loop liquid cooler outshines the priciest SBM build's big heat sink, even though large heat sinks consistently place well against closed-loop configurations in our most recent round-ups. Lenovo applies more voltage to achieve its overclock. But high temperatures, even after opening up our chassis, made it easy to blame a mediocre CPU sample for the $2550 machine’s heat woes.

19. Overall Performance And Efficiency

Even though some of us weren’t around in the days of the old turbo button, we still remember seeing it on cases many years ago. And we learned that everyone left this button engaged all of the time; switching it off would force lower clock rates otherwise. We believe the same thing will happen with the Erazer X700’s Overclock button, so we used that configuration as the baseline for comparisons.

A CPU overclock doesn’t do anything for the X700’s value-oriented enthusiast graphics card of course, but the performance benefits are easy to see in other benchmarks. Unfortunately, the $1300 System Builder Marathon configuration is a significantly faster platform for gaming.

Zeroing out the scale in the chart above so that nothing is shown to be more than 100% efficient, we see that the Erazer X700 becomes far more efficient when its overclock is disabled. That’s probably because Lenovo pushes the CPU to 1.4 V when it's tuned up.

Haswell-based machines are slower, yet consume so much less power that they take big efficiency leads.

20. Performance Per Dollar

We expect to pay a premium for Intel’s six-core platform, so we can't get too upset to find the Erazer X700 with a Core i7-3930K processor breaking well past $2000. In fact, at $2300, it’s still cheaper than our top System Builder Marathon effort sporting the same CPU. The big difference, of course, is that machine also sports a complex graphics configuration to boost gaming performance. No doubt, this will become an interesting value debate.

Our own overclocked machine barely edges out the value score of Lenovo’s Erazer X700, and the situation is even close to par at stock settings. But our system also didn't include an operating system, keyboard, mouse, or tech support. Heck, we didn’t even include the cost of shipping. With Windows 8 OEM priced at $90 and any kind of tech support worth at least $100, Lenovo’s Erazer X700 is actually a better overall value than our high-end DIY build.

One of the problems associated with evaluating a complete system based on overall performance is that many of our benchmarks don't benefit from the Erazer X700’s six-core CPU. And the system’s enthusiast-oriented graphics card doesn't win it much love in games, particularly compared to multi-GPU arrays. Lots of GPU horsepower allowed our $1300 PC to beat the X700 in overall performance, and no set of added features can offset a 77.7% value difference.

Coming to a positive conclusion about either one of the $2000+ machines' value propositions would require us to limit ourselves to looking at applications optimized for more than four cores.

21. But Is The Erazer X700 A Gamer?

The overall value rating on the previous page is really only important if you're looking for a multifunction performance-oriented PC. Lenovo is marketing its Erazer X700 as a more gamer-oriented box, though. When we get that specific, its high-end six-core CPU is an extravagance. But is that value-oriented, still-fairly-high-end graphics card a limitation?

Though AMD’s Radeon HD 8950 is a good card for most single-screen resolutions, it’s not exactly a powerhouse in Eyefinity. And though a few failed runs might not impact the majority of gamers, a $2300 system isn’t designed for the majority of gamers; it's intended for the top tier of folks who know what balance means, and that when you pair an almost $600 CPU with a $250 graphics card, frame rates are going to suffer. That this system fell behind our $1300 System Builder Marathon PC at the same quality settings means that gaming isn't really what the Erazer is best at.

The truth about Lenovo’s Erazer X700 is that it’s a home workstation that games well, rather than a purpose-built gaming powerhouse able to handle professional tasks during the workday. Huge storage capacity, Blu-ray burning flexibility, and a workstation-class CPU would have made this the perfect excuse for me not to visit the computer lab back in my university days, and I believe that a large number of today’s power users will find the Erazer X700 similarly suits their needs.

If we were to give Lenovo one piece of advice to wrap things up, it'd be to put a bigger emphasis on graphics performance, and perhaps dial back the CPU to save some money. Those six x86 cores, overclocked, don't further the X700's gaming mission, while a second Radeon HD 8950 in CrossFire would have really bolstered our gaming benchmarks.