
PSU: EVGA SuperNova 750 B2
I’m always looking for a good price on a high-quality power supply, and this time I found a deal on EVGA’s 750W SuperNova with an 80 PLUS Bronze rating.
Read Customer Reviews of EVGA's SuperNova 750 B2
For a mere $90, this SuperNova offers 67 A on the +12 V rail in a semi-modular design, where only the mandatory cables are soldered-on. It boasts up to 85% efficiency and a five-year warranty, too. Based on its connector package, the power supply also supports a second Radeon R9 290X graphics card, just in case our winner wants to upgrade.
SSD: Plextor M6S PX-256M6S
Working for a hardware site has some advantages when it comes time to shop. In this case, I was able to get an early look at our best SSD prices for September back in August. That data points to current pricing and the performance from our April review as reasons to purchase the 256 GB M6S.
Read Customer Reviews of Plextor's M6S PX-256M6S
Currently available for only $135, our storage editor though it was a good value even back at its earlier $170 price. “The M6S provides plenty of pep thanks to Marvell's 9188 controller. Even though the processor is limited to just four channels, it keeps pace with Plextor's well-regarded M5 Pro.”
Hard Drive: Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX
We don’t need more than the 256 GB of capacity to run the tests in our benchmark suite, yet the winner of today’s system will probably want a place to store photos and media. Western Digital’s 1 TB Blue drive provides that capacity without busting my budget.
Read Customer Reviews of WD's Blue WD10EZEX
The WD10EZEX has a 7200 RPM spindle to improve response time and a SATA 6Gb/s interface for speedy accesses to 64 MB of cache. But really, I only bought this disk to store information that doesn't need to live on the precious solid-state storage.
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0
Many readers claim that they no longer want or need an optical drive, but our operating system shipped to us on optical media. Besides, I'm willing to bet that you have something precious stashed away on a DVD or CD that you’d like to read someday.
Read Customer Reviews of LG's GH24NSB0
The GH24NSB0 also burns DVD media at 24x, just in case you have a few blank discs laying around. Plus, it's great for loading an unrecognized GbE controller driver...since you can't exactly download that until the network connection is up and running. Better still, it's 10% cheaper than the Lite-On drive I used last time.
- Can We Build An Even Higher-End $1600 PC?
- CPU, Graphics And Memory
- Motherboard, Case And Cooling
- Power Supply And Storage
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- How We Tested
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Far Cry 3
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Cloud
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat And Efficiency
- Is There Such Thing As A Perfect $1600 PC?




These quarterly builds usually only show miniscule improvements unless something disruptive happens to the market like a tick or tock. These articles could as well be bi-annual. Good though that the price point that you're at shifts from time to time.
290x -> SLI 770 = +$100
Same budget, theoretically a 10-15% performance boost, and new topic of discussion as part of the article.
These SBM builds have taken very few risks in the last few quarters...
290x -> SLI 770 = +$100
Same budget, theoretically a 10-15% performance boost, and new topic of discussion as part of the article.
These SBM builds have taken very few risks in the last few quarters...
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($239.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($143.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($76.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($115.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 780 3GB DirectCU II Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 780 3GB DirectCU II Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Professional 850W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1461.70
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-25 18:14 EDT-0400
What about this? Might be cheating, given the price drops from the GTX 900 series release. Also add $10 from a promo on the PSU.
With that said, I do find these SBM articles most interesting of all.
For the record, I'm not building it for myself, but somebody who wants a flashy case. I would pick the muted design of a fractal personally, but potato potah-toe
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($239.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($143.79 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($76.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($115.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 780 3GB DirectCU II Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 780 3GB DirectCU II Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($329.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Professional 850W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1461.70
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-25 18:14 EDT-0400
What about this? Might be cheating, given the price drops from the GTX 900 series release. Also add $10 from a promo on the PSU.
I went with the big cooler this time so I wouldn't have to hear about it if the CPU sucked, like it did last time. I could have met my goals on the cooler you chose, since the CPU I got this time was a great sample.
Hopefully I win this one. I need a new folding machine.
On a personal note :
I wouldn't buy an R9 290x if it was $200 BNIB.
I've seen first hand the problems that are seemingly inherent with that item.
Between the defect ratio and the variable performance , I would rather own a GTX 780, or heck even a pair of R9-280's for the same price than that lemon of a GpU.
Well, logically, those cards weren't available in large enough numbers to use on these machines.