
With a single 250 W graphics card instead of two 195 W models, this quarter's effort is guaranteed to use less power under a graphics load. The CPU shouldn't reflect much of a change, either, since both PCs employ quad-core Haswell-based processors.
Indeed, the Q1 2014 build remains under 475 W, even when I overclock it. A quick look at the CPU under load shows both platforms faring similarly, though the previous build's Core i5-4670K manages to idle at a significantly lower wattage. That could be a platform issue, where the board I'm using today isn't dropping to the same idle states.

The thermals are comparable between both machines, except for the GeForce GTX 780 Ti's higher temperature under load. We're not entirely surprised. After all, the 780 Ti leans on a big GK110 that uses more power than the smaller GK104 on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 770. Our overclocked 780 Ti's temperature drops quite a bit, which makes sense in light of our manual fan speed increase to prevent throttling.

- Taking The SBM Down A Different Road
- CPU, Motherboard, And Cooler
- Video Card, Power Supply, And Case
- Memory, Hard Drives, And Optical Storage
- System Assembly And Overclocking
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Results: Synthetics
- Results: Media Transcoding
- Results: Rendering And Productivity
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Compression Tools
- Results: Battlefield 4 And Arma 3
- Results: Grid 2 And Far Cry 3
- Power And Temperature
- A Core i7 And Flagship GPU Impress, Naturally
(1) You could include temperatures and acoustics performance in the overall assessment, given I think that is a big part of the case buying decision, and
(2) A way to factor in the intangibles (i.e. blu ray vs dvd, choice of SSD/HDD, etc), you could include a separate vote between this quarter's and last quarter's to see what the readers would choose for the best build given all the performance factors, aesthetics, and other components that do not contribute directly to performance. The reader's vote of this quarter vs. last quarter and/or an overall value winner for this quarter could be included in the final write-up.
I would also 2nd the vote for starting 4K testing. And also, why not 1440p? It seems those two resolutions are more relevant now in 2014 at the level of this competition than 1600x900 and 4800x900 resolutions.
Hmm.... What percentage of the performance measures in this article are for gaming?
I'm thinking a selection of CPUs as a fixed starting point, and GPU decisions based on remaining budget. Maybe an i7, i5, FX-8, and an APU.
Would be really interesting to see the performance differences across workloads by allocating budget between CPU and other components.
Already done for ITX. See here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-haswell-overclocking,3608.html
I'd second the uATX. In fact, I'd really like to see Crash attempt a uATX dual-gpu setup.
Frankly, it was the cheapest available card when the systems were ordered.
Nope.
The purpose is to have a resolution that the low-budget PC can operate at for the comparison article at the end of the week.