
I already know that my $2400 machine is no more than twice as fast as Paul's $800 effort, and that Don's $1600 configuration falls in the middle.
I also know from reading Paul's Day 1 coverage and writing my Day 3 story that each machine achieves higher value than its predecessor.

Don's previous mid-priced build achieved 70% the value of Paul's low-priced counterpart in September. Don's current build drops to 64% the performance-value of Paul's system. Meanwhile, I climbed from 46% to a much-improved 51%. In other words, Paul wins by more compared to Don, but I lose by less compared to Paul. Considering the traditional low value of high-end parts, I’ll gladly accept that step up.
Those calculations assume you're paying our purchase price, though. What happens if we build the same machines today?

Don’s $1600 machine only went up $5, while my $2400 build increased $300. A smaller $125 price increase hurts Paul’s $800 PC disproportionately, since that's such a significant chunk of the box's original cost. Given the unexpected price hike on AMD's graphics cards, I can only guess that Don's Magic 8-Ball said “Nvidia”. The outcome is that Don gets an unexpected 10% value surge, even though Paul still wins.
Personally, I cut my losses by 2% literally. But that doesn't mean I’m figuratively ready to do the same thing. I like this machine, after all!

A look at the high-resolution gaming performance numbers reveals one reason why I like this machine so much. This work-friendly PC solidly stomps on Don’s game-oriented build, losing the value comparison only by about the difference in CPU prices. And my CPU also proved capable of doing about 70% more work than Don's. So yeah, I'll take that too.
Paul wins as usual, but by less than last time. And his PC is the best value for anyone who can live with it. Builders with the money to spend and the monitors to game on will instead want to choose my $2400 PC. And anyone who wants really great gaming performance at 5760x1080 without breaking the bank should take a closer look at Don’s $1600 machine. But most of you already drew the same conclusions, so I'll turn this Marathon over to the guys giving these three systems away.
- Let The (System Builder) Games Begin
- Benchmark And Overclocking Configurations
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Arma III
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: Far Cry 3
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power And Heat
- Overall Performance And Efficiency
- Who Wins The Value Comparison?
The first one I can think of, being kind of boring as it might be, its the most obvious one to have: loading times. There are games that load a bazillion things on the fly and are some-what storage sensitive (MMOs basically) and we all hate waiting for everything to load, right? It can be clocked with a 10% error margin (thinking it usually takes around 200ms for human response).
I'm asking this, because RAID0 could become important if we see the value it adds to our builds. I know they're nowhere near SSDs, but Steam + other games take a LOT of space. My own Games folder racks up 410GB, where Steam is 300GB alone. You could slap 2x500GB HDDs in RAID 0 for half the value of a 240GB SSD if memory serves right and 2x1TB HDDs are just a tad more expensive. You can even use notebook HDDs if you want, haha.
Cheers!
Also, I would have cut the memory by half and remove the SSD for getting these 2 cards. Also... you really needs to change your SBM... it is ridiculous at this point.
1.) The $2400 PC was built with the entire benchmark set in mind, not just games
2.) The graphics cards were $400 at the time and nobody knew that they'd be capped in Far Cry 3
3.) Top-mounting the radiator would have further boxed-in the voltage regulator sink
4.) The NH-D14 had been found slightly-insufficient in the previous high-end build
What would you have liked to see changed?
Compression, dude! It's your best friend in digital gaming. And if all else fails, get an external drive. They're still pretty useful and cheap...
And I think the only thing I can disagree with the $1600 build is the case. OMG!! My eyes! Ughhhhh!
Whatever popular game your playing at the time, load it into the ram disk, when you grown tired of the game, unload it from RAM disk and back onto the HDD. Speed when you need it, storage when you dont.