I configure my builds to maximize low-load energy savings. The same doesn't look like it applies to Don's approach. Or, maybe his motherboard didn’t idle down properly even with those settings enabled. Either way, the new $1600 build appears to draw far more energy under load, and even the 80 PLUS Gold-rated power supply in last quarter's $2400 machine couldn’t promote power-savings with GeForce GTX 780s rendering away.

And now for the shocker: my new $1600 configuration doesn't run cool enough. But should we blame its cooler?

The above chart doesn’t tell the whole heat story, since my measurements were taken with both the GPU and CPU under duress. First, a CPU-only load would have dropped CPU temperature by up to eight degrees. Second, voltage levels approaching 1.30 V are extremely difficult to cool Haswell-based CPUs predating Devil's Canyon. Indeed, Thermaltake's cooler produced similar temperatures as the old MUX 120 that I use in motherboard round-ups to push the same Core i7-4770K up to 4.7 GHz. This truly was a bum processor for overclocking.
I could have spent twice as much money on CPU cooling to save a few degrees, and might have passed on a pass/fail system. But if I really wanted to be sure the platform would stay under its thermal threshold, I would have also needed more case cooling or an externally-venting graphics card cooler (you know, the noisy blower-style reference cooler from AMD that everyone hates). To that end, perhaps I could have used a GeForce GTX 780 rather than a Radeon R9 290X, since it appears that only Nvidia knows how to make a well-behaved blower-style cooler.

This quarter's $1600 build performs 3.4% better than Don's $1600 machine from last quarter at its stock settings, but falls a little more than 1% behind when both of us overclock. Again, it's a bummer that my CPU wouldn't stabilize above 4.2 GHz.
It’s also less efficient, and I can probably point to the graphics card’s high power consumption for most of that. The new CPU did need a bunch of extra voltage to run at its meager overclock though, which further hurt the new machine’s overclocked efficiency.
- Can A $1600 PC Really Be High-End?
- CPU, Graphics, And Memory
- Motherboard And CPU Cooling
- Power Supply, Case, And SSD
- Mass Storage, OS, And Optical Drive
- Installing Thermaltake's NiC-L32 CPU Cooler
- Completing Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- How We Tested Our $1600 High-End PC
- 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 Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Less Money, Lower Performance, Better Value?
was multicore enhancement enabled for both the q1 $1600(asrock z87 pro3) and this quarter's high end pc(asus z97-a)? did it affect the heat output? asus keeps m.c.e. enabled by default. i can't see any other factors atm.
all 3 builds look very well-performing this quarter. looking forward to the perf-value analysis.
I would go with 16 GB of memory for $85 more, since that’s only $85/$1600=5% more cost. I’d also go ahead and get the Asus 780 for $520. (Side note: I disagree that most would go AMD in a 780 vs 290x, but I know better than to open that can of worms). SLI was mentioned but not used, and I also would not get SLI unless I KNEW it worked with the game I was most interested in. The posts on various forums about SLI causing problems in most games, along with SLI “issues” dating back to 3dFX Voodoo2 cards, keeps me away from SLI.
I also would stay away from “generally stable, but usually not stable in the games I want to play most” (not quoting the author here) overclocking of the system/video card. It’s nice to see it in the charts, but I read about way too many problems in games caused by overclocking for me to rely on it to get my ‘value’.
Lastly, I think the pendulum has swung too far towards “value” for the high end build. I suggest tweaking that a little for future high end builds (eg..780Ti, 16 GB memory, 500GB SSD, but continue to stay away from $1000 CPU, $1200 SLI, etc).
The big lesson here though, is that people should NOT rely on the silicon lottery to meet their performance needs. Overclocking is NOT a sure thing. I seem to recall this happening before in the SBM; it's a lesson that needs to stick.
I might have made some different choices, but I'm not going to fault the ones that were made here (the head-scratching is left over from Don's choices yesterday of an Apevia case and a Corsair "CX"). I might be curious about the single-card choice, but I don't think I have grounds for criticism of the build in general.
If the Q2 builds are compared against each other on day 4, then the price categories should be comparable. Please compare the way WB 1T is placed in "Enthusiast" build vs "High-End" build. Different categories, if I understand correctly. And the high-end build DOES include the SSD in the Platform cost. Anyway, the price categories are named differently , so I cannot compare the builds directly.
I dont know if I made myself clear... The prices are divided in these sections Platform-TotalHardware-CompleteSystem, but Enthusiast build is divided differently.
The big lesson here though, is that people should NOT rely on the silicon lottery to meet their performance needs. Overclocking is NOT a sure thing.
+1.
And these giveaways might not be allowed to be global due to United States laws. They don't just ignore international viewers
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811815039
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146114