Motherboard: Asus Z97-A
Asus is known for stability, for overclockability, for its good tuning software, and sometimes, for premium pricing. Its Z97-A was unable to out-overclock its competition in Intel Z97 Express: Five Enthusiast Motherboards, $120 To $160, and consequently lost the value war over a $10 price difference.
Read Customer Reviews of Asus' Z97-A Motherboard
That $10 price premium is gone now though, and we’re happy to pay a lower price for a top-tier overclocking platform.
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake NiC-L32
Cooling is an extremely important part of overclocking, and I’d need an equally extreme overclock to approach the performance levels of last quarter's $2400 machine. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash for a $100 dual-fan liquid cooler or even a $80 super-sized tower this time around. The good news is that I know a little about design and the limits of Intel’s Haswell-based CPUs.

Read Customer Reviews of Thermaltake's NiC-L32 CPU Cooler
Lacking the improved thermal interface material implemented on Intel's Devil's Canyon SKUs, our Core i7-4770K realizes relatively minor temperature drops even from big changes in cooling. Compounding the issue, small voltage increases can result in large temperature spikes. Many overclockers report a 1.30 V core limit is the key to CPU longevity. My experience shows that right-sizing the cooler for this voltage level means finding something as effective as the old MUX-120 I use in motherboard comparisons.
Thermaltake’s NiC-L32 hadn’t been reviewed when I placed my order, yet none of the heat sinks I knew would work fit in my budget. Lacking any other reference point, I relied on visual analysis to find a sub-$60 cooler that looked like it might serve my purpose.
- 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