Power And Heat
Quad-core Haswell-based processors consume far less power than Intel's hexa-core Sandy Bridge-E design, even at idle, making the cheaper machines appear more energy-friendly. The $2550 System Builder Marathon system's three graphics cards also consume copious wattage, placing Lenovo's Erazer X700 in the middle of this chart.
The Erazer X700’s closed-loop liquid cooler outshines the priciest SBM build's big heat sink, even though large heat sinks consistently place well against closed-loop configurations in our most recent round-ups. Lenovo applies more voltage to achieve its overclock. But high temperatures, even after opening up our chassis, made it easy to blame a mediocre CPU sample for the $2550 machine’s heat woes.
