Adobe After Effects appears to show an affinity for the high-end configuration's extra cache, while Photoshop does not. Somewhat surprisingly, our processor-limited Photoshop workload doesn't get as much benefit from Hyper-Threading as other applications in our suite.
Where we do see better scaling is the OpenCL-accelerated Photoshop workload, which appears to reflect my higher-end machine's faster Radeon R9 290X (compared to Don's R9 290).


The $600 PC drags through the entire suite, but doesn’t drop to half of the $1200 machine’s performance until we get to Adobe Premiere Pro. Its successes elsewhere mean that Paul can probably look forward to a nice position on the value chart.


Acrobat is an office-oriented program wrapped within the Creative Cloud family. Because it’s a document-oriented application, its performance is reflected in our Productivity test suite.
- A SBM Based On Reader Feedback
- How We Tested Our Q2 2014 SBM Builds
- 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
- Results: Power And Heat
- Results: Overall Performance And Efficiency
- Our System Builder Marathon, By The Numbers
I got my two licenses for like, $20. Though I probably couldn't get any more like that, I don't need any more at the moment, thanks. If you don't want the OS, and you win my PC, just tell me and I'll keep it. Thanks!
Disposition should I be a fortunate winner:
1. Having not messed with a "new" Athlon, I might put a 92mm cooler on it and see what I can get out of it for a week or three. I'd almost certainly contribute a SSD to it, then most likely donate it to a startup I know of that actually is more in need of office-type PCs (but they do play some games).
2. If the motherboard were micro-ATX, I'd probably use most of these parts to upgrade / replace my Phoenix PC, as they represent a platform upgrade. It would be a substantial upgrade to my Omega PC, but I like the idea of maintaining that AM3+ system due to the overall quality of the parts in it. If the Apevia case surprises me due to its quality, I may use it anyway. One way or another, this would lead to another complete system donation though.
3. The parts in this one appear to be of sufficient quality / durability that I would probably end up forsaking the Omega PC for this one. I'd put its 990FX onto my test bench though to keep it around, and donate that one (MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming) as above.
Id also want system build for NAS and UPS and things. If you want to put your swap file in your memory. Get a UPS and link it so if the power fails you computer will shut down correctly. I wish they would of put that in this article.
Power outage is a b+ch. I have not done this but i wish there would be an article on UPS's that work well and turn off everything orderly.
It would be good if we had load shedding and other particulars to make the reliability higher. Id like a solar system with load shedding
I really wish they make more articles on upgrades or recycling, that would coexist with these new builds. I believe most Tom viewers, correct me if I am wrong, are not new to computers. For instance, I had an aging OC'd i7930 x58 with triple channel memory, the mobo died after many years, but tracking down a x58 board new is impossible today. So I had about $300 at the time to spend on a new CPU/MOBO (Im saving up for X99 btw) and wanted to use my old DDR3 1600 memory, SSD , HD, video card, and case.... Now what would be a good recommendation for that scenario? I went the following specs on my signature... $270 + about $30 shipping to Hawaii... :|