Life support build: Breaking all the rules to build a productivity PC beast

Performance Testing

To compare performance of various builds we’ve set up a standard suite for comparing systems. Setting this up was done after the last build, so we don’t have a whole lot of data for comparisons, but this will come in due time. Regardless, the data below should paint a solid picture of what you can expect from this system.

The tests below are run until thermals stabilize, generally around 15 minutes for good measure, and then the temperatures and power consumption levels are recorded for 1 minute, from which their average is calculated.

In sleep mode, the PC pulls just 4 W, and we recorded a noise floor of 32.9 dBA. This is near the lower end (30 dBA) of what our meter can pick up.

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By default, the ASRock software errs on the side of caution – the fans do run at lower speeds when the system is cooler, but the AIO’s pump runs at 100% unless changed by the user.

With a fan curve set up running the pump speed at 40% when CPU temperatures are low, and a slightly quieter fan curve set up, the system remains inaudible during light use and browsing. The CPU temperature sits at a cool 36° degrees C, and GPU at 51° C. The GPU’s temperature is a little higher here due to the fan-stop mode. Power consumption remains low at 88 W.

Load the system up with a 1000-shot DXO export, and power consumption rises to 198 W, with noise levels increasing only slightly to 34.1 dBA. For our previous test, using the Stout Owl, we ran the DXO export with DeepPrime 3 AI Denoising. However, this feature is not supported on Intel GPUs, so I had to pick between running the denoising on the CPU, leading to an export time of about 20 seconds per image, or removing the denoising.

This is a bit of a letdown as it meant I didn’t have a proper productivity test. But truth be told, most folks that do photo editing use Lightroom anyway, not DXO, and discrete Intel GPUs only account for a fraction of the market, so this combination is pretty rare. If you’re looking for productivity performance data, look at our CPU and GPU reviews – the tests here are meant to show thermals, acoustics, and power levels for builds, not so much performance.

Meanwhile, say you do want to fire up a game, gaming performance is surprisingly good on this system. 3DMark Speedway primarily leans on the GPU, keeping CPU temperatures friendly, while CyberPunk 2077 balances a nice load on both the CPU and GPU. With Cyberpunk running on Ultra settings, at QHD with Intel XESS on and framegen off, the system managed a framerate of 58.9 FPS in the benchmark test, which is pleasantly good considering this is only a $300 GPU.

System Power consumption sat at just 313 watts, and noise levels only rose to 34.7 dBA. Most of the noise came from the AIO, and with CPU temperatures at just 56° C, you could opt to run an even quieter curve.

Load the system up with Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously, and things, of course, get toasty and noisy. The system will draw 565 W while producing 43.2 dBA to cool itself, but no real-world workload ever comes close to this.

Manually setting all the fans to their maximum setting pushes noise levels to 47.9 dBA, but this offers no thermal benefit.

A great PC, were it not for the DRAM crisis

If you’re in the market for a PC for work and only play games once in a while, building priorities tend to change. AMD might be the front-runner in gaming performance, but Intel has the lead in productivity performance, and Intel’s chips also consume significantly less power at idle or partial system loads. If you’re a gamer and you load your PC up with a game the moment it boots, go with AMD. But if gaming is a secondary purpose and you’re not going to pop in a high-end GPU either, Intel’s Arrow Lake chips offer good value for money.

With that out of the way, the Life Support system offers fantastic performance when it comes to efficiency and noise levels, without needing to splurge on Noctua-level components.

The biggest problem with this build currently is pricing – when I selected the components months ago, this was a $1700 PC. Today, it will set you back over $3,000, and that difference is almost entirely down to the cost of the memory and the SSD. As much as I like the Kingston parts, I don't seem to be alone in this, as they seem to be in particularly high demand. Dropping to 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, and shopping around for good deals can, of course, save some serious cash.

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