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System Builder Marathon, Q3 2013: $2550 Performance PC

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DRAM, SSD, HDD, And ODD

System RAM: Mushkin Enhanced 993988S

Looking for a great price on a 16 GB quad-channel kit? After spending over half my budget on the CPU and graphics cards, I sure was. Mushkin’s Stealth DDR3-1600 CAS 9 appeared to fit the bill.

Read Customer Reviews of Mushkin's Enhanced 993988S

Rated at 1.35 V, I’m hoping that a little extra voltage will go a long way towards my overclocking goals.

SSD: Mushkin MKNSSDCR240GB-DX

A far lower price once again made Mushkin’s 240 GB DX-series the top pick over Samsung’s similarly-sized 840 Pro.

Read Customer Reviews of Mushkin's MKNSSDCR240GB-DX

Were I to choose an SSD today, recent price breaks for Samsung’s 250 GB EVO could have put it into this system. My consolation is that, for an extra $10, the EVO barely outpaces competing SandForce-based drives.

HDD: WD WD30EZRS

Read Customer Reviews of WD's WD30EZRS

Western Digital’s Caviar Green drives are designed for economy, which allowed me to choose a model with 3 TB of capacity. Though the 5400 RPM spindle speed also reduces power consumption, currency is the green that I’m hoping to save.

BD-RE: Pioneer BDR-2208

Read Customer Reviews of Pioneer's BDR-2208

I usually add optical drives for convenience, and one of the conveniences that I appreciate most is optical media backup to a hard drive. Writing BD-R at rates up to 15x is another benefit for Pioneer’s moderately-priced BDR-2208, even if I do rarely use it. The retail box also includes CyberLink Media Suite 8.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
88 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rolli59
    Nice one I got surprised, Tri SLI! I can see why editors wanted to try it knowing that the GTX770 is just an power efficient and overclocked GTX680.
    Reply
  • CaptainTom
    3x7970's would decimate this build for the same amount of money...
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    The gaming benchmarks are surprisingly disappointing. Maybe going with a 3770K/4770k with three 7970 or 770 may have provides better results.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    11596966 said:
    3x7970's would decimate this build for the same amount of money...
    Not sure about decimating, but it would have cost a little more and not filled Paul's curiosity. IIRC, the 760 4GB's were around $20 cheaper on order day.

    On the other hand, Paul's single GPU was OK with 2GB. I figured we'd need a jump to 4GB with 3-way on his GPU, but 3GB on the 7970 probably would have been enough. Also, a total difference of $60 still would have fit within the budget limit, so, maybe Ivy-Bridge E and Radeons for the next build?

    11597019 said:
    This build proves that spending the most money does not equal to best performance.
    In order to prove what you're saying, I would have needed to search for worse-performing overpriced parts. You'll see on Day 4 that this build has the best performance of the three. So this build actually doesn't prove anything, except maybe that six core processors boost six-core benchmarks and that more graphics power gives you better frame rates at 5760x1080 (etc). But we didn't actually need any proof for those things, did we?
    Reply
  • lp231
    This build proves that spending the most money does not equal to best performance. It's all about balance and most of the time, it's getting 2 or more graphic cards that drives these systems pass the $2K mark. If I had $2550 to spend on a build, I know that half of the $2550 won't be going towards 3 graphic cards.
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    11596998 said:
    Maybe Ivy-Bridge E and Radeons for the next build?

    Tom, the future builds need to have better budget tiers. The doubling of the funds in each tier is fine in certain cases but it doesn't provide real insight into hardware choices. Having the tiers with a fixed figure increase such as a $250-400 increase in budget per tier would make more sense. Also, I would love to see the comeback of the $500 budget builds.

    Lastly, what happen to the idea of themes each quarter?
    Reply
  • CaptainTom
    ^ Check the prices. A 7970 is the same price as the 4GB 760's. A 7970 is 20% faster than the a 760 and that lead grows at higher resolutions. Just look at how 3x7970's gain on 3xTitans...
    Reply
  • CaptainTom
    ^ Check the prices. A 7970 is the same price as the 4GB 760's. A 7970 is 20% faster than the a 760 and that lead grows at higher resolutions. Just look at how 3x7970's gain on 3xTitans...
    Reply
  • Yargnit
    I'm assuming going with Nvida as opposed to AMD video cards had to do with AMD not fully supporting frame-pacing across multiple monitors and all settings. Thus with 3-way video cards they wanted to go with what would provide the smoothest experience.
    Reply
  • persuse
    not overclockable ram ?
    Reply