System Builder Marathon, Q3 2013: $2550 Performance PC

Results: SiSoftware Sandra

Sandra's processor metrics scale readily as we add extra cores, so the benefits of this $2550 machine’s Sandy Bridge-E-based processor are obvious. Since they don’t represent real-world performance, though, they won’t help the new build’s value ranking.

A quad-channel memory controller could theoretically produce twice the memory bandwidth. I’ll happily settle for the 40% improvement shown.

Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.