System Builder Marathon Q4 2015: $1184 Gaming PC

Overclocking & Results

Overclocking

Now that I finally have a rig capable of overclocking something other than just the graphics card, I can finally spend some time pushing this build to its limit.

One of the nice things about the new Skylake CPUs is that they generally produce higher overclocks much easier than their predecessors. I cranked up the voltage to 1.4V and then did some quick testing to find the largest stable multiplier the CPU could handle. For awhile, I was running fine with a 47x multiplier, but eventually that deteriorated and I had to dial the overclock back a bit. In the end, I settled on a 46x multiplier and 1.39V. I thought about trying a BCLK overclock to see if I could find some stability between 4.6GHz and 4.7GHz, but I was running out of time and still had the RAM and GPU to overclock.

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Overclocking the RAM proved to be a bit more technical. Although G.Skill markets this particular RipJaws 4 kit as DDR4-2400, it's truly DDR4-2133 with an XMP profile which unlocks that extra bit of performance. I managed to get all the way up to DDR4-3000 before I found this kit's breaking point. I then dialed it back to DDR4-2800 and started working on trying to tighten up the timings and command rate. It seems like I ended up getting lucky with this kit, with a stable DDR4-2800 13-13-13-28 overclock and a 1T command rate at 1.34V.

I managed to enjoy the same overclocking success with the GPU as I did with the CPU and RAM. After cranking up the power available to the card, I optimistically started out at 1150MHz, which seemed to be stable. After a quick test to confirm that, I jumped up to 1160MHz, but I ended up having to dial it back down to 1155MHz in order to find complete stability. 

As with the core overclock, I optimistically cranked up the graphics card's memory clock to 1750MHz, however, I wasn't quite as successful this time and finally finished my overclocking with a 1740MHz memory clock. Finally, an hour of looped testing and a quick run though some of our more intensive benchmarks confirmed the overall stability of the system.

Component Settings

This quarter's $1184 Gaming PC is going up against the $800 Gaming PC from last quarter and the $1600 Gaming PC from the second quarter build.

Synthetics

As expected, this quarter's build far exceeds the performance of last quarter's $800 Gaming PC in 3DMark. It's a bit surprising that the overclocked performance of this quarter's build managed to keep up with the stock performance of the $1600 PC, beating its performance in physics and overall performance, and even exceeding the $1600 PC in graphics performance, despite the fact that the older PC is powered by a GTX 980.

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The Skylake processor shows its value in the arithmetic and cryptography benchmarks, shredding the Core i3-4170 from last quarter, and even besting the overclocked Devil's Canyon i5 from the $1600 PC.

Finally, while the DDR4 memory in the $1184 build lags behind the $1600 PC (initially due to looser timings), after a bit of overclocking it commands a solid lead over the older PC's slower DDR3 memory.

Gaming

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The overclocked $1184 build and the $1600 Gaming PC repeatedly trade blows in the gaming benchmarks, with the $1184 build's overclocked R9 390 meeting or exceeding the stock performance of the GTX 980 at higher resolutions and quality settings in most games. Outside of the highest resolutions, the R9 390 holds strong, but can't quite manage the performance of the GTX 980 in the more GPU-intensive games. 

Applications

Last quarter's build not only suffered from a lack of real threads, but a relatively low clock speed as well. With the new CPU bringing four real threads to the table, and the addition of faster RAM, this quarter's results improve significantly.

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As expected, the new architecture and faster clock speed of the $1184 build's Skylake i5 give it a small yet still significant advantage in all of the CPU-based benchmarks. In the OpenCL- and RAM-based benchmarks, however, the $1600 Gaming PC still comes out on top by a small margin.

Power, Heat & Efficiency

I mentioned earlier that AMD-powered cards are good at consuming lots of power, and that point is illustrated in the graphs below. Even though it uses a higher-tier GPU than the $1184 build, the $1600 build consumes significantly less power under a full graphics load.

With that increased power consumption comes an increased amount of heat as well, which despite the massive cooler on the R9 390, is still reflected in the elevated GPU temperatures in the chart below:

Remember all of that power consumption and heat? Well, that all has to be removed from the system at some point in order to keep the temperatures at a reasonable level.

While the massive cooler on the R9 390 does an admirable job at dealing with all of the heat generated during the benchmarks, it struggles to do so quietly.

It makes me very happy to see that my $1184 build beats the stock performance of the $1600 Gaming PC in most tasks, and even blows it out of the water after a quick overclock. It's also nice to see that once overclocked, it still managed to beat the overclocked $1600 build in most aspects, or stay close behind it, for the most part.

Value

When it comes to the value of the system as a whole, it's clear that my extra non-performance expenditures hurt me a bit when it comes to value, resulting in a 5% loss over last quarters build. Even if I'd kept the optical drive, tossed the hard drive and went with a $20 case, I could have enjoyed a 6% win over the base performance of last quarter's build. However, doing so would be greatly against the spirit of this build, which is something I still consider to be of importance, even though you can't put a number on it.

After a bit of overclocking I finally see the fruit of my labor with a 14% lead over last quarter's build. Even better, I managed to come within 2% of the base performance of $1600-worth of hardware, while spending 26% less money in the process.

Even with the slight value dip from losing the OS, I still enjoy an 11% value lead.

Furthermore, when it comes to the raw performance value of the system, which was my focus for this quarter, I still win against both of the older systems, with a sizable 13% lead.

Finally, when it comes time to assess how well I accomplished the "spirit" of this build (maybe you can put a number on it after all), I'm awarded with a resounding victory over both the overclock and stock performance of both of the previous builds. Gaming-wise, I even managed to beat the stock performance of the $1600 Gaming PC while spending less money.

However, even though I've won today, I've still only won half of the battle. The other half will be decided on Day 4 when my system goes toe-to-toe with two others, both of which are trying to accomplish the same goal. That said, I'm going to save my victory dance until the true winner is decided.

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Chris Miconi is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware,covering Cases. 

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