System Builder Marathon Q2 2015: $1600 Performance PC

Component Selection

I promised a Haswell-E and a storage upgrade during our last SBM, but combining those two things didn’t leave much room for a high-model Haswell-E, or even a top graphics card within my $1500 hardware budget. We’d still need other somewhat-expensive things such as a minimum of 16GB DDR4 in quad-channel mode, and a big stable power supply. Let’s start with the CPU:

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Intel Core i7-5820K
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MSI X99S SLI Plus
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PNY GeForce GTX 970
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G.Skill Ripjaws 4 (16GB)
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Samsung 850 Evo (250GB)
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Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX (1TB)
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Asus Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
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Cooler Master Hyper 612 v2
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Zalman Z11 Neo
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SeaSonic SSR-650RM 650W
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.