System Builder Marathon Q4 2014: Value Compared

Game Faces

System Builder Marathon, Q4 2014: The Articles

Here are links to each of the four articles in this quarter’s System Builder Marathon (we’ll update them as each story is published). And remember, these systems are all being given away at the end of the marathon.

To enter the giveaway, please fill out this SurveyGizmo form, and be sure to read the complete rules before entering!

Day 1: Budget Gaming PC
Day 2: Mainstream Enthusiast System
Day 3: $1600 Performance PC
Day 4: System Value Compared

You only need to build a few PCs to realize that the easiest performance gains at most budget levels are found in graphics upgrades. It’s no wonder, then, that as soon as Nvidia announced a game-changing pair of high-end cards, our $1100 and $1600 System Builder Marathon authors bought one of each. Suddenly, this is a gaming machine marathon, in spite of the fact that only 15% of our overall performance score comes from games.

Anyone who assumes that we don’t take the rest of our test suite seriously is mistaken. We’ve placed SSDs in our most expensive two systems for several generations, and the top build usually has Intel’s flagship processor for whatever mainstream interface is available. Moving that platform up to six cores would have helped fewer than 15% of our benchmark suite, drawing hundreds of dollars out of the graphics budget. Then again, most of you are realistic about what we're able to do for less than $2000, realizing it'd be impossible to create a do-everything wonder system for that amount.

Similarly, doubling memory capacity from 8 to 16GB would have helped either the $1100 or $1600 build reach higher performance levels in just one of our benchmarks, while forcing either machine to give up one "level" in graphics performance. Either of us could have spent more money on RAM, but to what effect in value when only one benchmark is noticeably affected?

The maximum allowable budgets for these machines are $600, $1200 and $1800. An extra 8GB would have put Don Woligroski almost exactly against his $1200 limit, and my $1600 machine would have come out to around $1700 with the same alteration. Yet, experience tells us that the smart money in this competition goes towards cost-cutting in the places that affect performance the least. As a result, this quarter’s $600, $1100 and $1600 machines look like replacements for last year’s $500, $1000 and $1500 systems…plus an operating system.

These were $588, $1100 and $1602 machines when we initially placed our orders. Let’s take a closer look at what happened, and how it affected our configurations.