System Builder Marathon: Performance & Value

Power, Performance, And Value

Power consumption is almost a perfect inverse of performance. The overclocked $5,000 system pulls nearly 800 W with all four CPU cores and all four graphics processors maxed, but it should be nearly impossible to replicate this load level using ordinary programs and games.

The $625 PC is miserly at all load levels, making it a great choice for buyers with simple needs:

Using the $625 PC as the basis for comparison, performance scales almost linearly with the $5,000 PC taking its biggest wins in productivity, rather than in games. The real shame is that while the $1,250 system is only twice as expensive as the $625 build, the $5,000 PC costs four times as much as the $1,250 configuration. How much will that hurt its value?

Overclocking added 39% to the value of our $625 PC, while it let the $1,250 system pass the standard-speed value of the $625 build. On the other hand, even record-breaking performance couldn’t have put a favorable light on the value of a $5,000 system, unless one considers what the other configurations couldn’t do.

Only the $5,000 PC could play Crysis smoothly at 1920x1200 and at very high settings, while the $625 couldn’t display that level of quality smoothly at any resolution. The $1,250 PC survived those same quality settings at a resolution of 1680x1050 and ran other games at 1920x1200 well enough to serve the needs of most gamers.

The $625 PC is adequate only for buyers willing to give up high visual quality in games to achieve smooth frame rates and also sacrifice high speed in other applications. The $5,000 system is perfect for buyers who believe that only the best is good enough and the $1,250 is probably the best balance of price and performance for the majority of computing enthusiasts.

Our biggest disappointment was a handful of money-wasters that were thrown into the $5,000 system in order to show the elitists what those components could do. At $800, the SSD drives made the system boot super-fast but they had little to no effect on gaming, encoding, or productivity benchmarks. The Extreme Edition processor didn’t overclock better than its cheapest sibling, but it did add over $700 to the system price. Our liquid-cooling system added around 5% to the system’s overclocking capability and around 10% to its total cost. Unless component prices or program requirements change significantly, we’ll likely scale back the budget on our next enthusiast-class system.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
  • timelist
    Next time when you do this, can you please do a 1250 AMD pc? and see how it compares and all that good stuff?
    Reply
  • gkay09
    Well can u please do a comparision of various builds considering its alternatives both from the Green and the Blue company ...so that we can guess at what price point, which will be better....that will be more informative...
    Reply
  • katmai
    i would really be interested to see amd into this also, because so far it has been all intel, but as far as i know the phenom II's are not quite bad, in fact i noticed lots of praises for their performance, so a 1250 $ AMD pc , and compare it to the 1250 intel would be awesome.
    Reply
  • sleepychink125
    they should just do whatever gives the best performance/price... people only care about how far their money will get them, not this AMD fanboy crap. If TH feels that a AMD chip will get them farther than an intel chip of the same price, then they should by all means go for it... if not, please stop complaining.
    Reply
  • sleepychink125
    btw, its not just these 2 above comments that bug me...its people like them spamming the boards EVERY SINGLE MONTH about AMD builds.
    Reply
  • gkay09
    sleepychink125btw, its not just these 2 above comments that bug me...its people like them spamming the boards EVERY SINGLE MONTH about AMD builds.Well tats such a dumb way of saying give me anything but don bother me wit many optons :P ...but people would really like to know more abt comparision rather than just sticking wit the options posted here...
    Reply
  • gkay09
    sleepychink125they should just do whatever gives the best performance/price... people only care about how far their money will get them, not this AMD fanboy crap. If TH feels that a AMD chip will get them farther than an intel chip of the same price, then they should by all means go for it... if not, please stop complaining.Well how would they knw if the options chose by them are the best unless they compare it wit the other options available...rather than jus posting the components they chose...mayb a more explained reason in comparision rather than jus a single component review would be gud...
    Reply
  • sleepychink125
    im sorry if i offended u... i just wanted to see some constructive conversation that i can learn from or join in, not just amd guys complaining.
    Reply
  • gkay09
    sleepychink125im sorry if i offended u... i just wanted to see some constructive conversation that i can learn from or join in, not just amd guys complaining.Lolz its nt jus that we are amd guys(I use a Core2 :P) Its jus that we want to see more competition come into play rather than jus stick to the Blue company...Its jus tat we want this competition to be alive so we gt better components...
    Reply
  • gkay09
    The Green company has come a far way...(from the Phenom I failure that is) there are many CPUs like the 7750, the new Phenoms, which can provide some competition (mayb nt beat the other)...

    The reason behind people posting request to see an AMD m/c is tat we cant buy all the components that are coming in the market and then sticking to the better ones...for which the THG come into play...they have the resources and manpower to do this and give the general public the pros and cons of the h/w out there...thus helping us...
    Reply