We’re back again for the final phase of our inaugural Build-A-Rig Challenge, the performance showdown.

For this first round we are starting with a subject near and dear to our hearts, higher-end gaming systems. For around $1500 we believe you can put together a rather nice system, so for the first Build-A-Rig we decided to put this to the test, creating a contest to see how our friends in the PC components industry would do at picking parts for a $1500 system. Competing in this first round are Corsair and Zotac, with Chinny Chuang from Zotac and Dustin Sklavos from Corsair taking on the challenge for their respective companies.

Last month we kicked things off with the interviews, talking to Chinny and Dustin about their choice in parts and design goals, and looking at their submitted parts lists. Then last week in our Build Logs for this round, we put the systems together for testing, documenting the build process, how easy the systems were to assemble, and collecting various thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the respective builds.

Now for the final phase of this round of Build-A-Rig Challenge we have run the assembled Zotac and Corsair systems through our benchmark suite in order to document their performance and crown a winner. With a $1500 price tag and a loosely defined goal of putting together a solid gaming system, Zotac and Corsair have submitted designs that are both alike and divergent at times, an excellent showcase of the many different ways one can build a gaming system.

Last but certainly not least of course is the giveaway. At the end of the Build-A-Rig challenge we will be giving these systems away, and that means today is the last day to enter. Two lucky winners within the United States will be receiving these completed systems for their gaming pleasure. So if you have yet to enter, you will want to do so before midnight tomorrow, August 6^th.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2209797/AnandTech-Newegg-Build-A-Rig-Challenge-Sweepstakes-Q2-2015

The Builds So Far

Last week we took a look at the assembled Corsair and Zotac designs. So before jumping into our benchmarks, let’s quickly recap the systems and their parts.

Zotac’s Hey Good Lookin

Zotac's Hey Good Lookin'
Component	Selection	Price as Chosen	90-Day Average
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i5-4460	$189.99	$189.85
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK	$139.99	$138.17
Graphics Cards (GPU)	Zotac GTX 970 AMP! Extreme Core Edition	$369.99	$369.99
Memory (DRAM)	Corsair Dominator Platinum 2x4GB DDR3-1866 C9	$99.99	$104.27
Storage (SSD/HDD)	Crucial BX100 500 GB SSD	$189.99	$188.39
Power Supply (PSU)	Rosewill Quark 750W Platinum	$139.99	$135.31
Chassis	NZXT S340 Black Steel ATX Mid-Tower	$69.99	$69.99
CPU Cooling	Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX*	$109.99	$119.99
Operating System	Windows 8.1 Full Version	$119.99	$119.99
Extras	SilverStone Sleeved 6-pin to 6-pin x2	$14.98	$14.98
	SilverStone Sleeved EPS12V 4+4-pin	$7.99	$7.99
	SilverStone Sleeved 24-pin	$12.99	$12.99
	Samsung USB 2.0 External DVD Drive	$23.99	$23.82
	DEEPCOOL RGB LED Strip with Controller	$16.99	$16.99
Total		$1,506.85	$1,492.58

The first system out of the gate is Zotac’s Hey Good Lookin’. A design focused on blending performance with aesthetics, the Zotac system looks significantly better for looks and cleanliness, Aside from the near-black internals accentuated by the lights from the GPU and the DRAM, cable management removes some of the more garish ends of the power supply should someone decide to shine a light in (or the eventual winner uses the LED kit also included in the bundle). A minor concern comes from the extra cable space behind the motherboard tray due to the large extension cables to improve the look, however once installed it becomes a relative non-issue.

Corsair’s The Accelerator

Corsair's 'The Accelerator'
Component	Selection	Price  as Chosen	90-Day  Average
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i5-4690K	$239.99	$237.62
Motherboard	GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3	$89.99	$97.99
Graphics Cards (GPU)	Zotac GTX 980 Ti	$649.99	$649.99
Memory (DRAM)	Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x8GB  DDR3-1866 C9	$104.99	$118.36
Storage (SSD/HDD)	Corsair Force LS 240 GB SSD	$94.99	$99.51
Power Supply (PSU)	Corsair CS650M Gold	$94.99	$94.99
Chassis	Corsair Carbide 200R	$59.99	$59.99
CPU Cooling	Corsair Hydro H60	$64.99	$64.33
Operating System	Windows 8.1 64-bit OEM	$99.99	$99.99
Extras	None
Total		$1,499.91	$1,522.77

Our second system, Corsair’s The Accelerator, is the quintessential black-box PC designed to be used, not seen or heard. Featuring near top of the line components from Intel and NVIIDA, it can be quite hard to argue with the performance components under the hood, and as we’ll see it delivers monster performance results. However as the quintessential black-box PC, The Accelerator has nothing to show off if the winner wants to take it to LANs or ends up with it on their desk.

System Performance

Diving into our showdown, we’ll start with general system performance. While the overall challenge was for a $1500 gaming PC, good gaming performance good overall system performance frequently go hand-in-hand. With gaming stressing virtually every aspect of a system – and not just the GPU – a balanced gaming system should do well on overall system performance as well.

Starting with PCMark 8, PCMark provides various usage scenarios (home, creative and work) and offers ways to benchmark both baseline (CPU-only) as well as OpenCL accelerated (CPU + GPU) performance. We benchmarked select PCs for the OpenCL accelerated performance in all three usage scenarios. These scores are heavily influenced by the CPU in the system.

The different PCMark subtests stress test systems in slightly different ways, but overall there’s a clear pattern here, with the Corsair system always holding an advantage here, upwards of 10%. PCMark 8 in particular does stress the GPU a bit thanks to OpenCL acceleration, but it’s not significant, particularly when you’re comparing systems with high-end GPUs. So the bulk of the difference is due to the difference in processors – a Core i5-4460 (3.2GHz) in the Zotac system, and a Core i5-4690K (3.5GHz) in the Corsair system. Even then, for the older PCMark 7 the two systems are neck-and-neck.

Moving on, we have CINEBENCH R15, an image rendering benchmark. CINEBENCH provides three benchmark modes - OpenGL, single threaded and multi-threaded. Evaluation of select PCs in all three modes provided us the following results.

In the CPU tests the Corsair system has a 15-20% lead, in-line with the differences we’d expect from the choice in processors. Otherwise the OpenGL test is even greater, thanks to the wider difference in GPU performance.

For a look at video encoding performance we have results courtesy of x264 HD Benchmark v5.0. This is simply a test of CPU performance with good scaling with both core count and individual core performance.

Much like under CINEBENCH, Corsair’s system is around 20% faster here, and this goes for both passes. Since the CPUs are Haswell i5s, what we’re seeing here is mostly clockspeed differences.

Up next, 7-Zip is a very effective and efficient compression program, often beating out OpenCL accelerated commercial programs in benchmarks even while using just the CPU power. 7-Zip has a benchmarking program that provides tons of details regarding the underlying CPU's efficiency. In this subsection, we are interested in the compression and decompression MIPS ratings when utilizing all the available threads.

Under 7-Zip the Corsair system yet again holds a roughly 20% performance advantage. Traditionally this benchmark has also shown some sensitivity to memory speeds and timings, but since both systems use Corsair DDR3-1866 kits, this ends up being a pure clockspeed test.

Meanwhile, as businesses (and even home consumers) become more security conscious, the importance of encryption can't be overstated. TrueCrypt is a popular open-source disk encryption program can take advantage of the AES-NI capabilities of modern processors, and even though TrueCrypt is no longer under development, its internal benchmark provides some interesting cryptography-related numbers to ponder.

Like 7-Zip, there’s a fair bit of memory interactions here, but with our systems using identical speed memory, this is another pure clockspeed test. This leads to the Corsair system holding a 22% lead here.

Agisoft PhotoScan is a commercial program that converts 2D images into 3D point maps, meshes and textures. The program designers sent us a command line version in order to evaluate the efficiency of various systems that go under our review scanner. The command line version has two benchmark modes, one using the CPU and the other using both the CPU and GPU (via OpenCL). The benchmark takes around 50 photographs and does four stages of computation:

1.  Stage 1: Align Photographs
2.  Stage 2: Build Point Cloud (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
3.  Stage 3: Build Mesh
4.  Stage 4: Build Textures

We record the time taken for each stage. Since various elements of the software are single threaded, others multithreaded, and some use GPUs, it is interesting to record the effects of CPU generations, speeds, number of cores, DRAM parameters and the GPU using this software.

Even with GPU participation, there aren’t any surprises here. The Corsair system retains its typical lead, and both GPUs are powerful enough to shift the bottleneck back on the CPU even with the use of OpenCL.

Finally, wrapping up our system benchmark numbers is the Dolphin Emulator benchmark mode results. This is again a test of the CPU capabilities, and how well a CPU can handle emulating the Nintendo Wii’s PowerPC 750 CPU.

This final test is once again to the Corsair system’s advantage, this time by 18%.

Gaming Performance

Shifting gears to gaming performance, and the focus of our $1500 Build-A-Rig challenge builds, the GPU becomes a much greater factor here, as these tests will shift between being CPU limited at lower resolutions and outright GPU limited at higher resolutions. As a reminder, Zotac went with one of their factory overclocked GeForce GTX 970 cards, while Corsair went with a Zotac reference GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Meanwhile the theoretical GPU performance difference between the two systems is greater than their CPU differences, however resolution will be an important factor here. Ultimately the Corsair system was designed to focus on 1440p and 4K gaming while the Zotac was not, so we’ve structured our testing accordingly.

We’ll start off our look at gaming performance then with our synthetic 3DMark gaming benchmarks. When working across vendors these benchmarks can be a little more problematic, but since both systems are using GeForce GTX 900 series cards, we should get some reliable results for how the gaming performance of the two systems differs.

The latest version of 3DMark puts the Corsair system solidly in the lead. The actual lead depends on the sub-test used, but on the more aggressive tests the Corsair system enjoys a 30-35% lead over the Zotac system.

The story is much the same with the older 3DMark 11. Once we crank up the test settings to something more befitting of these high-end GPUs, the Corsair system holds a lead of around 34%. However it’s interesting to note that the significant factory overclock on the Zotac GTX 970 and its ability to better avert thermal throttling means that these cards are closer than a cursory look at specifications might suggest.

Moving on to our real world gaming benchmarks, we’ll start with The Talos Principle. Croteam’s first person puzzle and exploration game The Talos Principle may not involve much action, but the game’s lush environments still put even fast video cards to good use. Coupled with the use of 4x MSAA at Ultra quality, and even a tranquil puzzle game like Talos can make a good case for more powerful video cards.

On our first real world game benchmark the Corsair system starts out especially strong here. The performance advantage for Corsair’s system is nearly 50% at both 1080p and 1440p, something of a best case scenario for both cards. In either case, the Zotac system can easily average 60fps at 1440p, hitting Zotac’s goals, while the Corsair system can’t quite hit 60fps at 4K, but still delivers more than playable performance for the rigors of such a high resolution.

Moving on, Total War: Attila is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a large area with a fortress in the middle, making it a good GPU stress test.

Attila is a great example of how one can be both CPU and GPU limited, especially when shifting resolutions. At 1080p the Corsair system is still in the lead, but not by much – we’re being held back by the CPU at times in this benchmark at this resolution. However shift to 1440p and the difference between the two systems opens up as it becomes much more strongly GPU-limited. In any case we’re not going to cross 60fps at any time with these settings regardless of the GPU, but since this is a strategy game 30fps is a more reasonable target.

For the racing game in our benchmark suite we have Codemasters’ GRID Autosport. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, delivering realistic looking environments with layed with additional graphical effects. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID Autosport includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty on lower-end cards but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.

GRID is another game where we end up CPU limited at lower resolutions; it doesn’t manifest itself too strongly, but I suspect the difference in performance between the Corsair and Zotac systems at 1080p is more CPU driven than GPU driven. Which is why the performance difference between the two systems opens up a bit more at 1440p.

Up next we have Crysis 3. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds the “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite.

A more pure GPU benchmark in our test suite, Crysis 3 puts the Corsair system ahead by 35% at 1440p. However in the process the Zotac system fares rather well for itself; the average framerate of 58fps being just shy of 60fps, so overall the Zotac system is still hitting its marks. What it can’t do is run at 4K, not that the Corsair system does exceptionally well either due to the strain of pushing so many pixels.

The final game in our benchmark suite is Grand Theft Auto V. The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up.

GTA V is another significant GPU stressor, resulting in the Corsair system taking a significant 40%+ lead here. Overall at these settings the Zotac system is going to be better off at 1080p, while the Corsair system can handle 1440p. Though even with its extra power, the Corsair system is struggling a bit with 4K, with a 46fps frame rate offering a bit less performance than what’s necessary for PC-standard smoothness.

Finally, while looking at gaming performance we’re also taking a look at GPU compute performance via CompuBench 1.5. Backed by OpenCL, we’ve picked out three of the benchmark’s suites best sub-tests, highlighting different use cases for GPU compute in modern systems.

Overall the Corsair system retains a solid lead. How big of a lead varies with the sub-test, but it’s at least 20% across all of these sub-tests.

Power Consumption and Thermal Performance

Our final set of evaluation criteria for our Build-A-Rig systems is power consumptions and temperatures. Given the sometimes disparate component choices between Zotac and Corsair, we’re expecting to see some significant differences in power consumption here. Corsair went with more powerful components than Zotac, but their power consumption and overall thermal load should be higher than the Zotac system as a result.

Also throwing a wrench in things is of course the differences in cases. Both Zotac and Corsair went with low-to-mid range mid-towers, but due to differences in build layout, mounted coolers, and airflow, that will also have an impact.

With both systems based off of a Core i5 processor and GeForce GTX 900 series GPU, idle power consumption at the wall isn’t going to vary greatly. What difference we do see is mostly down to the PSUs; the Zotac system features a larger PSU, which all things considered is going to be a bit less efficient at idle than the Corsair PSU.

Load power consumption on the other hand isn’t too far off from what we’d expect. The most surprising result here may be Prime95, our CPU stress test, which finds that the Corsair system is drawing some 31W more at the wall. On paper both i5 CPUs should be close in power consumption, but in practice the lower clocked Core i5-4460 CPU in the Zotac system is going to draw less power than the top-tier Core i5-4690K in the Corsair system, leading to what we see here.

Otherwise once the GPU comes into play, the difference in power consumption between the two systems ramps up significantly. The GTX 980 Ti in the Corsair system has a TDP nearly 100W higher than the Zotac GTX 970, and under FurMark in particular it makes itself apparent. Even Crysis 3 sees a 60W difference at the wall, going hand in hand with the Corsair system’s better GPU performance.

So what does this do for temperatures? Both systems feature Corsair closed loop liquid coolers, with the Zotac system using the larger of the two, an H100i GTX. The bigger difference is that the Corsair system features a blower-type video card, whereas the video card in the Zotac system is open air, and as a result relies on the airflow from the CPU cooler to exhaust the bulk of the heat.

At idle CPU temperatures are similar, but under load we see the result of the Zotac build’s larger cooler and lower power processor. Granted for our CPU workload we’re running FurMark, about as close to a sadistic workload as one can get, but these also represent the hottest temperatures one should see. In any case the Zotac system’s CPU is some 13-16C cooler than the Corsair system’s, due to the difference in build configuration.

GPU temperatures are also in Zotac’s favor, again due to the lower power consumption combined with larger coolers, and in the case of the video card an open air design. The GPU is not significantly affected by the CPU, so what we see is the full impact of FurMark on each card. Ultimately the GTX 980 Ti reaches its default thermal limits, as we’d expect for a reference card, while the Zotac system and its Zotac GTX 970 remain much cooler thanks to its open air cooler. But in return the Zotac card is offloading some of the cooling workload to the chassis, so it’s a good thing the Zotac system features the larger H100i GTX 2x120mm CLLC.

Build-A-Rig Round 1: The Conclusion

When we set out with our inaugural Build-A-Rig Challenge a few months ago, besides defining the challenge as a $1500 gaming PC we left the rules purposely vague in order to give our competitors as much latitude as possible in their system builds. We did this in hopes of getting some wide variety in designs, least all of our competitors gravitate towards the same types builds. Excitingly, between Zotac and Corsair we received significantly different builds, meaning that we have two very distinct systems to give away this week.

As far as performance goes for today’s showdown, the Corsair system is the clear leader, as we had expected based on our earlier interviews and design goals. While both systems include a Core i5 processor, the Corsair build includes a faster (and overclocking-capable) version of the processor, and augments that with one of the fastest video cards currently available, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. As a result in both CPU and GPU scenarios Corsair’s The Accelerator has a distinct lead, one necessary to hit the kind of 4K gaming that Corsair was shooting for in this build.

Which is not to say that Zotac’s Hey Good Lookin’ is a slouch. At 1440p the Core i5 and GTX 970 combination tends to do the job well – only occasionally having to drop back to 1080p – it’s just not going to keep up with Corsair’s build. Otherwise the one area with respect to performance that Corsair doesn’t lead is in storage performance, where the Crucial BX100 SSD gives Zotac’s system a slight edge.

The flip side to this is that the Corsair system draws more power, an unescapable result of its greater performance thanks to featuring more powerful processors. This gives Zotac’s build an edge on power consumption, and thanks in part to that and the use of a larger closed loop liquid cooler, the Zotac system operates at lower temperatures as well.

Otherwise the last area where the two systems differ isn’t just by how cool they are, but how cool they look. As we briefly described in the introduction, and as alluded to by the name Hey Good Lookin’, Zotac has gone for a greater emphasis on design and looks, over the quintessential black-box design of Corsair’s build. While for many gamers performance will be the greatest concern, we really like that Zotac has thrown us a curveball here by focusing on aesthetics. Windowed cases, LED lighting, and other decorative elements actually sell rather well in the PC space – showing off your system at a LAN party is an art in and of itself – so gamers looking for a good gaming PC that can also look good will probably find Zotac’s build more to their liking.

And with that, we wrap up the first round of the Build-A-Rig Challenge. The systems have been speced, built, and tested, and now all that remains is for many of you what will be the most fun part of this series, the giveaway. Today is the final day to enter the Build-A-Rig Round 1 giveaway, so be sure to submit your entry before midnight tonight in order to earn a chance to win either The Accelerator or Hey Good Lookin’.

Finally, we’d like to once again thank our competitors for this round, Corsair and Zotac, for taking part in this new giveaway by helping us to come up with the systems we’re giving away. And of course a big thank you to Newegg for supplying the parts for each system.

Join us later this month for the start of Round 2, where we’ll be asking our next group of competitors to spec out some exciting Small Form Factor PCs that are a bit lighter on the wallet in the process.