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  • heffeque - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    I'd stay with Zotac's build, even though it doesn't perform as well as Corsair's build.
  • a1exh - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    But it has a Z79 motherboard ;)
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis? ;)
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    He's talking about "Die Harder." ;-)
  • a1exh - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    They had a typo but it's sneakily been fixed.
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    Congratulations Dustin, you chalked up a win in my book. :-)
  • nedge2k - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    I'd like to see a HTPC gaming rig build-off. Only stipulations being the case must be able to take the place of a DVD player (i.e. no towers or shuttles) and it must have a least a dual TV tuner. Oh and a VFD/OLED display would be a bonus.
  • HOOfan 1 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    Chinny went a little overboard on the CPU cooler and Power Supply, and then spent money on bling instead of more RAM and a better graphics card.
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    I think it's a really classy sort of bling that doesn't go over the top at all.
  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    LED strips are over the top.
  • Refuge - Monday, August 10, 2015 - link

    It is down to perspective in the end.

    I like LED strips if done properly. I also thought the Zotac build was very pretty.
  • Mikemk - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    So will the winners be announced publicly?
  • Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    That's a good question. Our corporate parent technically executes the contest, so I'll check with them on the matter.
  • Drumsticks - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

    These are cool! I hope you do them well into the future, it's exciting to see what the companies come up with and some friendly competition is always fun to watch.

    I'd love to see Dustin/future people who add unlocked CPUs to their builds have them tested with an overclock added by y'all - after all, it's a huge benefit and the CPU performance advantage for Corsair here is kind of understated without it.

    Either way, no surprises with the results. Both builds did what people really expected; nobody saw Zotac winning many performance runs, but then again, they weren't really trying to with their picks.
  • Gasaraki88 - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link

    I don't get what the point of this article is. You take a computer that has a slower processor and video card and compare it to one that has a faster processor and video card. OK, guess who's slower?
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link

    It's part of our give-a-way contest project called Build-A-Rig. We give two companies a budget and ask them to spec down a rig. We then interview them about the industry and what they chose, and then we get the parts from our partner Newegg, build the systems, test them, and then give them away to our readers.

    Read the intro: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9403/
    Read the interviews and specification breakdowns: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9417/
    Read the build logs for each system: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9474/

    And this performance analysis is the final piece of the puzzle.
  • doggface - Sunday, August 9, 2015 - link

    When I first saw that h100i in the zotac build it didnt make sense. Using it to blow away the heat from the 970 is clever.
  • zerockslol - Saturday, August 15, 2015 - link

    Anyone else notice the inconsistency with prices in the 90 day average?
    I added up the 90 day averages and it reached $1512.72 you're welcome
  • zerockslol - Saturday, August 15, 2015 - link

    that was for Zotacs btw
  • Legionosh - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link

    While the Zoltac may look a little better, I'd much prefer the Corsair build due purely to performance reasons. The power consumption difference is nowhere near enough to warrant the performance difference in my opinion (and everyone has their own opinion).

    Granted the SSD does offer some performance benefits, but the difference in GPU and CPU performance more than makes up the difference for me. :-)
  • cykodrone - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link

    Ha, I built a similar powered AMD machine for $500 CANADIAN less. The only thing good about this is the motherboard. :P You actually paid for Windows? You sucker, lol. I run a mini-CD install Xubuntu that's been de-spywared. :D

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