System Builder Marathon, September 2011: The Articles

Here are links to each of the four articles in this month’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 Google form, and be sure to read the complete rules before entering!

Day 1: The $2000 Performance PC
Day 2: The $1000 Enthusiast PC
Day 3: The $500 Gaming PC
Day 4: Performance And Value, Dissected

Introduction

There wasn't a lot of incentive for us to look beyond the great performance and overclocking value of Intel's Core i5-2500K in our previous $1000 enthusiast build. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have any tricks up our sleeve this time around.

Of course, system performance is defined by a lot more than just a CPU, and we're thinking that it's about time our mid-priced system came with a solid-state drive. Although the cost of an SSD is too high to lean on it as an exclusive storage solution in this price range, we certainly have the budget to squeeze a boot drive into the build.

Moreover, variety is the spice of life. So, we're swapping out two Radeon HD 6850 cards in CrossFire used in our last build for a pair of GeForce GTX 460 models in SLI. We see what, if any, changes the graphics cards make in our power and performance metrics. 

Here’s the list of components in the current $1000 Enthusiast system: