Build-A-Rig Round 1, Zotac vs. Corsair: The $1500 PC Showdown

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.