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

The End Result

Zotac

For looks and cleanliness, the Zotac system looks significantly better. 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.

Zotac's 'Hey Good Lookin' System (above)
Chinny Chuang and Buu Ly from Zotac (below)

Corsair

In contrast, the Corsair system is the quintessential black-box PC designed to be used, not seen or heard. It can be quite hard to argue with the performance components under the hood, and we expect to see monster performance results, but a box has nothing to show off if the winner wants to take it to LANs or ends up with it on their desk. The danger with a bland machine is putting it on the floor and forgetting about it, allowing dust to build up, whereas a windowed machine at least gets some obvious hint if it needs a cleaning.

Corsair's 'The Accelerator' Build (above)
Dustin Sklavos from Corsair Memory (below)

Performance results are inbound for the final part of Build-A-Rig Round 1, with both of these machines nearing the end of their testing and we will post those results soon.

How to Enter

For Build-A-Rig, we are posting the survey link on each piece so users can enter at any time. The final entry date is August 1st, as the Build-A-Rig challenge is quickly coming to a close..

For the purposes of the giveaways, we should state that standard AnandTech rules apply. The full set of rules will be given in the survey link, but the overriding implementation is that the giveaways are limited to United States of America (US50), excluding Rhode Island, and winners must be 18 years or older.

With apologies to our many loyal readers outside the US, restricting the giveaways to the US is due to the fact that AnandTech (and more specifically our publisher, Purch) is a US registered company and competition law outside the US is very specific for each nation, with some requiring fees or legal implementations to be valid with various consequences if rules aren’t followed. It’s kind of difficult for the rules of 190+ countries/nations worldwide to all be followed, especially if certain ones demand fees for even offering a contest or tax on prizes. We recognize that other online magazines and companies do offer unrestricted worldwide competitions, but there are specific rules everyone should be following in order to stay on the side of the law. That’s the reality of it, and unfortunately we cannot change on this front, even with the help of Purch.

The survey link is:

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