Build-A-Rig Round 2: The $800 Back-To-School PC Winners

Our Build-A-Rig project is a place where PC hardware manufacturers (memory companies, case companies, GPU, CPU, power supply, storage et al.) are given an imaginary budget and a rough guideline on what system they should build fo that budget. Then we at AnandTech, with our partners Newegg, get the components in, build the system, interview the person that provided the spec list, give a run down of the components, test the system and then offer it as a giveaway to our readers.

This iteration was our second round, featuring Tony Ou from SilverStone Technology and Jeremy Mortenson from Cruicial Memory. The goal for this round was a Back-to-School build for $800. Both systems focused on different areas of CPU power, GPU grunt, storage and form factor.

Follow these links to read the interviews with Tony and Jeremy, as well as the component rundowns for SilverStone's Mighty Milo build and Crucial's Ballistix Bantam. We then built both the SilverStone and Crucial machines, then gave them a good run down in our test suite.

A full run down of both systems is as follows:

Build-A-Rig Round 2 Comparison
Component	SilverStone's Mighty Milo	Crucial's Ballistix Bantam
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium G3258 (2C/2T, 3.2 GHz)	Intel Core i3-4170 (2C/4T, 3.7 GHz)
Motherboard	ASRock H97M-ITX/ac	GIGABYTE B85N Phoenix-WiFi
Graphics Cards (GPU)	Zotac GeForce GTX 960 OC	EVGA GeForce GTX 950
Memory (DRAM)	Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 2x4GB DDR3-1600 C9	Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 2x4GB DDR3-1600 C8
Storage (SSD)	Crucial BX100 120GB	Crucial MX200 mSATA 250GB
Storage (HDD)	Western Digital Blue 2.5-inch 1TB 5400RPM 8MB Cache	Seagate Barracuda 3.5-inch 1TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Power Supply (PSU)	SilverStone ST45SF 450W Bronze SFF	Thermaltake TR2 600W
Chassis	SilverStone Milo ML08B-H (with handle)	Thermaltake Core V1 Extreme Cube
CPU Cooling	SilverStone Argon AR06	None
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM	Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit - OEM
Extras	None	LG USB 2.0 Portable DVDRW
Total	$811.90	$793.90

After sifting through the entries of what has been another successful round for our Build-A-Rig project, we are ready to announce the winners. This time around each of our winners is receiving one of the two systems. The winners are as follows:

• SilverStone’s Mighty Milo: Patrick Weisgarber of Southlake, TX
• Crucial’s Ballistix Bantam: Nicholas Wood of Carthage, NY

Both winners will be contacted shortly for their shipping details at the email address provided.

Build-A-Rig Round 3 is currently on hold due to external factors beyond our control, but we have plenty of ideas in the running when we're ready to get going again. Congratulations to our two winners, and thanks to all who participated.