T he PAX Predator belongs in the same genus as the rest of our CPU System Workshop builds, but it’s clearly a new species all to itself. Once we finished putting all the components together, our latest custom PC was ready to show its fangs and eat up our benchmarks.
Haswell quickly became one of our favorite processors, appearing in two of our four CPU System Workshop PCs last year.
The Core i7-4770K in the PAX Predator is the third time we’ve used this chip, so we were quite comfortable with it this time around. In fact, we used our familiarity (and a little help from Thermaltake’s Water 3.0 Pro) with the 4770K to push its clock speed to new heights—4.4GHz, or 100MHz faster than our previous OC. As a result, our CPU-intensive benchmarks benefitted the most from the healthy overclock. Our Cinebench 11.5 results improved by 12.5%, and our POV-Ray 3.7 Beta results shot up 12.6%. As we’ve said before, getting extra performance without paying a dime is always a winning strategy, and the 4770K can go well beyond 3.5GHz.
The PAX Predator’s GeForce GTX 760 came to us already overclocked, so we thank GIGABYTE for doing all the hard work. Because of this, you’ll notice that our graphics scores didn’t really budge when we tested the system at two processor clock speeds. For a graphics card that some consider to be midrange, the GV-N760OC-4GD did very well for itself. In both games, the graphics card produced great results at 1080p with maxed quality settings.
If you want to dial down some of the quality settings, this single GTX 760 should make you plenty happy at higher resolutions, too.
This system is fast on its feet, thanks to the HyperX 3K SSD. Everything loads incredibly fast thanks to this boot drive. Windows was ready in a matter of seconds, and games load incredibly fast. Thanks to all of the excellent components tucked away within the PAX Predator, it’s no wonder that this machine produced envious results in our benchmarks. We’ll have it on display at PAX Prime, so GET TO THE CHOPPA and get yourself entered for a chance to win.
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K; Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD5H; Graphics card:
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 760 (GV-N760OC-4GD); RAM: 16GB G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600;
Storage: 128GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD; PSU: LEPA MaxBron 1000-MB; Cooler: Thermaltake
Water 3.0 Pro; OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
Haswell quickly became one of our favorite processors, appearing in two of our four CPU System Workshop PCs last year.
The Core i7-4770K in the PAX Predator is the third time we’ve used this chip, so we were quite comfortable with it this time around. In fact, we used our familiarity (and a little help from Thermaltake’s Water 3.0 Pro) with the 4770K to push its clock speed to new heights—4.4GHz, or 100MHz faster than our previous OC. As a result, our CPU-intensive benchmarks benefitted the most from the healthy overclock. Our Cinebench 11.5 results improved by 12.5%, and our POV-Ray 3.7 Beta results shot up 12.6%. As we’ve said before, getting extra performance without paying a dime is always a winning strategy, and the 4770K can go well beyond 3.5GHz.
The PAX Predator’s GeForce GTX 760 came to us already overclocked, so we thank GIGABYTE for doing all the hard work. Because of this, you’ll notice that our graphics scores didn’t really budge when we tested the system at two processor clock speeds. For a graphics card that some consider to be midrange, the GV-N760OC-4GD did very well for itself. In both games, the graphics card produced great results at 1080p with maxed quality settings.
If you want to dial down some of the quality settings, this single GTX 760 should make you plenty happy at higher resolutions, too.
This system is fast on its feet, thanks to the HyperX 3K SSD. Everything loads incredibly fast thanks to this boot drive. Windows was ready in a matter of seconds, and games load incredibly fast. Thanks to all of the excellent components tucked away within the PAX Predator, it’s no wonder that this machine produced envious results in our benchmarks. We’ll have it on display at PAX Prime, so GET TO THE CHOPPA and get yourself entered for a chance to win.
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K; Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD5H; Graphics card:
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 760 (GV-N760OC-4GD); RAM: 16GB G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600;
Storage: 128GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD; PSU: LEPA MaxBron 1000-MB; Cooler: Thermaltake
Water 3.0 Pro; OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
