How we test
To test general PC performance, we’re use Futuremark’s PCMark 8 v2.0 benchmarking suite. Unlike the previous PCMark 7 benchmark, the new version doesn’t produce a single overall figure. Instead, results are divided into Home, Creative, Work and Storage tests. The Home benchmark reflects common tasks for typical home use with lower computing requirements, such as web browsing, photo editing and low-end gaming.
The Creative benchmark is aimed more at enthusiasts and professionals working with multimedia and entertainment content. It is more demanding on the processor and includes transcoding tests as well as further gaming workloads.
The Work test is geared towards office work tasks such as creating documents, web browsing, spreadsheets and video conferencing. It does not stress the gaming and multimedia capabilities of the PCs.
Gaming performance
We’ve used three games to evaluate graphics performance. We run our tests at 1280x720and 1920x1080 pixels at various detail settings. Framerates are recorded using the following games and quality settings. Final Fantasy XIV: 1920x1080, Maximum quality. Alien vs Predator: 1280x720, all settings at Maximum quality; 1920x1080, all settings at Maximum quality. Sniper Elite V2: 1280x720, all options set to Low quality, advanced shadows off, Supersampling off; 1920x1080, All options set to Medium quality, advanced shadows off, Supersampling off; 1920x080, all options set to Ultra quality, Advanced shadows – high, 4x Supersampling.
We also run Futuremark’s 3DMark suite of benchmarks to help evaluate gaming performance in eight different usage scenarios. With these results, we can get a good idea of the level of quality and display resolutions a given PC can run acceptably. In this group test, the scores are all very close, due to the similar hardware used. Results are given in points and higher numbers are better.
Power consumption torture testing
We measure the power consumption of each PC base unit when idle, and again while running at its performance limit. During the idle test, the PCs hard drives are still spinning and the power-management features are not enabled. For the full-load torture test, we run Prime 95 to force all CPU processing threads to maximum utilisation and stress system memory. At the same time we run the Geeks3D Furmark benchmark to stress any installed graphics cards. We leave these tests running for 10 minutes, then record the power consumption and the maximum CPU core temperature We pay close attention to the physical characteristics of each PC, its noise output and its build quality, delving inside the case and taking note of the quality of components used, cabling and airflow.
Support
Differences in warranty terms can impact our scoring. Long warranties are sought after, but we also look at the terms and conditions – specifically, whether faulty PCs must be returned to the vendor at your cost, and if both parts and labour are included.