Idea's for power efficent FAH rig?

[HrutkayMods]

Hi guys, I've been using FAH for 3 days now thanks to the distributed computing build guide video.

I have 2 systems.

my first system started out as my dad's 1st custom built photo editing rig (he's on his third now). He upgraded, and gave the system to his girlfriend in a new case with a crap Chinese 600W PSW that I still have in it. his girlfriend never used it and I recently got it off of her. It had to be brought back to life as it had bad ram and a BIOS corruption preventing it from reading drives.

I turned it into my main gaming rig once I fixed it.

the thing is IT'S REALLY OLD. and with the crap PSW, not power efficient at all. But it still runs all new games with good performance including GTA V at 1080P.

When I say it's OLD I mean IT'S PCIE 1.1 OLD. But it still has good power over my 2nd rig.

Specs:

Mobo: Intel D975XBX2 (circa late 2006)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (OC @ 3.2GHz) (originally had a Q6600)

Ram: 8GB DDR2 (Originally had 4GB)

GPU: PNY XLR8 GTX 950 (9% OC) (Originally had a GTX 8800, then a HD 4770, then a GTX 470)

OS: Dual boot Win 7 Ultimate 64 Bit and Win 10 Pro 64 Bit (main os) (originally had XP Pro 32 bit)

My second rig is my main laptop which hasn't aged as well and is roughly 3 years NEWER than my desktop

It's a Toshiba Qosmio X505 Q896 (IT RUNS HOT!)

Specs:

CPU: i7 740QM

Ram: 16GB DDR3 (originally had 8GB)

GPU: GTX 460M (slight OC)

OS: Win 10 Pro 64 bit (originally had 7 Home Premium, then 7 Ultimate, then 8 Pro, then 8.1 Pro)

I've been running these systems non stop since I learned about FAH and have emassed over 110,000 points for team Linus thus far and i've promoted FAH on my Hrutkay Mods Facebook https://www.facebook.com/HrutkayMods . But I wanna build a rig stictly dedicated to FAH so I don't literally melt my laptop and so my desktop doesn't send my electric bill into the stratosphere.

I'd like to set up a system with at least a Haswell i7 quad (maybe an i5 quad) and 2 GPUs in SLI or Crossfire (perfer Nvidia maybe 2 950s?)

I'd like it to be power efficient and I don't have much money currently at all but could probably swing $500 maybe $600 (not counting the GPUS)

Any ideas on a good rig build? the lower the price the better for me I'm just a college student living on his own and I have bills to pay.

[epicsmeat]

Go for something like and i5 4460 good value for money processor, z97 gaming 3 and also if you want to be power efficient never go crossfire or sli.

[HrutkayMods]

I understand that multiple Vid cards isn't really efficent but I'd like multiple GPUS for multiple processing power in FAH

[Extingquish]

Something like an i5 4460 with a 970 seems like better value than two 950s IMO

 

It means you can add more in the future if you buy a suitable motherboard, and it has a better Price:Watt:PPD ratio  

[baxtmann]

power efficiency? whats that?