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Core i7-4770K and GTX 780 Ti in a small, liquid-cooled PC.
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Core i7-4770K and GTX 780 Ti in a small, liquid-cooled PC.
Paying £1950.16 for a system that comes in as £1673.72(asus DCUII/ek Ni w/o dvdrw) in parts is a bit much. I would have understood if they used the Classified watercooled cards (£1702.79 w/o dvdrw) would have been much more understandable for this price as the card cost £647.74 and the one they use £628.84, that £20 cost can be easily recovered by what they pay the guy who removes the ACX cooler to replace it with the ek waterblock
Scan are pretty good when it comes to assembly price, I reckon the extra cost is because of the extra work required to build this.
Gotta be quite the ballache putting this together, not only working with tight constraints but making sure the liquid cooling runs fine/no leaks etc. so the asking price isn't that bad, it's probably a few days work..and before anyone says "£300 for a few days work I doubt they pay their staff that much", it's a company which works on the principle of making a profit, charging only what it costs them defeats the purpose of a business :P
Also I reckon it's a comfortable price point for those who would want this - it's not something a "real" PC person would pay, as any worth his salt would both wanna build it himself, and not go for unnecessary liquid cooling (seriously, air cooling is just fine), it's more a boutique product...in my opinion anyway.
Gotta say wouldn't say no if I had one lobbed at me for free though, but I'm a sucker for a monster case, give me a full tower any day :)
Comparing this to an Intel NUC that is over 4 times cheaper ?
This is like Top Gear comparing a ferrari against a Ford Fiesta ! I'd of prefered a comparison to a similar PC pre-build from scan that has similar specs, than a NUC that is in no way aimed at the same crowd at all.
Or did you compare it to such lacklustre systems in order to make it purposefully jump out of the graphs more, artificially making it look better than the others ?
@Sim0n - did you read the bottom of page 2? where it says
Quote:
Notes
Scan's 3XS Z87 Hadron Hydro is the first overclocked gaming rig to enter the HEXUS labs since the introduction of our new test suite. We're including benchmark results from a selection of much cheaper small-form-factor PCs, though do bear in mind they are only a point of reference and cannot be compared directly.
Other gaming rigs will be added to the line-up in due course, but for now we're only interested in seeing what sort of numbers the 3XS Z87 Hadron Hydro can achieve.
its just to build up a big table of results from different price points, and by using one set of tests you can easily see what throwing more money at a PC can get you.
there's nothing nefarious going on from what I can see anyhow. :)
But they are pretty bad if it goes wrong - read the small print very carefully before you buy anything from them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tunnah
Gotta say I agree with lovin the large full towers. Don't understand the craze of making the desktop pc smaller and smaller the tower sits in 1 spot and never moves why does it need to be small and light when ur never gonna move it around. Liquid cooling is almost pointless and adds more risks. A full tower with 3-4 quality large quiet case fans a noctua d-14 cpu cooler (works better then most water cooling setups but its massive in size) and a gpu with arctic accelero extreme cooling the 3 fan option and ur set and it's so easy to build and route wires and fit everything in a full tower.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tunnah
I guess im getting old, refuse to downsize my pc and refuse to downsize my laptop to a tablet like all these kids nowadays. For reference I have a corsair 850d tower and an alienware m18xr1 that i upgraded to an r2 inside an r1's chassis basicallly with gtx 680m sli and the triple heatpipe cpu heatsink still has the r1 mobo and i7 2960m cpu
I do like the new 8hr+ battery life ultrabooks tho. With heavy tweaking I've got my m18x runtime up to 5 hours browsing the web around 3 if i watch a lot of video, to game u got to plug in or be prepared to be cut off in an hour if ur lucky.. Might just have to get me 1 of them newfangled ultrabooks maybe after 14nm broadwell since its close.
The benchmark suite was changed at the start of 2014 and thus rendered all older results incomparable.
We have other ultra-high-end systems in the labs - think AMD FX-9590 and two watercooled R9 290X cards - and they will also be compared against the Scan. We'll begin to remove the less-pertinent ones as time goes on.
Excellent review Parm Mann :) for Excellent system the Scan 3XS Z87 Hadron Hydro!
A 300Mhz overclock on the CPU is a bit conservative for water cooling. Considering all the expense involved, is it really worth it?
£2k is a bit much for something that looks dated with green tubbing with anti kink springs. if it is aimed at gaming, a 4770k is a bit overkill.
I got a love for large towers - eyeing up the 900d for my next rig.Quote:
Originally Posted by Laststop
Gotta disagree with the liquid cooling statement though. It has its place.
Liquid cooling equipment is getting better and better each year, with safer, more reliable fittings and better coolant. Maintenance is a still pain in the private areas, although if you set up your rig to include to a drain tube then it makes life a little easier. That D-14 is a behemoth of a cooler in both size and weight - I never like anything could potentially warp the board. No such risk with LC. And whereas yes the Accelero is a great GPU cooler, it takes up 3 expansion slots and requires 3 fans to do so, so you are limited to 2 gpus. Its a fine single GPU solution, but if you are an enthusiast looking to LC, chances are you looking at a 2 card minimum setup, thats when things start getting toasty and noisy. Any more than 2 then you'd be pretty brave to not LC. Your system will also start to sound like a wind tunnel when things start warming up. Liquid cooling will always be silent (unless your pump breaks...then panic), which for some is reason enough to use it.
LC isn't pointless, it just depends on the context in which you plan on using it.
If you're talking desktop PCs then it depends how big your desk is. A smaller unit might mean you have room for a bigger monitor :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Laststop
If I was in the market for a high end gaming PC, and by high end I mean ~£2k for the base unit only like this, I'd want it to be able to drive 3 monitors for a more immersive gaming experience.
The 'craze' is you can fit that entire system into a much smaller chassis. Why bother with a chassis with a cubic metre of empty space inside? It serves no useful function, and it's just a thermal liability.Quote:
Originally Posted by Laststop