3rd Scan 3XS system ordered

[Pave Low]

Hi guys (and a big Hi to Philip, Ben & Lee - I'm back again), thought I would share my excitement with you, ordered my 3rd Scan system Yesterday

I got my first one 3 years ago

2nd was just in december - a Christmas present for my folks (who were extremely pleased with it (as was I), another quality product from Scan)

and the 3rd one will be for me, to replace my 1st Scan system

as you may see I went a bit over my original "budget" but meh, I worked a lot of overtime the last 2 months so "treated myself"

so without further ado details of system #3

Case: Akasa Omega - Black Aluminum Case

Power Supply Unit: 1000W Corsair HX Series Modular SLi PSU

CPU: Intel i7 965 Extreme, 3.2GHz, 6.4GT/s QPI, 8MB Cache, Retail

CPU Cooler: Thermalright True Black 120 Heat Pipe Black Nickel Plated Heat Sink

Overclocking: 3XS System Core-Logic Overclocking*10 - 20%*

Memory: 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3 PC3-14900 (1866) CAS 9-9-9-24

NVIDIA Graphics: 1792MB XFX GTX 295, 576MHz GPU, 480 Cores, 2000MHz GDDR3

System Drive: 1x 300 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor, 10000rpm, 16MB Cache

Storage Hard drives: 2x 1000 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache

Floppy Drive/Flash Card Reader: Scan Black Floppy Disk & Internal Combo All in 1 Card Reader

Blu Ray Reader/Writer: LG GGW-H20L Super Multi Blu-Ray Writer & HD-ROM Reader inc Lightscribe Support

Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional - PCI-E (x1)

Cooling Fans: 4x 120mm Akasa Amber Case Fan, Ultra Quiet and Long life - No LEDs

Acoustic Sound Proofing: AcoustiPack ULTIMATE Multi-Layered Material Kit

Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit

Just hope I don't drown in my own drool while waiting for it Hmm don't remember seeing that warning on the website

[Ph4ZeD]

Awesome system buddy, that system will fly through any game! Great rig with a lot of versatility with Blu-ray, storage space, the whole works! I'd love to have dual 24" hooked up to that baby

[Pave Low]

Thanks Ph4ZeD ,

Yeah, I really hope so, tried to cover the angles so it should be my primary "all in one" Gaming/Home Office mega-rig for at least 3-5 years to come

Had originally planned to relegate my current quad core 2.6 rig to just the "home-office" role and get a new lean pure Gaming rig (something like a duel core 4.0 rig as not many current and older games make full use of quad cores)
but once I started looking at an i7 core it really seemed a shame not to use it's full potential


hehe, It'll be hooked up to a 30in Dell 3007WFP (also bought from Scan just over a year ago)


I might stick in a 8800GTX that I already have to run a second monitor (@1920x1200) & to do the physX processing (and keep the 295 purely dedicate to SLI gaming only)

but 8800GTX 's do run Hot and noisy and wouldnt want to spoil the box, so might look at also getting scan to fit a cheap passive cooled card, maybe something like a Palit 9400 GT SUPER ?


and in a few years when prices have dropped might consider looking into adding another GTX 295 for some quad core SLI.

[Ph4ZeD]

Yeah that rig can really do it all. I've been tempted to do exactly what your suggesting there, I have a 9800GX2 with dual 20" and 22", and its never worked properly it being an SLI card. I'd love to get a little 9400GT for my second screen and have my 9800GX2 for my main screen.

[Clocker 1]

Hi Pave low , nice to see a loyal happy Scan customer I myself became a scan owner a short while ago and am very happy i did . They have been outstanding with their quality/ service / advice etc . . Anyway i just wanted to say I was going to opt for the i7 965 Extreme , until Phil pointed out to me that if I've selected 10-20% Overclocking that i might as well go for the i7 920 instead , as it will be Overclocked to 3.6GHz anyway ( as would the i7 965 , due to it being Air-cooled they cant go above 3.6 ) So i went for the i7 920 @ 3.6 and its awesome ! also i got to save some money by doing this which i spent on an SSD ! I'm sure you probably know this already but if not its something to think about . hope my ramblings made sense & help in some way .
Let us know your final specs , and post some pics when you get your 3XS Monster

[Steve A]

i could SLI my 2 rigs and you would still double me on 3d mark tbh

"Sigh"

[Pave Low]

I'm sure you probably know this already but if not its something to think about . hope my ramblings made sense & help in some way .

Hi Clocker 1, thanks for the suggestions, I'm always open to advice/tips (particularly if it can save me two hundred and eighty four pounds!)

Anyway i just wanted to say I was going to opt for the i7 965 Extreme , until Phil pointed out to me that if I've selected 10-20% Overclocking that i might as well go for the i7 920 instead , as it will be Overclocked to 3.6GHz anyway ( as would the i7 965 , due to it being Air-cooled they cant go above 3.6 ) So i went for the i7 920 @ 3.6 and its awesome !

Ahh right, figured wouldn't get as much on air as if had gone water, but wasn't aware the 940 + 965 would be O/C the same

Hmm .. £284 is a LOT of saving (either in new or different bits or back in my pocket)... but I'm still liking the 965 for a couple of reasons

The Higher QPI interface (12.8GB/sec in each direction) instead of 9.6GB/sec of the 940

and the 965 Extreme has "turbo mode" so even after an O/C to "only" 3.6 it should still automatically overclock one of the cores even higher for single-threaded apps (possibly 4.03GHz) and dual-threaded apps can get a 1x multiplier boost (possibly 3.83GHz)

i got to save some money by doing this which i spent on an SSD !

oh man don't get me started on SSD's, considered adding one or two to this rig but got "a headache" reading through all the different (& at times conflicting) articles and forums posts on them

the speed benefit (typically 12-50 seconds) seemed to be outweighed by the problems/quirks (eg when writing lots of small files and also having to move page/swap/temp files to a HDD and avoiding fragmentation issues)

think I'll stick with a Raptor for now (windows currently only takes 1 minute 24 second from hitting the on switch to logon and I can live with that )

Let us know your final specs , and post some pics when you get your 3XS Monster

yeah, hopefully Philip's still got the camera handy and we can see it's "birth" from a collection of boxes

[Pave Low]

i could SLI my 2 rigs and you would still double me on 3d mark tbh
"Sigh"

Hi Steve, I'm surprised you Scan folks don't all have totally badass rigs, do you not get a "super staff discount" or something

You need to suggest to the management that it might not reflect well on the company image for it's staff to not have the very best rigs possible

[Pave Low]

Hmmm, I had been initially slightly wary of the 295 for it's "reduced" memory bandwidth and possible problems/issues when going future quad SLI
and looking through dozens of reviews and testing results (even though it's supposed to be same cards and same settings they all had different max/min/averag FPS figures )

they do seem to confirm that I would be better getting 2x GTX 285's in SLI, rather than one GTX 295
(as I will be primarily running at 2560x1600 and some older games don't utilize SLI well or even at all)

any comments/suggestions please or "real world experience " feedback from actual card owners/users ?

any down sides ? extra noise ? heat ? "the whistling phenomena" with SLI 285's ?

also I see the 3XS configurator uses XFX cards, but is possible to use OC versions of other manufactures GTX 285 cards, EG BFG ? as that would add even more bang for buck to the SLI and should make it more advantageous (particularly as they would fill both slots and have to last longer and be more "futureproof")

[Philipp]

Hi Pave Low,

Sorry I havent been around on the forums for the last week or so....

Its great to see you have come back to scan again and again

Ill have a read up on the thread

[Philipp]

Hmmm, I had been initially slightly wary of the 295 for it's "reduced" memory bandwidth and possible problems/issues when going future quad SLI
and looking through dozens of reviews and testing results (even though it's supposed to be same cards and same settings they all had different max/min/averag FPS figures )

they do seem to confirm that I would be better getting 2x GTX 285's in SLI, rather than one GTX 295
(as I will be primarily running at 2560x1600 and some older games don't utilize SLI well or even at all)

any comments/suggestions please or "real world experience " feedback from actual card owners/users ?

any down sides ? extra noise ? heat ? "the whistling phenomena" with SLI 285's ?

also I see the 3XS configurator uses XFX cards, but is possible to use OC versions of other manufactures GTX 285 cards, EG BFG ? as that would add even more bang for buck to the SLI and should make it more advantageous (particularly as they would fill both slots and have to last longer and be more "futureproof")

Yep we can use diffrent cards if you like, XFX do offer overclocked cards...

Whats your invoice number, Ill have a look at the spec

[Pave Low]

Hi Philip

(some if this might look familiar as we have also been talking via email)

Invoice is *********

Got it

[Pave Low]

well it should come as no surprise to hear that I have changed the spec a bit since originally posted


Firstly I've replaced the single XFX GTX 295 graphics card with a pair of BFG OCX GTX285 cards running in SLI

This should provide much higher average FPS and also as a powerful "single card solution" still cope well with those games that don't utilise SLI.



and secondly I've replaced one of the pair of 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint storage drives with an 150 Gb 4.2 Ms VelociRaptor drive

The 150 Gb VelociRaptor becomes the primary system drive for O/S and apps, with the 300 Gb Western Digital VelociRaptor now being used for "games drive" and the remaining 1TB Samsung Spinpoint staying as main storage drive


so that's it, nothing to do now but wait for it to start build this week and that first wonderful pic of all the bits on the workbench ready to start life as my new "mega-rig"

Edit: System started build today (see the new build photo's sub-forum above for the first pics)