Introducing the 2020 HEXUS test platforms

[HEXUS]

Meet Vasquez and Ripley, the basis of our upcoming reviews.

Read more.

[spacein_vader]

Nice clean builds.

The newly retired builds would make nice competition prizes #JustSaying.

[kalniel]

Nice.

Though in your comparison chart you list the price as N/A, while only a page or so earlier you gave the total price of the system.

[[GSV]Trig]

Nice clean builds.

The newly retired builds would make nice competition prizes #JustSaying.

I was thinking exactly the same lol..

Also, just to get it out of the way, does it play Crysis, and what are the mining numbers like

[Xlucine]

Is the Radeon 4k QD32 write storage test looking at performance when the GPU has to go to the SSD for a texture not in the VRAM?

[LSG501]

I know it might be me but honestly it seems a little unbalanced to stick a 'mid tier' gpu with an i7 let alone a 3950x... if you're aiming for close to what people would buy the odds are they'd be going high end gpu's with high end cpu's.

Also it seems a little 'unfair' on the ram front... The 2018 Intel 'stock' is 2666mhz ram yet it got 3200mhz ram, which has been shown to give a performance boost. AMD 'stock' is 3200mhz and gets 3200mhz, even though 3600 is shown to be 'better'.

[philehidiot]

Trig;304]

Nice clean builds.

The newly retired builds would make nice competition prizes #JustSaying.

I was thinking exactly the same lol..

Also, just to get it out of the way, does it play Crysis, and what are the mining numbers like

I have a feeling it might be able to play Crysis purely on the CPU using software rendering....

[Iota]

I know it might be me but honestly it seems a little unbalanced to stick a 'mid tier' gpu with an i7 let alone a 3950x... if you're aiming for close to what people would buy the odds are they'd be going high end gpu's with high end cpu's.

Also it seems a little 'unfair' on the ram front... The 2018 Intel 'stock' is 2666mhz ram yet it got 3200mhz ram, which has been shown to give a performance boost. AMD 'stock' is 3200mhz and gets 3200mhz, even though 3600 is shown to be 'better'.

Valid points. All fairly moot though when the 2020 Hexus build uses the latest AMD Adrenaline driver and then compares the system to others using old drivers, I didn't look too closely at the OS version etc.

That aside, it's a nice little build, way more expensive than mine cost to make....

[kalniel]

I know it might be me but honestly it seems a little unbalanced to stick a 'mid tier' gpu with an i7 let alone a 3950x... if you're aiming for close to what people would buy

They're not aiming for close to what people would buy. As they explain, this is a test platform, to bring us reviews of other components.

[LSG501]

They're not aiming for close to what people would buy. As they explain, this is a test platform, to bring us reviews of other components.

Then why use a 3950x, a 2tb pcie4 drive etc.... they could have picked an 8c/16t cpu and more 'mid tier' hardware if this is purely about testing other components or are things like CPU and ssd's not what this is going to be testing etc. Yes GPU's are the most likely to be tested by it but what's the point in a 'benchmark' rig if it isn't going to be performing at it's best.

Like I say it seems unbalanced to stick a mid tier gpu with this build even if it is about testing other hardware.

[QuorTek]

Looking at 4K gaming, it does not seem like uh an option to buy an extremely expensive Nvidia GPU yet either.... well if looking at it overall... why ever?

Still need to see a single GFX card being able to pull at minimum 60FPS Ultra quality any game in 4K.

[kalniel]

Then why use a 3950x, a 2tb pcie4 drive etc....

Because storage and peripheral components do have a CPU/subsystem load and you want the bandwidth to test them easily. You can see in the gaming tests that they've hardly put a slow GPU in there, and it's not going to limit them in the slightest. Putting a slow CPU or storage in would.

[LSG501]

Because storage and peripheral components do have a CPU/subsystem load and you want the bandwidth to test them easily. You can see in the gaming tests that they've hardly put a slow GPU in there, and it's not going to limit them in the slightest. Putting a slow CPU or storage in would.

But the gpu is going to be an issue when testing games or monitors etc, especially as more games start making using of more than 4 cores and with the fact the display is 4K HDR etc.... We've now got screens that can do 4k at 144hz....

[jimbouk]

What's the thermal paste of choice? I'm guessing the CPU will be out a couple of times over then next few of months

Awesome rig and really neat build. See what you mean about the red network card though!

[kalniel]

But the gpu is going to be an issue when testing games or monitors etc, especially as more games start making using of more than 4 cores and with the fact the display is 4K HDR etc.... We've now got screens that can do 4k at 144hz....

The GPU is more than good enough to test monitors, and as for games, Hexus rarely do game reviews, and when they do they usually have test GPUs around if needed. The only thing the GPU can't do is test other GPUs.. which conveniently enough the test itself will provide.

[Ttaskmaster]

"Outstanding. Now all we need is a deck of [graphics] cards"!!

Kudos to whoever named them.
I could probably get a whole week's worth of fun just from quoting my second favourite film!!