A deciding factor in this test is efficient cooling of the processors. We used a new product from Zalman, the CNPS9500-AT, which is equipped with an automatic air cooling system from Intel using pulse width modulation. In contrast to its competitors, this cooling unit impressed us with its incredibly quiet operation even while maintaining consistent cooling. Sadly, our original plan to use a cooling unit from Gigabyte perfectly matched to the system failed.

The brand new Zalman CNPS9500-AT with pulse width modulation.

We used two NVIDIA 7800 GTX Extreme graphics cards from Gigabyte. The power supplies came from PC Power & Cooling, each providing 510 W of power. For the hard drives we only wanted the best, so we chose two 150 GB Raptor drives from Western Digital, the WD1500ADFD. These units run at 10,000 RPM, which means they require active cooling.

Turbo Cool 510 SSI from PC Power & Cooling.

Graphics card with NVIDIA 7800 GTX Extreme.