We had only one issue of note when we turned on our Solaris PCs. It's a fairly serious issue, but the folks at Solaris were quite responsive about it and have pledged to take care of the issue in the future.

Shortly after the first boot - but before the machines got to the desktop - both the Nebula XL and Polaris XLX systems we tested would just turn themselves off. Puzzled, our lab manager Shelton Romhanyi made a quick internal check and found that both of the stock Intel CPU coolers had fallen off during shipping!

After letting our contact at Solaris know about the problem, they took the information to their company and they decided to no longer ship with the stock Intel fans, opting for an Asus model with a back panel to hold it more securely. The following is an excerpt from the email sent to us from Max at Solaris PC:

"The model [of CPU Cooler] we will be using as standard on all Intel systems will be the Asus P5A2-8SB4W. It has some pretty good reviews and seems to do a better job at cooling, while at the same time staying quiet, which is very beneficial. We do have other cooling options, however. Customers will be able to pick from a MASSCOOL 8WA741, Scythe SCMNJ-1000, Scythe SCNJ-1100P and a Tuniq Tower. A Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme w/ Fan combo will also be available to those who purchase Worm Hole Series PCs, which are our top-of-the-line, factory overclocked computers."

This is a fairly positive response, and we think it's a satisfactory solution to the cooler woes we experienced.

Aside from this glitch, the Solaris PCs worked like a charm and provided us with all the benchmark numbers we needed to compare them to our system builder marathon PCs. Let's have a final look at the test settings before we disclose the benchmarks!

Test Settings

Let's have a look at the system specs, shall we? First the Photon XLX:

For reference, we'll be benchmarking this against the budget PC from our last system builder marathon:

Now, the Nebula XL specifications: