System Builder Marathon: The $4,500 Super PC

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Hardware Settings And Overclocking

Hardware installation was almost as easy as a typical system, but we do have a few notes.

1.) The motherboard’s bottom slot is partly blocked by the water pump and lower radiator hose. The half-length, half-height Asus Xonar DX fit perfectly, though we’d have preferred to use a PCI card in the upper slot.

2.) The Corsair CMPSU-1000HX power supply has ferrite rings on the flat, removable PCI Express power cables that prevented them from being run between cards. We had to use the soldered-on "round" cables for the top card.

3.) The photo above shows the "wrong" optical drive installed. Our BD-RE drive arrived late, so we began overclock stability tests using a substitute part.

4.) Purging air from the liquid cooling system should be done with the CPU water block removed, as detailed in our earlier liquid-cooling case comparison.

5.) The side fan of our Zalman LQ1000 case didn’t provide enough air pressure to effectively cool our memory at its rated speed. We had to use lower voltage and speed, with increased timings as detailed below.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ComponentBase SettingsOverclock Setting
CPUIntel Core 2 Quad Q96503.00 GHz, FSB-1333, 12 MB Cache4.14 GHz (9x 460 MHz), FSB-18401.4125 V Core, 1.40 V FSB Termination
CPU CoolerZalman LQ1000 IntegratedZalman LQ1000 Integrated
MotherboardAsus P5E3 Premium WiFi-APIntel X48, BIOS 0605 (09/02/2008)Intel X48 Boot Strap : 400 MHzNorthbridge Voltage : 1.49 V
RAM8.0 GB OCZ PC3-12800 Platinum Edition4x 2048 MB, DDR3-1600, CL 7-7-7-24 at 1.90 VUnderclocked to DDR3-1333 8-8-8-24 at 1.76 VDDR3-1533, CL 8-8-8-241.76 V
Graphics2x MSI R4870X2 OC Edition (Crossfire)2x ATI 4870 GPU (Per Card), 780 MHz2x 1024 MB GDDR5-3600 (Per Card)787 MHz GPU, GDDR5-3840 (960 MHz)
Hard Drives4x Samsung HD103UJ (RAID 0)1.0 TB, 72000 RPM, 32 MB CacheUnchanged
SoundAsus Xonar DX PCI Express7.1 Channels, DDL, DS3D GX 2.0Unchanged
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit NetworkingIntegrated Gigabit Networking
PowerCorsair HX1000W ModularATX 2.2, EPS 2.91, 2x 40A 12 V RailsUnchanged
OpticalLG GGW-H20L BD-RE/HDDVD-ROM6x BD-R, 2x BD-RE, 16x DVD±RUnchanged
Software and Drivers
Operating SystemWindows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, SP1Unchanged
Graphics DriverATI Catalyst 8.8 64-bit EditionUnchanged
Onboard Device DriversAsus P5E3 Premium DVD Rev.360.01Unchanged

With stability tests out of the way, it was time to finally install the "correct" optical drive and move forward to benchmarks.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
83 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cjdavis7
    So, how many times can they drop NewEgg's name in one article?
    Reply
  • Duncan NZ
    I'd drop Neweggs name lots if they gave me a $4500 system
    Reply
  • cangelini
    cjdavis7So, how many times can they drop NewEgg's name in one article?
    The reason we partnered up with NewEgg on this was to have access to a much wider range of hardware then we'd otherwise have. My hope is that this is an asset to our readers and does not interfere editorially.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    Duncan NZI'd drop Neweggs name lots if they gave me a $4500 system
    Just to clarify, all of the hardware goes straight back to NewEgg once the story is done. The arrangement simply gives us access to the hardware, straight from e-tail, to build, benchmark, and write about. It's good for us because we're saved the effort of finding manufacturers who want to send out their hardware and we think it's good for our readers because we can construct the systems we'd *really* build on these budgets. =)
    Reply
  • master9716
    4500 . Why would anyone spend 800 on a case? I dont really see a point to the article but oh well . New egg does have the best prices out there but mwave does beat it sometimes.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    master97164500 . Why would anyone spend 800 on a case? I dont really see a point to the article but oh well . New egg does have the best prices out there but mwave does beat it sometimes.
    Why would anyone spend $500 on a video card or $1,000 on a processor? ;-)

    This is why we do three stories with a trio of price targets--something for everyone!
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    Anyone more concerned with looks and styling than just function would spend more than a few bucks on a case.
    ie. Anyone who'd pick an alfa romeo or a lexus over an ordinary honda accord would want a more expensive case.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    We should also note that the on-board Intel controller is capable of excellent RAID 5 performancePerhaps I'm mistaken, but I am not thrilled by the intel raid controller. Perhaps the ich10 is better than the ich9 in this regard, but I only scored about 90mb/sec max read speed in raid5 (5x500gb) on my p35. That's the same speed as my 3x 35gb raptors in raid 0 on my secondary system, so it's okay. But still. A single new spinpoint is faster than the raid 5, so I'm quite sure my ich9r controller is requiring too many resources to work properly fast. Or it's my oc that causes it to slow down somehow. Dunno yet.
    Anyway, my experience with intel software raid running raid5 isn't that it's speedy.

    ps. wouldn't it have made sense to save a few bucks on storage (2x1,5tb or something) and added memory cooling blocks to go with the water cooled chassis?
    Reply
  • randomizer
    Memory doesn't get hot enough to justify losing 2TB of storage just so you can add some fancy cooling blocks to it. 4TB does sound pretty sweet, but I don't know how I'd fill up 500GB let alone 8x that. E-peen I guess.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    "2.) The Cooler Master CMPSU-1000HX power supply has ferrite rings on the flat, removable PCI Expresshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express power cables that prevented them from being run between cards. We had to use the soldered-on "round" cables for the top card."

    it's still a corsair psu according to the picture. (page 6)


    @ randomizer : If you'd replace the 4 drives with 2 bigger ones you'd only lose 1tb of storage, and half your theoretical read/write speed (and slightly improve your seek time). Anyway, if memory is running hot I would definetly want some cooling for it. My first choice would be to throw away the sound card and see if 90 bucks was enough for a decent cooler (onboard sound is excellent really), but since toms is rather happy about the sound, I think storage is the best place to compromise.

    Anyway, my point is - add a cooler to the modules! actually ocz already have models out there with watercooling built in - since they picked ocz they could've gotten those if newegg had em.

    Reply