Shuttle's Liquid I.C.E. Cooling Box; Expensive

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By Kevin Parrish
published

Last week Shuttle unleashed its mini-sized "extreme gaming solution "with liquid I.C.E. cooling, the SDXi Carbon. Mmmm tasty.

One week ago, Shuttle Inc. announced that its new custom liquid-cooled SDXi Carbon PC--looking more like a plastic footstool or filing cabinet than a gaming rig--has gone retail, sporting enough gaming hardware goodness to ignite grandma's pacemaker on fire. The company touts the rig as an "extreme performance system for gamers, enthusiasts, and even professionals" dabbing in CAD or animation. The product website even states that the SDXi Carbon is not the ordinary gaming PC, and from the hefty price tag and specs, the company isn't joking around.

Although the base system starts off at a whopping $2,599, the Shuttle SDXi Carbon ultimate rig comes packed with the quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor (3.2 GHz), a dual-slot Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 graphics card, and high-speed DDR2 memory. According to the company, the SDXi Carbon also features the "world's first" Liquid I.C.E. technology, or rather, the world's only small form factor water cooling solution. "By designing our own cooling, case, and motherboard, we are able to take full control of the thermal design and create an incredibly efficient and quiet system," said the company. "Now with Liquid I.C.E., you are free to push your processor to new limits while enjoying a near silent system."

The company said that the motherboard features a front side bus of 800/1066/1333 MHz, Intel's G45 + ICH10 chipset, Realtek's ALC888 with 7.1 channel High Definition audio, and four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM slots, offering a total 16 GB of memory. Consumers can choose between a wide variety build-to-order options, with various Intel Core 2 choices, hard drive options spanning sizes up to 1 TB via a Serial ATA 300, and optical drives ranging from a 20x20 DVD+-RW dual layer SATA to a 4x Blu-Ray triple writer SATA. Other optional graphic card choices include the GeForce GTX 285 with 1 GB GDDR3 and the ATI Radeon HD4850 512 MB GDDR3.

The computer not only offers a choice between Vista home Premium 32-Bit and Vista ultimate 32-bit, but Microsoft's Windows XP Professional downgrade feature for those who just can't get their game on in Vista. However, just for grins, a maxed out SDXi Carbon will cost consumers a whopping $6,245.99 that includes the three-year warranty, carrying bags, two 19" LCD monitors, both drive bays loaded and the Shuttle PS21 2.1CH multimedia speaker system.

Still, when a gaming rig starts with a $2,599 price tag, it's hard to imagine what manufacturers are thinking during a time of economic crisis. Sure, what PC gamer wouldn't want the meatiest rig around, sporting hi-resolution framerates that slide together like melted butter? However, it will be surprising if Shuttle can get anyone to invest in a costly computer no matter what parts are crammed under the hood.

Kevin Parrish
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7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • A Stoner
    Not everyone is suffering. 145,000,000 workers in America and since the downturn only a bump of unemployment of 2.3%, or about 3.3 million people. I honestly think that number is far less than true, but I will use it as a conservative number, that leaves well over 97.7% of workers (141,700,000), and 100% of the independently wealthy available for purchases like this. Not to mention the good for nothing peice of crap welfare kings and queens this nation just hopped a ton of whipped cream on tip of. I do not think the this is going to be a bad recession, although I think it has been significantly worsened by Paulson, Bush, Barack Obama, The House and Senate leadership and the media by doomsaying "the worst recession since the great depression and may well become the great depression". I am still working, I am still buying things, the only difference between Paulsons "fire in the theater statements" and today is that I have paid off almost all my credit card debt in anticipation of buying all the nice lower priced goodies that a recession makes available, because, "who is going to buy it at that price?" is a prevalent statement in a recession.

    I think if our leadership, starting with the "This is the time people will remember that the oceans rise began to slow, and the earth began to heal" craptastic president opening his mouth, saying; "things have been overblown." "There is not going to be a depression." "Companies that are now laying off large portions of their workforce are not in the dire straights they claim they are in, but are taking advantage of the scare tactics environment I myself am guilty of creating to be able to lay people off that do not need to be laid off." "Henry Paulson, for what ever his motives started this stampede, and he is going to be fully investigated to see if he had any financial gains to be made from this kind of market scare, criminal charges will be filed if any wrong doing, no matter how slight it may have been is found.", "Any more down talking of our economy by White House staff will be met with instant firings of those staff members."

    Every single economic reading since October has shown that the expected downturn was going to turn mid to late 2009, it was going to be shallow to moderate, and by mid to late 2010 we will have fully turned around to the point of being back where we began.
    Reply
  • tayb
    Bah, $6300? That is nothing! I can double that amount just from upgrading ram for a Mac Pro from Apple!
    Reply
  • Pei-chen
    Throw in an i7 920 and GTX 295 then we'll talk.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    Why would their extreme gaming rig come with a G45 Northbridge? And don't tell me anyone with $2500 to drop on a tiny computer is going to want to run off the onboard GPU for "low power use". They'd have to take-out the GeForce everytime. If Shuttle was designing their own MB, they should have created a Mini-ATX with SLI or Crossfire support.
    Reply
  • scooterlibby
    A StonerNot everyone is suffering. 145,000,000 workers in America and since the downturn only a bump of unemployment of 2.3%, or about 3.3 million people. I honestly think that number is far less than true, but I will use it as a conservative number, that leaves well over 97.7% of workers (141,700,000), and 100% of the independently wealthy available for purchases like this. Not to mention the good for nothing peice of crap welfare kings and queens this nation just hopped a ton of whipped cream on tip of. I do not think the this is going to be a bad recession, although I think it has been significantly worsened by Paulson, Bush, Barack Obama, The House and Senate leadership and the media by doomsaying "the worst recession since the great depression and may well become the great depression". I am still working, I am still buying things, the only difference between Paulsons "fire in the theater statements" and today is that I have paid off almost all my credit card debt in anticipation of buying all the nice lower priced goodies that a recession makes available, because, "who is going to buy it at that price?" is a prevalent statement in a recession. I think if our leadership, starting with the "This is the time people will remember that the oceans rise began to slow, and the earth began to heal" craptastic president opening his mouth, saying; "things have been overblown." "There is not going to be a depression." "Companies that are now laying off large portions of their workforce are not in the dire straights they claim they are in, but are taking advantage of the scare tactics environment I myself am guilty of creating to be able to lay people off that do not need to be laid off." "Henry Paulson, for what ever his motives started this stampede, and he is going to be fully investigated to see if he had any financial gains to be made from this kind of market scare, criminal charges will be filed if any wrong doing, no matter how slight it may have been is found.", "Any more down talking of our economy by White House staff will be met with instant firings of those staff members."Every single economic reading since October has shown that the expected downturn was going to turn mid to late 2009, it was going to be shallow to moderate, and by mid to late 2010 we will have fully turned around to the point of being back where we began.
    Thanks for the econ lesson. Let me summarize: the prez can say it's not horrible and it won't be. Thanks for the laugh, though, I was just writing a paper about time series forecasting and trying to wrap my head around moving average models (the basis of the 'readings' you refer to) when I took a break and hopped on Tom's to see your post. The juxtaposition was just great, as both doing this research and reading your post made me feel dumb, but for vastly different reasons.
    Reply
  • wow, almost 3 years later to the day. looks like every single economic reading back since october 2009 was wrong
    Reply
  • Pei-chen
    Waypoint, in four years we won't have a constitution.
    Reply