System Builder Marathon: High-Cost System

Features
By Thomas Soderstrom
published

Synthetics

3D Mark 2006 loves our current high-end system, but not enough to award it the coveted 20k score.

PC Mark's System test awarded the system nearly nine thousand points, which is a fairly good score, if previous reviews are any indication.

PC Mark's CPU test score flirts with the magic 10k mark.

The RAM test from PC Mark hints at low bandwidth, but this is a rather old benchmark version. We'll take a second look in Sandra.

PC Mark's hard drive test shows a very high score relative to those of other recent reviews.

Sandra's Arithmetic score underscores Wolfdale core performance, with incomprehensibly high Dhrystone mega-instructions per second and 44 gigaflops Whetstone performance using iSSE3 instructions.

Sandra Multimedia gets a big boost from SSE3 instructions as well.

Sandra's memory bandwidth test shows 7285 MB/s from our PC2-6400 modules, which would appear to be a great score if not for the fact that our memory is in dual-channel mode. Yet our RAM was chosen for its overclocking capabilities, and we'll examine it further in our upcoming overclocking test.

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.
4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • TDL
    Thanks for the great article - I'm having fun building this - I do have 3 questions though - the fan duct assembly fan has 3 wire sets, 1 has the 3wire motherboard connector, the second taps into a regular power lead. The third is a single wire - the case documentation does not describe that one - what is that little single lead for? Also the motherboard sound card has some connectors on it - I assume one is for the case headphone/mic lead? Third, should teflon tape be used in the dual radiator threads if not how tight is tight enough for the O-rings? Thanks great article!
    Reply
  • Dax3000
    Hi Thanks For The Great Article - I Am Also Building A System With A Few Modifications I Loved Asus Boards But Can Never Seem To Overclock Them At All So I Am Going With A EVGA 780i FTW when they come out, THat Processor IS Sweet But No Way CAn I JUstify PAying $1060 or more here in canada for 1 Pc Component when i already own three computers, I was thinking maybe a Q6850 when they come out, i have changed the middle fan in my case already and i am just waiting on my 120 rad to get here as i already have the other parts from another computer i built that i couldn't use so that saved me a few dollars:) and i can't find that power supply anywhere so i am gonna do with a X3 1000 watt from ultra i hope it's good enough. and since i am not a really good overclocker no point in risking a high end system by messing around with 2 expensive graphics cards will 2 9800GTX+ work for me ? and omost importantly after my system is finished and filled how do i top it up if it needs more water do i have to take the top rad down to fill it everytime or can i just add water in to the same rad. thanks alot of your help and keep up the great work.
    Reply
  • DaveCharleson
    I've been installing and have three questions. First, there seems to be no pump in this system - have I just missed something?

    Second, the twin fan radiator seems to draw the air from inside the case up through the radiator and then out the top of the case. Wouldn't you want to draw cooler air from the outside past the radiator?

    Third, I don't see any connection to the video card although the 880GTX card is built for water cooling. Wouldn't you want to include this in the loop?

    This is my first build with water cooling so sorry if the questions belie this.
    Reply
  • jimwalk
    The Arctic Silver instructions for applying to Intel Quad Core CPU W/Heatspreader are at http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinstruct/as5/ins_as5_intel_quad_wcap.pdf
    Reply