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Systemax to Offer 'Hot-Rod' PC
Professor_Quail writes "C|Net News reports that PC maker Systemax is going to be offering a new line of PC's aimed at gamers and performance enthusiasts. The computers, priced at approximately 3-4 thousand dollars, are touted by the company specifically for their overclocking performance; the DoubleX line comes equipped with a water-cooling system and dual hard drives configured with RAID-0. The systems will be sold through the company's TigerDirect subsidiary."
Too bad we cost them money when we /. their servers anyway.
They are EVIL(tm)
FP?
Yes, I realize the high-end gaming systems fetch a hefty profit margin, but isn't Alienware the standard retailer for such systems?
I think reputation has a lot to do with sales success, so it may be hard for Systemax to break into Alienware's marketshare. The watercooling option is definitely a step in the right direction; I'm pretty sure no system retailer has attempted such an offer.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
What can I say? I'm bored.
I would *never* buy a system from Tiger Direct. My work used to buy stuff from them a lot and they really suck.
Water-cooling has not been shown in tests to give statistically significant improvements in cooling vs. a high-end fan and heatsink (the primary advantage of water-cooling is it is quieter, but that isn't a performance issue), and overclocking is primarily a way for tinkerhead geeks to get more mileage out of old processors.
The hard drives are a nice touch, but any slashdot reader could build a system whose perfomance equals this overpriced iron and have enough left over for a hooker, a bottle of Courvissier, and a pack of Sheiks. The primary market for these bells-and-whistles systems will be late adopters with more money than brains and a tendency to be easily distracted by "the shiny".
Customer reviews of Tiger Direct
Anybody else see the irony in comparing THIS machine to the $199 Walmart/Lindows/AOL machine?
$199 to 'three or four thousand dollars' is quite the spread for two items that, at a certain level, are more alike than different.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
2,800 USD for this thing? you could buy all the components for approximately 1000, it doesn't even mention dual processors, which I would expect for this kind of money, and I imagine the only part that would be any trouble to assemble is the water-cooling system. the only reason i would pay for this is maybe the warranty factor, but you could buy components retail w/ a 3 or more year warranty and still come in well under that figure.
though I might be talking out my ass for the newer P4's, since I haven't been CPU-shopping in a few months.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
hey guys i drove a customer's mustang @ 140 mph...yuo suxk
Why would anyone bother overclocking with today's processors? The clock increase gained by it will be surpassed in a few weeks by a new processor release anyway, which is a testament to how ineffective it is these days. It's about % gain, man. Maybe in the days of the old Celeron 300 chips, where you could more than double your clockspeed, at the expense of processor life, this was effective, but I can't see there being any financial reason to do it now.
--sdem
will give you 90% of the experience of some absurd $3000 pc.
"News" like this seems more like an advertisement. Are they an OSDN company? :-)
Despite some good PC titles, gaming has been trending towards consoles, which cost $200 each. Even with green lights and water cooling $4000 is just way to much. You can still buy systems, which you could pop the latest motherboard in with a faster Athlon or P4 and play fast enough for less than $1500, fully kitted with DVD/CDRW, and all. Maybe they're targeting the rich kids, you know, the ones who never get invited to LAN parties.
"If you don't let me play, I'll take my server straight home!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
from the two-stupid-to-spell-correctly department
These guys Falcon Northwest have been doing this for a long time ...
when the shit hits the fan, it is not equally spread
I already knew about the utterly shitty TigerDirect, but know I will be certain to avoid Systemax! (As if I'd need someone to build me a computer.)
do you think talk about abusing a handicapped perso is funny?!
http://www.redcross.org
The systems they will be offering for 3-4 grand, could probably be built for less than $2,000. A high end system is where people can save the most money rolling their own. With all the online guides and books available for PC building, just about anyone can build a pc a in day, its really not that hard. I started building them five years ago, and now I'm building budget systems on the side for friends and relatives, padding the price by at least $200 and still beating Dell's prices on their low end systems, but not the ultra low end.
People don't overclock necessarily to gain performance, it just happens to be a general inherient benefit. It's done because it's a hobby that fuffils a person's interest in some way, be it challenging, cool, or interesting. To take something and run it it faster than it's intended is a 'geeks' way of fun (perhaps even their way of living on the edge ... i'm not a geek). This is similar to any mechanic or rice boy that modifies their car not necessarily by dropping new components into it, but tweeking for better performance..
... but then again, how many people really push their 2.8 MHz P4 to it's limits?
...
You're right when you say how ineffective it is these days in a monetary vs performance % gain
These boxes are most likely going to be aimed that rich kid with lots of money, that lacks the desire to learn to do it themselves.
Just a thought
Just a thought...
Isn't that a performance hit in the disk department?
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
People buying computers like this for so much money are helping are starving industry and help to get over this stupid recession !
If you are a patriot american you should buy one, if you are non-american you should buy one nevertheless.
A strong economy is good for everyone and makes much jobs and very much wealth.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm just nice to put linux on, along with UT2K3 for nice fast smooth gaming. Let the games commence. falvious linuxgaming.co.uk
knock this crap off. it was stupid the other ten million times too
As the article states, they're entering the market niche already occupied by Alienware and Falcon Northwest. While I wish them the best of luck, I can't help but wonder if there's enough business to go around.
After all, gamers (those who play more than solitaire on the computer) are a subset of computer users. Gamers who need great performance (fps++) are a subset of that group (since many of the most popular games don't need ninja machines).
Of that group, Gamers who can't already build their own ninja machine are a further subset. And, there again, you're looking at a further subset who want a machine tricked out with lights and suchlike.
So basically you're marketing to Gamers who aren't technically saavy enough to build their own computer, but who play the most resource-intensive games, have a lot of money to buy these computers and also want lights and transparent panels, etc....
They're also targeting "high-performance enthusiasts", but I think, really, that this is even a smaller group. Most people who are really into high-performance can, and already do, build their own computers. Most, not all, but most. In my opinion.
Then there's the whole RAID 0 thing. RAID 0 stripes data across the 2 drives, and is very useful for tasks that require the movement of large amounts of data quickly, like video editing. In my opinion, no game gets any useful benefit whatsoever from RAID 0. Sure, on map change your Counter-Strike level may load a half a second faster than anyone else, but my Western Digital Special Edition (with the 8Mb cache) loads them within a couple of seconds, so I don't see what's to be gained here. A red herring, if you will.
Why? Because there's a major drawback to RAID 0. If one of the drives fail, the data is lost for both, since it's "striped" across both, with no parity bit to tell the array how to rebuild the lost data. Double your risk for a speed gain you're unlikely to see unless you do lots of video editing.
I hope their support line is ready for angry calls....
Still, it's a neat rig. But, it's a niche market. Very niche.
Overclock the CPU and setup a raid 0 so you basically halve the mtbf on the logical volume?
What's the warranty, 12 minutes?
Meanwhile, two VP6s with dual PIIIs running at rated speed are dead.
Hardware seems to be getting less and less dependable as we push the envelope on speed and heat.
...What's with all of the C-Net and Infoworld stories showing up 2-3 days later on /.? It's not news if a major news outlet has had it on their front page for *days*.
-b
You're absolutely right. In the old days you could get some noticeable peformance gain in Quake when you overclocked your cpu. However, in my experience, the system wasn't very reliable.
These days, it pays to get a mid level cpu and spend the extra cash on the video card.
Live web cams
It is so easy to get a custom built system with better components at a decent price.
I personally don't believe overclocking is worth the hassle, risk, or expense. Your super duper unstable overclocked box will probably be obsoleted by a normal system in a month.
Here's how to buy a computer: pick a reasonable price/performance point. Don't get screwed out of your money for that last 3% of performance. Keep the difference and replace your computer sooner than you could have if you'd wasted your money on the overpriced top end.
-Kevin
Times change.
There used to be this game called chess that required little more than a candle and a keen mind.
Quake III and WC III run fine on computers with a single processor, non SCSI non RAID hard drives, moderate amounts of RAM, and a decent video card. There simply are no games out there to justify spending so much, and by time a game does in fact appear, the cost of the advertised system will have dropped tremendously.
Read what others have to say about their experiences with Tiger Direct before you place any orders: Consumer Affairs
However, I am curious how much of a dent this will make into the crowd that builds their own systems, not just because they enjoy doing so (because they often do) but because it is cheaper and they get the final word on the configurations (meaning a trully customized and optimal system). There are those that would not quit building their own system, because it is in the building not really the end result that they see the pleasure. Howerver, I refer to those that while sharing some of the enjoyment of building the systems themselves, they really want a cheap but kick ass system that has all the components THEY want.
On the other hand, if this place were to offer their own version of a bare-bones kit (including the water cooled system) then that might make it even more attractive.
Now me? I am interested in the tweak for less ability that many hobbiest builders (and pros for that matter) employ to bring mid range systems above the stock release of the highest. Some components (like the AMD Duron) while released as low end and thus cheaper are in reality a lightening fast system awaiting a little bit of love. With the proper care, one can make those outperform a chip that (and subsequent chipset and memory) that is often 2-3 times the cost of the tweaker chip and supporting components.
I'm perceiving my modest 1GHz Athlon desktop as sounding like a vacuum cleaner. I dare not envision how the monsters in the article would sound. Who would like to shell out $4K for a machine sounding like a jet engine warming up? Do these gamers live far into the woods, where they can crank up their 900 watt speakers in order to hear anything in a game like Thief (where the audio clues is most important)? Or did they accomplish the same thrashing of their eardrums by using head phones on maximum volume? How else can they stand the noise?
What fun is a "super gaming rig" if you can only stand sitting near it for 15 minutes?
Personally, I'd rather pay a premium for a quiet machine. I'd pay as much as 50% extra to get a silent desktop. Until some progress is done on the noise arena, I'm sticking to my silent IBM laptops. For me gaming on a PC is dead and will be until the manufacturers start taking this problem seriously.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
What is the point of raid 0? All it does is square the probability of your new extra-big drive failing.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Battlefield and UT2k3 don't even come close, either... A $600 comp will easily run those at 90fps+
Doom3 will not run like that on anything today, btw.
And as it's been said before, the whole system could be built for about under $1400 at newegg, and if you went down to your local PC shop for someone to put it together, it would probably cost $100 at the most.
If you spent $3000 on a PC, just max it out with top-of-the-line products, then buy an entire TERABYTE, or more, of hd space. Believe me, it can be used easily with broadband if you're a power downloader/ripper.
Besides, overclocking sucks -- it's like driving 80MPH in a 75MPH zone speed-wise, except it gets you in a lot of more trouble. Unless you have one of those 300A/1.5As that magically double themselves, of course...
Ok, we've all establised these systems are overpriced for what they offer. And that the only people who would be interested, are people who want watercooling, and a clear side.
Does anyone see the problem here?
The case is designed for LAN parties, etc, as is the spec.
But anyone who goes to LAN parties, or anything like them, generally knows a bit about computers, enough to avoid this computer.
so why would anyone buy one, unless they had enough money (so we can rule out a lot of people) who thought they were keen enough to validate this spend, but don't know what they are buying?
Funny, I just overclocked a 1.6ghz P4 to 2.13ghz with the retail heatsink and fan.
It hasn't been rebooted in nearly 2 months.
Now compare the price/performance difference between a 1.6ghz/400FSB P4 and a 2.13ghz/533FSB P4.
Looks like a bargain to me.
The irony is, that people who'd spend 3000-4000$ on such a system could very well afford new processors whenever they think it's necessary.
I think this system is most suitable for boasting.
where's all that Karma?
In two years, it'll be two hundred.
In three years, you can trade it for a chokolate bar if you want to drag the thing home.
It's the curse of Moore (or blessing, if you didn't buy it right away).
.
Why don't you just take her to bed?
I would. A $145 1.8a overclocked to 2.6-2.7 on stock voltage (or very close to it) with the retail heatsink/fan? Thats a damn good deal-about $300 savings at the least.
I see this as fundamentally flawed.
Most of the same enthusiasts that this is aimed towards, especially those needing/desiring watercooling, are going to do it themselves. They could build this system for $1500.
Not to mention the fact that they would do it anyways just out of the sheer enjoyment of tinkering with their machines.
Plus, they get to pick exactly what parts they want, not whatever the company decides to put in there.
There is the issue of a warantee, being able to send it back if it blows up... But is this worth the extra $1500-$2000? Absolutely not. You could build an entirely new system for that price.
Competition is so hard, and it goes against the tradition.
After all, look how bad it turned out for AMD, nVidia, Via, Sony, even Microsoft (and Linux) to try to compete when there was already a dominant marketshare "owned" by someone else.
Handicapped people are afraid of being rejected and often carry the burden of an entire history of rejections. Please don't add to that burden.
If someone brought that thing to a LAN party, trying to show it off, and said they spent $4000 on it, they would be LAUGHED OUT of the LAN party!
yet again we have another story posted at least 2 days ago on news.com.com and them nicely mirrored here at crashdot.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer khuber was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
... and then we overclock the video card!
-- Dr. Eldarion --
And with my current affliction with strategy games, that should make my copy of Moonbase Commander, Brood War, and Zeus run at a blistering 7 hojillion FPS.
- walls effect that is so damnably elusive.
Honestly people, we need to tell these people to patch the retail release IN THE BOX BEFORE I GET IT, and not worry so much about setting three programmers to really solve the "problem" with that pesky realistic-looking-liquified-guts-sliding-down-the
Well, I for one want gameplay. Most people do. That is why right now my wife is having an affair and is about to leave me for an Italian plumber from the mushroom kingdom. You should hear the answering machine messages. Half of my caller ID logs come from the Koopa kingdom.
Really people. Get a grip. Its almost as though game companies hire a bunch of obsessed nerds and then forget their target market, purpose of the game, most people's systems requirements, and their budget releasing some crap into the world that... oh.
Nevermind.
I think this Hot Rod configuration gives way better value for money. Pretty damn good system for $1600.
You're ignoring the money factor. It's not a matter of "let's push a brand new bleeding edge chip to a speed they won't match for 'a few weeks'", it's a matter of "let's buy a slightly older chip which can be clocked up to better performance and save some money which can then go to a better video card/faster hard drive etc."
My main question about this article is how they plan to warranty a system that they encourage overclocking on...
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Seriously. Well put man.
I am one of those gamers that spends about that amount of money on the latest hardware. Yes, 3-4 thousand dollars to build a computer for gaming. I do that about twice a year. It's a hobby, both the gaming and the box-building. I do have other hobbies (and work) so at some point I might be tempted to 'upgrade' the easy way and just shell out the $$ instead of building it myself. Most of the 'work' in building these machines by far is the research. Having a company claim to have done the research to build a gaming system sounds like an interesting attempt at the least.
;-)
I can asure you that $3000 is easily spend on:
- Intel 2.8GHz at roughly $550
- Latest graphics card, currently the ATI 9700 family for about $400
- NEC 21" monitor for $800 (I actually bought a Sony 24" for $2000...Not a good buy)
- 2*512 DDR PC-2700 from Crucial for $360
- Adaptec ATA RAID for $390
- 2*100Gb IBM HD for $240
- Motherboard, sound, mouse, other perifirals $500
we are at $3240 without any games to play
yeah, these choices are not the cheapest solutions. You can save about 50% of the price giving in only about 10% performance. I'm just telling you there is a (small) market for these systems.
Anyway, back to CounterStrike at 1 BILLION frames per second
Let me tell you something, my friend. I'm a college student at Roger Williams University, living in the Cedar freshman hall. The room across the hall from me, and the one next door, are both quads occupied by extremely attractive, cool women who are - ahem - not neccessarily conservative socially. But instead of talking with any of the many attractive women on my floor,
I'm posting to slashdot. What does this tell you?
That said, if I want a top-notch prebuilt gaming system, I'll save a grand or two and buy alienware.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The problem with overclocking are the overclockers themselves. "Yeah, I'm really sticking it to the man!" "They're trying to defraud us on these chips!" "That's how they get you, dude, they underrepresent the chips true speed so they can rip you off" Gah, it's just so pathetic.
They, TigerDirect, are not on the up-and-up. We had a deal with them to sell our product based on information presented by a TigerDirect sales manager and most of what he said was not true. And now we are not getting paid as per our agreement.
I wouldn't purchase from them OR SELL THROUGH THEM unless your money came for free.
Why would anyone pay three thousand dollars for a PC to play games?? Earlier this week - Slashdot ran a thread about PCs Losing Out as a Gaming Platform?. Game companies are developing for consoles first. PC games typically involve an hour or more (if you're lucky) of patch / configuration hell vs. load and go with console games. Soon most consoles will support broadband and multiplayer games. They might be able to sell a $3000 box to a business for CAD applications, but as a gaming box; high end PC's are dead.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Wait, wasn't that the HOT Rod and Hot Wheels PC offered with the Barbie PC?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Okay, my bad. Shoulda pointed out the lack of a gf.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The hair was shaved off for convenience, and I bike/walk everywhere I go. It's the "Say hi/look them in the eye" part that's hard. :-)
I'm the stranger...posting to
That will take care of the HOT part of the Hotrod pc. As for the ROD part, just install anything from Micro$oft, you'll be sure to get the rod from them!
| - | - |
The "overclocking saves money" thing is false.
What does it take to successfully overclock? Good fans. More of them. Heatsinks. Et cetera.
You end up spending more on cooling devices, negating any savings.
Besides, overclocking fucks things up. And it's for hopeless dorks.
I cringed when I saw the name TigerDirect. They're the ones who make crappy advertisements on PCWorld magazine.
AlienWare does a similar thing, but I've heard much better things about them than this Systemax company - they've been tagged the Cadillac of computers.
Not to mention, a high-end machine costs, at most, around/less than $3000.
Heh, want a Barbie computer? They've got 'em at PC Liquidator. Warning: this is basically an i810 with no way of upgrading the video. Which means good luck trying to play games on this puppy.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
With a 50% increase in clock speed, overclocking was well worth it. Even when I spent almost as much on my cooling solution as I did on the processor ($55 for former, $65 for latter). It let me build a system I was happy with for 2+ years at an unbeatable price.
Later, I went to a 800MHz Celeron. Just as I was considering pushing it to a 1.8GHz Celeron through an upgradeware upgrade, a fellow LANner managed to snap two capacitors off my motherboard and fry the whole box. (Don't ask how - and no, he's not going to pony up).
I just didn't see the point in upgrading my box except with processor b/c I was maxed with 1GB of RAM and the box performed (almost) flawlessly. Need ATA-133, pop in a card. Yeah, I only had AGP 2x, but I held my own fraggin' with a low-end GeForce2. If it hadn't been for the accident, I wouldn't have upgraded.
Now I'm the proud owner of a Shuttle SS51G-based system. With a DVD-burner, a smokin' WD 120GB drive, and a GeForce4 Ti 4600 w/VIVO. I wanted to wait for the Athlon/nForce2 based systems to come out in October, but I had a dead box and couldn't really wait. Being an old-school overclocker, I decided to see how far the CPU would go:
I started with a stock 2.4GHz rev B Pentium 4 and cranked it up to 2.52GHz. Went a tad higher, but had to clear CMOS and start over. When I benchmarked the system at different speeds, there was negligible difference. Why make the extra heat? Bah.
My system absolutely smokes. I'm extremely happy and if current trends continue, I won't feel the need to replace this box for another 3-4 years. And the size is perfect for toting to LAN parties. Now I just need a sweet LCD monitor without tracies....
you are a fuckin idiot who doesn't even know how to unlock an athlon. so please don't let your finger write checks that your body can't cash. go check out something like www.hardocp.com thats Hard Over Clockers Paradise. read a few pages there before thinking you have any fuckin idea about overclocking.
My NEC 1550M that I have hooked up to my SS51G (w/Geforce4 4400, same WD 120GB HD, etc) works pretty slick. Response time is *very* good; close enough to a regular monitor that I really don't notice at all, at least not in the UT2003 demo or BattleField 1942.
:)
That said, when I'm at home, the 15" LCD is only my auxiliary display--still using my 19" trinitron as my main one. Want an 18" LCD though
...a window in the case.
/. crowd. How many geeks would put a neon light inside a overclocking box so hot it needs water cooling?
I have a feeling this is not aimed at the
To paraphrase Robin Williams: "Double XX boxen are God's way of telling you you have too much money." The target market is the same as the average Wall Street cocaine dealer: Guys who want to impress their friends with their electronics purchases (but limited to those with gullible friends).
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Say they project selling 100 of these a month for $3000 with a $1000 cost to them. To put it formally w/ business jargon:
Fixed Costs
$100,000 / Month (i know...this is very rough!)
Average Sales Revenue
$300,000 / Month
Average Gross Profit Per Sale
$2,000
Average Gross Profit Percentage
67%
Break Even Point
$447,761
Which means, to break even (using current costs) they must sell $447,761. Seems like a losing venture to me.
Hard work usually pays off over time, but procrastination pays off now.
1. Which tests? I was under the impression that water cooling a peltier was far superior than blowing hot air over it, and yes I've been reading the [H]ardforums for a few years, too.
2. don't undervalue the noise-reduction. Ever heard a 7000 RPM fan on a copper CPU heatsink? Personally, I cannot stand it for a minute.
3. These are not built for you; they are built for the people who buy little badges that say "R" to replace the "H" on the back of their little car and large-bore aluminum kazoos to undo the work of their muffler. OK, maybe those people would prefer their fans to be heard over all the other PCs at the lan party...
On which planet are they like this? Go get beamed up or something. Anyway, all that empty talk is surely better than the environmentalist anti-capitalism protestors who actually burn tires.
Each of these cults correspond to one of the two antagonists in the age of
Reformation. In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, as in Catholic Europe,
worshipers peer devoutly into screens filled with "icons." All is sound and
imagery and Appledom. Even words look like decorative filigrees in exotic
typefaces. The greatest icon of all, the inviolable Apple itself, stands in
the dominate position at the upper-left corner of the screen. A central
corporate headquarters decrees the form of all rites and practices.
Infalliable doctrine issues from one executive officer whose selection occurs
in a sealed boardroom. Should anyone in his curia question his powers, the
offender is excommunicated into outer darkness. The expelled heretic founds
a new company, mutters obscurely of the coming age and the next computer,
then disappears into silence, taking his stockholders with him. The mother
company forbids financial competition as sternly as it stifles ideological
competition; if you want to use computer programs that conform to Apple's
orthodoxy, you must buy a computer made and sold by Apple itself.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
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