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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."
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."
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
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.
Overclock the CPU and setup a raid 0 so you basically halve the mtbf on the logical volume?
What's the warranty, 12 minutes?
the only reason i would pay for this is maybe the warranty
How do you even begin to attempt to warranty a system which you blantantly overclock beyond the cpu's normal parameters.
joe schmoe: "hello tech support, my 2.8ghz overclocked to 3ghz is fried"
tech support: "Why did you overclock it?"
Joe: "Because that's why I paid 4k dollars for an l33t system that I probably could have built for myself for 100 bucks."
Tech support: "Yeah.. I'm going to have to ask you to not call us again."
Live web cams
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]
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....