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Wahoo P4 Stratagem System Review
Ian Bell writes "Buddhacon reviews the P4 stratagem system from Wahoo Computers. Could this be the most powerful home system on the market? With just about every option available including an overclocked Intel 2.9GHz CPU, Radeon 9700PRO, 1GB of memory and all the cooling features you can think of you would think a system like this would blow the competition away. Just goes to show that sometimes a fine tuned V6 can beat an over the top V8."
But how will it heat my house in the winter?
sorry, I'll stick with an AMD
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Does anyone else think this sounds like Latin crossed with web-dotcom-buzzwords?
Christ people, this is starting to sicken me. I've got an iMac 333 G3, a couple P2 333 and an old P1 90. Unless you're doing something like heavy graphics editing, what the hell would you ever need something this powerful for? And over over six grand?
People, stop trying to build the fastest box imaginable, and thing serious. Use what you need for the job. Save money. Reuse old machines. Don't spend six grand on something you'll never need (well, you will, but probably when it costs more like a thousand bucks). If you can justify having this much power, okay, but otherwise, stop wasting time and money, and killing perfectly usable old boxen.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
but then I have to calculate the cost of savings by going with AMD, vs a P4 and divide that into the supposed heat savings, and I'll probably end up not giving a damn by the end of the calculations....
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Who, in their right mind, would buy one of these for $6536? You could easily build a faster system for 1/3 the price. It seems like a company that just doesn't know how to build computers. It comes with water cooling, but could only be overclock to 2.9GHz before it started becoming unstable. What? Why does it have a Zip drive if it comes with a CD and DVD burner? Why RAID-0 WD1200JB hard drives, and not a Cheetah 15k.3 for a boot drive? And most importantly, they don't seem to know how to ship a computer:
"Due to inadequate mounting procedures, the Radeon 9700's core was ripped from the card during shipping."
Equivalent watercooling System: $300
Enermax 550W Quiet Power Supply: $180
Case Fans: $20 (They're using panaflo L1A's for everything, an excellent choice for a watercooled system, but yes they really are this cheap)
Babybus: $40
Pentium4 3.0ghz
2x HDD Cooler: $25
Top of the line Granite Bay Motherboard: $200 (includes intel 10/100/1000 ethernet)
2x Sticks of 512mb Insane DDR of a brand of your choice : $400
Radeon 9700 pro : $270
Sound Blaster Live! Audigy Platnium : $200 (To anyone considering this -- DO NOT BUY IT -- go with terratek if you truly care about sound!)
2x WD1200JB Hard Drives: $280
Plextor CD-RW + HP DVD+RW Drives : $450
Zip Disk + Floppy: $35
Hardware Modem: $50
WinXP Pro: $170
Total: $3662
That is a FREEGING HUGE PRICE DIFFERENCE. Your paying about $3000 for the case plus them putting it together. I mean, I know that there are people willing to pay quite a premium for a well built system they don't have the time to research -- but jesus chrirst $3000 is nuts. This article is just more free advertising for some random company.
I disagree with your viewpoint. I'm one of those people that upgrades (or rather buy new) their machines as soon as something faster comes round. Why do I do it, as my old machine is obviously fast enough for any normal purpose? Well, a couple of reasons: 1) Games! I play a lot of graphics intensive games that can really use all the oomph you can wring out of the hardware. Call me shallow, and I shall ignore you! ;-)
2) I recycle my old machine to neighbours, friends and charity. Two weeks ago, I gave away my XP2400+/512Mb/180Gb/GnuLinux system to a local organisation that works with handicapped children.
3) I like to build machines from parts I get from all over the place. I usually lead the local stores in performance by at least half a year. Again, I know this is a weird thing but I enjoy that.
Anyway, while I don't *need* to upgrade, I frequently do: about every three months.
Ciao!
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Before people say that this is different because it's a desktop (unmodified), do I need to point out that the average user won't need this much power? The people that buy this will be rich techies, or businesses. Alot of techies prefer dual CPU stuff for the value, so this has no real market. Too new, too expensive.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
"Most powerful home system"? 3.06GHz P4s are available, I don't understand why this system has a 2.8 overclocked to 2.9?
-Berj
" What I'm waiting for is a machine powerful enough to calculate the DNA sequences for artificial life."
Yeah, they should just build that instead of doing these incremental speed increases.
Really, I swear!
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
the reason I would buy the thing is because my penis is small. That machine will make others believe otherwise. Plus it has an AWESOME DVD burner, in blue no less!
Paint.NET, a Free Image Editor, with Source Code Available!
Why are people remotely excited about this?
I figured that some poster had managed to sucker the editors into putting an ad up, but apparently people are really into this.
Can anyone tell me why people *care* about this? There's nothing particularly significant about this computer. It's not on the level of people introducing case windows for the first time, nor is it a never-before-done hardware hack. Some guy tossed a bunch of stuff that's already been done into a case, and is selling it for a *lot* of money. Big whoop.
This doesn't have unparalleled performance, since Sun sells systems that can smoke this thing.
It doesn't let home users do anything they couldn't do before, since no software requires this, and in two years it's going to be a middling system.
It's just another currently high-end x86 system. You can get things like this from a *ton* of vendors, with overclocking even.
May we never see th
Most people don't need a Porsche either, but I sure as hell enjoy mine.
Consider this a "luxery PC" and the market for these items is generally small, but profitable.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
I go to college in a small town, and thus I pay my college bills by working for Best Buy. We carry Alienware systems (well, carry is the wrong word, since they're ordered through our store but there are no pre-built systems kicking around). As I walk by our demo unit, I often ponder the market for systems like Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and these Wahoo Fellas. These guys are all using standard component parts, (in the case of Alienware, readily available cases from Chieftec and standard off-the-shelf boards components). In the case of companies like Wahoo and Falcon Northwest, they even tell you the actual Mobo, RAM, Hard disk, etc. manufacturers. So honestly, where is their market?
Retail Boxed PCs have the ignorant consumer who knows the brand name. Screwdriver shops have the slightly more informed consumer looking to save a buck or get more standardized parts (or the geek who doesn't feel like spending his day off building a PC). But these companies seem to charge an extreme premium for their products, given that most screwdriver shops would sell you the exact same parts and assemble them in the same manner (maybe not this watercooling business, but I know of a couple shops that would probably do that). The best I can figure is heavily spoiled 14 year-old boys who know that the Radeon 9700 is good because they saw it on PlanetQuake, but you can't build a computer company on the whims of 14 year-old boys (can you?!?). So seriously, I'd like some input here. Does anyone own, for example, an Alienware or similar system? Do you know someone who owns one? What was the motivation for the purchase? Since it's the only item I can really quantify that they might offer beyond the local shop, do these "premium" PC companies have tech support that's really that much better (or honestly, necessary) than the screwdriver shop that'll sell you the same PC, built with the same parts, for $500 less?
why do we always get this idiotic V6, V8 and turbo crap? A V6 of x displacement will be broadly equivalent in power and torque output to a V8 of the same displacement - the car engine/CPU analogy NEVER FUCKING WORKS.
So stop it.
That was classic intercourse!
...it might just be me, but I swear the first page says it has a 2.8 P4 overclocked to 2.9, but the last pages says a 2.53 and no mention of overclocking.
I would hate to pay $6500 and be slighted 370 mhz of performance...
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
It doesn't matter if this computer is a good deal or a bad one, if the components are well chosen or not, if the construction quality is amazing or if the whole thing just looks cheesy, the real question is this: how is this news?
Someone throws standard retail components into a custom-designed case, sells it for way more than it's worth, and somehow we care?
Computers are not cars, there is no art to tweaking them at the hardware level. Put prefabricated components together in the right way, and you have a computer. There are many hardware sites dedicated to this; let this kind of article be posted there.
This whole case-modding culture is a joke if you think about it. It's the computer equivalent of bored rich kids paying someone to put the world's largest spoiler on a civic.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
No, this is a long way from the best system I have ever seen. I'm going to be harsh and say why...
What's with the shitty toggle switch "baybus" fan controllers? The site reports that the fans don't even start on the lowest speed. That isn't good engineering, and they shouldn't really ship a product like that. I would expect all the fans to be intelligently controlled by a microprocessor independant of the motherboard. This would include fan failure detection, CPU throttling etc.
They've put a live drive behind a door... erm, isn't that a little stupid? Now you're going to have to leave the door open all the time, or hack a hole in it, or not use the live drive.. oh well/
Raid 0 with no proper backup? I don't think so. I've seen far too many people lose data on raid 0 now to ever use it. At this kind of price, it would be nice to see two very fast and small scsi drives raided for a boot drive. Then larger IDE drives for data. But still no raid 0.
There seems to be some confusion about SCSI and IDE. People suddenly thought that IDE drives were better, especially in RAIDs... and it's plain wrong. SCSI is more reliable (the drives are built far better), it is faster, the bus is quicker. When you are doing things like photo or video editing, then having a fast page file and scratch disk is very important. SCSI has lower access and seek times, and the difference notices a hell of a lot.
The paint job looks pretty shite as well.
I just don't believe they are charging that much for this system. It's not amazing or anything.
Something that beats it? Go to The Overclocking Store and take a look at their Advance Micronics systems. Refigerator based cooling, complete systems, which are better configured and specced. You get an LCD and bluetooth mouse and keyboard for less than the system in the slashdot story. But...
Why did I buy alienware? Summer before last my computer began to break down - CD burner and monitor both died about a week apart, and the main hard drive started misbehaving - and since it was a 4 year old box I started looking at my replacement options...
I originally looked at purchasing parts and assembling a system piecemeal. I discovered that living where I did (middle of nowhere town in NEw Brunswick, Canada) I'd have to have everything shipped - most of it from the states. After I totaled up the cost of shipping and customs duties for the parts, and then factored in the time required for me to assemble it, I realized it would be about the same cost as buying what I wanted, pre=assembled and warrentied, from Alienware (w/free shipping). Free shipping really helped - as well as the fact that when my nice big Alienware box crossed the border the customs official informed me that as an international student residing temporarily in Canada I wasn't required to pay duty (something I wouldn't have discovered if I had made a bunch of small purchases not requiring me to speak on the phone with customs).
As for what they offer as added value, the support people that I talked to when I had problems with my box were first-rate. The ONLY help desk people I've ever spoken with who didn't treat me like a moron and actually listened to me.
In July O7, I got a mac pro. There's no punchline. Just endless joy and wonder.
The small cylinder, high-reving V8 should indeed have higher bhp. This can translate directly into higher top speeds, and will allow better use of gears (more time in lower gears). It will also be smoother (more, smaller sparks), which is why luxury cars almost always come with V8s or even V12s.
The V6, while not reving as high, will have a stronger torque curve (each pulse provides more raw power) and, as was originally posted, can rev faster (but to a lower maximum rpm).
This helps to explain why Ferraris run V12s while Semis run V8s. The Ferrari is faster, but a nice diesel semi will be substantially more powerful.
Or, to bring it back to computer terms, bandwith != latency.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I can see the difference between 25 and 50 fps, but a game running at 25 fps (or even 15 fps) doesn't bother me much, as long as the framerate stays constant. What bothers me more is when a game runs at 100 fps most of the time, then slows down to 3 when there is lots of action on screen, then speeds up again.
Not really. Server chipsets are optimized for I/O, processor and reliability, not graphics. Dell uses Serverworks and Intel E7500 chipsets. The AGP performance you need for gaming would lag behind the desktop chipsets.
Still, if you didn't need the AGP performance, a Poweredge 1600SC with dual 2.4Ghz Xeons, 1GB RAM and a 10K rpm SCSI drive runs you about $2000. Dual 2.8G Xeons is about $800 more.