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."

Comments

go AMD

[cdf12345]

But how will it heat my house in the winter?

sorry, I'll stick with an AMD

wtf

[CySurflex]

reviews the P4 stratagem system from Wahoo

Does anyone else think this sounds like Latin crossed with web-dotcom-buzzwords?

Heat to cost radio

[cdf12345]

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....

Overpriced systems are newsworthy?

[Unoriginal Nick]

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."

NOT WORTH IT

[Chuu]

I have been building my own systems for quite a while. This system is a nice one . . . but $6500 jesus christ! And it's not even top of the line -- for some reason they are using a P4 2.5ghz @ 3.0ghz, instead of a true 3.0 with hyperthreading. This leads me to believe it was an old review. Anyways, back to the price issue, if I was to put an equivalent to that system (i.e. top of the line now, instead of top of the line then) into a decent case:

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 /w HT gaurenteed to overclock nicely: $700 (note this is about $400 more then the CPU they are using)

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.

Re:NOT WORTH IT

[darkov]

The problem is that the people with enough money to buy this sort of stuff most often have the least knowledge or time to put one together. And the time factor is substatial. When it starts flaking out on you intermitently you can't just dump it on the vendor. You have to pull out or replace each bit until you find out whats going on. Ror your average nerd this is no problem since they have lots of time on their hands -pesky things like girlfriends or lives don't sap their tinker time, but for most people they have better things to do.

So yes, you're right, but there is obviously a market for this sort of stuff.

Re:I'm sorry, but WTF would you ever need this for

[MrBoombasticfantasti]

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!

Porn is just that much better at 2.9ghz!

[cdf12345]

Really, I swear!

Re:I'm sorry, but WTF would you ever need this for

[craigtay]

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!

I don't get it

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:I'm sorry, but WTF would you ever need this for

[Stanley Feinbaum]

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.

Who is the market for these sorts of computers?

[UserChrisCanter4]

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?

Piece of Crap

[cybergibbons]

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...

Re:V6 and V8 comparisons

[rjstanford]

Ahum, you've got to be kidding. With the same total swept volume, the smaller cilinders of the V8 should make it rev higher, and thus produce more bhp.

Welcome to the difference between torque and horsepower.

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.