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Review: Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 7800 SLI Gaming
The system itself is as below:
Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
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Power Supply: Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 w/SLI Support 600W Power Supply
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
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Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
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Heat Sink: Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan
Memory: 2 GB (4 pcs 512MB) DDR (400) PC-3200 Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO)
Hard Drives: 1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD), 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS)
RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup
DVD-RW: Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA
Floppy: Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black)
Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI
Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound
Wireless NIC: D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter
Industry Standard Upgradable
USB Ports on front of case
6 Month Warranty - Free tech support
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All Monarch PCs include: 48-72 hr. Burn-in Diagnostic (to ensure all components are malfunction free); Latest BIOS, drivers, and tested patches installed (All drivers are also included on CD); award-winning assembly and installation including tie-off on all cables (for improved airflow); final 62-point inspection by Intel and AMD Certified Technicians, and Free Unlimited Phone Support. All manuals, disks, cables and other accessories included with your retail components will be included with your system.
As is fairly obvious, the machine's specs are pretty hardcore. In doing some of the standard testing, the system turned out a 3DMark05 test of 13,002 whichout missing a beat. Similarly, the Sysmark04 score was a studly 225. To be blunt, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before - in real life, that is.
What was even more impressive for me at least was the machine's ability to handle that most important of tasks - playing games. Playing Doom 3, with all graphic options cranked (including the console accessible ones) this machine still turned out a 80.2 FPS. Turning off the console options, and just going in ultra-mode had a frame rate of 87.3, sustained. My other gaming obessions, World of Warcraft (Props to Ajul-Nerub server!) managed to turn in a more paltry 77.3 FPS, but given the fact that you are often depending on your connection with WoW for some of that, that's pretty amazing. DivX encoding was also quite fast - 1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.
The more subtle touch on the machine was evident as well - you can open the thing up from multiple angles, with a swing front door on it, and the lighting was handled nicely. And given the machine's power and draw, I was fairly impressed with the noise from the various fans. The heat output from the machine is fairly impressive; you'll not need that space heater in the room anymore in the winter time, but the actual heat inside of the machine case, and CPU always stayed well within manufacturer recommended ranges. While running the very high-end graphic testing of Doom 3, the temp did get some spikes, but nothing that was concerning. The nVidia 7800 duals make a huge difference.
One of the other features that I liked is the fast primary drive, and back-up, slower, but RAIDed drives. It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives. The other comment I would make, speaking as an obessive wire organizer, is that the machine itself ships very very nicely tied off cabling-wise. I think this looks nice, but also, I would suspect, makes a appreciable difference to the heat flow. One other important note is that they offer a 3 year 24/7 support plan - all warranties are different options, 'course.
In short, the machines rocks. The issue, of course, is the pricing - but if you are looking for a top end machine, this is a phenomenal rig. Monarch does a great job of supporting the product, with a great packet of documentation and information that comes with the machine, but also active forum postings and involvement from the tech support on their boards. Great company, great machine.
[x] Memory: 2 GB [Check]
[x] Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939) [Check]
[x] Hard Drives: 1 x 74 GB SATA, 2 x 250 GB SATAII
[x] Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB
This extreme gaming platform should meet the minimum requirements to play Solitare under Windows Vista. For those planning on gaming on Vista, how much more muscle can you pack into this rig?
The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000.
Ah, part of the TCO equation! But, heck, you should be able to buy this system for $3000 a year from now. Funny how this pricing reminds me of what it cost to have 1 PC XT with MS-DOS on it back in the mid-eighties.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Base Price: $4,589.00
;-)
Holy CRAP that's expensive! And that's (apparently) without the monitor! If I may suggest, you should be able to build the same machine for about half the price, perhaps a bit more.
Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4
Sweet! They chose my favorite board! I have the A8N-E board (same thing, but only one Vid card) and I must say that it is a VERY nice board. Practically everything you could ever want is built in. NForce4 chipset, Gigabit ethernet, PCI Express, 8 channel audio, 10 USB ports, hardware firewall, hardware RAID support, 4 SATA-300 (aka SATA-II) connectors, IDE support, nearly all AMD64 chips supported, etc. I haven't found a better board, especially in that price range!
Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound
Can anyone explain what is up with this? The board comes with 8 channel sound built in. What do you need a separate sound card for? Is the sound quality really that much better?
BTW, if you get the A8N board, don't get the ASUS Star ICE. I've got one of those things and I'm now using it as a desk ornament. I just wanted an extra fan to keep things cool. I had no idea that I'd get a friggin' JET ENGINE! (I'm not kidding either. This thing can barely fit in the case when installed.) It gets great comments from my coworkers though. "What the HELL is that!?"
If you don't believe me on its size (no one ever does) just look at this pic.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I hope it pays for the hosting costs... or the editor's training :)
how much power this baby needs ?
Does it come along with it's small nuclear power plant ?
This just in: a computer built with the highest end components yields the highest end performance.
This was the most blatant advertisement as an "article" that I have ever seen. Too bad Monarch's servers can't handle the load; it makes the advertisement far less effective.
1574 seconds on the sample size that I used.
Wow, that't amazingly fast!
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
they list a feature on the motherboard, "IEEE". Do they realize that IEEE is an orginization, and not a part? The number that goes after IEEE is more important, like 802.11 or 1394
"Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI"
:)
No game manufacturer is going to make a game that REQUIRES so much brute-force GPU power to play...that would kill the market. All this would do is make games playable with insane settings like 4x FSAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering. But most gamers (read: the average gamer) can't tell the difference between different levels of anisotropic, or the difference between 2x and 4x FSAA unless they stop and look at the screen. When is the last time you ran through the jungle in Far Cry and said to yourself while being chased by a mutant monkey with uncanny ability to maul, "Damn these leaves need to lose some jaggies"?
The point is that as soon as games come out that need next generation GPU's, your SLI system is obsolete because it likely won't have HARDWARE features to perform next-generation effects. The analogy I like to make is that 4 GeForce 4 MX's can't match a single GeForce 4 Ti 4200 because the 4 MX doesn't have hardware shaders while the Ti does. So is it really worth dropping that extra money (don't forget, your mobo needs to have extra PCI x 8 or x 16 slot as well, so there is a little extra cost there too)?
That being said, this system you posted is quite beastly
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI Audio, GB-LAN, IEEE, USB, PCI-E, SATAII w/RAID, DDR-400, ATX
Wow, there's an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers integrated on the motherboard? No wonder it's such an expensive setup...
Why does Hemos think that backing things up to a RAID0 which is "slower" is a convenient thing?
RAID0 is FASTER than a single drive configuration, because you're doubling the number of spindles and heads working together. It also offers NO REDUNDANCY so backing up anything to a RAID0 is completely and utterly retarded. He's got everything ass-backwards.
This is why reviews on Slashdot are moronic, whether it's Zork's misinformed and useless game reviews or hardware reviews by the tech-uneducated editors. Stick to linking to real review sites guys, please.
Now watch in a day there will be a Slashdot story linking to Hemos's review...
"I want to get more into theory, because everything works in theory." -John Cash
Who said anything about enthusiasts? I'm actually puzzled the moderations are leaning towards funny, because I really was trying to make a non-humourous point. It's perhaps funny-ironic, the ultimate system will hardly be the minimum for the next OS release from the vender most people get their work/entertainment environment from.
That mid-eighties box, which cost about $3,000 was about a mid to high end model, it had a faster clock, 20 MB HD and a Hercules video card. It was the bare minimum to do work, most of which was running a terminal emulator, but the rest was some work in Turbo C
You can buy a very capable system for $300 at Fry's right now. There's a large gulf between capable for today's OS releases and the one coming out in a year. The big question is, how many suckers are going to bite?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If the original poster is reading this, could you do me a favor and run an Excel benchmark on it, since that's what I'd be using it for?
Get back to me with the results ASAP... the bank just approved my $5k loan.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
My Monarch system took an addition month for tech support to fix. Anything stressing the GPU would cause an instant lockup. I had to update all the firmware myself - it was months out of date. So much for the updates and burn-in. I really wished I had just put it together myself from Newegg. It would have been faster and the returns, if any, would have been easier.
I thought The Monarch's nemesis was Dr. Venture.
[DRTFA]
my pet machine