Review: Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 7800 SLI Gaming

A couple weeks back now, I had the pleasure of testing and using Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 8700 SLI Gaming machine. This model is a top-of-the-line gaming rig; I'm currently testing the Hornet machine as well. Read below for my take on the machine.

One of the first things that should be acknowledged is that this version of the Nemesis is a very high end gaming machine. The price for the system that I had been testing was over $5000. There's the scary-fast base system itself, but then you throw on full THX surround sound, the customzied keyboard and mouse that Monarch produces - and while you are talking about top-dollar, you are also talking about top performance.

The system itself is as below:

Case: Thermaltake Custom Painted Shark Full Tower Aluminum Case Series w/Window (Fire Pearl)
View

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
View

Processors: AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939)
View

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
View

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.

Monarch

[AlienSexist]

I've bought Monarch computers before, usually on the value-end for simple workstations. They held up fairly well. But there was always some small problem like a CD burner never worked on a new system, or the CPU fan would die and nuke the CPU. I'm sure they love you plugging their products on such a major website. Did you disclose if you work for them or not?

Re:My favortie board

[Sduic]

Integrated sound is going to require more CPU time. If you can offload it to a card, you can leave the processor for more important things.

Re:My favortie board

[AKAImBatman]

I thought that's what the built-in RealTek ALC850 [realtek.com.tw] chip was supposed to do?

Speaking of which, DO NOT install the nForce drivers under Linux! They are WAY out of date and will just screw stuff up. Just get the latest version of non-Kernel ALSA and you should be fine. The ethernet is already supported.

The GeForce drivers should work without a hitch, though.

Re:My favortie board

[iainl]

One of the guys at work brought his in because he didn't want it any more (replaced it with something smaller that still did the job). It's huge, but more importantly to me it weighs an absolute ton! There's no way I'd want something that heavy hanging on to the motherboard like that; I'd be too worried about it stressing the material to damaging point.

In fact, it's so heavy I'd be worried about the damage it could do to all the AGP and PCI cards on the way down as it broke off, too.

SLI is always a waste

[vectorian798]

"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 :)

Re:RAID Setup: RAID 0 (Zero) Setup

[AKAImBatman]

FYI, the A8N board has a couple different hardware RAID configurations built in. If you don't like the RAID 0, you can reconfigure. Here's a list I pulled from here [directron.com]:

NVRAID: RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA.

Re:Monarch

[KavyBoy]

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.

Re:My favortie board

[ALpaca2500]

the real answer to why it has an Audigy 2 ZS is that the audigy supports EAX 4, which a lot of games use for positional audio, to take the strain off the CPU and boost performance.

Newegg Cost

[DnemoniX]

Just out of sheer morbid curiousity I priced this out on Newegg, grand total minus shipping and any applicable tax was $3,702.95 not a bad mark-up they have going there. But if you put it together yourself you won't get the swanky paintjob. But then again you won't get the retarded disk configuration either.

Thermaltake Shark Tower Black - $169.00
Enermax Noisetaker EG701AX-VE-SFMA ATX 2.0 - $149.99
Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4 SLI - $175.00
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (939) - $1,011
Zalman CNPS7000-CU Copper CPU Fan - $42.99
4 x Corsair w/LED Display (TWINX1024-3200XLPRO) - $430
1 x Western Digital 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor (WD740GD) - $183.00
2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB SATAII 16MB Cache 7200 RPM (WD2500KS) - $237.98
Plextor PX-716SA DVD±RW 16x8x16x DVD+RW 48x24x48x CD-RW SATA - $116.99
Mitsumi Floppy 7-in-1 USB Card Reader/Smart Media Drive (Black) - $21.00
2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI - $928.00
Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum INT Drive Sound - $176.00
D-Link DWL-AG530 Tri-Mode Dualband (2.4/5GHz) Wireless 108Mbps PCI Adapter - $62.00

Re:There's Nothing Cool about Creative

[HazE_nMe]

My friend's Audigy 2 ZS Platinum has more than just a slew of 1/8" miniplugs on the front bay.
Headphone Out (1/4" Stereo Jack)
Line In 1 (1/4" Stereo Jack , shared with Microphone In with Gain Control)
Line In 2 (1/4" Stereo Jack)
Line In 3 (2x RCA Jack)
Optical SPDIF In/Out
Coaxial SPDIF In/Out
Digital Out for 5.1 support (6-channel SPDIF Output to Creative digital speakers)
MIDI In / Out
With the ASIO 2.0 drivers for low latency (as low as 2ms) multi-track playback and recording at 16-bit/48kHz or 24-bit/96kHz, we have even been able to do a little multi-track recording for their band.
If you think that all Audigy cards only come with the old 1/8" miniplugs, then you clearly don't know what you're talking about...