Review: Monarch Computer's Nemesis FX-57 7800 SLI Gaming 299
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.
My favortie board (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [mwave.com] for about half the price, perhaps a bit more.
Asus A8N-SLI Premium nForce4
Sweet! They chose my favorite board! [blogspot.com] 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 [64.233.167.104] 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 [viperlair.com]. 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 [viperlair.com].
Fine but... (Score:3, Interesting)
how much power this baby needs ?
Does it come along with it's small nuclear power plant ?
RAID-0 (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd rather have two RAID-1 arrays, one small and fast and one larger and slower. But maybe l33t gamers don't care about their data.
Re:Monarch (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder what they do for burn in?
My experience is the same as yours with monarch, neither the system, or the complete board (MB+CPU+DDR+fan) I got worked right at first, and took 3 returns of the system, for them to get it so it could even boot a linux install cd (apperently was bad memory.)
this might be industry standard for discounters for all I know though. They did get the system working again, but not worth the down time.
Re:The Bare Minimum -- Cost to Enthusiasts? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:My favortie board (Score:3, Interesting)
You obviously haven't been keeping up with onboard sound tech. SoundStorm provides full hardware acceleration (and dolby digital encoding in real time) in 5.1 surroud, and even provides optical out. Even your basic RealTek chip will please anyone but the most picky audiophile. All of this and you don't even lose many, if any at all, cpu cycles since there are DSP's involved.
Also, Creative's drivers are notorious for sucking unnecessary CPU time, so your 0-3% estimate is way off.
I have bought a PC From Monarch (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Their prices are about as good as those you find on pricewatch for components.
2) I had a tech issue and they did respond to me. It was my error. They also seemed to be helpful on their forums.
3) They claim to do a burnin but they did not - I know because of the progress reports on the website and because the MB I have records how much time it has been on. They may have reset the HD counter - it showed only 6 hours - but there progress reports did not allow enough time for it to burn in as long as they say it would.
4) I would probably buy from them again.
SLI is kinda cool, and is not just for gaming =) (Score:3, Interesting)
-chitlenz
Good and bad points (Score:1, Interesting)
Power supply. Excellent beast - among the best powersupplies there is, and very quiet for the power (the PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI has a Delta fan in it = loud, the OCZ Powerstream is good if you like LED fans and manually adjustable voltage rails, and there's nothing else in that quality bracket except the nutty PC Power & Cooling 850, and the Enermax Galaxy 1K, and that's more for dualies and graphics workstations). I have the same PSU myself; had to RMA the first one due to the 3.3V line riding at 3.94V, but RMA was extremely swift - the other one is flawless, and I think that speaks better for the quality of the Enermax customer service than it does for the occasional inevitable defect. Good choice.
Motherboard: I have the exact same motherboard. Flawless (better than the Deluxe model, and the others). Chipset uses a heatpipe, so no chipset fan. SLI doesn't need an edge connector to swap. And it's a good overclocker (second only to the leading DFI, whose higher memory voltages can push it towards the nutty Redline RAM).
Processor: Nutty overkill, gotta love it. Might hit 3GHz, but maybe not on that heatsink. And no point with that heatsink with SLI; the machine will not be quiet, deal with it, just keep Deltas and Tornados away. Maybe get the FX-55 and overclock it 200MHz and save a whole bundle on cash, and I think the Thermalright XP-120 (which is enormous, but does fit on that board, and cools the heatpipe radiator excellently), and a 120mm Panaflo fan would be better choices. Also, for the same price, you could get a X2 4800+; I know this is billed as a gaming PC, but games *will* be dualcore as it gets more popular, dualcores are just plain smoother to use (even Steam doesn't freeze as much) and if you want a little futureproofing... well, you can still swap it out later, I guess, that's the beauty, and it's a good choice. FX-57: Part of the reason this machine is stupidly expensive.
Memory: *Poor* choice. Can't run 1T with four sticks. 1GB sticks are decent now, and a matched pair of 1GB sticks will work MUCH better - Corsair have two suitable ones, but I suggest the OCZ Platinum. That way you'll get lower memory timings, and crucially to 1T, which does make a measurable difference in framerate in some games (which tend to like lower latency memory, than clockspeed).
System HDs: Two Raptors in RAID-0. You can't argue with that; mainstay of many a high end gamer's system; they really reduce load times and improve the performance like you wouldn't believe, and you won't do any better without resorting to SCSI or Fibrechannel, and the Cheetah X15.4 or Maxtor Atlas -- and they cost a bomb, and drop like flies. For those sticklers about "reliability" - don't be stupid, it's the system drive. You need SPEED on the system drive, and RAID-0 delivers - if a drive goes, it goes, you replace it and reinstall Windows or restore from the ghost image you kept on the storage drives, bleh. Your data storage should be the *other* pair. Raptors are very reliable, if they aren't first-week failures, anyway. Good.
Storage HDs: Not as good a choice. They're cheap. At least the 300s, and I'd have preferred to see the WD Caviar 400GB RAID Edition 2, and maybe in a RAID-1 pair (or just separate). I'd say the Hitachi 7K500s, but they get hot, real hot, and that hints at the possibility of early failure.
DVD-RW: I can't argue with that, but I can ask which TLA it is. That drive has a spotty history, and isn't always the best (which is really disappointing from Plextor; I look forward to a higher quality drive in future).
There isn't a CD-RW. That's a mistake, IMHO. DVD-RWs are lacklustre at CD performance, and more easily confused at protection. And this is a gaming PC. Put a Plextor Plexwriter Premium in there, while you still can. Don't ask, just do it. You'll thank me later, when you're ripping audio (your own discs, for personal enjoyment, of course) and making Alcohol images of your game CDs, that the DVD-RW wouldn't touch with a ten foot
1. Read. 2. Think. 3. Post (optional) (Score:2, Interesting)
The review said:
ErMaC spewed forth:
It's quite clear that you did not bother to think about what the review said. The RAIDed drives are 7200 rpm whereas the primary is 10K. So, he was right. The RAIDed drives are slower than the primary. Furthermore, the fact that he said "but RAIDed" suggests a contrast against the relative slowness. It's obvious he understands that even though the drives are slower, the RAID configuration should overcome that.
Now, the review did say "back-up" drives. Perhaps a poor choice of words, but he goes on to explain: "It's nice for installing high access demand apps on the primary, but using the other drives as storage drives." This suggests that he uses them as regular storage drives. You know, like for normal data storage, not for backing up data.
Re:The Bare Minimum -- Cost to Enthusiasts? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is so right.
These 3yo specs are still more than sufficient for the vast majority of people, including (non-teenage boy) gamers:
Purposefully no mention of disk space, because that need is always growing.