ABS Ultimate X9: Core 2 Extreme Hits a Speed Bump
by Jarred Walton on August 18, 2006 1:35 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Internals and Construction
As we saw from the rear view, ABS has basically included everything the typical gamer could dream of putting in a top-performing system. With all of the features and components, many systems can and do suffer from cable clutter. Thankfully, ABS has done a decent job at keeping most of the cables tied down and out of the way.
With the water cooling adding additional tubes to the internal clutter, it's no small feat to maintain a tidy appearance. The end result isn't the absolute best cable management that we've ever seen, but it's more than sufficient and helps in keeping the system properly ventilated. The top area nearest the power supply still has an abundance of cables, but with the required power connections for the HDDs, ODDs, water cooling, fans, GPUs, and motherboard it's difficult to completely eliminate that. The only drawback to having all of the cables tied down and out of the way is that it can make things difficult if you ever need to perform maintenance on the system. Unfortunately, we had to do just that.
When we first received the system, we began conducting our typical stress testing and benchmarking. Several days into the process, the Enermax power supply blew up with a loud pop and a bright flash. The smell of burning electronics filled the room, and we were afraid to find out what had just happened to the powerful system sitting on the floor. Thankfully, a bit of investigation helped us to discover that the only failed component was the power supply, and ABS quickly sent out a replacement.
Unfortunately, replacing a power supply is perhaps the most difficult component to remove from a system -- especially when most of the power cables have been zip-tied into place. Given that the Enermax Liberty PSU is a modular design, we hoped to leave most of the cables in place. However, the original PSU and the replacement PSU were slightly different revisions, with the included cables having a filled-in prong on the power connectors with the new version, so we were forced to replace all of the cables. The good news is that we gained a greater appreciation for all of the work that ABS put into wiring the system and keeping everything tidy. The bad news is that all of the zip ties simply made our job more difficult, and it took a couple hours to get everything more or less back to the original state.
When we say "more or less", we're probably closer to less than more, as the cables never really did look as good as when the system first arrived. We neglected to get pictures before the PSU swap, however, so the cables in the provided images represent our attempt at getting things back in place. The wiring was better before we messed with it, but we didn't have the patience/skill to get the cables back to the original state.
What about the blown power supply? For now, we just have to chalk it up to random bad luck. It appears that the replacement is a later revision, so it's impossible to say how old the original PSU was and what might have been done to it before the system arrived at our location. Even the best power supplies do have periodic failures, and even at full load the power draw of the system is far lower than the rated 620W of the Enermax PSU. We also have to take some consolation in the fact that the PSU did its job properly, failing in a spectacular flash of light and smoke but making sure that nothing else in the system was damaged. The replacement PSU has been running without any difficulty under similar stress conditions for several weeks, so we are optimistic that this was simply a fluke incident.
Returning to the internal construction, one area that does cause us some concern is the location and mounting of the water reservoir/pump. It is rather hard to reach, given the tubes and wires that pass nearby, and it occupies the space that would otherwise be used for 3.5" external drives. As it stands, you cannot put a floppy drive into the system without relocating the pump and reservoir. ABS does give you the option of adding a floppy and/or 3.5" flash memory reader, so perhaps they would install the pump and reservoir in the spare 5.25" bays in such a configuration. We would prefer that the pump be placed there regardless of whether or not a floppy is installed, as even with the death of floppy drives there may be other devices that will work better in a 3.5" bay. As for the pump, it is basically velcroed and wedged into place. The plastic reservoir also doesn't appear to be particularly durable, and we have read reports online of people cracking the reservoir when using mounting screws (which might explain the velcro used by ABS). We did not experience any leaks or other difficulties with the water cooling system, but the smaller tubes leading to the graphics cards seem to be less than optimally effective.
Normally, you want a single circuit for the water to travel through, thus guaranteeing adequate flow to all components. ABS takes a different route, and has a pair of small 3/8" tubes that branch off the main line to cool the two GPUs. We did experience a few crashes (complete system reset without warning) after many hours of intense gaming while the CPU was also under 100% load (two instances of Prime95 running alongside a game, to really stress the system), which seems to support the idea that the GPUs could use additional water flow. The crashes were pretty random in nature and only occurred after extended stress testing, and not always even in similar circumstances. We also experienced a few cases of slight graphical corruption, notably in F.E.A.R. and Quake 4, where green speckles appeared around the screen. As it stands, we have to conclude that the GPUs are getting too warm, due to inadequate water flow. It shouldn't require a massive change for ABS to improve the GPU cooling, but it is unfortunate that a high-end system with water cooling experienced any sort of instability.
Without further time and testing, we can't say for certain that the GPUs caused the reboots/crashes -- it could be the CPU overclock as well, or may a combination of the CPU OC and GPUs. We also only experienced four crashes total, three in Titan Quest v1.08 and one in Serious Sam 2.068, and at least TQ is a recent enough release that there could be other bugs contributing to the instability. However, we didn't experience any crashes with the CPU set at stock speeds, and they also didn't occur except when gaming with the CPU under heavy load. We would qualify the system as 99.9% stable, which means if you play games while for example running Folding@Home 24/7, you might get a periodic crash/reset, particularly during the summer. If you tend to game in 2-3 hour sessions or you don't run other CPU-intensive tasks in the background, you probably won't ever encounter problems.
The biggest issue right now is stability, and we feel ABS should tweak the water cooling to improve cooling for the GPUs. While we were able to deal with the few crashes we experienced, and playing around in the BIOS seems to have improved matters, the typical consumer looking to purchase such a system is far less likely to know how to address instabilities. Enthusiasts and overclockers are used to troubleshooting crashes, but they usually build their own systems to begin with.
As we saw from the rear view, ABS has basically included everything the typical gamer could dream of putting in a top-performing system. With all of the features and components, many systems can and do suffer from cable clutter. Thankfully, ABS has done a decent job at keeping most of the cables tied down and out of the way.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
With the water cooling adding additional tubes to the internal clutter, it's no small feat to maintain a tidy appearance. The end result isn't the absolute best cable management that we've ever seen, but it's more than sufficient and helps in keeping the system properly ventilated. The top area nearest the power supply still has an abundance of cables, but with the required power connections for the HDDs, ODDs, water cooling, fans, GPUs, and motherboard it's difficult to completely eliminate that. The only drawback to having all of the cables tied down and out of the way is that it can make things difficult if you ever need to perform maintenance on the system. Unfortunately, we had to do just that.
When we first received the system, we began conducting our typical stress testing and benchmarking. Several days into the process, the Enermax power supply blew up with a loud pop and a bright flash. The smell of burning electronics filled the room, and we were afraid to find out what had just happened to the powerful system sitting on the floor. Thankfully, a bit of investigation helped us to discover that the only failed component was the power supply, and ABS quickly sent out a replacement.
Unfortunately, replacing a power supply is perhaps the most difficult component to remove from a system -- especially when most of the power cables have been zip-tied into place. Given that the Enermax Liberty PSU is a modular design, we hoped to leave most of the cables in place. However, the original PSU and the replacement PSU were slightly different revisions, with the included cables having a filled-in prong on the power connectors with the new version, so we were forced to replace all of the cables. The good news is that we gained a greater appreciation for all of the work that ABS put into wiring the system and keeping everything tidy. The bad news is that all of the zip ties simply made our job more difficult, and it took a couple hours to get everything more or less back to the original state.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
When we say "more or less", we're probably closer to less than more, as the cables never really did look as good as when the system first arrived. We neglected to get pictures before the PSU swap, however, so the cables in the provided images represent our attempt at getting things back in place. The wiring was better before we messed with it, but we didn't have the patience/skill to get the cables back to the original state.
What about the blown power supply? For now, we just have to chalk it up to random bad luck. It appears that the replacement is a later revision, so it's impossible to say how old the original PSU was and what might have been done to it before the system arrived at our location. Even the best power supplies do have periodic failures, and even at full load the power draw of the system is far lower than the rated 620W of the Enermax PSU. We also have to take some consolation in the fact that the PSU did its job properly, failing in a spectacular flash of light and smoke but making sure that nothing else in the system was damaged. The replacement PSU has been running without any difficulty under similar stress conditions for several weeks, so we are optimistic that this was simply a fluke incident.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Returning to the internal construction, one area that does cause us some concern is the location and mounting of the water reservoir/pump. It is rather hard to reach, given the tubes and wires that pass nearby, and it occupies the space that would otherwise be used for 3.5" external drives. As it stands, you cannot put a floppy drive into the system without relocating the pump and reservoir. ABS does give you the option of adding a floppy and/or 3.5" flash memory reader, so perhaps they would install the pump and reservoir in the spare 5.25" bays in such a configuration. We would prefer that the pump be placed there regardless of whether or not a floppy is installed, as even with the death of floppy drives there may be other devices that will work better in a 3.5" bay. As for the pump, it is basically velcroed and wedged into place. The plastic reservoir also doesn't appear to be particularly durable, and we have read reports online of people cracking the reservoir when using mounting screws (which might explain the velcro used by ABS). We did not experience any leaks or other difficulties with the water cooling system, but the smaller tubes leading to the graphics cards seem to be less than optimally effective.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Normally, you want a single circuit for the water to travel through, thus guaranteeing adequate flow to all components. ABS takes a different route, and has a pair of small 3/8" tubes that branch off the main line to cool the two GPUs. We did experience a few crashes (complete system reset without warning) after many hours of intense gaming while the CPU was also under 100% load (two instances of Prime95 running alongside a game, to really stress the system), which seems to support the idea that the GPUs could use additional water flow. The crashes were pretty random in nature and only occurred after extended stress testing, and not always even in similar circumstances. We also experienced a few cases of slight graphical corruption, notably in F.E.A.R. and Quake 4, where green speckles appeared around the screen. As it stands, we have to conclude that the GPUs are getting too warm, due to inadequate water flow. It shouldn't require a massive change for ABS to improve the GPU cooling, but it is unfortunate that a high-end system with water cooling experienced any sort of instability.
Without further time and testing, we can't say for certain that the GPUs caused the reboots/crashes -- it could be the CPU overclock as well, or may a combination of the CPU OC and GPUs. We also only experienced four crashes total, three in Titan Quest v1.08 and one in Serious Sam 2.068, and at least TQ is a recent enough release that there could be other bugs contributing to the instability. However, we didn't experience any crashes with the CPU set at stock speeds, and they also didn't occur except when gaming with the CPU under heavy load. We would qualify the system as 99.9% stable, which means if you play games while for example running Folding@Home 24/7, you might get a periodic crash/reset, particularly during the summer. If you tend to game in 2-3 hour sessions or you don't run other CPU-intensive tasks in the background, you probably won't ever encounter problems.
The biggest issue right now is stability, and we feel ABS should tweak the water cooling to improve cooling for the GPUs. While we were able to deal with the few crashes we experienced, and playing around in the BIOS seems to have improved matters, the typical consumer looking to purchase such a system is far less likely to know how to address instabilities. Enthusiasts and overclockers are used to troubleshooting crashes, but they usually build their own systems to begin with.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
48 Comments
View All Comments
yyrkoon - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link
Ah sorry, forgot to add, or ask rather, why do tech sites such as yours review OEMs anyhow ? Server equipment I can see, but a gaming / desktop system, I could never understand. Most people who read your site are very technical, and while I cannot speak for everyone, I think its personally a waste of time for you, and your readers(since most of us build our own systems anyhow). Also, again while I cannot speak for everyone, all my systems have_to_be stable, and when I build my own system, they usually either start off stable, or get fixed in the building the system (ironing out flaky software issues). I do not see how a OEM, who is serious about thier product, can put out something that isnt stable, I mean they have a hell of alot more resources than the average Joe such as myself, and yet, ever system I've built over the last 6-8 years (been building my own systems since 92 or earlier) has been 100% stable, usually from the get go. Then again, those of us who are tech savy, know that you never skimp on 3 parts EVER, Motherboard, memory, and PSU . . .JarredWalton - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link
I don't think ABS intentionally skimped on anything here. The problem is simply that they're working on the bugs on a design - I'm not sure if the GPU watercooling is actually coming on any systems right now, but they have said that a new GPU cooling solution should be ready in a month or so.As for why we review OEM systems, I tried to make that clear in the intro. 1) Not all people build their own PCs. 2) Core 2 is currently a bit difficult to find at retail, and you have a better chance of getting it in an OEM system As for the readers, trust me when I say there are a LOT of readers that never read the comments section or post here; with literally millions of readers (Anand could give actual numbers), we basically cater to every corner of the market.
Speaking of 100% stability, I'd wager a lot of systems would be somewhat unstable under the extreme test scenario we used. Two instances of Folding@Home along with running games (real games and not just a demo loop or 3DMark) for hours on end can cause problems on a lot of the overclocked "100% stable" enthusiast systems. I've had Dell and other OEM business computers take a dive in such a scenario.
Xenoid - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
Although not all people build their own computers, I'm sure that if you set up a poll, you'll see that a huge majority here do, so spending all the time on this article is just good comedy for me to laugh at what 13 year old's father is going to buy this for his kid so he can play Counter-Strike on while running 5 viruses simultaneously.As for the stability under 2 instances of F@H with a game on for hours at end... I'm sorry but who on this website is purchasing a computer here for NASA? Anyone? We're not counting the extreme nerds running F@H for a few years until they manage to lose their virginity. Running math programs for hours on end is not exactly my idea of fun or productiveness. There's a huge difference between stability and "stability in case of a nuclear meltdown while running 30 instances of F@H while your wife is screaming at you and your kids are playing with matches".
Stability for most of us means we can run a few programs (a media player, a game, a bittorrent program, a trillian-esque program, and a few other things) while focusing on the game experience and making it top notch and not crashing.
And I wouldn't doubt the ability of a Dell or other OEM business computer to take dives in any situation. That's why most of us don't buy OEM. We like to know how it's getting put together. If you need any more go find some pictures of those Apple laptops that used to ignite themselves and what they looked like inside.
JarredWalton - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
Most people may not plan on running two instances of Folding@Home while playing games, but doing an SMP capable video encode (i.e. DivX) while running a game would place a similar stress on a system. Do you all want to know that a system can run stable under moderate use, or do you want to know that it is truly stable? I suppose we could just run SuperPi 32M once, and if the system completes without errors it must be fully stable, right?Who really knows what programs are going to be like in another year or two -- we might get games that can fully stress both processor cores on their own, along with completely stressing the GPUs. Certainly there are no current games that do that, as Quake 4 tops out at around 75% CPU usage with two cores and that's higher than Oblivion and Call of Duty 2.
Anyway, what else are people going to use quad core or even octal core systems to run at home? At least with Folding@Home people can feel that their computer is doing something potentially useful with its spare clock cycles rather than just consuming electricity. It's also somewhat humorous that you talk about all of the people here who build their own systems and then make fun of the "extreme nerds" that run Folding@Home. (Most "normal" people in the world would consider both parties to be "extreme nerds", but I digress.)
The bottom line is that you can't call a system 100% stable and less you truly stress test the system. As any experienced overclocker can tell you, there are really only two types of systems in the world: those that appear stable because they have not crashed yet, and those that you know are at least somewhat unstable because they have crashed. Under the right conditions, I think the vast majority of computers are at least partially unstable. I guess that's okay, though, and we should all return to the days of Windows 95 when daily reboots were practically required?
Still, the system I'm writing this on is a socket 754 3200+ Newcastle overclocked to 2.42 GHz, and it routinely runs for weeks on end without rebooting. About the only time I reboot is when I have to install one of the updates from Microsoft. It also runs Folding@Home 24/7 in the background. If that eventually causes my CPU to fail, it will probably be time to truly upgrade anyway. (Odd that I haven't switched over to one of my newer systems, but this one just does everything I need it to do, other than intense gaming. It's kind of nice to have a computer where I don't need to worry about gaming performance, as probably 95% of my computer crashes that have occurred in the past five years happened when I was playing a game.)
yyrkoon - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
Yeah games cause alot of crashes on PCs but thats not to say its the hardwares fault. If it happened all_the_time then possibly, but the random crash once in a blue moon should not be attributed to hardware issues (atleast IMO).Re-read the post above where I said my PCd frequently stay up for months on end . . .;)
yyrkoon - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link
PCs, sorry, you guys really need an edit function heheheyyrkoon - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link
Well thats kind of harsh on any system, running all those apps at once, but I've always been in the school of thought that IF you're going to game, game, and dont try to run 500 application all while doing so. If you really want to crash ( or maybe just CTD a game), run Oblivion ;) Still. if you managed to crash any system running all that, I would consider that a software issue (OS, or appliction), and not hardware.As for ABS intentionally skimping on hardware, well, all it takes is a little research, and all those worries go away (usually). I did notice they are using a tier 1 motherboard, which is probably a good idea, but I will bet any one of us could build the same system for half the cost. Anyhow, with sites such as yours, reviewing motherboards, memory, and such, there is no excuse for anyone really, to buy 'crappy' equipment, hell, I only paid $54 usd for my current motherboard (AM2 system), but its very solid . . . care to guess who made it ? At any rate, its merely a steping stone in the dirrection of where my system will be this time next year.
Anyhow, what I consider 100% stable, is a PC that is used normally (which for me, I use my systems all day everyday), for gaming, and work, and able to stay up for months on end without having to reboot (not including installing drivers, etc.), BSoD, or crash applications constantly. I havent seen a BSoD on any of my systems in a long time (years?), because of hardware issues. This is not to say I'm special, this is just to say that even in windows, its very possible to build a rock solid system (in-exspencively), with uptimes approaching Linux server status, you just need to pick your hardware carefully. Overclocking shouldnt even be used in the same sentance as stable in my opinion, these systems MAY run fine for a few years, but OC'n will usually eventualy kill a system, and I consider it a good thing, if systems last well past 3-5 years.
Now, to be honest, I must say I only skimmed this article, since I'm really not interrested in OEM systems (well, I usually recommend Dell to clients for a cheap OEM systems, depends on needs), but I personally havent had any problems finding C2D CPUs (except for the 6800 extreme CPUs, which is out of my price range anyhow).
Now, if I may offer a suggestion, I personally think it would be cool if you guys linked these comment sections to your forums.
samuraiBX - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link
Hehe, thanks! I'm looking forward to the "I don't have to sell my kidney on e-bay" computers!