Sandy Bridge is grabbing all the headlines at the moment, but a good choice of graphics card is every bit as important to an avid gamer. That’s why Palicomp has crammed a pair of powerful AMD Radeon HD 6950s into its Phoenix Hydro-X.
We’ve seen some high-end CrossFireX systems in the past, but this tops the lot. Even when tested with Crysis at 1,920 x 1,080 and Very High quality settings, the Hydro-X waltzed through with a phenomenal average of 84fps. Compare that to the 76fps of our previous gaming record-holder, the Palicomp Kinetic Hydro-X, and you see just how far ahead this PC is.
But the Hydro-X wasn’t done there. When we upped the resolution to a 30in monitor-friendly 2,560 x 1,600 and added 8x anti-aliasing, it still cantered through at 41fps. It’s the first PC we’ve tested that managed to remain playable in that ludicrously difficult test.
Gaming is clearly king here, but there’s still a Sandy Bridge processor to keep up with the Joneses: Palicomp has overclocked the i7-2600K from 3.4GHz to a huge 4.7GHz. It surged through our application benchmarks with an overall score of 3.37 – not quite the fastest we’ve seen, but it’s the kind of raw power you won’t find in many PCs.
As if this wasn’t enough, you also get a 64GB Kingston SSDNow V+ drive and a 1.5TB hard disk, along with 8GB of RAM and a Blu-ray reader. It’s all inside a Cooler Master HAF X chassis that offers a plentiful supply of ports: the front sports pairs of USB 3 and USB 2 sockets alongside eSATA, and the rear has USB 3, eSATA, FireWire, S/PDIF and PS/2.
Warranty | |
|---|---|
| Warranty | 1 yr return to base |
Basic specifications | |
| Total hard disk capacity | 1,564GB |
| RAM capacity | 8.00GB |
| Screen size | N/A |
Processor | |
| CPU family | Intel Core i7 |
| CPU nominal frequency | 3.40GHz |
| CPU overclocked frequency | 4.70GHz |
| Processor socket | LGA 1155 |
| HSF (heatsink-fan) | Corsair H70 water-cooling |
Motherboard | |
| Motherboard | Asus P8P67 PRO |
| Motherboard chipset | Intel P67 |
| Conventional PCI slots free | 1 |
| Conventional PCI slots total | 2 |
| PCI-E x16 slots free | 1 |
| PCI-E x16 slots total | 3 |
| PCI-E x8 slots free | 0 |
| PCI-E x8 slots total | 0 |
| PCI-E x4 slots free | 0 |
| PCI-E x4 slots total | 0 |
| PCI-E x1 slots free | 1 |
| PCI-E x1 slots total | 2 |
| Internal SATA connectors | 4 |
| Internal SAS connectors | 1 |
| Internal PATA connectors | 1 |
| Internal floppy connectors | 1 |
| Wired adapter speed | 1,000Mbits/sec |
Memory | |
| Memory type | DDR3 |
| Memory sockets free | 0 |
| Memory sockets total | 4 |
Graphics card | |
| Graphics card | MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II |
| Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards? | yes |
| 3D performance setting | Low |
| Graphics chipset | AMD Radeon HD 6950 |
| Graphics card RAM | 2.00GB |
| DVI-I outputs | 4 |
| HDMI outputs | 2 |
| VGA (D-SUB) outputs | 0 |
| DisplayPort outputs | 2 |
| Number of graphics cards | 2 |
Hard disk | |
| Hard disk | Kingston SSDNow V+ 64GB |
| Capacity | 64GB |
| Hard disk usable capacity | 59GB |
| Internal disk interface | SATA/300 |
| Spindle speed | N/A |
| Cache size | 32MB |
| Hard disk 2 nominal capacity | 1,500GB |
| Hard disk 2 formatted capacity | 1,397 |
| Hard disk 2 spindle speed | 7,200RPM |
| Hard disk 2 cache size | 64MB |
| Hard disk 3 make and model | N/A |
| Hard disk 3 nominal capacity | N/A |
| Hard disk 4 make and model | N/A |
| Hard disk 4 nominal capacity | N/A |
Drives | |
| Optical disc technology | Blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo |
| Optical disk 2 make and model | N/A |
| Optical disk 3 make and model | N/A |
Monitor | |
| Monitor make and model | N/A |
| Resolution screen horizontal | N/A |
| Resolution screen vertical | N/A |
| Resolution | N/A x N/A |
| Pixel response time | N/A |
| Contrast ratio | N/A |
| Screen brightness | N/A |
| DVI inputs | N/A |
| HDMI inputs | N/A |
| VGA inputs | N/A |
| DisplayPort inputs | N/A |
Additional Peripherals | |
| Speakers | N/A |
| Speaker type | N/A |
| Sound card | Realtek HD Audio |
| Peripherals | N/A |
Case | |
| Chassis | Cooler Master HAF X |
| Case format | Full tower |
| Dimensions | 260 x 528 x 417mm (WDH) |
Power supply | |
| Power supply | Thermaltake EVO_Blue 750W |
| Power supply rating | 750W |
| Power supply efficiency | N/A |
Free drive bays | |
| Free front panel 5.25in bays | 3 |
Rear ports | |
| USB ports (downstream) | 8 |
| FireWire ports | 2 |
| eSATA ports | 3 |
| PS/2 mouse port | yes |
| Electrical S/PDIF audio ports | 1 |
| Optical S/PDIF audio output ports | 1 |
| Modem | no |
| 3.5mm audio jacks | 6 |
Front ports | |
| Front panel USB ports | 2 |
| Front panel eSATA ports | 1 |
| Front panel memory card reader | no |
Mouse & Keyboard | |
| Mouse and keyboard | N/A |
Operating system and software | |
| OS family | Windows 7 |
Noise and power | |
| Idle power consumption | 179W |
| Peak power consumption | 633W |
Performance tests | |
| Overall application benchmark score | 3.37 |
| Office application benchmark score | 2.60 |
| 2D graphics application benchmark score | 3.58 |
| Encoding application benchmark score | 2.87 |
| Multitasking application benchmark score | 4.44 |
| 3D performance (crysis) low settings | 218fps |
| 3D performance setting | Low |
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