Puget Systems Deluge: Revisiting the Art of Custom With X79
by Dustin Sklavos on November 24, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Gaming
- Intel
- Puget Systems
- mid-tower
- Water Cooling
- NVIDIA
Gaming Performance
Things should get interesting with gaming performance, but unfortunately we hit a snag when testing the Puget Systems Deluge, and it's a snag that you'll uncover if you start checking out other forums: as of this writing, surround gaming in SLI doesn't work on X79 and Sandy Bridge-E. I'm not sure exactly where to place the blame; it's hard to argue that Sandy Bridge-E didn't feel rushed (especially with how disappointing X79 turned out to be), but shouldn't this also have been something NVIDIA was on top of? It's tough to tell. NVIDIA has confirmed that a driver which enables surround on this platform will be available soon, so at least we know they're working on it, but it really should've been working when Sandy Bridge-E launched. That leaves us with 1080p testing for now, which is something of a joke when you're packing this much hardware.
Update 11-30-2011: With the NVIDIA 290 series beta drivers, we've now added surround testing.
In most cases on our soon-to-be-retired "high" testbed, we find the systems essentially CPU-limited, producing results that are academic at best. At these settings even the GeForce GTX 460 768MB in the budget WarFactory Sentinel is able to produce a playable experience. Let's see how things work out when we start to shift more of the load to the graphics subsystem.
From the looks of things, our testbed is definitely a bit long in the tooth. Performance is excellent across the board, though, right where it should be, although the extra 100MHz (and perhaps better platform optimizations) on the i7-2600K in the DigitalStorm Enix seems to be paying off in StarCraft II. Hey Blizzard, you think maybe someday you'll release a game that scales beyond two threads? Guess we'll know when the next chapter in the StarCraft II saga comes out.
Once we get to our surround testing, we unfortunately see just how much Sandy Bridge-E and its 40 dedicated PCI Express 2.0 lanes bring to the table: not a whole lot. I don't want to say this is conclusive, but our results here mirror those of other sites; eight PCIe lanes per card seem to be enough for at least a pair of GPUs.
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tiro_uspsss - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
"..and the wiring and liquid-cooling routing are top notch.."you've got to be joking right? its crap. very crap. super-duper crap given the cost of the system.
seriously, on what the heck did you base that statement??
LordanSS - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
My biggest concern... is something I have read about, regarding Koolance's products.From what I can gather, they make pretty decent copper water blocks. The issue is that their water blocks are made out of copper, the radiators are aluminum.
Different metals... same loop... good idea? =/
Snotling - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
the aluminum-copper thing would maybe become an issue if Such supercharged rigs lasted more than 5 years.sure you'll get a bit more oxidation and some of your conduits may get narrower over time but you'll still get decent cooling.
vol7ron - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I think the thermals would come into play too. Heat is still dissipated into the air and along the length of the material. The surface area of the material and amount of heat generated could be enough to handle the cooling required; of course, in lava everything burns.Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I expect that water leaks will destroy the PC hardware long before five years so the electrolysis and corrosion issues from the different metals is a moot point as the system will be scraped long before then. This is a really bad PC system even at $2K.jonup - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
You can't help yourself mentioning the leaks, can you? :)Everyone,
Water coolers leak! Just ask Beenthere.
Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Reality bites when you can't deal with it. ;)Death666Angel - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
Just toss some anti-corrosive in there and it should be good enough. Standard operating procedure when you build your own water cooling rig.Beenthere - Friday, November 25, 2011 - link
Maybe throw some automotive stop leak in too, while you're at it? ;)hotsacoman - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Just donate the system to me and i'll support you lol