Nice review. I too am unimpressed by Haswell, but even more unimpressed by the GTX 770. Basically an overclocked 680. Only the 780 is even worth mentioning IMO. That's just my opinion and since I am on SLI 670s I suppose my view is a little unfair.
That all said these systems offer pretty good value for someone who wants a ready to go system right out of the box with no fuss. The pricing is extremely fair.
The GTX770 is worth mentioning for the blower- it uses the Titan/GTX780 blower instead of the GTX680 blower. Lower temps, less noise, especially when pushed.
Really ?? The only GTX770 with blower-style coolers listed on the US eVGA website as of 06/26 all have GTX680-type coolers, no Titan cooler.
The Titan cooler requires a physical redesign of the GTX680 circuit board to accommodate the mechanics. It seems very odd to me that the nVidia reference design of the GTX770 sports the Titan cooler, but none of the partner-manufacturers offer that cooler as an option. I suspect that excess GTX680 circuit-board material and component inventory is currently being reallocated to GTX770 by installing the updated GK104 silicon and Boost2.0 firmware. Presumably after that material is used up, then Titan-style GTX770 may appear, probably at some price premium.
Hm. You're forgetting the price argument about the 770.
The 770 isn't just an overclocked 680. It's an overclocked 680 at former 670 pricing. So not only are they giving you more than top end performance from the last card line, but they're selling it to you for $100 less.
Meanwhile, Haswell is nothing but absolute disappointment for the desktop user. Even for the laptop user who isn't buying an Ultrabook, I question much of its value. Haswell makes the most sense in Ultrabooks and in Razer Edge-esque tablets.
Wow, I didn't realise the Gryphon came with the ALC892. Would have assumed an ALC898 minimum. I would guess the money on that motherboard was spent on the TUF features first before the audio.
Seems a little odd for a boutique build that ASUS is chosen for the motherboard, ASUS for the ODD, then EVGA with the GPU. Why not keep it all one company? Same with the memory - the case and PSU are Corsair, but the memory is ADATA? I'd assume that 'cost at the time' is the answer, but $2500 seems a lot for the whole system, or is that just me? [Insert self-build takes time over pre-built hence extra 10% on cost]
My guess is that the Gryphon was getting expensive already, and Asus decided to use the lower-priced sound chip to help keep the retail price down. I mean it's already $175 in the U.S. (without the armor kit, which is another $45, heh). I don't mind because I'm not going to use the on-board sound solution anyway. (Yeah I bought a Gryphon, cause it had all the features I wanted, 5-year warranty, and I like its looks, and I bought the armor kit cause I like its looks and for the protection of any unused slots. Haven't assembled it yet as I'm waiting for the armor kit.)
I'm wondering if it matters- all Realtek codecs in the last five or so years have had decent specs and middling performance; but it doesn't take much to make them work. Good op-amps are a start, and we're seeing those on various boards.
And that would be important for an mATX build; it's begging for a second GPU (why the hell else would it have twice the PSU it needs...), which would negate the use of an excellent SoundBlaster Z.
Anyway, 4.4 GHz is probably about as high as you want to go as boutique PC manufacturer, unless you want amass quite a collection of 4770K's that didn't make it to your target overclocked speed.
Upgradability, specifically SLI, and further overclocking. Add a second 780 (admittedly a tight fit in that case), and go for broke on the overclocking CPU, GPUs and RAM, and you could end up in the 700-800 W range. For maximum PSU life, running at least 20% under maximum rating is about right.
If the system consumes 800W, that also means it would put out 800W of heat, which would be impossible to manage with that case. Besides, it comes with a m-ATX board which means those GTX 780's would be sitting right up against each other. It would be toasty, to say the least. PSU life would be the least of my concerns.
Consuming 800W of power does not mean producing 800W of heat. Heat generated in a computer is "waste heat," it's heat produced by energy leakage.
If you look at the board, too, you'll notice a second 780 would actually be installed in the bottommost slot. That means there would be one slot of space between the two 780s, which is typical of almost any build.
Electricity is energy and heat is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed. Unless the energy the computer pulls from the socket gets transformed into electro magnetic waves or mechanical energy, it gets transformed to heat. Which is what happens to over 99% of the energy input into the PC. Not sure if you refer to something else.
Dustin, the heat in a computer is a reflection of *total* power draw. All that energy, waste or not, eventually turns into heat. Thus at idle, this system generates ~70W; at load, ~360W.
So what useful work in energy terms do we get out? Mechanical lift? Come on dustin I ex0ect more from an anandtech reviewer knowing the fundamentals :/
Airflow. 800W of airflow. [Actually this ends up being heat in the ambient room to, just not always in the case. No matter what work you do, adding 800W into a area means 800W of heat: EM waves just makes the area bigger :)].
We long ago hit the wall on how fast on overclocked CPU can perform without burning out or using liquid cooling systems - the soaking the entire computer in mineral oil. It is simply the laws of physics that present a wall that CPUs cannot bridge.
It is not surprising that Haswell hit that wall.
You can give GPUs more bandwidth and more cores to get faster and faster speeds. They key is that GPUs have massive numbers of cores and GPUs are used for massively parallel tasks.
The key to future performance is parallelism - the more cores in a CPU the better.
In day to day use, I have more than 20 apps running at the same time - at least I would like to. But I am limited by the number of cores my computer has. Four cores is simply not enough.
For example, Parallels and Jabber Video each require 1.5 cores each. When I have them on simultaneously everything else grinds to a halt since every other app has only one core left for it.
It would be nice to have 12 cores per CPU when doing a lot of multitasking.
The future is multiple cores - more than 4. The more cores the better.
It doesn't do good to complain about the limits of 4 core CPUs. They simply cannot do any better without specialized liquid cooling or other weirdness.
You've clearly missed the complaint, which is that the die package used to be connected with what's called here a "fluxless solder," which has high thermal conductivity and transfers heat well to the metal surface that you see on production chips (I forget the name for that layer). That metal surface is then cooled with your heatsink, etc.
The problem is that the fluxless solder was replaced with a thermal paste to save an incremental amount of money. The thermal paste is unable to transfer the same amount of heat per time. This means that no matter how good your cooler is, even if you're dissipating heat very quickly from the surface I mentioned, there is more heat retained inside the chip between the surface and the package.
So it's a valid complaint. And Haswell didn't hit a wall, its solder hit a price wall.
So by what you have said above anyone who takes off the IHS and removes the "bad" paste should have great overclocking ability compared to leaving on the IHS with the paste. This is not true and means that isn't truly the base problem. Like Ivy Bridge delidding reduces the temperature of the chip greatly ~30°C, but only marginally increases overclocking.
It has also been shown with Ivy Bridge that it isn't the paste so much as the spacing between the chip and the IHS that causes the bad heat transfer. The paste doesn't help, but for better heat transfer you are always better off removing extra interfaces and distance the heat has to travel.
Furthermore your "parallelism" is too all-powerful. If those wonderful GPU "cores" (hint, they're not cores; they're clusters) were given the same cooling mechanisms as these CPU cores, your computer would be up in flames or your magic "parallelism" would be running at 1/2 speed.
Yes, multithreaded applications are great. Yes, more cores is great. But cooling the existing cores properly and running them at the frequencies they *should* be able to hit is still a valid solution, and in most applications there is the headroom to do so, should that fluxless solder be reintroduced into Intel's CPU packages.
And besides, if you're running parallels and jabber video, get yourself a Sandy-E. You're a niche, so buy the niche product that fits your needs. My 3960X meets my multicore needs, and you can even settle for a 3930K if you're not concerned about clockspeed.
The reason GPUs aren't on fire isn't so much superior cooling (you try cramming a CPU heatsink into a single or even double slot), so much as cores designed for high efficiency at the cost of painful latency. Trying to use one of those "cores" would be like going back to the PC-AT days (with the exception of floating point single performance, more like the DSPs of those days). Larrabee was a bit more CPUish (and thus would have melted down if they ever got performance anywhere near competitive) but would still be outperformed at traditional CPU (serial) tasks by an atom.
The future is multiple cores, I think we are just beginning there, but you are wrong about the clock limit, and certainly AMD has proven that by releasing 5GHz factory CPUs. And, if the chips can be OC'd in extreme builds to 8GHz or better, then I suggest it IS feasible to eventually get that kind of clock in a production chip.
If Intel wanted to, they could make production CPUs run at 5GHz base with a turbo to 5.8 easily enough. We could be OCing those to the 6GHz range. On air, or an AIO water cooler, no liquid nitrogen required. They just aren't putting their efforts in that direction.
The computer in question has a 250W GPU and a 1000W power supply, there is no reason to veto a 220W CPU. While I think the Nvidia 780 is a "marketing gimick" (pretty much the same additional performance/cost), it seems to be a minority opinion on this site.
That 220 W is the reason Intels dismisses such CPUs, as they'd hardly sell at all. How ever would be interested in such beasts is already covered with the current Ks and Extremes, including factory OC'ed builds.
That's rubbish. Super low temperatures always help FETs to work significantly faster. That's why the clock speeds reached with LN2 will NEVER be possible in production untits of the same fundamental technology.
And if Intel designed for significantly higher clock speeds they'd loose IPC due to the longer pipeline and would blow the power efficiency gains Intel worked so hard on during the last years completely out of the window. Just remember the Pentium 4 or nVidias hot clock versus Kepler.
Contrary to what everyone is saying, I and several others have discovered that Haswell is surprising fast at emulation - around 20% faster than Ivy and 30% faster than Sandy. If would be great if a review site like Anand would actually benchmark such programs because they are heavily CPU-oriented and currently are one of if not the only compelling reason for Haswell and it'd be a shame if people missed that memo.
Yeah I agree from an enthusiast viewpoint that Haswell is a little underwhelming, and am irritated that Intel kept the glue-on method of attaching covers, but there are apps in which it crushes Ivy Bridge - and none in which Ivy Bridge is superior.
As always, buy your hardware for the applications you most want to support. :)
I agree that emulators could work well as CPU benchmarks, especially since many of them are single-threaded or lightly-threaded (so they're a real-world application where IPC is important). PCSX2 running Dragon Quest 8 would be a good benchmark. It uses two CPU threads (three if MTVU is enabled) and is very demanding, especially in busy scenes.
So what is exactly the value DigitalStorm brings to the table? It seems to me that they put together a few off the shelf components, and slightly bumped up the frequency. Is that all? If so, that's something anyone who reads this site can do themselves in an hour or less.
What I expect from a "boutique" computer builder is systems like the new Mac Pro, only where I can customize everything and anything.
Otherwise, no, they don't deserve extra $200-300 on top of Newegg BOM.
The advantage is mostly in the hands-off warranty. As long as everything goes well, you're good building yourself, but I can imagine better ways to spend time and money, than to debug every component of my system, because I get odd bluescreens.
Their default warranty covers defective components for 1 year, and if you want to extend it to 2 or 3 years, you pay $99 and $299 correspondingly. Pretty much every component you buy on Newegg has better warranty that this. So, basically, their warranty is a joke.
If you get an odd BSOD, you better know how to debug it (not rocket science, most issues relate to faulty RAM, which is easy to check), otherwise you will have to ship your system to them (and pay for shipping).
Honestly, I don't remember the last time I had problems with my builds, just buy quality components, read reviews, and chances of a problem will be tiny.
The cost of paying a tech to build and burn-in the system, plus system warranty, isn't worth 10% over Newegg costs? Really? That's a very good margin from a customer point of view. If you don't like it, then don't pay it. By definition, if you're a confident enough builder and are willing to spare the time, you're not a target customer for boutique builders anyway.
Note that I qualify on both fronts, so would never buy this system. However, I've also worked as a system builder and integrator, and from that viewpoint I think this system represents very good value.
See my comment above about their warranty. Essentially, their value is assembly of components. For a technician who does it every day, it should not take more than 1 hour to assemble, overclock and test a system. That technician typically makes $15-25/hour. So, again, what do they offer for the extra $200 they charge, which actually cost them $20?
I think these kind of systems are aimed at gamers who aren't "enthusiasts" in the more general sense. Just because you like playing games on a PC doesn't mean you feel comfortable building a PC out of components, or even installing Windows from scratch. To you and I, those things are second nature, but most people can't do them.
Most gamers who are not "enthusiasts" will probably just go to Dell/HP website, or to their local BestBuy store, or ask their more knowledgeable friends for an advice on what to buy at Dell or BestBuy. When buying a new computer on their own, their choice will be primarily determined by brand awareness. DigitalStorm does not have any.
They probably also have dedicated sales/accounts managers for maintaining a relationship with customers of their workstation products. This would let them avoid being dependent on the health of a single market.
And at a given price-point their machines have more value than a similarly-priced Dell or other global brand. They might not be the first brand in mind for a gamer, but any gamer who checks them out after seeing an article on a gaming news site will find a better machine for less. Whether or not they take the leap then depends on how much they trust the source. That's why sending machines to reviewers is so important to companies like DigitalStorm.
I don't work for a company exactly like DigitalStorm, but with regards to technician rates for custom builds or upgrades I get paid $15/hr but my employer charges either $60/hr or a flat fee based on the number and types of components. Whoever closed the sale also gets a small commission. From what I understand, a warranty extension for $99 is pretty typical of our competitors, but my employers charges more. However, we also offer warranty renewals if the customer allows us to perform a system checkup. There's a lot of overhead that eats into whatever the markup appears to be if you go strictly off the BOM.
1 hour is optimistic, running extended memtests and imaging the software etc takes time. A large OEM would run lots of these in parallel but boutiques don't get large volumes of orders so don't get those economies of scale.
No, a system warranty is worth more than individual component warranties. One example: Let's say you have a potential CPU OR motherboard problem causing occasional bluescreens or crashes, but you don't know for sure which it is. Do you have the spare parts to swap out the cpu and motherboard one at a time to determine what the problem is? Not unless you spend more money. Also, it can take considerable time to diagnose these hardware issues, and time is money. If you don't think it's worth $200 dollars, then don't buy it. But saying it only costs them $20 proves you know nothing about how much it costs to run a business. If it were my own computer, I would build it myself. But if someone offered to pay me $200 to build it for them (I am an IT professional and get requests for help all the time), I wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be worth the hassle, time, and risks. So in that way, I think the $200 is a totally reasonable premium.
It's always the same comment whenever a boutique is reviewed.
They are offering a service for a certain price and people who want that service pay for it, simple.
It's true most people with half a brain could assemble a computer themselves if they learnt, most people don't have the time or desire how to do it themselves.
If I wanted to to I could do all the work on my own car, but personally I prefer to pay a mechanic to do it for me. Sometimes it's just easier to pay someone, especially if you could earn more money doing your own job then you would otherwise save by doing it yourself.
It took my just about one full weekend (Friday evening to Sunday night) to build and initially get my latest system running the way I liked, finding a good 24/7 overclock, finding the tightest memory timings that would work etc. and several more weeks until everything was running exactly how I liked it software- and hardware-wise.
Since I actually enjoy that process, the time was worth it for me. However not everyone has that kind of time or enjoy building and tweaking computers. Time is money - If your regular job pays more than $200 for working a full weekend, you would actually save money by paying someone else $200 to build a computer for you.
Here's the value... For a guy, say a CPA, who makes a decent amount of money. He's into tech, but not at an "enthusiast level". He hires a lanscaping company to mow his lawn, a financial advisor to manage his money, another CPA to do his taxes, and he's willing to hire experts to build a top-end PC.
Maybe this guy likes to game. Maybe he just wants an awesome PC for his kid. But he's definitely not going to waste time learning all the in's and out's of motherboard/cpu/case compatibility, power requirements, GPU performance, cooling, and all that.
He also wants something better than what most other people have. He likes to buy from boutique firms in general. He just got a nice $50k bonus, and he has no problem dropping $2.5k on a high-end PC.
Dustin, any chance you can run some IBT AVX on that Haswell and report your highest core temps? I noticed the high vcore and am wondering if the same binned CPUs are being used as the retail box ones we buy at newegg etc. According to that vcore, that CPU should thermal throttle within minutes when Prime95 small fft or IBT with AVX is ran.
You wont see much benefit running a 680 under a custom water block. It might in theory go slightly faster but its not normally much. In order to get at the extra performance potential you need to pump more voltage through the chip than an air cooler could cope with, and that level of voltage adjustment is not all that easy with todays GPUs, and the gains are often quite marginal even then.
I typically say that a custom loop is worth about 5% at most. On a CPU its maybe 100-200Mhz as long as your willing to push more voltage (which could kill the chip regardless of the reduced temperature). On the GPU side I have typically only found water to offer around 25Mhz, its normally not much at all. Its real advantage is noise reduction.
Odd. I'd expect a bit more. Even then you can certainly expect more quiet than you will get with airflow. From the comments in the article, the 780 may be a far better board for trying out water cooling.
I have a more sinister thought that it had nothing to do with cost and everything to do with artificially limiting the performance of the chips. They are so far beyond AMD right now on almost EVERY front that they have the ability to create a fantastic chip today and roll out a refresh of the EXACT SAME CHIP with a better interface material and reap a double sale.
The only confusing part is that they're not willing to offer 'properly TIM'd' CPUs as an additional SKU. I'd pay another $10-$20 to get a K CPU with it; hell, they could just use it on all K SKUs and make everyone happy. We're already paying more for something with less features but an unlocked multiplier, why not let us push it to the limit?
You *will* be able to pay extra for a properly TIM'ed CPU but it won't be another $20. You'll be looking at the IB-E and upcoming Haswell-E which will be several hundred more than their LGA1150 equivalents, with more expensive motherboards thrown in for good measure.
So, 1000W PSU's are just for shits and giggles? It couldn't draw more than 500w in the worst load situations, and 750W PSU's covering dual-GPU setups are far more reasonable.
Any chance you could be convinced to see what you could do by deliding the i7-4770K changing the internal TIM, and see what you can do with it? I would really like to find out what the real top end to Haswell is, without Intel's nerf.
This is kind of a creative way to give Haswell a numeric boost. How about both systems with 780s? Probably not much of a difference whatsoever.
When AMD starts creating meaningful CPUs again, we'll see Intel get back into competition mode. Until then, they'll just keep selling CPUs with ever-so-slight increases.
If you choose to buy a 780 GTX over a 770 GTX, you gain 10-20% performance increase for 70% higher price.
You have to pay 20% more if you choose to buy 770gtx SLI rather than a single 780 GTX for a 50-60% performance increase. In addition, a 770 GTX is a lot cheaper, faster and better temperatures than 680 GTX. Not sure, about new features such as shadowplay and automated performance/temperature control also works with older models.
In my eyes 770 GTX is defiantly very viable. If you want the most for your buck.
As good as the Digital Storm build looks, the sad truth is that there is STILL no compelling reason to buy a new Digital Storm system, when the 2600k based one I bought at the beginning of 2011 is almost as powerful as anything I can get today (and overclocks better).
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY
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cmdrdredd - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Nice review. I too am unimpressed by Haswell, but even more unimpressed by the GTX 770. Basically an overclocked 680. Only the 780 is even worth mentioning IMO. That's just my opinion and since I am on SLI 670s I suppose my view is a little unfair.That all said these systems offer pretty good value for someone who wants a ready to go system right out of the box with no fuss. The pricing is extremely fair.
airmantharp - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
The GTX770 is worth mentioning for the blower- it uses the Titan/GTX780 blower instead of the GTX680 blower. Lower temps, less noise, especially when pushed.But otherwise, you're right, it's unremarkable.
HisDivineOrder - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Actually, very few of those 770's with the Titan blower were made. Fewer still are being sold. In the US, they're all coming with custom coolers.sticks435 - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
Evga is now bringing out a limited run of them, though with a higher price.kilkennycat - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
Really ?? The only GTX770 with blower-style coolers listed on the US eVGA website as of 06/26 all have GTX680-type coolers, no Titan cooler.The Titan cooler requires a physical redesign of the GTX680 circuit board to accommodate the mechanics. It seems very odd to me that the nVidia reference design of the GTX770 sports the Titan cooler, but none of the partner-manufacturers offer that cooler as an option. I suspect that excess GTX680 circuit-board material and component inventory is currently being reallocated to GTX770 by installing the updated GK104 silicon and Boost2.0 firmware. Presumably after that material is used up, then Titan-style GTX770 may appear, probably at some price premium.
MattKatz - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
I'm not impressed by either one. The CybertronPC Borg-Q GM4213C is much better. /Matt from http://www.consumertop.com/best-desktop-guide/HisDivineOrder - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Hm. You're forgetting the price argument about the 770.The 770 isn't just an overclocked 680. It's an overclocked 680 at former 670 pricing. So not only are they giving you more than top end performance from the last card line, but they're selling it to you for $100 less.
Meanwhile, Haswell is nothing but absolute disappointment for the desktop user. Even for the laptop user who isn't buying an Ultrabook, I question much of its value. Haswell makes the most sense in Ultrabooks and in Razer Edge-esque tablets.
IanCutress - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Wow, I didn't realise the Gryphon came with the ALC892. Would have assumed an ALC898 minimum. I would guess the money on that motherboard was spent on the TUF features first before the audio.Seems a little odd for a boutique build that ASUS is chosen for the motherboard, ASUS for the ODD, then EVGA with the GPU. Why not keep it all one company? Same with the memory - the case and PSU are Corsair, but the memory is ADATA? I'd assume that 'cost at the time' is the answer, but $2500 seems a lot for the whole system, or is that just me? [Insert self-build takes time over pre-built hence extra 10% on cost]
Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
The margin on this build is actually a very reasonable one, comparatively. We're looking at probably around or a bit less than the 10%.aruisdante - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Because EVGA' 1150 boards aren't out yet. It is odd they went with the Gryphon instead of the Genethough.Sabresiberian - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
My guess is that the Gryphon was getting expensive already, and Asus decided to use the lower-priced sound chip to help keep the retail price down. I mean it's already $175 in the U.S. (without the armor kit, which is another $45, heh). I don't mind because I'm not going to use the on-board sound solution anyway. (Yeah I bought a Gryphon, cause it had all the features I wanted, 5-year warranty, and I like its looks, and I bought the armor kit cause I like its looks and for the protection of any unused slots. Haven't assembled it yet as I'm waiting for the armor kit.)airmantharp - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
I'm wondering if it matters- all Realtek codecs in the last five or so years have had decent specs and middling performance; but it doesn't take much to make them work. Good op-amps are a start, and we're seeing those on various boards.And that would be important for an mATX build; it's begging for a second GPU (why the hell else would it have twice the PSU it needs...), which would negate the use of an excellent SoundBlaster Z.
Subyman - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
I'm wondering why they put a 1050W PSU in a system with an ~80W CPU and ~250W GPU.JimmiG - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Marketing..Anyway, 4.4 GHz is probably about as high as you want to go as boutique PC manufacturer, unless you want amass quite a collection of 4770K's that didn't make it to your target overclocked speed.
kuraegomon - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Upgradability, specifically SLI, and further overclocking. Add a second 780 (admittedly a tight fit in that case), and go for broke on the overclocking CPU, GPUs and RAM, and you could end up in the 700-800 W range. For maximum PSU life, running at least 20% under maximum rating is about right.JimmiG - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
If the system consumes 800W, that also means it would put out 800W of heat, which would be impossible to manage with that case. Besides, it comes with a m-ATX board which means those GTX 780's would be sitting right up against each other. It would be toasty, to say the least. PSU life would be the least of my concerns.Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Consuming 800W of power does not mean producing 800W of heat. Heat generated in a computer is "waste heat," it's heat produced by energy leakage.If you look at the board, too, you'll notice a second 780 would actually be installed in the bottommost slot. That means there would be one slot of space between the two 780s, which is typical of almost any build.
Death666Angel - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Electricity is energy and heat is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed. Unless the energy the computer pulls from the socket gets transformed into electro magnetic waves or mechanical energy, it gets transformed to heat. Which is what happens to over 99% of the energy input into the PC.Not sure if you refer to something else.
jtd871 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Dustin, the heat in a computer is a reflection of *total* power draw. All that energy, waste or not, eventually turns into heat. Thus at idle, this system generates ~70W; at load, ~360W.Meaker10 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
So what useful work in energy terms do we get out? Mechanical lift? Come on dustin I ex0ect more from an anandtech reviewer knowing the fundamentals :/wumpus - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Airflow. 800W of airflow.[Actually this ends up being heat in the ambient room to, just not always in the case. No matter what work you do, adding 800W into a area means 800W of heat: EM waves just makes the area bigger :)].
iamezza - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Actually all the power consumed will eventually end up back as heat. It's how physics works.MrSpadge - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Ouch.. someone's about to enter the shame corner of our little physics class!jameskatt - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
We long ago hit the wall on how fast on overclocked CPU can perform without burning out or using liquid cooling systems - the soaking the entire computer in mineral oil. It is simply the laws of physics that present a wall that CPUs cannot bridge.It is not surprising that Haswell hit that wall.
You can give GPUs more bandwidth and more cores to get faster and faster speeds. They key is that GPUs have massive numbers of cores and GPUs are used for massively parallel tasks.
The key to future performance is parallelism - the more cores in a CPU the better.
In day to day use, I have more than 20 apps running at the same time - at least I would like to. But I am limited by the number of cores my computer has. Four cores is simply not enough.
For example, Parallels and Jabber Video each require 1.5 cores each. When I have them on simultaneously everything else grinds to a halt since every other app has only one core left for it.
It would be nice to have 12 cores per CPU when doing a lot of multitasking.
The future is multiple cores - more than 4. The more cores the better.
It doesn't do good to complain about the limits of 4 core CPUs. They simply cannot do any better without specialized liquid cooling or other weirdness.
lmcd - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
You've clearly missed the complaint, which is that the die package used to be connected with what's called here a "fluxless solder," which has high thermal conductivity and transfers heat well to the metal surface that you see on production chips (I forget the name for that layer). That metal surface is then cooled with your heatsink, etc.The problem is that the fluxless solder was replaced with a thermal paste to save an incremental amount of money. The thermal paste is unable to transfer the same amount of heat per time. This means that no matter how good your cooler is, even if you're dissipating heat very quickly from the surface I mentioned, there is more heat retained inside the chip between the surface and the package.
So it's a valid complaint. And Haswell didn't hit a wall, its solder hit a price wall.
Nottheface - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
So by what you have said above anyone who takes off the IHS and removes the "bad" paste should have great overclocking ability compared to leaving on the IHS with the paste. This is not true and means that isn't truly the base problem. Like Ivy Bridge delidding reduces the temperature of the chip greatly ~30°C, but only marginally increases overclocking.It has also been shown with Ivy Bridge that it isn't the paste so much as the spacing between the chip and the IHS that causes the bad heat transfer. The paste doesn't help, but for better heat transfer you are always better off removing extra interfaces and distance the heat has to travel.
MrSpadge - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
I've heard that the 22 nm transistors couldn't take the temperatures the soldering produces. No hard proof, though.lmcd - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Furthermore your "parallelism" is too all-powerful. If those wonderful GPU "cores" (hint, they're not cores; they're clusters) were given the same cooling mechanisms as these CPU cores, your computer would be up in flames or your magic "parallelism" would be running at 1/2 speed.Yes, multithreaded applications are great. Yes, more cores is great. But cooling the existing cores properly and running them at the frequencies they *should* be able to hit is still a valid solution, and in most applications there is the headroom to do so, should that fluxless solder be reintroduced into Intel's CPU packages.
And besides, if you're running parallels and jabber video, get yourself a Sandy-E. You're a niche, so buy the niche product that fits your needs. My 3960X meets my multicore needs, and you can even settle for a 3930K if you're not concerned about clockspeed.
wumpus - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
The reason GPUs aren't on fire isn't so much superior cooling (you try cramming a CPU heatsink into a single or even double slot), so much as cores designed for high efficiency at the cost of painful latency. Trying to use one of those "cores" would be like going back to the PC-AT days (with the exception of floating point single performance, more like the DSPs of those days). Larrabee was a bit more CPUish (and thus would have melted down if they ever got performance anywhere near competitive) but would still be outperformed at traditional CPU (serial) tasks by an atom.Sabresiberian - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
The future is multiple cores, I think we are just beginning there, but you are wrong about the clock limit, and certainly AMD has proven that by releasing 5GHz factory CPUs. And, if the chips can be OC'd in extreme builds to 8GHz or better, then I suggest it IS feasible to eventually get that kind of clock in a production chip.If Intel wanted to, they could make production CPUs run at 5GHz base with a turbo to 5.8 easily enough. We could be OCing those to the 6GHz range. On air, or an AIO water cooler, no liquid nitrogen required. They just aren't putting their efforts in that direction.
3.6GHz is conservative.
HideOut - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
That 5ghz chip is also 220w part. Not even close to relevant to most reasonable pc users. It's a marketing gimmick.wumpus - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
The computer in question has a 250W GPU and a 1000W power supply, there is no reason to veto a 220W CPU. While I think the Nvidia 780 is a "marketing gimick" (pretty much the same additional performance/cost), it seems to be a minority opinion on this site.MrSpadge - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
That 220 W is the reason Intels dismisses such CPUs, as they'd hardly sell at all. How ever would be interested in such beasts is already covered with the current Ks and Extremes, including factory OC'ed builds.Klimax - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
220W which won't beat my 3930k on conservative overclocking 4.4GHz and which is most likely cheaper...MrSpadge - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
That's rubbish. Super low temperatures always help FETs to work significantly faster. That's why the clock speeds reached with LN2 will NEVER be possible in production untits of the same fundamental technology.And if Intel designed for significantly higher clock speeds they'd loose IPC due to the longer pipeline and would blow the power efficiency gains Intel worked so hard on during the last years completely out of the window. Just remember the Pentium 4 or nVidias hot clock versus Kepler.
Nintendo Maniac 64 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Contrary to what everyone is saying, I and several others have discovered that Haswell is surprising fast at emulation - around 20% faster than Ivy and 30% faster than Sandy. If would be great if a review site like Anand would actually benchmark such programs because they are heavily CPU-oriented and currently are one of if not the only compelling reason for Haswell and it'd be a shame if people missed that memo.This forum topic summarizes what I describe:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1402557/haswell-is-surp...
Sabresiberian - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Yeah I agree from an enthusiast viewpoint that Haswell is a little underwhelming, and am irritated that Intel kept the glue-on method of attaching covers, but there are apps in which it crushes Ivy Bridge - and none in which Ivy Bridge is superior.As always, buy your hardware for the applications you most want to support. :)
JDG1980 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
I agree that emulators could work well as CPU benchmarks, especially since many of them are single-threaded or lightly-threaded (so they're a real-world application where IPC is important).PCSX2 running Dragon Quest 8 would be a good benchmark. It uses two CPU threads (three if MTVU is enabled) and is very demanding, especially in busy scenes.
Gigaplex - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Running PCSX2 on potentially pirated games for a commercial review is legally dubious at best.p1esk - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
So what is exactly the value DigitalStorm brings to the table?It seems to me that they put together a few off the shelf components, and slightly bumped up the frequency. Is that all? If so, that's something anyone who reads this site can do themselves in an hour or less.
What I expect from a "boutique" computer builder is systems like the new Mac Pro, only where I can customize everything and anything.
Otherwise, no, they don't deserve extra $200-300 on top of Newegg BOM.
wanderer000 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Anything and everything is a bit of a stretch there.p1esk - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Well, let's just say I should have the widest possible range of components to choose from, that will fit into their design.Rick83 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
The advantage is mostly in the hands-off warranty. As long as everything goes well, you're good building yourself, but I can imagine better ways to spend time and money, than to debug every component of my system, because I get odd bluescreens.p1esk - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Did you even look at their warranty?Their default warranty covers defective components for 1 year, and if you want to extend it to 2 or 3 years, you pay $99 and $299 correspondingly. Pretty much every component you buy on Newegg has better warranty that this. So, basically, their warranty is a joke.
If you get an odd BSOD, you better know how to debug it (not rocket science, most issues relate to faulty RAM, which is easy to check), otherwise you will have to ship your system to them (and pay for shipping).
Honestly, I don't remember the last time I had problems with my builds, just buy quality components, read reviews, and chances of a problem will be tiny.
kuraegomon - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
The cost of paying a tech to build and burn-in the system, plus system warranty, isn't worth 10% over Newegg costs? Really? That's a very good margin from a customer point of view. If you don't like it, then don't pay it. By definition, if you're a confident enough builder and are willing to spare the time, you're not a target customer for boutique builders anyway.Note that I qualify on both fronts, so would never buy this system. However, I've also worked as a system builder and integrator, and from that viewpoint I think this system represents very good value.
p1esk - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
See my comment above about their warranty.Essentially, their value is assembly of components. For a technician who does it every day, it should not take more than 1 hour to assemble, overclock and test a system. That technician typically makes $15-25/hour.
So, again, what do they offer for the extra $200 they charge, which actually cost them $20?
JDG1980 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
I think these kind of systems are aimed at gamers who aren't "enthusiasts" in the more general sense. Just because you like playing games on a PC doesn't mean you feel comfortable building a PC out of components, or even installing Windows from scratch. To you and I, those things are second nature, but most people can't do them.p1esk - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Most gamers who are not "enthusiasts" will probably just go to Dell/HP website, or to their local BestBuy store, or ask their more knowledgeable friends for an advice on what to buy at Dell or BestBuy.When buying a new computer on their own, their choice will be primarily determined by brand awareness. DigitalStorm does not have any.
TheScottyB - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
DigitalStorm might not be as big as Dell or HP, but they've been doing well enough over the past 10 years to move into this facility four years ago: http://www.digitalstormonline.com/forums/facility-...They probably also have dedicated sales/accounts managers for maintaining a relationship with customers of their workstation products. This would let them avoid being dependent on the health of a single market.
And at a given price-point their machines have more value than a similarly-priced Dell or other global brand. They might not be the first brand in mind for a gamer, but any gamer who checks them out after seeing an article on a gaming news site will find a better machine for less. Whether or not they take the leap then depends on how much they trust the source. That's why sending machines to reviewers is so important to companies like DigitalStorm.
I don't work for a company exactly like DigitalStorm, but with regards to technician rates for custom builds or upgrades I get paid $15/hr but my employer charges either $60/hr or a flat fee based on the number and types of components. Whoever closed the sale also gets a small commission. From what I understand, a warranty extension for $99 is pretty typical of our competitors, but my employers charges more. However, we also offer warranty renewals if the customer allows us to perform a system checkup. There's a lot of overhead that eats into whatever the markup appears to be if you go strictly off the BOM.
Gigaplex - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
1 hour is optimistic, running extended memtests and imaging the software etc takes time. A large OEM would run lots of these in parallel but boutiques don't get large volumes of orders so don't get those economies of scale.techienate - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
No, a system warranty is worth more than individual component warranties. One example: Let's say you have a potential CPU OR motherboard problem causing occasional bluescreens or crashes, but you don't know for sure which it is. Do you have the spare parts to swap out the cpu and motherboard one at a time to determine what the problem is? Not unless you spend more money. Also, it can take considerable time to diagnose these hardware issues, and time is money. If you don't think it's worth $200 dollars, then don't buy it. But saying it only costs them $20 proves you know nothing about how much it costs to run a business. If it were my own computer, I would build it myself. But if someone offered to pay me $200 to build it for them (I am an IT professional and get requests for help all the time), I wouldn't do it. It wouldn't be worth the hassle, time, and risks. So in that way, I think the $200 is a totally reasonable premium.iamezza - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
It's always the same comment whenever a boutique is reviewed.They are offering a service for a certain price and people who want that service pay for it, simple.
It's true most people with half a brain could assemble a computer themselves if they learnt, most people don't have the time or desire how to do it themselves.
If I wanted to to I could do all the work on my own car, but personally I prefer to pay a mechanic to do it for me.
Sometimes it's just easier to pay someone, especially if you could earn more money doing your own job then you would otherwise save by doing it yourself.
JimmiG - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
It took my just about one full weekend (Friday evening to Sunday night) to build and initially get my latest system running the way I liked, finding a good 24/7 overclock, finding the tightest memory timings that would work etc. and several more weeks until everything was running exactly how I liked it software- and hardware-wise.Since I actually enjoy that process, the time was worth it for me. However not everyone has that kind of time or enjoy building and tweaking computers. Time is money - If your regular job pays more than $200 for working a full weekend, you would actually save money by paying someone else $200 to build a computer for you.
JBVertexx - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Here's the value... For a guy, say a CPA, who makes a decent amount of money. He's into tech, but not at an "enthusiast level". He hires a lanscaping company to mow his lawn, a financial advisor to manage his money, another CPA to do his taxes, and he's willing to hire experts to build a top-end PC.Maybe this guy likes to game. Maybe he just wants an awesome PC for his kid. But he's definitely not going to waste time learning all the in's and out's of motherboard/cpu/case compatibility, power requirements, GPU performance, cooling, and all that.
He also wants something better than what most other people have. He likes to buy from boutique firms in general. He just got a nice $50k bonus, and he has no problem dropping $2.5k on a high-end PC.
Rvenger - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Dustin, any chance you can run some IBT AVX on that Haswell and report your highest core temps? I noticed the high vcore and am wondering if the same binned CPUs are being used as the retail box ones we buy at newegg etc. According to that vcore, that CPU should thermal throttle within minutes when Prime95 small fft or IBT with AVX is ran.BrightCandle - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
You wont see much benefit running a 680 under a custom water block. It might in theory go slightly faster but its not normally much. In order to get at the extra performance potential you need to pump more voltage through the chip than an air cooler could cope with, and that level of voltage adjustment is not all that easy with todays GPUs, and the gains are often quite marginal even then.I typically say that a custom loop is worth about 5% at most. On a CPU its maybe 100-200Mhz as long as your willing to push more voltage (which could kill the chip regardless of the reduced temperature). On the GPU side I have typically only found water to offer around 25Mhz, its normally not much at all. Its real advantage is noise reduction.
wumpus - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Odd. I'd expect a bit more. Even then you can certainly expect more quiet than you will get with airflow. From the comments in the article, the 780 may be a far better board for trying out water cooling.7Enigma - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Ouch, harsh but true. Let's hope he didn't have his coffee yet and we can pretend to let it slide.7Enigma - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
I have a more sinister thought that it had nothing to do with cost and everything to do with artificially limiting the performance of the chips. They are so far beyond AMD right now on almost EVERY front that they have the ability to create a fantastic chip today and roll out a refresh of the EXACT SAME CHIP with a better interface material and reap a double sale.It's a nasty practice, but a very shrewd one.
airmantharp - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
The only confusing part is that they're not willing to offer 'properly TIM'd' CPUs as an additional SKU. I'd pay another $10-$20 to get a K CPU with it; hell, they could just use it on all K SKUs and make everyone happy. We're already paying more for something with less features but an unlocked multiplier, why not let us push it to the limit?JimmiG - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
You *will* be able to pay extra for a properly TIM'ed CPU but it won't be another $20. You'll be looking at the IB-E and upcoming Haswell-E which will be several hundred more than their LGA1150 equivalents, with more expensive motherboards thrown in for good measure.airmantharp - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
So, 1000W PSU's are just for shits and giggles? It couldn't draw more than 500w in the worst load situations, and 750W PSU's covering dual-GPU setups are far more reasonable.danjw - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Any chance you could be convinced to see what you could do by deliding the i7-4770K changing the internal TIM, and see what you can do with it? I would really like to find out what the real top end to Haswell is, without Intel's nerf.Ubercake - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
This is kind of a creative way to give Haswell a numeric boost. How about both systems with 780s? Probably not much of a difference whatsoever.When AMD starts creating meaningful CPUs again, we'll see Intel get back into competition mode. Until then, they'll just keep selling CPUs with ever-so-slight increases.
Klimax - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
I doubt we'll ever again see GHz race, because energy density is getting very high .(Smaller chip is, more heat per mm needs to be transferred)And without huge complexity, per-clock performance is walled too. (And GPU show how such complexity works with yields)
AndersP - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
If you choose to buy a 780 GTX over a 770 GTX, you gain 10-20% performance increase for 70% higher price.You have to pay 20% more if you choose to buy 770gtx SLI rather than a single 780 GTX for a 50-60% performance increase. In addition, a 770 GTX is a lot cheaper, faster and better temperatures than 680 GTX. Not sure, about new features such as shadowplay and automated performance/temperature control also works with older models.
In my eyes 770 GTX is defiantly very viable. If you want the most for your buck.
godrilla - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
My 3 year old rig with i7 980 xe at 4.3 ghz and 1 year old gtx 690 1150/6500 mhz is still top notch.halcyon - Wednesday, June 26, 2013 - link
These kind of meagre performance upgrades are the reason I'm not upgrading. Yes, I have the cash. In fact, it's burning in my pocket.But a 10% or so improvement at best over what I have?
Even my secondary 2009 system has a 3-channel memory subsystem that can actually feed four cores, unlike Haswell chipsets.
GTX670 and GTX770 offer almost zip improvements for my CUDA based workload.
But I'm not complaining, I can spend this money on better digigams, new phone, new tablet, etc.
At least there have been _substantial_ improvement on those, unlike in CPU/GPU performance of the past years.
Bluejay234 - Monday, July 22, 2013 - link
As good as the Digital Storm build looks, the sad truth is that there is STILL no compelling reason to buy a new Digital Storm system, when the 2600k based one I bought at the beginning of 2011 is almost as powerful as anything I can get today (and overclocks better).Drittz121 - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY