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
Build, Heat, and Power Consumption
Cutting to the chase, the Deluge's physical build quality is, as has been the case with all Puget Systems machines we've tested, basically unimpeachable. The modifications made to the Antec P183 enclosure are clean, and the wiring and liquid-cooling routing are top notch. I was actually impressed with the work they did installing a window on the side panel; the P183's inside panels are acoustically padded in a way that might make modification challenging, but you wouldn't know it to look at the Deluge.
I'm also impressed they were able to make a computer with a window on the side and glowing blue fans and tubing not look incredibly gaudy. While I think blue LEDs are starting to feel played out, this looks and feels like a powerful custom machine. It's hard not to be taken aback when you look at it. The thing weighs a ton, but what did you expect?
Where Puget Systems unfortunately falters is the overclock. They don't allow the idle voltage to drop on the i7-3960X, forcing it to constantly run between 1.41 and 1.46 volts. Ignoring for a moment that those are pretty high voltages (and undoubtedly necessary to hit the punishing 4.6GHz overclock), I'm actually disheartened to see a company that's normally a wonderful citizen where power consumption is concerned trip up in this area. I gripe about lazy overclocks pretty frequently, but this is really a situation where they should've known better and done more tuning. Blame the newness of the platform if you want (which is almost certainly a factor), but the result is a processor that's running hotter at idle than it needs to, a cooling system that has to work a little harder than it should, and power consumption that's pretty dire.
Despite the custom liquid-cooling loop with a 360mm radiator and an additional 120mm radiator in the front, the i7-3960X still runs a bit toasty under load, and those idle temperatures are quite poor. Again, though, that's what happens when you dump so much voltage into a processor and don't let it scale down at idle. The Deluge essentially needs the liquid-cooling loop to maintain the overclock. Higher temperatures generally go hand in hand with higher power consumption, and that's precisely what we see.
Given the improvements in SNB-E and X79 relative to Gulftown and X58, we were hoping for a better showing. At idle, only the last generation Nehalem in the DigitalStorm BlackOps and Gulftowns in the CyberPower and AVADirect rigs are worse, and the CyberPower and AVADirect rigs are both powering four GPUs.
Things get even worse under load; only the quad-GPU rigs running Gulftown are able to draw more power than the Puget Deluge. You can argue that DigitalStorm's Enix makes things at least look a little better, but we actually took DigitalStorm to task over the overclock in their system: its voltage idles low but shoots through the roof when the i7-2600K is placed under load.
I'm going to keep dinging boutiques on these overclocks until they start paying attention: "fastest" does not mean "best," especially not when it results in this kind of heat and power consumption. It's one thing to set a speed record for the Futuremark ORB or an overclocking competition, but it's quite another matter to sell a system designed to run daily tasks for the next few years. The Deluge is plenty fast, but long-term it could really benefit from some additional tuning.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
72 Comments
View All Comments
neelwebs - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Me too. They should have two 6990s and 16GB of RAM instead of 32GB and two 580s.piroroadkill - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Yup. Most games won't use more than 2GB, let alone 32GB, and somebody who actually will use that much RAM for video editing, image editing or CAD, or some such.. won't be be using a system like this. They'll have bought a Xeon workstation loaded out with RAM.inighthawki - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Considering that most games are still running 32-bit binaries, its literally impossible for most to use more than 4GB. But a lot of ram can have its advantages. Though this is clearly targeted towards gamers, it's certainly possible that this PC can make use of a lot of video encoding, CAD, and have a game open as well, which could push the limits of 8GB easily, especially if you turn off the paging file.Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
...or a proper gaming system instead of a hacked server platform. ;)DarkStryke - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
8K and you get a crappy low end case that isn't even painted in the interior, with some abhorrent wiring on the side window fan and nothing sleeved.You can build a rig yourself for close to half this with the exact same parts, then spend the extra $3k on a real enthusiast case, a high quality water loop with aquacomputer quality plated blocks and some high end sleeving (not to mention a better PSU like the seasonic 1k platinum).
For a custom high end build this aesthetically looks like garbage, something you'd expect from a junior modder at best.
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
The Antec P183 V3 is a "crappy low end case"? That's news to me.But whatever. I actually have this unit in house and while I disagree with the price, this is definitely one of the cleaner, nicer builds I've tested.
piroroadkill - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I agree with him in a sense. This is probably one of the fastest, neatest turnkey system you can buy, but there are some seriously nice things you can do if you go all custom, and get someone to custom fabricate bits for a high end case.Rick83 - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
I got one even though I exclusively use the optical output for my Z-560s, because even though my mainboard's audio has a fancy 'SoundBlaster' branding, it doesn't support dolby-encoding of surround streams. The Xonar does have a license though, so that works.Additionally, I find having multiple soundcards rather convenipent, it allows me to use the onboard optical out to hook up a small digital head phone am.
Beenthere - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
This system is just for bragging rights. No one who knows what they are doing with PCs would use an X79 and SB-E for gaming. At best this thing would make a poor server.fluxtatic - Thursday, November 24, 2011 - link
Yeah, definitely a heinously expensive e-peen extender. I knew they'd come, but it doesn't make them any less ridiculous. I hope anyone that thinks this is a good idea buys one, as idiots deserve to lose thousands on poorly-conceived ideas.Really too bad there wasn't a better AMD system on comparison, too. I know AT is at the mercy of what gets sent to be reviewed, but this makes it look even worse. Give me numbers on a box with an X6 and a current GPU just so it's on level ground.
And yes, I understand entirely that the SB procs here are quads...but I also know that AMD quads can't compete with SB, sadly.