iBUYPOWER Erebus GT: Custom Cooling for Less
by Dustin Sklavos on March 15, 2012 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- iBuyPower
- Systems
- Water Cooling
- boutique
- desktops
- Radeon HD 7000
- i7
Application and Futuremark Performance
Intel's Core i7-2700K is a relatively known quantity, as we've reviewed systems with overclocked Sandy Bridge processors in them many times before. Suffice it to say, the iBUYPOWER Erebus GT should prove to be plenty fast where the CPU is concerned. As mentioned previously, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is also the fastest single-GPU card currently available, giving the Erebus GT a substantial amount of graphics horsepower without the potential headaches of a multi-GPU solution. Finally, the SandForce-based SSD should carry the Erebus GT the rest of the way in our PCMark benches (though 240GB SF-2281 SSDs would benchmark slightly faster thanks to the additional NAND die).
All of the results line up pretty much exactly where you'd expect. The Erebus GT's 4.6GHz overclock on the i7-2700K allows it to hang with AVADirect's system, while benchmarks that benefit from more than four cores (and eight threads) allow Gulftown and Sandy Bridge-E to shine. The PCMarks continue to dance around the differences between SSDs, but the Erebus GT is still in the ballpark, right where it should be. Just about any of the above systems will prove to be plenty fast for most applications.
3DMark06 remains essentially CPU-limited while the multi-GPU solutions beat AMD's single-GPU Radeon HD 7970 once the workload shifts to the graphics subsystem. While we would never judge a GPU solely by 3DMark scores, the 7970 still proves its worth by placing well ahead of the GTX 580, a pattern which repeats itself when we get to the gaming benchmarks proper.
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will54 - Saturday, March 17, 2012 - link
Where did you find a GTX 570 for 210$? The ones on Newegg are around 300$ if I could find one for 210$ I would be less likely to wait for Kepler to build my rig.rakunSA - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
The sleep issue you were experiencing isn't an isolated incident. It affects the whole SB platform. People thought Z68 would correct this issue but apparently, Z68 boards are still affected.http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1619794
There hasn't really been an official fix. But it seems like it has to do with PLL overvoltage enabled or disabled.
Zap - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
It is an issue, but can be worked around. All of the overclocked Sandy Bridge systems I have built (8-10?) can S3-sleep/resume just fine, with the exception of one using an Asus P8P67 Pro which on occasion (once a month?) doesn't resume and another using an ASRock board that was fixed with a BIOS update.WeaselITB - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
My ASUS ROG motherboard with an overclocked i5-2500k experiences this issue, too, if I try to resume from either keyboard or mouse input - it seems to hang while re-initializing the graphics. If I resume by pressing the power button on the tower, it comes up every time.Food for thought.
-Weasel
zanon - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
Thanks for the review, this looks like a very interesting piece of kit. I agree that the incredible overclock capability of the 7970 seems in fact to be one of its major virtues, so it's a bit too bad to not see that pushed a bit in an LC setup (I'd prefer that with a tamer CPU OC actually), but even so stuff like the attention to detail in tuning the CPU OC voltage is appreciated.One review-related thing I wondered about though was temp & noise. You have the normal Anand review charts showing idle/load power, but not the charts for temperatures & noise under idle & load. Per above, I understand that you're really busy with batches of stuff at once, but particularly with liquid cooling a big part of the value centers around temperature and noise, so it's helpful to be able to see exactly how it stacks up. Even so, thanks again!
Lazlo Panaflex - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
I'm not versed in the nuiances of Watercooling setups. Was wondering what kind of maintenance is involved in maintaining a system like this? I suspect the coolant would have to be replaced completely by IBuypower at some point?Lazlo Panaflex - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
by IBuypower or the user at some point? need an edit button here!rakunSA - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
looks like a standard loop with a 360 rad. Since they're using dyed coolant, the tubing will stain. You're probably looking at a standard 1-4 flushes a year depending on OCD you are with it (there are some people who flush once every 2 years). Also gotta make sure the rad is clean (much like you would clean a normal heatsink).The coolant is typically some sort of mixture of distilled water, glycol, biocide, and colored dye. Most enthusiasts will just use distilled water, biocide or 99.999% silver and call it a day. Its the best performing setup (yes better than the proprietary coolants), and requires the least maintenance.
Lazlo Panaflex - Friday, March 16, 2012 - link
Thanks :)Sunburn74 - Thursday, March 15, 2012 - link
Sleep issues with the k series sandybridge chips with high overclocks can often be remedied by turning off CPU PLL and running memory at stock settings with exactly 1.5V as the input vdimm. That being said, sometimes to cross 4.5ghz you need cpu PLL on so pick your poison.