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
Conclusion: Worthy of Enthusiast Attention
Before getting into the problems we had in testing, it bears stating that the iBUYPOWER Erebus GT is fundamentally an excellent product. Boutiques need to find ways to distinguish themselves both from competing boutiques and from larger vendors like Dell or HP, and iBUYPOWER has managed to do exactly that. Shallow though it may be, it's important to establish a brand and aesthetic with your hardware. The Erebus GT isn't just an excellent performer, it's a distinctive-looking piece of hardware to boot.
While the iBUYPOWER representative's response to our testing problems does play a bit like the usual PR, it's also the best and probably most honest we can get or expect. I don't have to tell any of you just how complex computers are at a fundamental level, and I've never owned a piece of hardware that didn't have at least one or two small idiosyncracies or the occasional glitch. It's hardly surprising to me that something didn't gel 100% by the time I was done testing it, but there wasn't anything here that struck me as a major quality control issue, and iBUYPOWER's representatives certainly seem game to help out the end user.
It's unfortunate that as a reviewer it's difficult to see what consumers are going to have to deal with; we typically get one system that we test and write about, and a sample size of one isn't particularly meaningful. We also generally expect our samples to get a bit of extra TLC from the vendor, so when we have any issues—even minor ones—you have to wonder about the "regular customers" experience. If we have a problem with any hardware, we can't even accurately gauge customer service (since our system order would clearly point to the review unit status). Ultimately, all we can say for certain is that our particular sample wasn't 100% stable, but there weren't any show stoppers and iBUYPOWER does have a 30-day money-back guarantee should things really get messy. Is that enough? For an enthusiast capable of doing some troubleshooting, yes, it probably is; for your mom or dad? I'd likely stick with a less extreme system—and it's not like most non-enthusiasts would really be looking at HD 7970 cards anyway.
Ultimately $2499 is still a pretty penny to pay for a gaming machine, but I think value is on iBUYPOWER's side here. To recap our earlier pricing summary, a quick jaunt to NewEgg puts the pricetag on the individual components at $1668, but that's before getting the waterblocks for the CPU and graphics card, the radiators, the coolant, the tubing, the seals, and the large steel custom enclosure that in my time reviewing cases I would expect to see go for somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 at least. It's also before the time and labor spent working on the system.
If you're looking for a custom gaming system or know someone who is, and they're willing to spend up for power and quality, the iBUYPOWER Erebus GT offers a reasonably strong value proposition and I would be willing to recommend it. You may need to disable the sleep mode (or be willing to do some back and forth with tech support), and I'd still like some option of taming the noise levels. I'm also not entirely convinced liquid cooling is something I need or want, but for those that are the Erebus GT can give you most of the perks of liquid cooling without the elbow grease. Then again, most of the liquid cooling crowd seems to think that's part of the fun.
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will54 - Saturday, March 17, 2012 - link
Where did you find a GTX 570 for 210$? 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.