iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC: Enthusiast Class
by Dustin Sklavos on September 2, 2010 3:30 AM EST
Good Value but Perhaps Overkill
This review winds up being difficult to wrap-up. There are two faces to the iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC: what is, and what could have been.
We'll start with the what is: it's a powerful, if hot and noisy (at least during gaming), custom machine. It's flexible enough, and the motherboard the build is based on is one of the best on the market, leveraging a wealth of features (including USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps) that ensure it will remain useful for some time. The SSD used for the operating system drive is snappy enough but does run into problems when you try to multitask while doing heavy file-copying procedures, a fact I can personally attest to on my own machine. Will it play anything you throw at it and handle any task you ask of it? Absolutely.
But there's also the what could have been: the overclock is a lazy and poorly-tuned one, leaving both performance and efficiency on the table. A pair of GeForce GTX 470's in SLI is also a curiously unbalanced choice: if heat and noise aren't issues, and you're already spending this much, go whole hog on a pair of 480's. Otherwise, save yourself a healthy amount of bread and hearing and go for the 460's. And if you're only gaming on one monitor, short of a 30" LCD a single Radeon 5850/5870 or GeForce GTX 470/480 is probably just fine. iBUYPOWER offers a lot of options, but we don't feel the pair of 470s is the right call.
What this boils down to is this: is the iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC as reviewed here worth the cost? Thankfully, yes, we think it is. What you're looking at is a premium of a couple hundred dollars to have your machine overclocked from the factory, and to not have to actually assemble it yourself. The three year warranty is excellent as well. This isn't the configuration we would recommend for this build (we'd spring for a Corsair SSD for not much more and a pair of GTX 460's instead), but the price is actually reasonable given what iBUYPOWER offers in addition to the cost of components. With a couple of changes, this would be an excellent alternative for someone tired of the troubleshooting sometimes involved in building their own machine, or for someone who just wants a solid gaming desktop.
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wolfman3k5 - Friday, September 3, 2010 - link
You may do your own search on youtube about how actual iBuyPower systems look like that are being shipped to customers, but for reference here is a video from May, 2010:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKZD4BFAo8k&fea...
I wouldn't say that it looks any better than from what an average Joe with average computer hardware skills would put together.
Just my 2 cents.
JarredWalton - Friday, September 3, 2010 - link
I'm not sure what you'd want it to be. Since the switch to SATA in place of the old IDE cables, wiring has become less critical IMO. Anyway, I've played with old Falcon Northwest and VoodooPC computers in the past, with immaculate wiring jobs. The problem is that if you ever need to replace something, or add hardware, or whatever it's a total pain in the butt. Then again, I don't care about case lighting or windows, so all I need is wiring that isn't terrible. iBUYPOWER doesn't do much beyond what an enthusiast can do, but if you were to ask me to build a similar system I'd probably charge $200 and I wouldn't be providing free tech support.Notleh - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
1) Personally, I love the look of the white Phantom case. I am friggin sick of boring black rectangles.2) You are spot on with the i7 overclock. You can get 4.0-4.2 easily on air cooling. With that 2X120mm radiator they should have no problems hitting at least 4.0ghz.
3) I think you are a bit off on 470GTX. Yes, to your comments about heat and power. But the 470GTX is at a sweet spot right now, since you can pick up a pair of them for $440. When run in SLI they are very competitive at that price. Not needed for a single monitor run at normal res, but VERY nice for high res or multi-monitor.
4) The cable sleeving argument is mildly retarded. Nowadays you can just buy the colored, pre-sleeved cable extensions from NZXT directly or newegg or frozencpu for like 6-10 bucks. They look fantastic. Not to mention the fact that this case has so much room and amazing airflow that sleeving isnt much of a performance issue.
Anyway, nice review. You marked your issues but still made a call at the end. I wouldn't go prebuilt since I could build my own, but this isn't a bad build or a bad price. Rock on Dustin.
wolfman3k5 - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
The cable sleeving argument was mine. I wasn't talking about pres-sleeved extensions, which is probably what they've used. Yes they look fantastic, and no, I didn't know that you could buy them for NZXT power supplies. I've done cable sleeving in the past and it is very time consuming, not to mention expensive if you do a whole computer (~$60 to $70 in materials alone). My point was that I couldn't believe that they would take the time to sleeve cables at this price point, but since there are extensions that you can buy readily available, it is more plausible.I agree with you on the GTX 470. I've just picked up a pair of Gigabyte GTX470 (reference cards, probably made by the same manufacturer who makes all the other GTX 470 cards) for ~$500 from NewEgg. Maybe in some amazing combo, they would cost $440 for a pair. But right now they are actually the best bang for the buck when used in SLI.
Hitting 4.0GHz requeres a little bit of skill, regardless of the motherboard that they where using. However, 3.5GHz was easy to attain. The reviewer meant that the overclock was poorly tuned when he said that it was "lazy", not that the CPU wasn't set at a higher speed.
Will Robinson - Sunday, September 5, 2010 - link
Enough with the "You can easily get 4GHz on air" comments.Do you even have one?
A Core i7 WILL overclock stably to 3.8GHZ without too much tweaking but after that it requires voltage increases that rapidly increase system temps and often result in INstability.
I have mine under water cooling and with summer ambient temp,anything over 3.8GHz heats things up very quickly.
I know it sounds so hardcore boasting about 4GHz overclocks but in the real world its not as "gosh darn" child's play as you state.
Notleh - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
You can buy them at Fry's for $249 each and they have a $30 rebate. I got a similar deal a month ago that Galaxy posted on the [H}ardocp forums.I see what you mean on the OC. Weaksauce adjustments to Bclk, vcore and such...which led to a weak overclock. If I am paying for an expert to build my system I would expect it to be properly tuned.
Wolfman, how are you liking those 470's? I am very pleased with mine running 3 monitors in NVSurround.
Sleeved cables ($10 for 24 pin in black/red/white):
http://nzxt.com/new/products/premium_cables/cb_24p
470 deal:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1543978
wolfman3k5 - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
I love the my pair of GTX 470. IMHO they're the best bang for the buck right now, period. I got a pair of Gigabyte GTX 470 from NewEgg (it was an order for a whole system), and with the combos and MIR I got my pair same as you, for $440. Again, I highly recommend the cards in SLI.Sabresiberian - Sunday, September 5, 2010 - link
This article is a perfect example of why I don't buy a pre-built.Power supply made by who? The people who build machines to sell will find ways to cut corners. Overclocked by a factory monkey who cared the first 100 machines he/she built, but frankly the job is getting a bit old and doesn't really pay all that well to begin with. Besides, time is money, and spending a extra couple of hours with your boss breathing down your neck isn't fun, even if you still enjoy the actual work. Been there, done that.
Okay, I imagine there are a few who don't cut corners, but they don't sell machines under $3k. Most don't even bother to check with mainboard manufacturers and see if the components they use have been tested, or see if Microsoft has approved it for Win 7. I'm not saying iBUYPOWER is that sloppy, but many manufacturers are.
As far as video card overkill - all I have to say is, I play WoW on a system using an i7 920 OC'd to 4.1GHz running Crossfired 5770s and it can't hold 1920x1200 @ 85 Hz everywhere in the game with all settings on "Ultra", so I'll believe 2 470s in SLI, even with their much greater power and scalability, will be more power than I need when I see it - and that's before I buy a bigger monitor with more pixels to generate. The fact is, standard these days is 1920x1080 and a bunch of us have more than that (I'm running old school still, and far better than most of you, which is the reason I can run @ 85 Hz. Hz=refresh rate=fps for those of you unfamiliar with the nomenclature); this system is far from overkill. We run 2 monitors (or more), Sony GDM FW900s, The Dell U2711, 30" monitors, or a variety of other options other than the average setup.
(Not putting down "the average setup" or anything else. I also have an LCD running 1920x1200@60Hz, and it is a nice monitor. TN monitors have come a long way. But then, so have other screen types.)
Granted, WoW is a CPU intensive game and not strictly speaking a fair judge of video card performance (but it is a great judge of overall computer video performance); and the WoW tech boys and girls need to step up and bring the game in to modern times and take advantage of the video card power we have these days (maybe they are going to do it in Cataclysm, but I'm not holding my breath. Regardless, even software doing mostly traditional CPU style work is wasting a modern computer's power if it's not taking advantage of the GPU to share the load - the 2 systems are not as separate in function as they once were, and software engineers should be taking advantage of that.) but the video card setup does have a big impact.
We also now have 3D with a 120Hz requirement@ 1920x1080 (Didn't I just read an article talking about how much better the experience of 120Hz was over 60Hz here in Anandtech?), monitors capable of 10-bit color becoming mainstream, and LCD television screens capable of 240Hz. The video capabilities of a computer like this are far from overkill.
;)