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
Gaming Performance
We've already established the AMD Radeon HD 7970 at the heart of the Erebus GT is the fastest single-GPU graphics card currently available, though iBUYPOWER didn't opt to exploit the liquid cooling loop to coax more performance out of it. Given these figures, that performance may not be entirely needed until you start running games in surround resolutions.
Note that a couple results are missing from Civilization V and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim due to separate issues. As mentioned in our review of the HP Phoenix, Civilization V (or more accurately, the Acer HN274H) has a bug wherein the maximum resolution of the monitor isn't correctly detected by the benchmark, so we don't have results from AVADirect's system in that game. Likewise, AVADirect's Skyrim benchmark was run before Patch 1.4 and the high resolution texture pack, so those results have been omitted.
With that out of the way, iBUYPOWER's system demonstrates a healthy lead on the competing systems. HP is unfortunately not planning to make the 7970 available in the Phoenix, opting for a more lateral move to the Radeon HD 7950 from the GeForce GTX 580 in our review unit. The result is that while the HP Phoenix can be had for less than the Erebus GT, it's also never going to approach iBUYPOWER's system in terms of raw gaming performance. We've also gone ahead and run our surround gaming tests (for the first time on our new suite) with the Erebus GT:
Because the AMD Radeon HD 7970 supports running three displays off of a single card, we're able to include surround gaming testing results that really stress the system. It's not surprising that Battlefield 3 turns in an unplayable result; the game is incredibly stressful on its own before asking a single GPU to handle it at a 6.9 megapixel resolution with 4xMSAA. Civilization V also continues to be quirky by refusing to benchmark in surround mode, but the game is actually playable at the 5760x1200 resolution with no problems.
We'll have to wait for additional systems to see where a single 7970 (and the iBUYPOWER system) stack up relative to other offerings, but considering the punishing requirements of our gaming suite it's safe to say that the only way you'll get a better triple-head gaming system is by using multiple GPUs (or waiting to see what NVIDIA's Kepler brings to the table).
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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.