Project-X - Building a new Guru3D.com test rig

Project-X -- Building a new Guru3D.com test rig

Intel recently released their Core i7 platform, taking over the PC land by storm. So we figured .. it is inevitable that we'll be testing on such a speedy platform anyway, so now's the time to start thinking about building a new test system.

X58 as you guys know can support both SLI and Crossfire, allowing one PC to test both, and for a reviewer that's pretty wicked really, as we do not have to build multiple similar configured systems. One to rule them all. We figured, let's make a new system and go a little crazy.

So the guys over at Smooth Creations decided to help us out by taking care of a custom paintjob. I wanted blue Guru3D colored flames with our logo stamped in there, with a black coating. And so they made that happen on a Silverstone chassis.

A while ago the chassis came back from the USA (towards Europe) and I have started building the new primary graphics card test PC. We wanted it to look good though, so we had the guys from Smooth Creations do a bitching paint-job on the chassis after which we needed to make some choices regarding the rest of the components.

Here's what Guru3D.com graphics card test-platform will look like for the reviews in 2009.

• Chassis - Silverstone Temjin TJ-10 aluminum
• Motherboard - ASUS X58 Rampage II Extreme ROG
• Intel Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz
• Memory - OCZ DDR3 6 GB 1600 MHz 9:9:9:24
• PSU - 1200 Watt
• 3x HDD (one OS for ATI, one OS for NVIDIA, one 64-bit generic PC testing)
• 1x Optical drive

Now this is the chassis (still) in early stages. We still are seeking a proper water-cooling block for Core i7 as this system screams H20. So with that in mind, we are still building it. We already received a lot of questions about this rig as some of you spotted a photo on it in a couple of out articles.

So this is a small pictorial of our new test system called Project-X. Let's have a peek shall we? Then please head on over to the next page.

There she is: "Project X" ...