6 - Subjective tests and remarks

Subjective tests

You know it, you are on Guru3D.com and we write articles based on our experiences and nothing else. When a manufacturer or OEM or system builder makes mistakes we tell it like it is. So with all the glory and good looks, admittedly ... we have had some issues with this PC.

Problems we ran into:

Try to follow me. First experience: we start up the PC, and Windows BSODs (blue screen of death) completely with a ATIDMAG error (ATI diagnostics library). After puzzling for a couple of hours, we can only conclude that either the HDD was corrupted during transport or one of the graphics cards didn't survive transport. We boot into safe mode, uninstall the drivers and try to boot up again. No way, again a BSOD.

So we insert a new HDD with a ghosted clean Vista onto it. I have HDDS all prepped lying around, hey we test a lot of systems. The result, a 100% similar BSOD, so we can't get into Windows Vista at all. At this point we can rule out a possible software issue.

Now remember in the photo shoot where I mentioned a 4870 card with a green sticker ? This is the point where I take out both 4870 cards and visually inspect them. And sure .. one card has a very familiar green/white sticker labeled  .. evaluation sample, and the other is a way newer model with the latest BIOS.

See, that's easy math for a veteran like me, I grabbed one of my own 4870 cards with latest BIOS, we pop it in and bam .. boot into Windows Vista. Apparently the cards selected at Smooth Creations where not paired from the same batch. Now that winds me up, as even if you where an experienced consumer, you would not have figured this out by yourself. Likely as a result, you would have shipped the entire PC back for RMA or asked a refund. A very bad booboo for sure.

Second nag: Noise ... Smooth creations picked out a FoxConn P45A-S mainboard. By itself an okay mainboard, yet originally being an OEM manufacturer and not really out there ranking as best tweakable and configurable mother boards. Here's the thing, it does not allow flexible and manageable fan speeds at BIOS level. For example if you take an nForce mainboard, you can tell FAN1 to spin at 60 or even 40% RPM. That way you have good cooling and very acceptable noise-levels.

Since that can not be managed, the minute you turn on the PC, the first three words you'll say is "What, the, and then the last word will be Fuck". The dBa reading from this PC made my eye browses frown. We measured well over 50 dBa at 75 CM distance because chassis and CPU fans rotate at 100% power. And guys, that Foxconn motherboard isn't lowering RPMs at all, even if you enable the Smartfan options in the BIOS it just doesn't happen.

I'm confident that you'll end up purchasing a 15 USD fan controller as you can't take sitting next to this PC for more than 30 minutes. Perhaps there's a Foxconn software tool allowing control for this ? I don't know  .. Smooth creations did not include the Foxconn driver CD.

I recorded a video for you guys to be able to demonstrate what I am experiencing here in the lab.

Noise levels from the PC -- Note the noise is coming from the rear fan mostly, you can't even hear the Radeons at boot up.

Now it's time to move away from my frustrations, and start to focus at what's good. If this system had acceptable noise levels with the help of a little fan controller, and say somebody figured out to actually check the system to see if it's booting Windows, then by far we have an extremely fast and stunning system.

Now other than the two silly goof-ups, this is an excellent machine which would drive your gaming enjoyment to another level. It's fast, it's snazzy .. it is really is sexy. As our benchmarks show, that's leading performance. So the components that have been opted for this system really work out well. Though I'd like to have seen the Foxconn mainboard swapped out for something a little more tweakable and spicy, and actually with two Ethernet connectors as well. But surely it does the job well.