The Alien Has Landed

Got my computer at about noon today. Been configuring updating drivers, blah blah blah


Specs:

x6800 Processor
2 Gig Ram
680i Mobo
Dual 8800 GTX 768 MB (SLI)
Raid 0 - 500G
Alien Ice Video Cooling
Liquid Cooled Processor


Well im kinda lazy for pics but i will give some impressions and some good experiences i had with support people etc..........

PACKAGING:

Standard Alien High Quality Packaging. Computer came with no damage and a nice leather folder with CDs and other stuff.

NEW CASE DESIGN

The new case is excellent---very easy to open each side. The alien logo is the power button. Everything was nice and neat inside.

PART MANUFACTURERS

Video cards and mobo are EVGA. The optional Chipset fan was already installed on the mobo. EVGA says this is not necessary unless you overclock the system. Anyway the machine is very very very very quiet. Its awesome.

GAMES:

I only had time to play some WoW--needless to say at 1920 x 1200 with every single setting (im not kidding here) turned to max I was getting an average of 80fps.

SUPPORT:

As i was installing stuff and changing stuff around i kept getting a windows explorer error that was preventing me from really being able to do anything. A.C my support rep walked me thru some different steps and finally we just restored windows which made me lose a few programs but fixed the problem.


I will post more about games when i have time to mess with it. I will be traveling this week so dont expect something too soon.

PROS

-machine worked
-everything mostly up to date driver wise
-Looks great
-Very quiet
-Ate up WoW right out of the box

CONS

-no documentation/manuals for the motherboard (not big deal because i can download that). Would not have even known it was EVGA without a lot of research but AW support had me update Mobo BIOS as a support step.
-Heat - The machine gets hot---not sure how this will play out in marathon gaming sessions (8+ hours).
-No Vista Upgrade Coupon information -- Had to call to find out the deal with that

Just to answer some questions

1) I will run 3D Mark 06 tomorrow---im only getting the free version so not sure how good that will be.

They left a little document on my desktop that showed some benchmarks. SLI was not enabled when i turned on the PC so this is probably single GPU numbers

Doom 3: 221.2 FPS
3DMark Score, 11,883


2) Case Fans---There is a fan on the case door that blows right on the video cards, there is also a fan that sits below the hard drives and blows onto the video cards

I have the liquid cooling so there is no large case fan in the back---well there is but there is a radiator in front of it.

No fan on top of case which would really be good IMO.

Another Con is that AW gives you no information on the liquid cooling system---no instructions how to refill it, etc.............

3)

Temps: After playing FEAR for about an hour (Demo) my temps were

CPU: 50c
GPU1: 81c
GPU2:70c

Dont know if those temps are good or bad to be honest

4) Windows Vista

Guy said we everyone should start getting emails in about a week.

IMPORTANT: WINDOWS VISTA DOES NOT SUPPORT SLI YET. I am sure Nvidia will have a driver release soon that fixes this but until then if you want Vista NO SLI FOR YOU!!!!!

I think AW is actually selling Vista machines with SLI which is sort of strange--everything i have read states that Vista does not support SLI---who knows!

Close.....

____ Your Mother

Oh ok---there is a little teeny, tiny fan on the cpu block. I am sure there is a reason why its there but its so small i cant see it doing any good really.

Ok i ran 3dmark 06

Used the free version so not alot of options were turned on....its probably a bad indication of the systems capabilities but..........

Score: 12842

If someone has a registration code for the pro version i can run it with all settings etc..........