VXI BlueParrott B100 Specifications download pdf (Page 41)

reviews

TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED

74 MAXIMUMPC HOLIDAY 2005

hile not ofﬁcially sanctioned by

Intel for desktop use, the Pentium

M processor has long been cov-

eted by fans of quiet PCs and small form-

factor boxes,

for the very

reasons the

mobile CPU

has excelled in

the notebook

arena: low

power usage

and minimal

heat output.

This custom

PC from Puget

Systems is the

ﬁrst Pentium

M-equipped

desktop sys-

tem we’ve reviewed and we were eager

to see how the chip would fare against its

Pentium 4 brethren and AMD competitors.

The heart of this system is the

2.35GHz Pentium M 780, which sports

2MB of L2 cache. It’s keeping company

with 2GB of DDR2/533 RAM, a single

Western Digital 74GB Raptor, and a BFG

GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB videocard.

Most of the systems we’ve reviewed this

year have incorporated some iteration of

SLI, thus the lone GeForce 7800 card in

Puget’s PC seems paltry by comparison.

Nonetheless, the GeForce 7800

is more than capable of playing

today’s games. Puget left sound

duties to the onboard 7.1 chan-

nel HD audio controller, in lieu

of the familiar Sound Blaster

Audigy 2 ZS, but this isn’t its

biggest failing. Shipping a

$4,700 system with only 74GB

of storage is inexcusable; we’d

rather see a quieter, nearly as

fast 500GB Deskstar.

The stand-out feature in

this rig is the Aqua-Computer Airplex Evo

1800 Radiator. This is the ﬁrst fanless water-

cooled system we’ve tested, and it’s made

possible by the beefy, probably-big-enough-

to-cool-a-small-car radiator. The CPU, chip-

set, videocard, and hard drive are all cooled

by the heavy-duty water-cooling kit, which

looks impressive at work with purple UV-

reactive dye running through its water lines.

All hardware is housed in an elegant Lian-Li

PC-767 case, perfect for quietude.

The Puget system batted pretty low

in SYSmark 2004, for which we blame the

Pentium M. SYSmark simulates multitask-

ing in various applications, and without dual

cores or even Hyper-Threading, the Pentium

M just can’t compete. Performance in

Premiere Pro and Photoshop CS was more

impressive, comparable to previous FX-55

systems we’ve tested. And the Pentium M

780 was able to encode our MPEG-4 test

video as well as P4 systems with 1GHz

faster clock speeds.

With its single 7800 GTX videocard, the

Puget system couldn’t compete with the

big boys in our game benchmarks. Still,

it summarily spanked single-card 6800-

based systems and managed to crank

out 1.6 more frames per second than our

6800 Ultra SLI-powered zero-point rig in

the 3DMark05 benchmark. And a score of

almost 41fps in Doom 3 from a single card

is deﬁnitely respectable, but we would have

loved to see this system with a 7800 SLI

conﬁguration.

While the Pentium M provides good per-

formance and runs cool doing so, the proc

lacks multithread capability, SSE3 instructions,

and 64-bit processing. So it’s not surprising

that Puget’s custom system isn’t a high-per-

formance gaming PC. Instead, it’s a high-per-

formance quiet PC that allows the Pentium M

to ﬂex its gaming muscle. If your ﬁrst concern

is quiet operation, and you want something

with a little get-up-and-go, then get up and

go get this system. Otherwise, grab a system

based on a full-throttle processor.

Puget Systems Custom PC

Upwardly mobile, this rig hints at a promising future for Intel’s Pentium M

Minimalists might dig the single videocard, single hard

drive, and small, fast, Pentium M, but we need at least

a couple hundred gigs of storage.

The Puget’s ginormous radia-

tor is the key to its fanless

water-cooling solution.

UNDER THE HOOD

BOOT: 29 sec. DOWN: 9 sec.

BRAINS

BEAUTY

179 (-10.95%)

BENCHMARKS

SYSmark2004

201

ZERO POINT SCORES

Premiere Pro 620 sec

Photoshop CS

286

sec

Divx Encode

1812

sec

3DMark05

29.3

fps

Doom 3

77.1 fps

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our zero-point reference systems uses a 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55, 2GB of DDR400 Crucial Ballistix RAM, two nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in SLI, a Maxtor 250GB

DiamondMax10, a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, a PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe Express, and Windows XP Pro with SP2.

PUGET SYSTEMS CUSTOM PC

SILENT BOB

Not enough storage, No SLI,

and the radiator is huge.

RIOTING MOB

Ultra quiet, great case and

aesthetic detailing, slot-

loading DVD.

$4,730, www.pugetsystems.com

CPU Intel Pentium M 780

(2.26GHz)

MOBO Aopen A-i915GA-HFS

RAM 2GB DDR2/533

LAN Gigabit Ethernet

HARD DRIVE 74GB Western

Digital Raptor

OPTICAL Plextor 716AL/SW

Slot-loading IDE

VIDEOCARD BFG GeForce 7800 GTX

256MB (450MHz core,

625MHz GDDR3)

SOUNDCARD Onboard Azalia 7.1 channel

HD audio

CASE Lian-Li Classical Silent PC767,

Antec Phantom 500W PSU

611 sec

303 sec (-5.61%)

1770

sec

30.9 fps

40.9 fps (-46.95%)

1 2 ... 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 ... 55 56

Comments to this Manuals

No comments

VXI BlueParrott B100 Specifications Page 41

Comments to this Manuals