Final Thoughts
All in all iBUYPOWER has put together a great system for anyone that want to play the latest games at the highest settings. Not to mention this system is just a great overall system, you can do video editing on it, CAD and other activities that take up a lot of CPU usage. The dual radiator CPU cooler system does a great job at keeping the case cool and is not that loud at all, especially compared to an large heatsink fan that you would normally have on your CPU.
The system itself is built with quality components, not no-name brand products that we have seen is other custom system. Many of the components in the system we have actually reviewed and we know they are great products. With that being said you should expect this system to last you quite a while and if it does not iBUYPOWER does give you a free 3-year warranty.
Talking about components I went on Newegg and built the exact same system pretty much and my total came to about $100 less then what iBUYPOWER is asking for the system. But you have to consider that the system is already built, is already overclocked, and has Windows installed. I’m sure that is definitely worth more than $100 to most people.
Did I mention this system looks badass? iBUYPOWER did a great job in picking the NZXT Phantom as their case of choice on this system. When you have it fired up and the lights on it looks awesome. If you are not a fan of the Phantom there a quite a few other cases to choose from.
When it comes down to it I think anyone would be happy to have this system as their own and I know I have spent many hours gaming on it myself. Overall ThinkComputers gives the iBUYPOWER Gamer Paladin XLC Intel X79 Gaming System a 10 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Quality components
– 3 year warranty
– Great performance
– Stable 40% overclock on the CPU
– Price is consistent with buying the components yourself
Cons:
– None that I found
Man, seeing an X79 build review really takes me back. The i7-3930K was such a legend in its day; having 6 cores at 3.20GHz for a home gaming rig felt like absolute madness when most of us were still struggling to justify moving past quad cores. I especially remember the hype around liquid cooling being a “must-have” to really let those Sandy Bridge-E chips stretch their legs.
It’s funny to look at these specs now that my daily focus has shifted more toward enterprise hardware. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with a ProLiant DL360 rack that has a 16 Core 2.9GHz Xeon https://serverorbit.com/pc-and-servers/proliant-dl360/16-core-2-9ghz-xeon, and it’s wild how much the “core wars” have evolved. Back then, 6 cores were for extreme gamers, but now 16 cores in a 1U chassis is just a standard Tuesday for virtualization tasks. I still have a soft spot for the “cool factor” of cases like the NZXT Phantom mentioned in the post, though—server rails definitely aren’t as fun to look at!
Do you think these older enthusiast platforms like X79 still have a place as budget workstations today, or has the power draw versus modern efficiency finally made them too expensive to keep running?