Overclockers UK Ultima 460i Scimitar Review

Introduction Our look at pre-built systems continues today as we take a step up and look at a fully water-cooled system from the guys over at Overclockers UK. We've had a look at a range of systems so far that use off the shelf components that most users would buy and fit themselves, however there is always the scope for more and when it comes to getting more out of your system, custom water cooling loops are the next step. Water cooling for the most part is an uncharted area for a large number of people due to the seemingly complex process that is involved and more so the worry of the system leaking and damaging other components in the build. Overclockers UK are one of the UK's biggest hardware retailers, both in their shop at their warehouse in Stoke-On-Trent and more so through their website at www.overclockers.co.uk where this system and much, much more can be found - sadly not including giraffes! Overclockers UK pride themselves in having a large knowledge in overclocking their shop built systems, as their name would suggest and this they pass on to their huge consumer base with their pre-built systems. The Ultima 460i Scimitar is one of OcUK's more recent system creations with a hearty amount of power from the latest generation of Intel processors and one of the most powerful graphics cards on the market courtesy of AMD. To top all this off, the system has been overclocked and fully water-cooled with a custom loop, which itself is made up of parts from the biggest names in the water cooling market. Name: Ultima 460i Scimitar Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II MB: Gigabyte Z87X-OC CPU: Intel Core i7 4770k @ 4.5GHz RAM: 16GB Team Group Vulcan Orange 2133MHz (2x8GB) SSD: 120GB Samsung 840 HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2TB GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7990 6GB PSU: Corsair TX850W V2 ODD: OcUK DVD-RW / Blu Ray Combo Radiators: XSPC EX120 120mm, XSPC EX360 120mm, Hardware Labs Black Ice SR-1 240 120mm CPU Block: XSPC Raystorm GPU Block: EK Water Block EK-FC7990 SE - Acetal Pump: XSPC D5 Vario Reservoir: EK Res X3 250 Fittings: XSPC Black Chrome Rotary & Compression Fluid: Mayhems Pastel Orange Fans: 6x Noiseblocker Black Silent Pro PLPS 120mm OS: Optional Windows 7 or 8 Warranty: Minimum 24 month Collect and return (36 month optional) Price: £2,764.00 inc VAT As system specifications go, this is by far the longest and most impressive list that I've seen to date, however that is not all, it is also the biggest and heaviest system that I've had to haul around the office. After muscling this hefty system up the stairs (which I will add was inside another box with loads of protective foam and heavy-duty straps around the outside), we find that the original boxes for the motherboard and GPU are included along with all of the manuals and extras for all the system components. A Closer Look With more muscling around and after lifting this colossal system out of its box we can get our first look at the Cosmos II. Whilst we have not reviewed the Cosmos II itself, I will highlight over some of its features as we go through the review, although I won't go into too much depth today as a review on the case itself will follow in due course. The Cosmos II is without a doubt a case that really needs no introduction, following in the foot steps of the Cosmos and now with a new little brother the Cosmos SE alongside it, there is no prize for guessing that this is one of the most popular chassis on the market - especially for those who want to include a custom water cooling loop. On the top of the chassis is a cover that slides back to reveal the power button, reset button and fan controller. On the front of the panel, there is no shortage of USB ports, with four USB2.0 and two USB3.0 ports at your disposal and these are topped of with an eSATA port and 3.5mm headphone and microphone connectivity. Sliding the front cover down to reveal the drive bays, we find the DVD-RW/Blu Ray combo drive that OcUK have installed. Whilst the drive in our system is courtesy of Asus, other systems may have a similar drive but of an alternative brand such as Lite-On or Sony. Moving around to the back of the chassis we can see a 120mm fan fitted to the case, pulling air through one of the three radiators that are to be found. On either side of the system there is a door latch that pushes down to unlock the door, allowing it to swing open for access to the body of the system. Whilst there is only one GPU in this system, there is heaps of room still to play with for additional expansion cards. Finally, lifting off the upper cover we can see more closely at the fans that are used in the system. There are a total of six Noise Blocker Black Silent Pro 120mm fans used to cool the three radiators. Releasing the latch on the back allows the entire side to swing open, giving the maximum amount of accessibility as possible. Even though the doors are thick and bulky, they are surprisingly light when compared to the solid metal panels that we find on some other cases. Lifting the door off the front hinge, it's clear that nothing is going to move in transit due to the use of InstaPak foam protection. Whilst the first pack of foam is easy to remove, the other two are far more difficult and in fact I had to cut them out bit by bit, as pulling them out whole would have pulled one of the hoses out off of the loop, spilling cooling fluid everywhere. Before I get onto the hardware, looking at the back of the case, we can see that OcUK have made a fair effort at hiding all the cables away and there is also a set of cable extensions to add to the systems black and orange colour scheme. Finally on to the bit that I'm sure you're all waiting for - the hardware in this system. Even though the Cosmos II is massive inside, the motherboard and water cooling loop don't appear to be lost with a mass of space left around them. The water cooling loop also looks nice and tidy with a flow that runs around the system through the three radiators. Working from the top down, the biggest of the three radiators is a 360mm XSPC EX360 with a twin pass water-flow with twelve 2mm water pipes that run along the split fin design for improved heat dissipation. Moving down, on the back of the case is a small 120mm XSPC EX120 rad that has the same features as the top rad and this is linked to XSPC's Raystorm CPU block. Th block is covering a 4.5GHz overclocked Intel i7-4770k CPU running on Gigabyte's popular Z87X-OC motherboard. Keeping with the orange theme is a pair of Team Group Vulcan Orange memory modules giving the system 16GB of 2133MHz RAM to play with. Nestled in the front of the system we can see the back of the Blu Ray combo drive and for anyone who was curious as to why this was not mounted in the top bay, we can see that the barbs for the top rad are mounted towards the front of the system for a cleaner and shorter loop. Moving down to the graphics, as seen by the included box we have a AMD Radeon HD 7990 courtesy of Sapphire. A fully water-cooled system would be incomplete without cooling the GPU and knowing how hot the 7990 can get, an EKWB EK-FC7990 SE - Acetal block has been employed keeping both GPU cores cool under the collar. With its clear cover we can also see how the fluid flows through the GPU block to cool both cores in a single pass. As seen from our look at the rear of the system, the four main power cables have all been extended out with orange braided BitFenix Alchemy extensions, adding that finishing touch to the colour scheme inside the system. Mounted to the side of the drive bays is an EK Res X3 reservoir for the water cooling loop with its fill port on the top. When you first come to unpack the system, you will note that there is a cable tie or two placed around the reservoir, securing it to the drive bay rails during shipping. The fluid of choice for this system is courtesy of Mayhems, namely their Pastel Orange which as we can see compliments the motherboard and cables very well. With the door open you want to surely show off the insides of the case and along the top and bottom is a white LED strip that nicely lights up the interior - these can be turned off from the control panel on the top of the case. In the Cosmos II's lower cavity is the last of the systems three radiators, again kitted out with two of the Noise Blocker fans. Unlike the other two rads, this one is a Hardware Labs Black Ice SR-1. Behind the bottom rad and accessible from the opposite side of the system is the most important part of the water cooling loop - the pump. This XSPC D5 Vario is very popular amongst water cooling enthusiasts and has a small red adjustment for altering the speed of water flow through the system. Note that OcUK will have set this at an optimum level for the system during the build stages. Above the pump are the Scimitar's drives. Primary storage is taken care of by the popular Samsung 840 series SSD whilst bulk storage is handled by a 2TB hard drive from Seagate. Last, but not least of all is the power supply. Whilst many users believe that for a system like this a huge 1000W and up supply is needed, due to the advances in power consumption that we've seen over the last year or so, 850W is going to be more than enough for this system. Test Procedure To test this system, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this system. This particular system comes pre-installed with Windows 8, but of course this can be customised upon checkout. To give us a baseline performance that is easy to compare, we ran the Windows Experience Index test and the results can be seen below: Many different software applications are used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible. Hardware used: Acoustic dBA meter Software used: 3DMark 11 3DMark 2013 AIDA64 Cinebench R11.5 CrystalDiskMark CPU-Z PCMark 7 PCMark 8 Super PI Unigine Heaven 4.0 Unigine Valley 1.0 Games used: Bioshock Infinite Dirt Showdown Metro Last Light Sleeping Dogs Tomb Raider PCMark 7 PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive. PCMark 8 CMark 8 is the latest version in our popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. 3DMark “The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets, to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it’s not just for Windows. With 3DMark you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It’s the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we’ve ever created. Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.” 3D Mark 2013 FireStrike 3D Mark 2013 FireStrike Extreme 3DMark 11 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. 3DMark 11 Performance 3DMark 11 Extreme Unigine Heaven 4.0 Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 1680 x 1050 1920 x 1080 Unigine Valley 1.0 Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user. 1680x1050 1920x1080 Bioshock Infinite BioShock Infinite is the third game in the BioShock series. It is a first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games, and published by 2K Games. It supports higher-resolution textures and fully utilises DirectX 11 capabilities. DiRT Showdown Dirt Showdown is a video game from Codemasters and is part of the Colin McRae Rally games revolving around a tour of events to compete in allowing you to win money and prizes to spend on new cars and upgrades as well as unlocking new events and races. The game uses high resolution textures and AA settings to simulate dust particles, terrain and damage to the vehicles. Metro Last Light Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver.he game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. It utilises DirectX 11, Tessellation and heavy shadows. Sleeping Dogs Sleeping Dogs is a 2012 open world action-adventure game based around Wei Shen; a Chinese-American police officer going undercover. The game utilises DirectX 11 features as well as high quality intensive reflections and high-resolutions textures. Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a video game franchise which also includes comic books, novels, theme park rides and movies, centering around the adventures of the English archaeologist Lara Croft. Square Enix have rebooted the franchise with a DirectX 11 utilised game with Anti-Aliaising features and lighting effects. HD Video Playback We opted for some Iron Man 2 to assist us with this test, utilising the 1080p HD MKV file to check on CPU utilisation. Running the movie using VLC Player and using a predefined action scene, we check the CPU usage to see how it fairs with HD video playback. CPU Benchmarks Cinebench R11.5 CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It's completely free. CPU Benchmarks Continued Super PI Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point—up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss–Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits. Memory Benchmarks AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Storage Benchmarks AIDA64 Storage AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Solid State Drive Hard Disk Drive CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”: Sequential reads/writes Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes Text copy Change dialog design internationalization (i18n) Solid State Drive Hard Disk Drive USB Benchmarks AIDA64 USB 3.0 Storage AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”: Sequential reads/writes Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes Text copy Change dialog design internationalization (i18n) Acoustics Noise is generally the bain of most consumers lives and in the hope of finding the quietest operation, we feel it's necessary to show you the audio level of components. Typically with a desktop system we would fit a Power Consumption To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment. Temperatures Measuring temperatures is all about being consistent therefore we keep a steady eye on monitoring the ambient room temperature to make sure that it stays the same. While this is constantly being monitored, we measure the idle temperature of the card using HWMonitor over a 15 minute period. Once this has been recorded, we set FurMark into motion for 15 minutes and record the results again. Final Thoughts Pricing As you can probably imagine, this system like other top end pre-built systems does carry a fairly strong price tag. Naturally the 7990 and the custom water cooling loop do account for a large amount of this cost, but for just over £2700 (inc VAT) you do get a top spec lineup of components to accompany the GPU and water cooling loop. That is not all though as your system is built, overclocked and then stress tested for 48 hours by one of the leading companies in the country followed by a courier who will give you notification of when your system is due to arrive at your door in a 1 hour bracket. Overview Overclockers UK are very well-known for the wide range of systems that they offer up, catering for many different user groups and these systems range from those that give the fundamental basics that a person may need for basic office work or web browsing right up to the exclusive systems by 8Pack that have been recently launched. The Ultima 460i Scimitar is nestled in amongst the high-end gaming systems that most gamers will be aiming for, both in terms of performance, but also the looks and more importantly the price. Anyone that is looking to spend £3000 on a system is ultimately going to be expecting a lot, and with this system, that is what you get. Some people may not be totally happy with the baseline specification that has been given to this system, but this can easily be sorted if you give the guys at OcUK a call to discuss upgrading certain parts as you can do with all their systems. Looking at the specification of this system, there are only two components that I feel need to be altered in the baseline specification. The first of these is the SSD. Whilst there is a 2TB hard drive installed for mass storage, when you are paying this much for a pre-built system it would be nicer to see a larger capacity SSD inside to install more applications to, as 120GB soon fills up and you may find yourself upgrading this after a short while. The other aspect though is one that I feel is more fundamental towards this system as a whole. To cool down the system, OcUK have chosen Noiseblocker's Black Silent Pro 120mm fans and whilst [on paper] these are some of the best fans to be had, in the real world I'm afraid I cannot agree with them at all. In our office I have a number of systems running, but the bearings and coils in these fans are just too noisy for me and even after having a number of fans replaced, I can still hear these fans with a significant buzzing noise coming from them. As an alternative, I recommend that Overclockers change the systems six fans over to the likes of BeQuiet's Shadow Wings 2, which offer up nearly the same air flow, but are known to be virtually silent during operation. Granted these fans do cost a little more each when bought separately, however I feel that this would benefit the system on the whole. Looking at the performance, it's safe to say that with the temperatures of the overclocked 4770k and 7990 kept under control with the custom cooling loop, the frame rates that we experienced during our gaming benchmarks would keep anyone happy for a number of years, with some of the best frame rates that we've seen from a 7990 to date. This just goes to show how cooling efficiency is directly related to performance in the real world. Overall I'm extremely happy with this system and with the recommendations that I've made to make the system more desirable and quieter at the same time, any gamer that wants a system that doesn't mess about when it comes to cooling performance and gaming performance should have a think about a system like the Ultima 460i Scimitar from OcUK. Pros Well known system integrator Top spec list of components Fully water-cooled CPU and GPU Overclocked to 4.5GHz Upgradeable 2-year collect and return warranty Fast-Track build times available (at additional cost) Cons Big and heavy - not the ideal LAN going system Noise blocker fans are not as quiet as claimed by the manufacturer 120GB SSD "The Ultima 460i Scimitar is not only a cool looking system, but with cool running temperatures and ultra high-end gaming performance, this is one Ultima-te system for anyone who wants to spend up to £3k on a pre-built, pre-overclocked system" Thanks to Overclockers UK for providing this review sample.