Velocity Micro Edge Z55: Core i7-940 with CrossFire 4870
by Matt Campbell on December 12, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Power
We measure power consumption using a Kill-A-Watt device at the wall outlet. Idle indicates a measurement taken in Windows with no applications running. Max indicates the maximum power draw with the system fully loaded (running eight instances of Prime95 and 3DMark Vantage simultaneously). We've also indicated power draw with just the CPU loaded.
Noise
We measured noise with a sound level meter, at distances of 24" and 48". The chipset fan dominated the noise produced. For reference, ambient noise was approximately 37.5 dB(A).
These are the maximum noise levels under a full CPU load. At idle, the system was 1.2 - 1.4 dB(A) less than the values shown. Subjectively, the system is fairly quiet apart from the chipset fan, which is high-pitched enough to be annoying over long periods.
Temperature
We utilized CoreTemp 0.99.3 to measure CPU temperatures, which has incorporated the latest TjMax values for Intel processors. We loaded each core with Prime95 and ran 3DMark Vantage in the background.
The Core i7 processor is notorious for running quite hot. Compounding this, we have an overclocked gaming system that is using a stock Intel heatsink and fan, which is unusual. Temperatures climbed above 80°C in about a minute, and settled out near the 90°C mark. At only 3.2GHz, clearly this is a limiting factor, as we remarked in the opening.
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leexgx - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
it utterly destroys hard disk performance when it gets stuck doing an shadow copy for 1hr until it give up and stopson my d: drive it has an tendansy to read my 3dmark vantage setup file 4 times as i can see it doing it in resource monitor repeatably reading the same files
but i must admit system restore on vista does work alot better when useing it and tends to brake less things when ran
UNHchabo - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
I looked at some of their machines, and they do offer Norton Suite pre-installed as an optional extra.One small request: jpegs make sense for posting gaming screenshots or photos, but could you please switch to .png files when posting screenshots of regular windows programs? The lack of artifacting makes it easier to read things like the System Information window.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Grap...">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Grap...
leexgx - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
is there any way to make MSpaint on vista allways pick PNGi can see why web sites do not use PNG still but realy users should be useing Opera (still works on win95 and up)/Firefox 3 with 2-3 plugins for exploits/ IE7 (maybe not IE with lots of 0day problems at this time but should be installed and fully up to date)
PNG should be used nowadays or very uncompressed JEPG (do not use msPant as it has no compression settings)
Voldenuit - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
Intel stock cooler? And wait, what is this I'm hearing... *chipset fan*???Blegh.
Cuhulainn - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
This is just unbelievable to me.Spending that kind of scratch on a system with the latest greatest Intel processor (which is known to run hot!) and not getting an aftermarket cooling solution?!
It's like buying a fine wine and drinking it out of a dixie cup.. or something.
mmntech - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
It certainly is chintzy. If you're spending $2100 on something like that, I would expect at least high end air.UNHchabo - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
At Core i7's launch there were only two LGA1366 aftermarket coolers on Newegg, and both had reviews saying that the stock cooler actually did a BETTER job of cooling the CPU.strikeback03 - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
That is the stock Intel cooler on an Intel board, and it looks like it overhangs the first DIMM slot?Matt Campbell - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
Good eye - yes, it does.afkrotch - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
I read Anandtech a few times during the week and noticed this review. One thing I feel is lacking is the Customer Service portion. I like the way HardOCP deals with it. They call customer service with an issue to see how it gets resolved. They act like a regular customer with a regular problem and rate it based on their experience.