iBuyPower Paladin XLC

 

BuyPower tells us that the Paladin XLC is designed for performance-oriented buyers who are also focused on reliabili­ty, aesthetic design, and value. In short, it's more of an all-around performer than a pure gaming beast. The Paladin XLC sent to us featured Intel's six-core Core i7-970 overclocked to 4.04GHz, an OS volume created with two 64GB Kingston SSDNow V Series in RAID 0, and two Asus Matrix 5870 Platinums in CrossFire.

The Paladin XLC is built in a red (both inside and out) NZXT Phantom case, which we found to be plenty roomy. Two 120mm fans on the side of the case blow cold air over the graphics cards, while a 360mm mesh opening in the side panel allows for heat to passively move out of the system. There are two 200mm fans at the top of the case, where iBuyPower also installed the 240mm liq­uid-cooling radiator for the Asetek 570Le. The interior of the case looked great. iBuyPower added cable harnesses made of individually black-wrapped wires. The result was that even the visible wires weren't distracting to the eye.

 

The two 64GB Kingston SSDNow VSeries SSDs set up in RAID 0 seemed to save us several seconds, in comparison to other systems, each time we loaded an application. And combined with the over­clocked, six-core Intel Core i7 -970, the Paladin XLC was snappy to respond during all our testing. Other speedy conveniences inside this build included a lOX BD-ROM drive, a 22X DVD burner, and USB 3.0.

the Paladin XLC per­formed extremely well in our processor benchmarks, including the top mark among Tier I systems in Cinebench 11.5, POV-Ray 3.7, and several of Sandra 2010's processor benchmarks. It also wasn't a terri­ble performer in games, with 136.05fps in Left 4 Dead 2, 32.9fps in Aliens vs. Predator, and 44.1fps in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

Call of Pripyat. Those quick load times we experienced were backed by a 360MBps speed in Sandra 2010's Physical Disks test. The Paladin XLC's processor-centric design is shown in 3DMark Vantage, where it delivered a 36843 CPU score.

The iBuyPower Paladin XLC was one of the few colorfully painted systems we saw this year. It also meets iBuyPower's goals of a value performance system with high benchmarks in our processor, memory, and storage tests to deliver a system that's good in most areas and exceptional in a few ..•

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