Components

Available at the heart of the Ultimate X Striker Extreme is one of the highest of high-end consumer processors, the Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme QX6800. Featuring four cores running at 2.93 GHz on a 1066 MHz front-side bus with 8MB of L2 cache, it packs up to four wallops at once. If two cores are good for multi-tasking, four are great; unless you continuously scan for viruses, compress files, encode media, surf the web, video-chat, and write a term paper all at the same time, your computing experience will almost always be silky smooth.

At the tippy top of the graphics heap right now is the GeForce 8800 Ultra. Essentially an 8800 GTX with higher clocks and a slightly improved cooler, the 8800 Ultra epitomizes the hardware enthusiast's ubiquitous aphorism. That is, even the slightest performance enhancement is worth the obscene amounts of money being asked for it. Not that you won't be impressed by its rendering muscle, if you value your financial security, you may opt for a less expensive member of the 8800 family; there are several choices available.

Included in this build is a pair of EVGA's vanilla variant of the Ultra, with core, shader, and memory clocks of 612, 1500, and 1080 MHz, respectively. With 128 unified stream processors and 768MB of 384-bit GDDR3 RAM each, these bad boys will be sure to cure your low-FPS blues. HDCP compliance means they’re ready and raring to display high-definition video, providing you shell out for a similarly capable DVD drive. Four dual-link DVI outputs ensure multi-display ecstasy and, as with the entire 8x00 family, they fully support DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0.


To fuel these power-mongers is no small task. NVIDIA recommends a power supply of at least 900 watts for two 8800 Ultras in SLI, but you need to make sure the +12V rails have enough amperage. According to EVGA, each 8800 Ultra will draw up to 34 amps through their dual 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. The Tagan Turbojet 1100W fitted into this configuration meets that and then some. Along with the four rails that provide 72 amps to the video cards, it sports two more +12V rails at 20A each, a +5V rail at 28A, and a +3.3V rail also at 28A.

Two 80mm fans supply the air flow across the precious PSU innards whilst simultaneously exhausting hot air from the 3D Aurora case. Without the eloquence of a modular design, the spare cables just float around in the empty 5.25” drive bays. At least they are out of sight and are not obstructing air flow quite as much as they could be. A pleasant and unique feature of the TurboJet is a grounding cable that is meant to be connected to the chassis. Provided you ground yourself by touching the metal framework of the case, this will lessen the chance of electro-static discharge, one of the primary causes of premature component failure.


This particular build includes the premium RAM upgrade, consisting of 4GB of Wintec AmpX PC2-6400 in a dual-channel pair. The high capacity DIMMs are convenient in that there are still two free slots on the motherboard, but they leave something to be desired of the timings. 5-5-5-15 isn't quite what you would expect from a build of this magnitude. For this reason, you might choose the alternative 2GB of Corsair XMS2 and put in another 2GB yourself. The timings are better, yet the price difference is minimal.

Four gigabytes of RAM is quite a luxury and more than enough for any game. However, a 32-bit operating system cannot utilize all of that RAM. Due to an addressing limitation in a 32-bit environment, there are only 4,294,967,296 unique numbers that correspond to one byte of memory. Some of those addresses need to be assigned to other devices that use memory, like a graphics card. Once these are taken into account, main memory is left with little more than 3GB worth of addressing space, meaning that only that much RAM is able to be used. 64-bit operating systems are capable of addressing many, many more unique bytes (two to the sixty-fourth power). So, you will need to upgrade to either the x64 version of XP or 64-bit Vista to take complete advantage of 4GB of RAM.




A common practice among the hardcore crowd is using high-RPM disk drives, like the Western Digital Raptor, to store the operating system and games. Multiple high-RPM disk drives in a RAID 0 configuration? Even better. In addition to cost, storage capacity is a pretty major downside to this approach. To alleviate that, a slower, high-capacity hard drive is often employed for storing items that are less frequently accessed. A 750GB Seagate Barracuda fits the bill quite nicely, bringing the total of space to nearly a terabyte.

Perpendicular recording is the talk of the magnetic storage industry as of late. This breakthrough allows for immense amounts of data to be stored in the conventional 3.5" form factor, giving birth to high-capacity drives like the 750 GB Seagate Barracuda included in this build. Not only that, but smaller hard drives, like those in laptop computers or iPods, are able to reach unprecedented capacities upward of hundreds of gigabytes. The best part is that prices are dropping nearly as rapidly as capacities are rising. A 500 GB hard drive can now be had for around a hundred bucks. You've got to love the computer industry.


Rounding out the innards of the machine is a Samsung DVD burner with LightScribe capabilities. It is very quiet and supports just about any sub-HD media format you can think of. The only caveat is the ATA-133 interface; while a transfer speed increase might not be noticeable, using Serial ATA would eliminate the ghastly IDE cable from an otherwise beautiful interior.