The Integrated

• ASUS’ upcoming Maximus Formula III motherboard looks slick as hell. And I dig the RoG Connect.
• If I’d been in the military 50 years ago, I might’ve worked on this beast of a system.
• Obama’s plan for gay rights.
• Here’s a hilariously truth-free promotional page for Internet Explorer. Oh, Microsoft, you never fail to fail to create believable hype. Or fail to maintain IE’s status as the shittiest modern browser. Free advice for you: I wouldn’t boast about web standards when your product scores 20/100 on Acid3 and your competitors score 94, 100, 100, and 100 (FF 3.5, Chrome 2, Opera 10, and Safari 4 respectively). Also: The reason you can claim that IE is compatible with the most sites on the internet is because you single-handedly held the development of the Web back by a decade with IE 6.
• Slightly old, but: This is a good article about a master of compromising physical security devices.

…is, according to Thermaltake, to bring world-class industrial designers in to do it for you. Behold the Level 10, designed by BMW. Yes, the auto manufacturer.

I’m not sure if I like it or not, but it’s certainly unlike anything else on the market, and the hot-swappable hard drive trays are a convenient feature. See more pictures here.

The ever-reliable guys over at [H]ard|OCP have put Quad SLI and CrossfireX to the test, checking out whether it really offers any performance gain over just one dual-GPU video card. The answer is completely unsurprising, given SLI’s history of scaling problems in actual games. This is what I’ve been telling people all along, and it’s nice to see it vindicated in snazzy graph form: any configuration past two GPUs is a waste. Its only purpose is  for benchmark nuts (a legitimate use, to be sure, but a tiny sliver of PC enthusiasts), and for people with more money than sense. If you were thinking about a three- or four-GPU setup for your next computer, why not put that cash elsewhere in the rig? Get a top-of-the-line motherboard, if you hadn’t picked one out already. Get more RAM—always a useful upgrade for heavy multitaskers and folks who work with very large files. A better or additional monitor, perhaps? I guarantee you you’ll get more value for your dollar out of having a gorgeous dual-display setup on your desk than out of having four GPUs instead of two.

Or, hell, why not drop the cash you save in a savings account? That’s a better use for it than any unneccesary upgrade. But please, don’t brag to me about your killer $1k+ video card setup unless you’re LN₂-cooling them and breaking 3DMark world records.

This entry originally appeared on January 6, 2009 (before I installed WordPress).

Look, BFG. I like you. You make good nVidia boards, and are one of the few GeForce partners out there with a Step-Up program. But your new adventure in system integration is a bit…preposterous.

Starting configurations run $3000, $5000, and $8000, with the eight-grand box loaded out as follows:

• Core i7 965 Extreme Edition
• MSI Eclipse X58 mobo
• 6GB Patriot DDR3-1600
• 2x GeForce GTX 295
• 1x GeForce GTX 285 (as a dedicated PPU)
• CoolIt contained watercooling system
• 4x WD Velociraptor HDDs
• Blu-ray drive
• Auzentech X-fi Prelude
• 1.2kW PSU
• Integrated iPhone/iPT dock
• Integrated 8″ touchscreen

A few comments about these specs:

1. “Extreme Edition” on an Intel CPU means that out of the box, you’re getting a marginal performance boost over the highest-tier standard processor, in exchange for an astronomical price that’ll give any system builder but Scrooge McDuck severe sticker shock. An EE’s main benefit is its unlocked multiplier, which really only comes into play for overclockers shooting for world record benchmarks. For the consumer ordering a system online from an integrator, it’s a scam to cash in on the ill-informed.
2. Patriot memory blows.
3. SLI scales horribly. This configuration of two dual-GPU cards for quad SLI falls into the above category of tiny performance benefit for gigantic mountains of cash.
4. Prefab, off-the-shelf watercooling units offer meager benefit (if any) over a top-tier heatsink with a good 120mm fan strapped to it. They don’t offer the above-and-beyond cooling performance the average user expects from watercooling, and while they do have the benefit of silence, a 120mm fan is pretty quiet, and I’d say below most people’s noise tolerance threshold. In exchange for these slight advantages, you pay a lot more money. Cash-in bait #2.
5. The integrated iPhone dock is a good idea…if you have an iPhone. I hope (I assume) this is optional. Why not have the choice for a standard iPod dock? There’s still a lot more classic/nano/older-gen iPods floating around out there than iPhones/iPTs.
6. I’ll put down money that at least 85% of Phobos purchasers play with the touchscreen for five minutes when they first get the thing, and never use it again. Especially considering this system is in a standard tower configuration. Memo to BFG: Most people with a tower or midtower put it under the desk.

But the most absurd part of this whole offer is not what’s in the box. It’s the concierge service. From the BFG press release:

“As a result, Phobos is sold with complementary Concierge Service which includes expert in-home installation and a six month follow up maintenance visit.”

Expert in-home installation. For an $8000 gaming PC. Look, if you’re buying an SLI gaming box, and you can’t match a DVI cable to a DVI port and USB cables to USB ports, I don’t know how the hell you’re going to manage to even turn the thing on.

All things considered, this isn’t the right economy to introduce such a product anyway. Anyone in the “gullible, uninformed twit who likes gaming but knows a lot less than he thinks he does about computers and wants maximum e-peen factor” demographic—at least, anyone who still has, you know, a job, and money to splurge on such things—is likely already a customer of Alienware or Falcon Northwest. If you were serious about offering a product for gamers who simply don’t have the time or inclination to build their own box, you could easily create a rock-solid $1000-1500 i7/DDR3 system that’ll handle, at a minimum, the next three to four years’ worth of games. Phobos will also handle the next three to four years’ worth of games. But it’s more about attempting to swindle those gamers.