It's time to cash out the mutual fund. Hardcore Computer's Reactor gaming system has a $10,000 price tag, and its design is almost as eye-popping. But what does this cool investment get you? Oil. A lot of oil.
Hardcore Computer Reactor
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Multimedia
| Audio Adapter Model | Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Pro |
| Audio Channels | 7.1 surround |
| Graphics Board RAM Type | DDR3 |
| Video chipset | Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 |
| Installed video memory | 1024 MB |
| Video bus | PCI Express Triple-SLI |
Software
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32 bit) |
| Included Software | Creative Media Source |
Display
| Included monitor | No |
| Monitor model number | Samsung SyncMaster 2493HM |
| Display type | LCD |
| Display size | 24 inches |
- Lab Tested
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Pros
Full immersion cooling
Superb design
Cons
Extremely expensive
Tricky to upgrade
Bottom Line
Impressive PC cools its parts by immersing them in oil, but more upgradable, cheaper, and faster (graphics-wise) PCs exist.
Hardcore Reactor
Reactor Review, by David Murphy, PC World November 26, 2008
The Reactor is an immersion-cooled PC. Its custom-designed case is filled with a synthetic, viscous liquid that keeps your parts cooled (using an included pump and radiator system) the same way a deep fryer makes your French fries tasty.
That liquid immersion allows Hardcore to kick the Reactor's 3.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 up to 4.0 GHz of processing power. It's not the fastest overclock we've seen (that honor goes to the 4.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 of Xi's Mtower HAF-SLI), but it's enough to keep this quad-core system competitive against the fastest rigs we've benchmarked.
Other features of the Reactor include four gigabytes of DDR3-1600 RAM and, true to the company's name, a "hard-core" storage setup that uses three Samsung SSDs in a RAID 0 array for your boot volume and two RAID 1 Samsung Spinpoint F1 terabyte drives for your file storage. That's 2.2-terabytes of storage in all, with the RAID mirrors making 1.2-terabytes actually available. Unfortunately, Hardcore doesn't include a cooling solution for your wallet--your credit card will be molten once you dole out $10,053 for the system (as of November 11, 2008). And that's for the tower only; it'll cost you an additional $425 for an above-average Samsung 2443BW monitor.
All in all, it's a high sum for the system's overall performance. While the Reactor was able to tie the fastest gaming computers we've tested with a WorldBench 6 score of 163, its average frame rates on our gaming tests were still less than those of Falcon Northwest's comparatively budget-priced Mach V rig ($7395). The Reactor and its tri-SLI PNY GeForce GTX 280 cards (even overclocked to 640 MHz) are simply no match for the Mach V's CrossFire AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards. While we'd normally commend the GeForce cards for being able to run our tested games at high settings and resolutions like 2560 by 1600, the Reactor's absurd price point forces us to expect no less than supreme graphical dominance, which just didn't happen.
However, we absolutely love the lengths Hardcore goes to bundle usability into its custom-built chassis. All of the system's connectors are built into the case's top, for example--it's certainly the first time we ever plugged our speaker cords into that part of a system. Two hot-swappable hard-drive bays on the front of the case free you from having to navigate the oily inner nightmare just to add storage to your machine. The case's grilled side glows a thunderous blue-purple, though we wish more attention had been paid to showing off the case's gooey interior. It would be nice to see what's actually inside your machine, given the novelty of this PC's cooling system.
We also applaud Reactor's inclusion of a Sony NEC Optiarc BC-5600S Blu-ray player and DVD read/writer combination, because that's its only optical drive. The case's connection options could be a bit more extensive: eight USB and four Firewire 400 ports are nice, but an eSATA option anywhere on the case could have sweetened this ten-thousand-dollar deal. The included Logitech G9 mouse is acceptable, but the DPI adjustment buttons are difficult to access in the heat of the moment. We also miss the fancy flip-up screen that used to be a staple element of the included Logitech G11 keyboard. A G15 keyboard, with screen included, would have been a better choice.
There's no question that the Hardcore is an impressive, delightfully imposing machine. But the gimmick of oil-based cooling doesn't sweeten the deal (or its benchmarks) enough to make this $10,000 machine an instant buy. You can find a faster PC that's far easier to upgrade for thousands less.
--David Murphy
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- Rating Breakdown
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95
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70
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89
- See Complete Lab Results »
Performance Comparison with Similar Desktops
95
79
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99
Performance
| Adobe Photoshop CS2 | 251 |
| Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP-3 DirectX | 321 |
| Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP-3 Rendering | 230 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars High 1024x768 | 130.83 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars High 1680x1050 | 113.03 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars High 1920x1200 | 106.07 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars High 2560x1600 | 94.9 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars Normal 1024x768 | 128.47 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars Normal 1680x1050 | 126.47 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars Normal 1920x1200 | 122.5 |
| Enemy Territory Quake Wars Normal 2560x1600 | 102.47 |
| Firefox 2 | 150 |
| Microsoft Office 2003 with SP-1 | 300 |
| Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0 | 111 |
| Nero 7 Ultra Edition | 192 |
| Overall Graphics Score | Very Good |
| Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5 | 165 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Highest 1024x768 | 117.61 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Highest 1680x1050 | 112.27 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Highest 1920x1200 | 114.34 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Highest 2560x1600 | 112.57 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Medium 1024x768 | 165.94 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Medium 1680x1050 | 164.16 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Medium 2560x1600 | 164.59 |
| Unreal Tournament 3 Medium1920x1200 | 163.81 |
| Winzip Computing WinZip 10.0 | 142 |
| WorldBench 6 Score | 163 |
| WorldBench 6 Word Score | Superior |
WorldBench 6 Tests
| Multitasking | 180 |
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