Assassin P67 review

Alright so I've had it a couple days now, and things seem to be going well. This computer was a lot of firsts for me - first OC'd cpu, first SLI, first SSD, first custom builder, first setup over $3k.   I've always known the basic layout of mobos and what the components do in  a computer, but I only really started looking into computer hardware selectively about 4 months ago. A number of sites such as Guru3d and this forum steered me in a good direction I think. So there's as good a chance as any that the setup will work for a long time, lol.

Based on certain things I gathered during my research, I had a number of special requests for the build - the Noctua cooler (not a standard option when I ordered), the RAID1 secondary HDD array, the max vcore, and avoiding marvel controllers for the SSD. All these things were taken care of with no confusion or fuss, and the couple times that I called my concerns were handled immediately with no hassle. I haven't dealt with the company for long, but there is every indication that customer service will be better and more accessible than with major computer builders I have used before. Really the only thing that was a little strange was that I was sent the wrong tracking number, but that was corrected the next day.

The computer itself came very well put together. The ft02 case is a solid chunk of tower. When I took out the packing foam, I looked over the interior thoroughly with a flashlight to make sure things were seated right and everything checked out (such as the SSD sata routing, etc.). Everything was solid, and the cable management was great.  It's a cleaner and more charismatic interior than any other computer I've had (mostly DELLs). The blue color scheme was unintentional but worked out for the better - blue evga cards, power supply, and mobo match my blue lit DECK keyboard and the power lights on my monitor and usb 3.0 external HDD.  The only thing I changed were the power lines going to the Noctua fans (I took out resistors). 

The most noticeable thing at first was the speed of the SSD. Programs usually open in less than a second (no more lag on the first opening of Office or web browsers), and game load times are many times faster. For example, a loading screen that used to take 10-15 seconds in Dragon Age now took about 2 seconds. As far as graphical performance, I honestly can't test the limits of this system with any games I have. I can only say that it's way better and more fluid at max settings now than it was on medium settings with my 3-year-old computer.  Temperatures seem good - with gaming or 3dmark11 or heaven dx11 at max settings the highest gpu temps were 65-68C, and 60-65C for the cores of the CPU with full load (only 52C in Heaven).

It's not a question of how it does on current games - it smashes through those like so many faceless henchmen.  Even with max settings it's getting more fps than the monitor refresh rate at 1920x1200 - what will demonstrate the caliber of the setup are games not yet released.

Anyway, here are the specs:

Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Black OPS Assassin Edition 
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K 3.40GHz (Unlocked CPU for Extreme Overclocking) (Quad Core)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 Deluxe (Intel P67 Chipset) (New & Improved B3 Revision Without SATA 3G Issue) 
System Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested)
Power Supply: 1000W Corsair (Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible) 
Expansion Bay: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (300GB Solid State (By: Intel) (Model: 320 Series) 
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 2x RAID1 (500GB Western Digital Caviar (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache)(Model: Black Edition)
Optical Drive 1: Blu-Ray & DVD Writer/Reader (Burn + Play Blu-Ray & DVDs) (12x BD-R) (Lite-On iHBS112) 
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card(s): 2x SLI Dual (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB (Includes PhysX Technology) 
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: AIR: Stage 2: Noctua nh-u12p se2 
Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: - No Thanks
Enhancements: - No Thanks
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
CPU Boost: Stage 1: Overclock CPU 4.0GHz to 4.4GHz
Graphics Boost: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
Memory Boost: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory
OS Boost: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit Edition)
Recovery Tools: Windows Recovery Toolkit (Bundled with Windows 7 CD)

It looks like the RAM is  actually Corsair sticks, which is fine by me lol.  I guess the video cards are EVGA reference models.



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Edited by bishamon - 20 Jun 2011 at 9:57pm

love it man!

Ya, I like the simple panels and 90 degree config. Seems to do the job keeping it cool, too.

Congrats,