MaximumPC 2005 03

Reviews

A

katana is a thin Japanese

sword with graceful lines,

fashioned for slashing-

and-thrusting melee. Although

impressed by Kick Ass Gaming

PC’s Katana SLI, we’re of the

opinion that another weapon

would be a more appropriate

namesake.

The Katana SLI, you see, isn’t

a machine to be used in the early

morning, with a shimmering

mist shrouding Mt. Fuji and a

Shakuhachi—Japanese flute—

playing softly in the background.

This machine is more of a battle-

axe, made for hacking into armor

and smashing skulls and bones

with its massive blade.

You’d think of broken bones,

too, if you had

to heft this

50-plus pound

machine onto

a bench. A

good portion

of that weight

comes from

the 10 drives

inside the huge

Cooler Master

CM Stacker

case. Kick Ass

Gaming PC (an

arm of Space

Center Systems)

actually put

two power

supplies in the box just to run all

the hardware. One powers the main

components, while the second spins

up the majority of the hard drives.

Four of the drives are the hot new

Seagate 400GB NCQ SATA drives.

The formatted capacity of the array

is just less than 1.1TB in a “just a

bunch of drives” configuration.

The remaining four SATA ports

are occupied by a quad WD Raptor

set running in RAID 0+1. KAGPC

configured the 74GB Raptors as the

primary boot, while the Seagates are

used for bulk storage.

While the machine has SLI,

it’s the videocard selection that’s

controversial: Instead of two uber-fast

nVidia 6800 Ultra cards, the machine

features two nVidia 6800 GT cards.

The Katana SLI performs well for

its class, but it doesn’t have muscle

enough to KO either the Voodoo

Rage F:5 reviewed this month or

even last month’s Velocity Micro

SLI rig. Because our outdated

gaming benchmarks can’t truly

reveal the power of SLI, we’ve

taken to running FutureMark’s

3DMark05. Here Voodoo’s F:5

scored just under 10,000 3DMarks

(9,965, to be exact), while the

Katana SLI scored about 15-percent

lower (8,431). All told, the Katana

SLI ranks third out of four SLI

machines we’ve reviewed so far.

Our most serious ding against the

Katana SLI is the noise. With a total

of 13 fans (including those for the

GPU and chipset) whirring away, the

system borders on intolerable—and

that’s in our noisy Lab. In a home

environment with the PC right next

to you, the racket might well drive

you batty.

We’re a little conflicted over the

Katana SLI. Although we’re sure

some users will appreciate the over-

the-top storage, KAGPC seems to

have sacrificed a few other options

to get all those drives into the box.

The machine’s optical drive is double

layer, but its single-layer burns are

limited to 8x even though 16x drives

are readily available. For $6,000, we

expect to receive the top-of-the-line

optical drive and videocards.

The Katana SLI is the exact

opposite of the ultra-refined and

quiet Voodoo Rage F:5—it’s loud,

heavy, and in your face.

—GORDON MAH UNG

Kick Ass Gaming PC

Katana SLI

Overkill defined

68 MAXIMUMPC MARCH 2005

With four 400GB drives, you’ll never need to

delete anything, ever.

MITHREL

PADDED ARMOR

It’s only a minus if you don’t like the sound of

whirring fans.

$6,100, http://www.kickassgamingpc.com

MAXIMUMPCVERDICT 8

0 20% 40% 60% 80%

PERCENT FASTER

ZERO

POINT

SCORES

SYSmark2004

Premiere Pro

Photoshop 7.0

MusicMatch 8.1

Jedi Academy

Halo

172

720 sec

289 sec

281 sec

54.4 fps

38.8 fps

100%

WOULD NOT RUN

644 sec

245 sec

236 sec

128.6 fps +

106.4 fps +

KATANA SLi SCORES

Our zero-point system includes: a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51, an Asus SK8N mother-

board, 1GB of Corsair Registered TwinX DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT, a

250GB Western Digital WD2500JB hard drive, Plextor PX-708A DVD burner and a PC

Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe power supply.

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

Videocard Two nVidia 6800 GTs in SLI mode

(354MHz/500MHz DDR)

STORAGE

Hard drives Four 74GB Western Digital

WD740GD (10,000rpm SATA)

running in RAID 0+1 via nVidia

south bridge. Four Seagate

400GB Barracuda 7200.8 NCQ in

JBOD via onboard Silicon Image

RAID controller

BUNDLE

Windows XP Professional

THE BRAINS

CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (2.6GHz

1MB L2)

Mobo Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (nForce4

SLI chipset)

RAM 2GB Corsair Micro DDR400

(four sticks)

I/O ports 10 Hi-Speed USB (six front,

four rear), three FireWire A (one

front, two rear), parallel port, PS/2

mouse and keyboard

LAN Dual Gigabit LAN (one nVidia

and one Marvell)—integrated

AUDIO

Soundcard Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS

Platinum Pro

Case Cooler Master CM Stacker

Fans/extras Three 120mm fans, one 80mm

case fan, one drum fan,

ThermalTake CPU cooler, two

520W OCZ PSUs

FINE DETAILS

BOOT: 45 sec. DOWN: 13 sec.

Got storage? The Katana SLI sports eight hard drives.