MaximumPC 2003 12

B

ack in March 2002, we received

our first system from Totally

Awesome Computers. It was

dubbed the SuperDell (in honor of

Dell Schanze, the company’s vain-

glorious founder), and it performed

admirably but had the sex appeal of

lederhosen. We stated as much in

our review. Eleven months later, TAC

came back with a vengeance—its

“Ridiculously Insane” PC received a

glowing 9 verdict and Kick Ass award

in our February 2003 issue. That com-

puter offered traditional TAC perfor-

mance and value, but this time, the

company cleaned up its aesthetics.

This brings us to TAC’s latest

Ridiculously Insane system, which

falls somewhere between the compa-

ny’s two previous

submissions.

The crown

jewel of the new

Ridiculously

Insane is AMD’s

Athlon FX-51

processor. This

2.2GHz chip is

paired with a

gig of registered

DDR400 memory,

and plugged into

Asus’ new SK8N

mobo, featuring

the nForce3

chipset. Given

all this new hard-

ware, we expected

a box that would

indeed destroy

benchmark

records but also

suffer instability.

Thankfully, only the former came to

pass. During testing, the TAC beat

Falcon Northwest’s FX-51

rig (reviewed last

month) in every

single benchmark—

quite a feat considering

the Falcon machine’s blis-

tering speed.

Now the caveat: The Ridiculously

Insane is the fastest AMD- based

system we’ve tested in our official

system benchmark suite, not the

fastest all-around box to ever grace

the Lab. Top benchmarking honors

still belong to the Pentium 4-based

Velocity Micro rig that we reviewed

in August 2003. This machine out-

paced the TAC system in SYSmark2002,

MusicMatch, and 3DMark2001 Game

4. Of course, our current official
   system benchmarks are rather aged,
   so the Velocity Micro’s dominance
   may not be as relevant as P4 fanboys
   would like to believe. Make sure to
   check out this month’s CPU show-
   down feature for details on which
   processor platform reigns supreme,
   as well as this month’s In the Lab sec-
   tion for details on our planned
   benchmark renovations.
   For now, simply consider that the
   Velocity Micro box was overclocked,
   had two 10,000rpm Western Digital
   drives in RAID 0, and cost almost
   $1,000 more than the Ridiculously
   Insane rig.
   TAC strapped a juicy pair of
   Western Digital 2500 hard drives to

its mobo’s onboard Promise RAID

controller. This storage system offers

almost a half-terabyte of 7200rpm

disk drive debauchery. Audio tasks are

handled by the ubiquitous Audigy 2

soundcard, while optical chores are

covered by a 52x Lite-On CD-RW

drive and a 4x dual-format DVD+R\

RW drive from Pioneer. Both drives

performed admirably, and the dual-

format burner is indeed a nice touch.

3D acceleration is handled by a

128MB Radeon 9800 Pro. This is

certainly an excellent card, but we

haven’t seen a system with a 128

megger since August. While we

appreciated the moment of nostalgia

that swept through the Lab upon

the card’s discovery, we think a truly

next-gen system like the Ridiculously

Insane deserves nothing less than

a 256MB board. Considering TAC’s

high price tag, we expect—no,

demand —top-of-the-line everything.

A 128MB card just isn’t as future-

proof as a 256MB card.

We also had a laugh at what TAC

calls its “light package.” Said package

consists of five illuminated fans (blue

and red), glow-in-the-dark ATA and

floppy cables (neon green), and three

UV, door-mounted cold-cathode

lights. One staffer put our collective

reaction very succinctly—“The look

and feel is ‘overblung.’”

That means cheesy. Gaudy. Silly-

looking, actually. We also agreed that

if you’re going to use Velcro patches

to hold up your cathode lights, you

better not put those patches on a case

window, where they’ll be all too vis-

ible. On a happier note, airflow inside

the case is excellent, passive and active

cooling mechanisms are abundant,

Thankfully, only the former came to

pass. During testing, the TAC beat

Falcon Northwest’s FX-51

the Falcon machine’s blis-

TAC Ridiculously Insane AMD64

It’s got a silly name, but a lot of game

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

Videocard ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB

(378MHz core, 337MHz DDR)

Monitor 20-inch NEC 2080UX-BK LCD

STORAGE

Hard drives Two 250GB Western Digital

WD2500JD (7,200rpm SATA,

8MB cache), integrated Promise

RAID chip

Optical Pioneer dual-format DVD+R\RW

(4x DVD+R, 4x DVD-R, 16x CDR);

Lite-On CD-RW 52/32/52

BUNDLE

Windows XP Home, CyberLink PowerDVD,

Ahead Nero Express

THE BRAINS

CPU AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 (2.2GHz)

Mobo Asus SK8N (nForce3 Pro chipset)

RAM 1GB Registered DDR400

Mushkin (two 512MB sticks)

I/O ports Four High-Speed USB, two

low-speed USB, one serial, one

parallel, four FireWire

LAN nVidia Fast Ethernet (integrated)

Modem US Robotics V.92 analog modem

AUDIO

Soundcard Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Speakers Logitech Z-680 5.1

Case Chen Ming case, NSpire 350-

watt power supply, custom “light

package”

Fans/extras Five 80mm case fans, Zalman

CPU fan

Mouse Logitech MX 700 Cordless

Keyboard Logitech Elite Keyboard Cordless

FINE DETAILS

BOOT:49 sec. DOWN: 8 sec.

Reviews

 MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2003

The TAC is a smokin’ box, but its

lighting is a bit too reminiscent

of a certain part of Amsterdam.

Our zero-point system includes: an Intel D850MV motherboard, a 2GHz P4 CPU,

512MB PC800 RDRAM, a GeForce4 Ti 4600 videocard, and a Western Digital

1000BB hard drive (2MB cache).

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