MaximumPC 2004 03

Reviews

 MAXIMUMPC MARCH 2004

W

e hate to

admit it, but

we love clear

cases. And why not? If

you’re going to spend

two paychecks on red

or blue PCB hardware

and lights, why wrap

it in aluminum or steel

when you can go au

natural and let it all

hang out? But at the

same time, we have to

admit that clear cases

can also be a horror.

They’re hard to keep

clean and occasionally

crack or otherwise fall

apart. Thanks to Vicious PC, how-

ever, this final flaw may no lon-

ger be a factor.

The Assassin

is not the first

clear PC, but it’s

certainly the

finest.

Illuminated by

an array of blue

LEDs strategi-

cally placed

around the

case, and a pair

of multicolored

fans, this sys-

tem is both ele-

gant and eye-

catching.

Despite the

inclusion of just

two relatively quiet fans, their careful

placement and the airy internal layout

ensure superb ventilation. More

importantly, thanks to the four metal

rails, heavy-duty acrylic panels, and a

remarkably rigid structural design,

Vicious PC manages to produce a case

that feels as solid as it is sexy.

Accessing the Assassin’s innards is a

breeze, thanks to the side panels that

smoothly slide out to the rear upon

the removal of a single thumbscrew.

The only bothersome aspect of work-

ing within this PC is the use of hex

screws. Nifty in appearance, it won’t

take you 10 minutes before you find

yourself cursing because you can’t

find your Allen wrench. (Thankfully,

Vicious PC includes one.)

If the beauty ran only skin deep,

we would have considered this system

a pleasant distraction and nothing

more. But the Assassin also packs

quite a hefty punch. At its heart is a

MSI K86-Neo mobo hosting AMD’s

brand-new Athlon 64 3400+ CPU.

This mobo, which uses the VIA

K8T800 chipset, is an excellent per-

former, and when combined with the

2.2GHz CPU, is able to trounce sys-

tems built around the vaunted FX-51

in many tests (more on that later).

In the Lab, we found the Assassin

to be a remarkable performer. Even

though its 3400+ CPU lacks the FX-

51’s dual-channel memory controller,

it’s clocked at 2.2GHz, which is 10

percent faster than the Athlon 64

3200+. This combined with the VIA

KT800 chipset makes for dynamite

results. The system posts a SYSmark

2004 score of 198, which smacks

around our FX-51 reference system

by a whopping 26 points. The 198

score puts it just behind the 3.4GHz

Pentium 4 Extreme Edition system

we used to test CPUs this month. (It

must be said that, unlike the Assassin,

neither our zero-point nor our P4 EE

system had RAID 0 storage.)

The system’s performance in

MusicMatch 8.1 and Photoshop 7.01

represents the best we have seen in an

AMD system to date. Lastly, while the

graphics performance indicated by the

Halo and Jedi Academy benchmarks

broke no records, they are right up

there with the fastest systems we have

tested. Overall, the system finished

notably ahead of our FX-51 baseline

system in 5 out of 6 tests, and comes

almost imperceptibly close in Halo.

That’s no small feat for a system that

costs $3,000!

—DWIGHT LOOI

Vicious Assassin

Special Edition

A gorgeous clear case combined with

high-speed performance? Sign us up!

crack or otherwise fall

apart. Thanks to Vicious PC, how-

Beautiful, fast, and fairly priced.

HAMMURABI

SADDAM

Annoying hex screws that won’t stay tight, 4x

DVD burner.

$3,000, http://www.viciouspc.com

MAXIMUMPC VERDICT 9

It’s clear to anyone that Vicious

has built a killer PC.

0 20% 40% 60% 80%

PERCENT FASTER

ZERO POINT

SCORES

SYSmark200 4

Premiere 6.0

Photoshop 7.0

MusicMatch

Jedi Academy

Halo

172

720 sec

289 sec

281 sec

54.4 fps

38.8 fps

100%

198

58.4

37.1 (-4.38%)

688 sec

261 sec

255 sec

Assasin Special Edition 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 ATi Radeon 9800 XT (412MHz core,

365MHz DDR)

STORAGE

Windows XP Home

THE BRAINS

CPU AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.2GHz)

Mobo MSI K86-Neo (Socket-754, VIA

K8T800 chipset)

RAM 1GB DDR400 Kingston Hyper-X

(two 512MB modules)

I/O ports Six USB (two front, four rear), one

serial, one parallel, three IEEE 1394

(two on mobo, one on Audigy 2 ZS)

LAN Fast Ethernet (integrated)

AUDIO

FINE DETAILS

BOOT: 45 sec. DOWN: 10 sec.

Soundcard Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1

Hard drives Two 36GB Western Digital Raptor

(10,000rpm SATA), RAID 0

Optical One NEC DVD+/-RW burner (ND-

1300A, 4x DVD+/-RW, 16x CD-R,

10x CD-RW, 40x CD)

One Toshiba 16x DVD-ROM

Other One 1.44 MB Floppy drive

Power supply 475-watt Herolchi

HEC-475VD-T ATX-12V.

Fans/extras Two 80mm clear case fans,

OEM CPU fan.

Keyboard Multimedia 9801

Mouse Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer

Optical

BUNDLE