ABS Ultimate X8

More on this product: review; user reviews; specifications; shop

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Reddit
- Facebook
E-mail
Print

CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
Detailed editors' rating

Average user rating:
Write your own review
See all user reviews

Product summary

The good: Highly expandable; well-organized interior.

The bad The bad: Expensive; not as fast as other similarly configured PCs; monitor and speakers not included; one-year warranty.

The bottom line: The ABS Ultimate X8 features some of the latest high-end parts, but its performance falls short of other systems in its class. It's well built and offers plenty of expandability, but it could have used some more fine-tuning.

Specifications: Processor: Intel (3.2 GHz); RAM installed: 1 GB; OS provided: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP 2; See full specs

See all products in the ABS Ultimate X8 series

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: John R. Delaney
Edited by: Dan Ackerman
Reviewed on: 08/12/2005
Released on: 08/12/2005

The $3,899 ABS Ultimate X8 could never be mistaken for a standard desktop rig. The system uses Thermaltake's Armor VA8000BWS case, a monstrous full-tower chassis done up in black brushed aluminum, complete with the requisite side-panel window and blue-lit cooling fans. With Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 840 dual-core processor and dual 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX video cards, this desk-hogging system commands a premium price. And while it might blow away low-end PCs, it lacked the performance of similarly configured systems we've tested.

The front bezel of the Ultimate X8's case gives the system a decidedly different look; the 10 front-mounted drive bays are protected by two half doors that fold out on either side. A perforated metal plate covers each empty drive bay to maximize airflow, except for the bottom bay, which has a drawer big enough to hold a few CDs or a small set of headphones. If 10 drive bays aren't enough, an internal cage mounted on the upper rear of the chassis holds 3 additional drives. A total of four system fans (one for intake, three for exhaust) combine with the processor and video card fans to keep things cool inside without producing too much of a racket.

A small round panel on the top of the system pops up to reveal two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and two audio jacks. While this is handy for connecting cameras, headsets, and other peripherals that can rest atop the case, it may be difficult to get to if you store the Ultimate X8 under a desk. Rear-panel connectors consist of four USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, two Ethernet ports, an external serial ATA connection, and jacks for 8-channel audio, including dual S/PDIF audio connections (an increasingly popular digital audio standard). Another FireWire port comes by way of the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card, and a daughtercard provides two more USB 2.0 connections and a game port for those of you with legacy game controllers. There's plenty of room to work inside the case, even though there's only one open PCI slot, and all cables are neatly tied down and out of the way.

At the heart of the Ultimate X8 is Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 840 dual-core processor running at 3.2GHz, 1GB of Corsair 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and an Asus P5ND2-SLI motherboard based on Nvidia's Nforce 4 SLI Intel Edition chipset. The high-end hardware serves the Ultimate X8 well, but not as well as those in some similar high-end PCs. In the dual core-oriented multimedia tests, the ABS Ultimate X8 posted slower times compared to other dual-core and even some single-core systems. On our Photoshop CS test, the single-core Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge DualX was 7 percent faster, while the Alienware Aurora 7500, with a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ came in 16 percent faster. Things looked better for Apple iTunes encoding, where the Ultimate X8 was 25 percent faster than the Velocity Micro, although it was no match for the Apple Power Mac G5, which, true to its reputation as a media-friendly machine, was 77 percent faster. While the ABS Ultimate X8 sits in the top tier of performance for multimedia and general computing tasks, with a little more care and tweaking it could have outscored other PCs in its class.

With dual 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX video cards running in SLI mode, the X8 provides powerful 3D graphics muscle. In our Half-Life 2 tests, compared to other twin GeForce 7800 GTX SLI-based offerings, the Ultimate X8 came in 40 percent behind the single-core Velocity Micro Gamer's Edge DualX, which has a 2.8GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-57, and 28 percent behind the Maingear F131, which has a dual-core 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ CPU.

See more CNET content tagged:: asset based security,; Velocity Micro,; bay,; Nvidia GeForce,; video card

User reviews

Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
Back to product review
My rating: 0 stars Write review

Showing 1 of 1 user reviewSee 1 user review
0.5 stars

"Do not expect any customer support from ABS"

by fergusoncr on December 3, 2005

read more
See 1 user review Write review

Submit your review

ABS Ultimate X8

1. Rate this product:: (Mouse over the stars to rate this product and click to set your rating.)
2. One-line summary:(Summarize your review in one line. 10 characters minimum; required.): 0 of 55 characters
3. Pros:(Tell us what you like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.): 0 of 250 characters
4. Cons:(Tell us what you don't like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.): 0 of 250 characters
Bottom-line summary:(Explain to us in detail why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product's features and functionality, and your experience using the product. This field is optional.): 0 of 5000 characters; Submit