14 DAY TRIAL // Boutique PC vendor Maingear Computers has introduced the EPHEX Skulltrail gaming computer based on Intel's Skulltrail enthusiast platform. The dual-processor beast can deliver extreme graphics performance thanks to the four-GPU CrossFireX link.
Built on top of Intel's D5400XS motherboard, the EPHEX Skulltrail is powered by two 45-nanometer Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors working at 3.2GHz, but the PC vendor can deliver factory-overclocked gaming systems to easily reach the 4 GHz barrier.
The PC has all the features of a Skulltrail-based system: 4GB of FB-DIMM Memory (4x1GB) working at 800MHz frequency, but it's the graphics subsystem that makes it really special: the EPHEX Skulltrail comes with either two dual-chip ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 or two single-chip Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra cards. The CrossFireX and SLI technologies can coexist within the same machine due to the motherboard's two nForce 100 chips.
The EPHEX Skulltrail gaming rig comes in an innovative, all-aluminum chassis, with a separate hard-disk drive cage, in order to shield the storage area from the heat generated by the graphics cards and processors.
Just like any respectable gaming system that can support 800 MHz overclocking on-the-fly, the EPHEX Skulltrail comes with a closed circuit, maintenance-free water cooling solution that allows the system to operate smoothly and silently. The watercooling system can be complemented with the Blastflow Tidal Skulltrail SB Block, to cool the system's southbridge and the SLI chips. Additionally, Maingear offers optional water-cooling upgrades for all the graphics processing units.
The basic hardware configuration starts at $9,000 and includes two Western Digital Raptor Enterprise 150GB 10K RPM hard drives set in a RAID 0 configuration, but it can be swapped with a RAID 0 array of MTRON solid-state drives for a small premium.