As many of you know there are several companies out there that want to sell you their high end gaming rigs. Companies such as Alienware and Voodoo PC immediately come to mind when I think of those types of vendors. Both have built a long standing relationship with the computer enthusiast crowd so prying sales away from them will be no easy task. Systemax has recently made major efforts to add their brand of PC’s to this high end market place and are doing a fine job if we do say so. Today we have the chance to examine a system from Systemax. The Systemax Sabre is built around the new Intel®Core™2 Extreme X6800 processor and ATI’s X1900XTX Crossfire technology. The system includes Windows XP Pro SP2, 2 x 150 GB 10K RPM Raptor SATA drives, 2 GB of Corsair TWINX PC6400 memory, a Plextor SATA DVD-RW drive, a Sony DVD/CDRW combo drive, a floppy drive and a flash card reader.

About Systemax (in their own words)
Systemax is a Fortune 1000 company. We offer direct pricing and quality systems built with the world's best components–and backed by our Maximum Service Customer Care Plan. Whether you need a powerful PC for your home, or thousand's for your office, Systemax has crafted a configuration that will drive your future. And we can customize your new Systemax PC any way you like. Tell us what you need; we'll take care of everything. And after you get underway with your new Systemax PC, you'll know that if you have any questions, or any problem–you can count on us to help, and keep on helping.

The Systemax Commitment to Excellence
We know there's a number of PC makers that can build you a system. But building a great system is where our job really begins–and where we start to emerge as a different kind of PC Company.

The Package:
Here is the package that the courier dropped off at the front door.


After opening the box the first thing we find is another box that contains all the extras. When we open the second box we find the Saitek Eclipse Red backlit keyboard, the Razor Diamondback Salamander Red Gaming mouse and all the essential driver disks.



The case is a high gloss bright red colour and has Thermaltake 80mm red led fans for front and side air intake as well as 2 more that serve as exhaust fans.


Build Quality:


The build quality of the Systemax Sabre is top notch.  Their assembly staff took the time to make sure that all the interior cables are neat, secured and tucked away.  Those few extra minutes add up to better cooling and a sharper, cleaner appearance which is commendable.  The case has locking side and front panels and is painted a very high gloss red that is reminiscent of a sports car, or maybe it was to signify the fact that it’s an ATI Crossfire rig. Regardless of why they made the choice, it exudes the aura of a high performance system. 


Above we can see the Plextor SATA DVD/RW Drive as well as the Sony DVD/CDRW Combo drive.  The image below shows us the multi format flash card reader and the standard 1.44” floppy drive. Shame they didn’t complete the look by using red fascia’s on the drive fronts.


When we removed the side panel for a closer look, the tidy setting up of the interior stood out again.  Underneath a Foxconn heatsink/fan is the heart of the system, the Intel Core2 Extreme X6800 processor.


The memory Systemax is using comes from Corsair. For this setup they are using 2 GB of PC-6400 DDR2 in dual channel configuration.


The hard drives are a pair of 150 GB WD Raptors in RAID 0.  These hard drives run at 10,000 RPM and have a 16MB cache, and average seek time of 4.6ms and a 7 second spin up time.


Then of there are the 2 Radeon X1900 cards that should be capable of pumping out modern titles at some high resolutions.


This next image gives you a close up look at the infamous Crossfire connection cable.  It is important that you make sure that all the threaded connectors are securely fastened using a small screwdriver while being careful not to over tighten them. If these connections are not properly secured you may experience onscreen jitter or graphical corruption once you put a heavy load on the graphic system.


The next image below shows the 2 rear Thermaltake 80mm exhaust fans as well as the I/O ports for all the necessities like mouse, keyboard, audio I/O ports, firewire port, USB and IR ports as well as the onboard LAN port.


The next image shows the rear of the Ultra X-Finity 600 watt PSU.  The power supply has dual 80mm fans, and while it’s not the modular type it features Ultra’s FlexForce cable design for increased airflow.

Staying with the red colour scheme they have added a special edition red illuminated Saitek eclipse keyboard and the Razor Diamondback Salamander red gaming mouse.  These 2 additional components are a nice finishing touch to a gaming system.  The illuminated Saitek keyboard is great for that late night gaming session when you don’t want to light up the room. The Razor mouse is extremely responsive when it counts the most in the heat of battle.




Continue for a look at the BIOS and the start of the benchmarking >>