Build Quality/Overall system thoughts

Hardware:
As mentioned earlier in this review the wiring job is excellent, it rivals and in some cases surpasses that which we have seen on previous systems from companies such as Alienware. We really could not suggest any improvements on this aspect of the product.

The choice of case is one which does require some discussion. Firstly in terms of looks and functionality the Antec model is great, it cools very well thanks to the installed fans, including a 20cm model and the buttons and ports are in a convenient place. Compared to a case like the Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 the Antec model is clearly second best in areas such as hard drive installation. The Cooler Master model is also more roomy, has more external connectors (including e-sata) and has handles which make moving a system as heavy as this a little easier. That said, there is nothing wrong with the Antec 900, it is just not as good as some others.

Uberclok have gone purely for Nvidia based graphics products on their configuration options and this means that the choice of motherboard is limited also. In order to provide SLI functionality and keep build simplicity to a minimum we feel they are right to only offer one motherboard choice at this early stage of their development. The question is, did they choose the correct model? Certainly the EVGA 680I SLI board is a good performer and is very configurable; even though the idea is that the consumer should not need to fiddle with the Reaktor.

Our overall feeling however is that there is a better SLI board available. Abit’s IN9 32x-MAX. The Abit board has a better layout of SATA ports, a much better location for front panel connectors, the ability to reset CMOS in a SLI system without removing components (a complete nightmare on the EVGA board) and the option to have various BIOS profiles which would assist in recovering the system to its shipping state without the need for a lengthy and complicated call to Uberclok support for BIOS configuration. As an aside, the inclusion of the IN9 would also allow the Reaktor to be Wi-Fi enabled when shipping, provided the X-Fi audio solution was chosen. Once again a good choice of component in the EVGA, just not the best in our experience.

Tell any enthusiast that a system has two super clocked 8800 Ultras and an Xtreme Gamer X-Fi in it and they will no doubt begin to drool over the performance. One Ultra is enough for even the most demanding enthusiast! On this level Uberclok have things spot on and we cannot fault the choices made, or the options available on their site.

There are two CPU options available on the Reaktor configuration, E6850 at 3.7GHz and Q6600 at 3.2GHz. Therefore the choice is simple, dual core or quad core. Both will be lightning fast and both feature clockspeeds in excess of any part available in retail. Our E6850 at 3.7 GHz ticked over at 46c idle and 65c load when on medium case fan/high Tuniq fan settings, which is excellent and well within safe values. The Tuniq tower impressed us greatly when combined with the Antec case cooling and like the CPU, graphics and sound options we feel Uberclok have chosen exactly the right component for use in the Reaktor.

Drive configuration is a personal choice, the review system shipped with a DVD-Rom and DVD writer installed and while we do not see the value of two drives it is good to see that the online configuration tool allows us to add HD-DVD and Blu-Ray models if we wish. It is also possible to add up to four hard drives, ranging from 500 GB Seagate models to 150 GB Raptors or 1Tb Deskstar’s. Raid 0 is also an option; and though our sample only shipped with the 500 GB model it still performed flawlessly.

Finally the PSU. What more could we want than a known and trusted brand such as Thermaltake? especially when the 1kw+ unit  performed flawlessly with the configuration and the modular design assisted in a clutter free build. Once again a great decision by Uberclok.

Optional Extra:
Uberclok allow one final configuration option, the inclusion of a “Killer NIC”. Like many other aspects of their documentation the company are honest about the value of this component to the average person (not worthwhile for most) but they do offer the choice which is good.

Software:
As mentioned earlier the Reaktor uses a standard EVGA BIOS which means it is no different in layout or options to the retail boards. The BIOS is now on version P31, our review sample shipped with P30 which was the latest available at the time it was built so it is good to see Uberclok shipping with the best version they could. The P30 BIOS is a significant improvement on the versions first released by Nvidia/EVGA and we experienced no BIOS related issues during our testing.

The operating system options available on the Reaktor range from XP to Vista Ultimate and if desired, dual booting. Once more this is a personal choice but we can report that our system had the dual boot option and it worked well. XP was set as the default operating system, however this can be easily changed - we would in fact recommend Uberclok boot to Vista by Default in future, especially on a system with DirectX 10 graphics cards.  The actual configuration was fully patched, UAC is disabled before the system ships, Firefox is the default browser and there are various extras installed such as video codec’s although they are not quite the right ones in our opinion.

We appreciate that Uberclok have tried to ensure most of the major file formats are supported out of the box but installing QuickTime and ITunes is rather overkill (QuickTime can be installed on its own) and the choice of the cole2k codec pack meant that we could not play high definition .mkv files by default. A better codec pack for all round use would have been CCCP. CD burning software is installed in the form of Nero 7 and there is a freeware application which supports all the major file compression formats including RAR and Zip. Uberclok have also gone to the trouble of installing Ntune for system monitoring which is a nice touch.

The only item which seems to be missing is the ability to request a fully functional version of PowerDVD. A PowerDVD disc would come bundled with the HD/BD drive if chosen, but it would be nice to see the option of having a version pre-installed before shipping.

There were a few minor and questionable choices. The first is that for some reason the Windows experience score was not completed and the second is that Media Player 11 was not pre configured before shipping. For attention to detail, we would have liked the experience score to be available and express settings configured prior to sending out units. For anyone interested our completed index score was 5.6.

One final comment on the build is that Uberclok bundled a nice set of wallpapers with the system, many are game related but most are pretty cool.