Wahoo P4 Stratagem System Review

Ian Bell writes "Buddhacon reviews the P4 stratagem system from Wahoo Computers. Could this be the most powerful home system on the market? With just about every option available including an overclocked Intel 2.9GHz CPU, Radeon 9700PRO, 1GB of memory and all the cooling features you can think of you would think a system like this would blow the competition away. Just goes to show that sometimes a fine tuned V6 can beat an over the top V8."

Re:go AMD

[HFXPro]

I will admit AMD chips usually run a higher base temperature, especially compared to a P4. However, P4's of about the same speed with the same heat sink will usually run hotter when loaded up beyond 50-60%. So if you want to heat your house, just let the P4 run a nice number crunching program such as seti@home. I have found this the case in several systems I have had the pleasure of observing.

NOT WORTH IT

[Chuu]

I have been building my own systems for quite a while. This system is a nice one . . . but $6500 jesus christ! And it's not even top of the line -- for some reason they are using a P4 2.5ghz @ 3.0ghz, instead of a true 3.0 with hyperthreading. This leads me to believe it was an old review. Anyways, back to the price issue, if I was to put an equivalent to that system (i.e. top of the line now, instead of top of the line then) into a decent case:

Equivalent watercooling System: $300

Enermax 550W Quiet Power Supply: $180

Case Fans: $20 (They're using panaflo L1A's for everything, an excellent choice for a watercooled system, but yes they really are this cheap)

Babybus: $40

Pentium4 3.0ghz /w HT gaurenteed to overclock nicely: $700 (note this is about $400 more then the CPU they are using)

2x HDD Cooler: $25

Top of the line Granite Bay Motherboard: $200 (includes intel 10/100/1000 ethernet)

2x Sticks of 512mb Insane DDR of a brand of your choice : $400

Radeon 9700 pro : $270

Sound Blaster Live! Audigy Platnium : $200 (To anyone considering this -- DO NOT BUY IT -- go with terratek if you truly care about sound!)

2x WD1200JB Hard Drives: $280

Plextor CD-RW + HP DVD+RW Drives : $450

Zip Disk + Floppy: $35

Hardware Modem: $50

WinXP Pro: $170

Total: $3662

That is a FREEGING HUGE PRICE DIFFERENCE. Your paying about $3000 for the case plus them putting it together. I mean, I know that there are people willing to pay quite a premium for a well built system they don't have the time to research -- but jesus chrirst $3000 is nuts. This article is just more free advertising for some random company.

I'm confused...

[thryllkill]

...it might just be me, but I swear the first page says it has a 2.8 P4 overclocked to 2.9, but the last pages says a 2.53 and no mention of overclocking.

I would hate to pay $6500 and be slighted 370 mhz of performance...

Re:Is it me?

[homer_ca]

Not really. Server chipsets are optimized for I/O, processor and reliability, not graphics. Dell uses Serverworks and Intel E7500 chipsets. The AGP performance you need for gaming would lag behind the desktop chipsets.

Still, if you didn't need the AGP performance, a Poweredge 1600SC with dual 2.4Ghz Xeons, 1GB RAM and a 10K rpm SCSI drive runs you about $2000. Dual 2.8G Xeons is about $800 more.