Cyberpower Ultra Scylla six-core AMD PC The Cyberpower Ultra Scylla derives its name from a mythical six-headed sea beastie, which is a tribute to the hexa-core nature of the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor that lies inside the PC. CyberPower Ultra Scylla The joy of six: Cyberpower's Ultra Scylla The £899 version of the Ultra Scylla that I was sent includes a …
...an empty washing-up liquid bottle and a pair of Val's old knickers.
On a less serious note, aside from Steven's valid point about the cooling, it's nice to see a sensible custom-built PC reviewed with quality mainstream components and coming in under a grand rather than the usual water-cooled multi-GPU behemoths that dim the lights in your house when switched on and require an extension to your mortgage to purchase.
This is the most stupid airflow design I have seen for the last 3-4 years. The pic on slide 2 is self-evident.
The fan on the top of the case is obstructed by the CPU nuclear reactor heat exchanger or whatever they bolted on it. It is doing nothing in terms of cooling and a lot in terms of noise. The rare case fan is correctly positioned, but severely underpowered for this monstrosity so the heat dissipated by the VGA and the CPU is nicely mixed inside instead of being taken out promptly. I would expect 200mm or even 250mm on the back, further to the back on top (not right on top of the CPU) or on the front instead. For $DEITY sake, we live in a day and age when even Maplin can get cooling right on a budget case
Is it that difficult?
Lots of fans at low speed = better cooling vs noise than a duct and a high speed fan. In our many years experience as a system builder ducts tend to become resonating chambers amplifying the sound of the high speed fan to a deafening roar.
I like the shoe box PC idea, watch this space or follow my tweets...
Let's be honest about it: this PC is designed as an affordable gaming rig. To that end it has value-for-money grunt with the CPU/GPU combination, a bit of economical bling with the case and some minor gamer kudos being mildly over-clocked.
It's not that hard to design a near-silent gaming box but it probably wouldn't sell to the people this PC is aimed at as it would be designed around a much more understated case: cases with a thermal/airflow design aimed at low noise + good cooling only have holes where they need to let air in (usually front/fanless/covered by door or baffling to prevent direct sound path) or out (usually rear/fan directing sound away from user). No side fans and just quality efficient/quiet 120mm fans (Nexus/Scythe/Noctua) running just fast enough to cool components sufficiently. All this means there's no point in having those LEDs as you wouldn't see them!
So while our chap from CyberpowerUK may have a point about ducting it certainly is not necessary to have lots of fans with a case like the bling-free Antec Solo.
No, really.
Why not use a low noise, moderate throughput fan (such as those from Noctua, and other similar people) in the ducting? One at each end of the duct gives a reasonably constant air pressure and they don't generate enough noise to cause major resonance issues.
That said, I threw some Noctua fans at my Big Box upstairs, fully intending to duct it, but it was quiet enough that I never bothered - I might break up an old shoe box and get some gaffers tape and see if the sound gets any more noticable/better/worse in terms of it's signature etc.
Although that said, this is the whole reason I stopped building systems (for other people at least ) I still build my own workstations and servers) - too much hard work for not enough profit, especially if you are overclocking on top of that....
Steven R
Nice processor but
- graphics card is too small for gamers but rather large for non-gamers
- processor is too large for games, and non-gamer users are unlikely to want all those blingy lights
- large amount of poorly designed cooling sounds rather undesirable in a PC you'd only buy if you had very processor-heavy work to do
Seems like a powerful box that doesn't fit an obvious niche.
I have to agree with the others who point out that ducting is your friend.
The most beautiful interior design of a machine I have seen was in a Mac G5 (the big aluminium case). The ducting in that is all see-through acrylic, aerodynamically formed to drive air straight through across the dual Power processors and logic board in the bottom, with expansion slots (incl graphics card) having their own dedicated duct at the top (below the DVD drive and power).
Now if anyone can come up with a beautiful set of acrylic/polycarbonate ducts that have the same style of design, they'd probably sell like hot cakes.
but i have had the oppertunity to take an old G4 powerpc apart, and I have to agree with your comments.
Apple pc's are very well designed and tidy inside, with dedicated cable runs, ducting etc and other cool features.
there is one thing that puzzles me though.
the mac that I took apart was 10 years old. there were a few features inside that I would have expected to start seeing in normal desktop cases by now - one of them is a wireless antenna that runs round the outside of the case on both sides, and (i think) uses the actual case itself as an antenna. this cable ended in a standard fit connector, placed on the inside of the case in a convenient spot (i assume where you would put the airport card extension).
Now unless apple has a patent on all of this (which may be the case I admit) why, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't anyone else done that?
Karakal - know any games that use six cores? Or even really tax four? The 5770 is fast but a 5850 would be faster; dropping to a quad core processor (I can't believe I'm saying that) would free up money spent on unused cores (while still matching the current general "high end" core number so having at least one spare for the future) and save money for bigger graphics you can benefit from right now.
I'm not much of a gamer but I have enough of an interest in making PCs that go like stink to know that, above a certain level, you have to have something of a plan for what it needs to be best at. This spec would be a fine basis for a development PC for the office (with maybe a couple of modest tweaks) but I doubt my boss or colleagues would be thrilled by masses of fans and a bright red glowing gamer case.
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