Upgrading Our Test Rig, Shout Out to Corsair

Every so often, we like to take a look at both our regular testing machine and also our methodologies and see where improvements can be made. The latter is really a never-ending process, but I believe we’re at the point now where we have an ideal setup in place that allows us to expose the full potential of whatever it is we are evaluating, while being able to deliver accurate and repeatable results.

We’ve just spent the past two weeks working over all the details of how we benchmark, and plan to put new methodologies into place in the coming weeks for motherboards, GPUs, CPUs and now storage. Definitely stay tuned as I’m sure you’ll be pleased with where we are going with things. With Nehalem right around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade our main testing machine as well, or at least change the components used.

You can see our most recent configuration here. What will be changed is the CPU (to a QX9770), the motherboard, the RAM, power supply, chassis, cooling and ODDs. I won’t get into the chosen parts for some of those yet, but I did want to give Corsair a shout out for sending us two kits of their memory, 4GB DDR2 and DDR3, and also their kick-ass HX1000W power supply. The PSU we’ve been using for a while is less-than-stellar (Antec TruePower Quattro 1000W), but I’ve heard nothing but great things about the HX1000W from some of the industry’s most well-known experts. I feel confident adding it to our rig, and the fact that it’s modular helps us continue to retain a great airflow scheme.

We are still waiting on a few other components to arrive, but our first step in putting forth our newest methodologies is with our GPU reviews. We’ll be upgrading both Crysis and STALKER to their ‘sequels’, Warhead and Clear Sky, and re-benchmark our entire lineup using the most recent drivers, to give a better sense of where things stand right now in the graphics scheme of things. We’re both excited and confident about new changes we’ve put in place and definitely think you’ll come to enjoy the content even more (assuming you liked it before!).