IBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom Series System Review

IBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom Series

Today we have the opportunity to look at something we don’t normally look at: a full turn-key system. Today’s system is one of the newest models from iBUYPOWER. Who is iBUYPOWER? They are a company on a mission. Based in Los Angeles County California, iBUYPOWER’s mission is to provide a complete computing solution to meet the needs of the surrounding community and customers nationwide. The current product line from iBUYPOWER includes gaming desktops, gaming laptops, workstations, media center PC’s, peripherals and multimedia products. As you can plainly see, iBUYPOWER has quite an extensive product line to choose from and can meet any demand you may have for a system or accessory. Though today, as I said, we are going to look at one of their latest releases: the iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom!

The iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom has a base model and is upgradeable from there to fit your needs. The base model starts out at an expected retail price of $1459.00. I was informed that the starting price of the iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom may change prior to release.

Case	NZXT Phantom – White
CPU	Intel Core i7-930 Asetek 570LX 240mm Liquid Cooling
Motherboard	ASUS P6T SE
Video	ATI Radeon HD 5830-1GB
Power	Corsair 750w ATX Power Supply
Memory	6GB (3x2GB) DDR3-1600
HDD	1TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA3-6.0Gb/s
Optical Media	24x Double-layer DVD+/-RW + CD-RW Drive
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Front Panel Connectivity	1x Mic-in 1x Headphone-out 1x E-SATA 3x USB 12-in-1 Multi-format Memory Card Reader
Peripherals	iBUYPOWER 6-button 800DPI-Switching Mouse iBUYPOWER Standard Internet Keyboard
Warranty	3-Yr Limited Warranty + Lifetime Phone Support
Price	$1,459

Just because it is a base model doesn’t mean that it isn’t a solid system. As you can see in the above table the iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom features some of the latest and greatest features. Starting out with the processor, it features a water cooled Intel Core I7 930; you can get all the DirectX 11 graphics with the ATI Radeon HD 5830! The iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom has plenty of space for music, movies and games with a Western Digital one terabyte SATA3 hard drive. This all comes packaged in the attractive styling of the new NZXT Phantom case!

Today though, we aren’t looking at a base model iBUYPOWER Paladin XLC Phantom. We are going to look at an iBUYPOWER Paladin with a few upgraded parts; after all, what fun is a base model? You need to customize it how you want! The first piece of hardware to get upgraded is the motherboard. Instead of the ASUS P6T SE we will be using a system based around a GIGABYTE X58A-UD3R. The reason for the motherboard switch has to do with the next upgrade. Instead of the single ATI Radeon HD 5830 we are going to be running a pair of PaLiT GeForce GTX 460’s in SLI! This will undoubtedly give us the ability to crank up the DirectX 11 eyecandy. We will also be adding to the list of features with a 64GB Kingston SSDNow! V2 series MLC SSD. We are also dropping the DVD Rewriter and replacing it with an LG Blu-ray rom/DVD Rewriter. Last but not least are a couple of changes with the processor. The Intel Core I7 930 will be overclocked from iBUYPOWER with the iBP Labs Level 3 Powerdrive Overclocking. The iBP Labs Level 3 Powerdrive Overclocking will give you an overclock out of the box of up to 30%; in this case we will be running at 3518MHz! That’s not the only set up that we are going to use though; we are also going to run an Intel Core I7 970 at both stock speeds and with a iBP Labs Level 3 Powerdrive Overclock which will put this processor at an impressive 3840MHz!

Component	Base Model	Configuration 1		Configuration 2
CPU	Intel core I7 930	Intel core I7 930		Intel core I7 970
Motherboard	ASUS P6T SE	GIGABYTE X58A-UD3R
Video	ATI Radeon HD 5830-1GB	2x PaLiT GeForce GTX 460 1Gb
Power	Corsair 750w ATX Power Supply	Soly-Tech SL-8850EPS 800 Watt
Optical Media	24x Double-layer DVD+/-RW + CD-RW Drive	LG Blu-ray ROM
Technologies	None	iBP Labs Level 3 Powerdrive Overclocking iBP Labs Advanced Professional Wiring
Price	$1459	$1999		$2624

We will be testing both configuration one and configuration two today. Both of the configurations have the iBP Labs Level 3 Powerdrive Overclock in place. We will also reset that overclock and see how well the system does with the processor’s out of the box speeds! Before we get to the testing let’s take a peek at how well iBUYPOWER packages their products!