A machine that will still have support in
2022?
You may not have heard about PC builder
Stealth Machines, but apparently that’s the way the company likes it. In fact,
the company’s web page proclaims that it’s the "underground computer
company of the hardcore gamer.” We’d guess that’s the "stealth” part of
the name.
So color us surprised when the Stealth Machines
Espionage arrived and it wasn’t matte black and sporting that new ECS Stealth
motherboard (see Quickstart).
Stealth
Machines Espionage
The Espionage isn’t extreme, but it’s
nicely outfitted. Built around an EVGA Z77 FTW board, it packs a 3.4GHz Core
i7-3770K overclocked to 4.68GHz. All four DIMM slots are packed with Mushkin
DDR3/2133. For a gamer, the most important component is the graphics card. In
this case, it’s the graphics cards - plural. Stealth Machines held out until
the last minute to score a pair of EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti cards.
Would it make more sense to run a single
GeForce GTX 680 instead? We think there’s no easy answer to that question. Our
general philosophy is to run the single fastest GPU you can afford, since it
will give you performance in every game from day one rather than having to wait
for SLI or CrossFireX profiles. We think the 660 Ti might be an exception to
that rule. Basically, the 660 Ti duo will smoke a single GTX 680 card in most
games and came surprisingly close to the performance of our zero-point rig’s
GTX 690. Part of that is the result of the Stealth’s overclocked Ivy Bridge
CPU, but it’s a shocker to see this PC just 16 percent slower than our
zero-point in Batman: Arkham City and 11 percent slower in 3DMark 11.
Lest you cheapskates scoff at the GeForce
GTX 690, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that our zero-point hammers out
55.5fps in the tessellation-heavy Heaven 3.0 benchmark while the Stealth is way
back at 38.3fps. That’s almost a 30 percent difference - so there is a point to
the heavy metal sometimes.
Elsewhere, the Espionage aces the
zero-point in Stitch.FX 2.0 and ProShow Producer 5.0. Neither benchmark exploits
the six cores in our zero-point, but the ZP gets payback in Premiere Pro CS6
and x264 5.0, which can eat all the cores you throw at ‘em.
We’re
not fans of the LED strips on the power cables, but you might like the colorful
addition
In the end, the Espionage is a pretty nice
gaming rig and has plenty of power for content creation, too. But we can’t
publish this review without some criticism. First, we’d probably opt for a
pair of 8GB DIMMs rather than four 4GB sticks, to allow for future upgrades. We
also had a small snag in the overclock, as one core failed during a Prime95
test. Stealth had us add voltage to the core and all was well. Our final
criticism, though, is the price. The machine, while fast for its class, is also
awfully expensive for its class. As a comparison, our Ultra rig (see Blueprint)
is just $140 more expensive with a hexa-core CPU, GTX 690, 3TB drive, Cosmos II
case, and an LGA2011 board.
Stealth argues that much of its value comes
from the warranty it’s willing to put on the line: 10 years. That’s indeed one
of the longer warranties available on a modern PC, but we’re not sure we’re
really going to care about any PC we buy in 2012 in 2022. Still, we can’t argue
with the performance; it just doesn’t offer the price-to-performance ratio we
expected.
Benchmarks
|
Premiere Pro CS6 (sec)
|
2,000
|
2,520 (-21%)
|
|
Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec)
|
831
|
730
|
|
ProShow Producer 5.0 (sec)
|
1,446
|
1,268
|
|
X264 HD 5.0 (fps)
|
21.1
|
17.9 (-15%)
|
|
Batman: Arkham City (fps)
|
76.0
|
64.0 (-16%
|
|
3D Mark 11
|
5,847
|
5,187 (-11%)
|
Our current desktop test bed consists of a
hexa-core 3.2GHz Core i7-3930K 3.8GHz, 8GB of Corsair DDR3/1600, on an Asus
Sabertooth X79 motherboard. We are running a GeForce GTX 690, an OCZ Vertex 3
SSO, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.
Pros
and cons
F-22: Lethal combo of Ivy Bridge and SLI 660 Ti cards
F-105: Expensive; not as quiet as you’d expect from a company
named Stealth.
Specifications
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K 4.6GHz
Mobo: EVGA Z77 FTW
RAM: 16GB DDR3/2133
Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 in SLI
Soundcard: Onboard
Storage: 240GB Mushkin Chronos SSD, 2TB WD Caviar Black
Optical: Lite-On DVD+RW
Case/PSU: NZXT Switch 810 Corsair HX 1050
Verdict
Ratings: 8
Price: $3,225
Website: www.stealthmachines.com
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