[NATO] Battle Edition - Eclipse Computers

One of the barmiest-looking systems ever – is this PC ready for the fight?

[+] Admiral Nelson – Tidy interior; great gaming performance; distinctive looks

[-] Leroy Jenkins – Loud and ugly case; reliant on SLI

Many case and PC manufacturers concentrate on making stylish, minimal hardware, but the trend for blank, monolithic enclosures seems to have passed by Eclipse. Its new [NATO] Battle Edition chassis, and it’s one of the most gregarious builds we’ve ever seen. For starters, much of the Thermaltake’s steel body and plastic façade is khaki green, with meshed areas in black.

Eclipse has also been hard at work augmenting the army-themed colors with its own additions. The front and sides have been slathered in stickers saying NATO, Eclipse Computers and Nvidia, all of which are in white or green and written in an “army-style” font. Of course, looks are subjective but, in our opinion, unless you’re a teenager with no taste or military enthusiast, this PC is borderline ugly – we much prefer the classier enclosures that dominate the landscape.

Meanwhile, the side panel opens backwards on a hinge that’s unlocked with a key, and there’s more to like about the interior. It’s painted black, so it looks classier than the outside, and Eclipse has done a decent job of keeping the insides tidy, with cables largely kept behind the motherboard tray. Cooling comes from Thermaltake’s Water 2.0 Performer water-cooling unit, with the small reservoir and radiator strapped to the exhaust fan bracket, with two 120mm fans. In addition, there’s one 200mm fan in the roof, another 200mm spinner at the front and a third 200mm fan in the side panel.

All three fans have LEDs, and a button on top of the machine switches their color between blue, red and green – you can also opt for one color to flash on and off, or just turn off the lights entirely. The side fan has a dust tray that snaps out for easy cleaning too, and the top of the case can be removed with a single button, giving quick access to the top 200mm fan.

The black interior is matched by the Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard, which hides its PCB, headers and transistors beneath a black metal shroud. Eclipse has also opted for SLI in this system. The two Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti cards come from Asus, and their 915MHz base clocks have been overclocked to 967MHz, although the maximum boost clock of 1,058MHz remains unchanged. The two graphics cards are joined by a 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-3770K overclocked to 4.6GHz, and 16GB of Corsair Vengeance 1,600MHz RAM.

Meanwhile, the Asus Xonar DGX sound card offers great sound quality, and platter-based storage comes from a 1TB Seagate Barracuda drive – although we’re a little disappointed not to see a 2 TB drive. There’s a respectable 128GB Crucial M4 SSD too, which won last year’s SSD Labs test, although it’s since been usurped by the OCZ Vertex 4.

However, with all this hardware installed, there isn’t much room for further upgrades. There are only single 16x and 1x PCI-E slots empty, no memory slots are vacant and most of the motherboard’s headers have already been used. For SATA ports are also free, but they’re tricky to access behind the graphics cards.

On the plus side, the three 5.25in bays’ front panels easily snap off, so you can slide in any additional drives without removing components. The trio of empty hard disk bays are also easily accessible – they open from the side, have individual plastic caddies and their SATA and power plugs are pre-installed. However, the Cooler Master GX Lite 700W PSU stands out in such a well-built system. It’s a good PSU, but it isn’t modular, and its multi-colored cables aren’t braided either.

Performance

Both Eclipse and Palicomp have recently sent us systems overclocked to 4.6GHz, but the Core i7’s Hyper-Threading in the former gives it the edge. This was demonstrated in our multi-threaded video encoding benchmark: the Eclipse rattled through to a score of 4,225, while the Palicomp lagged behind with 3,674. The Hyper-Threaded cores made their advantage known in the multi-tasking test, too, with a score of 1,841 beating the Palicomp’s 1,740.

Only in the image editing test did the Palicomp system catch up: the Core i5 chip retuned a score of 2,285, which outpaced the 2,220 scored of the Eclipse. That didn’t make a difference to the overall result though – the Eclipse’s final score of 2,762 bettered the Palicomp’s 2,586.

The Eclipse really comes into its own in gaming though. The pair of GTX 660 Ti cards blew away the Radeon HD 7950 in the Palicomp. The Eclipse’s minimum of 103fps in Battlefield 3 easily outpaced the 46fps o the Palicomp. There’s no argument about which PC is quicker in Shogun 2 either – the Palicomp averaged at 36fps, but the Eclipse scored a 57fps frame rate. Despite being pre-overclocked, there’s more headroom in the graphics cards too. We added 150MHz to the stock and memory clocks, and the Battlefield 3 average improved to 110fps – not a huge leap but, with no significant increase in temperature, a tweak worth making.

That said, however, the Eclipse costs $900 more than Palicomp, so improved gaming performance is to be expected. The Eclipse’s performance will also be very much reliant on SLI drivers and performance optimization in games, and there’s little point in combining the power of two mid-range graphics cards, unless you’re upgrading. For this money, a single-GPU GeForce GTX 680 or Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition would have been preferable.

The processor is clearly at its limit, however. We added 100MHz to the 4.6GHz clock and the system’s overall benchmark score of 2,762 improved to 2,848 but the processor’s peak temperature increased from an already toasty 93ºC to a scorching 95ºC. For such a small performance gain, it simply isn’t worth it. The Eclipse was also notably noisy, even when idle with the Thermaltke Water 2.0 Performer making a fair amount of noise, as well as all the other fans. You certainly wouldn’t want the system to be any louder for the sake of an extra few CPU clocks.

1 – There’s one 200mm fan in the roof, another 200mm spinner at the front and a third 200mm fan in the side panet.

2 – The two Asus GeForce GTX 660 Ti cards have had 915MHz base clocks overclocked to 967MHz

3 – The Cooler Master GX Lite 700W is a good enough PSU, but it isn’t modular, and its multi-colored cables aren’t braided either.

Conclusion

The Eclipse blitzed through our game tests, and it has enough power for gaming on multiple monitors too. We’re less enamored with the reliance on SLI, though, and the PC’s high noise level. The outside is designed for a specific taste too – plenty of effort has gone into its khaki, de-called exterior but, to our eyes, it looks tacky and over the top.

If the speed and looks appeal, and you aren’t bothered by noise, this is capable system. For most people, though, more demure builds will be easier on the eye, and single-GPU systems offer more reliable gaming performance.

How much? §  Price: $2,399 §  Supplier: www.eclipse-computers.com §  Manufacturer: www.eclipse-computers.com In detail §  CPU: 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-3770K overclocked to 4.6GHz §  Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77 §  Memory: 16GB 1,600MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR3 §  Graphics: 2 x Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti §  Sound: Asus Xonar DGX §  Storage: 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14, 128GB Crucial M4 SSD §  Optical drive: LG Blu-ray reader §  Case: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Battle Edition §  Cooling: CPU: Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer, 2 x 120mm fans; case: 1 x 200mm roof fan, 1 x 200mm side fan. §  PSU: Corsair GX Lite 700W §  Ports: Front: 2 x USB 3, 4 x USB 2, eSATA, audio, rear: 4 x USB 3, 4 x USB 2, 2 x eSATA, 6 x audio, optical S/PDIF, LAN §  Operating system: Windows 8 64-bit Scores §  Speed: 23/ 25 §  Design: 12/ 25 §  Hardware: 19/ 25 §  Value: 18/ 25