We dives into the guts of the ASUS
ROG Tytan CG8890
Price: $5,699
Distributor Asus
A case such as that present on the CG8890
is either going to be loved or hated. Without being sexist or prejudiced, we[d
assume most of the people after the “looks awesome” tick box would be young
males between the age of 12 to 22; a perfect target audience ASUS would assume
when going after hardcore PC gamers.
ASUS
ROG Tytan CG8890
The guts
Underneath this monstrous case, however, is
where we’d like to focus most of our attention, as this PC really does have a
lot on show, and even more to offer in terms of raw CPU and GPU performance.
Underneath the hood, we’ll find a Sandy Bridge E i7 3960X CPU, which as many of
you will already know is a 6-core 12-threaded Intel CPU aimed at the
professional desktop sector along with over clockers, not usually gaming PCs.
The choice of the 3960X over the 3930K is a
very odd one, as the main difference between the two CPUs is cache capacity and
(arguably) a higher binning process in order to earn itself the “extreme”
badge. We’re not talking about price yet, but this choice in extreme processor
over the regular “K” chip has already blown out the price by $600.
It
seems ROG has opted for the superior performance though, as this monstrous case
includes an astronomical 10 case fans, making the statement written just above
of “softer acoustic” completely untrue in the case of the CG8890 Tytan
Supporting the monstrous Intel CPU is 16GB
of 2133MHz DDR3 RAM, a stonking four Kepler GPUs in the form of GTX 690 SLI and
a lighting quick storage solution, embodying two 128GB SSDs in RAID 0. This
ensures that all bases are covered, from rendering work, file transfer and
extraction, number crunching and, of course, gaming. Even multi-tasking all of
the above should prove seamless on such a high end system.
Of course, many of you will be asking the
question, why socket 2011, why GTX 690s and why only 128GB SSDs? The answer to
those questions is rather simple, and that is the system isn’t all that new; in
fact, the CG8890 was first spotted at last year’s Computex around 15 months
ago. Given that knowledge, this system is surprisingly still very current. Only
very recently has the GTX 780 launched, and Intel still has not launched a true
socket 2011 replacement with 6-core CPUs. All it really needs is some larger
SSDs and it’s still about as good as it gets for a professional gaming/CAD
machine with a limitless budget.
The glory
With this system priced higher than most
people spend on their first car, it’s understandable to do some quick math,
tally up all of the included hardware as say “wait a second, they’re ripping us
off!” Well, you be both right and wrong with that statement. Sure, the $5,699
could be spent far wiser, netting yourself a PC with nearly the same grunt in
all areas of concern for almost half of the price – leaving you with enough
cash left over to pick up a nice 27” IPS monitor and an arse-ton of games to
actually play on the thing.
“First spotted at last year’s Computex
around 15 months ago, this system is surprisingly still very current”
That isn’t the point of this PC though.
It’s not meant to be a moderately priced computer put together for the
budget-concerned; it’s a “custom built” ROG case packed to the rafters with
overly exotic hardware all wrapped up and ready to go in one convenient
transaction. You don’t need to muck about with screwdrivers, cable ties and
Windows installations. You also get a more than reasonable 3 year warranty and
it looks pretty epic to boot.
Another couple of features add to the value
(if only a little); one of which is the “speed” button found on the top left of
the case. This button takes the i7 3960X from its stock 3.9GHz clock to 4GHz
and 4.2GHz respectively with each button press. The neat thing about this,
though, is that it is wired in directly to the ASUS ROG Rampage IV Formula.
This means overclocking is instantaneously applied via the CPU multiplier, and
there is no need for a system restart.
While this feature at first seems useful,
you quickly realize that going from 3.9GHz to 4.2GHz does sweet fluff all for
gaming performance, and even Cinebench e-peen measuring contests. If the
“speed” switch was programmable, we’d be all over this. The ability to set the
clock below stock for web browsing, stock levels for gaming, and overclocked
for benching would be amazing, all without a reboot. However, the button is not
programmable and you cannot do this – oh well.
The next super awesome feature which
completely justifies this price tag is the inclusion of water cooling (CPU
only). Water is an expensive commodity right now, and if the Oscar-winning film
Tank Girl is anything to go by, this PC could be worth more in the year 2022
than it is now. The inclusion of water cooling is welcomed, as it will
hopefully prove to other PC manufacturers that there is superior cooling
performance to be found, along with softer case acoustics.
CG8890
Tytan still looks cool!
It seems ROG has opted for the superior
performance though, as this monstrous case includes an astronomical 10 case
fans, making the statement written just above of “softer acoustic” completely
untrue in the case of the CG8890 Tytan. Oh well, it still looks cool!
Unfortunately there is one last little
niggle we’ve got. While the system is sporting a nice Rampage IV Formula
motherboard, ROG didn’t see it appropriate to also include ROG video cards.
Where are the MARS 3 cards? Or at the very least we were expecting a red paint
job on the NVIDIA OEM cards included. Because they’d go faster.
