AVADirect Review System - The Super-Mini Xeon Workstation

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   AVADirect Review System - The Super-Mini Xeon Workstation
When we have a review system for a major technology review place like CNet or Computer Shopper Magazine, we hold nothing back.  These review places like to see the newest technology and the latest gadgets.  AVADirect treats this like a challenge and we rise to overcome this every time.
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When I saw this system and then realized what was in it, I was speechless.  There is more hardware and technology in this system then there is in most other systems we build.  There are two processors, three hard drives, a GTX 280 video card, a Blu-Ray writer drive, and a 1000 watt power supply.  This system is just so amazing at how compact it is with all this hardware.  Normally it takes an EATX case to fit dual processors and all this other hardware.  

Stay tuned for more updates and some performance numbers as soon as the system is tested.

Let me go over the stars of the show in this system.

Silverstone Sugo SG04B-H mATX Mid-Tower Case 
Obviously, this case is the star of the show.  If the case was not engineered so perfectly, we would have not been able to put as much hardware in there as we did.  Also, the component location has been very well thought out.  Even though the power supply was huge and powerful, this case was able to put it in such a location so that it did not interfere with any other components.  Same goes for the GTX 280.  The inside fans were moveable, creating just enough space for this to fit exactly.

Features 

Room for two 120mm cooling fans                         Cooling capable of supporting dual CPU motherboard 
Support dual 10.5” graphics card                           Amazing expansion capability 
Support 1000W power supply                                Compatible with all optical drives up to 210mm 
Top mounted die-cast aluminum handle 
http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_parts.asp?PRID=11163 

SuperMicro mATX X7DCA-L Motherboard 
This again is what made this system possible.  This motherboard was able to cram features previously seen only in EATX workstation and server motherboards.  These features include support for two 5400 series Xeon processors, a whopping 48 GB of memory, full size PCI-E x16 video card, dual network ports, high-definition 7.1 surround sound, and 6 SATA ports.  There is just so much avaialble power and performance it blows my mind away.
http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_parts.asp?PRID=11034 

2x Intel Xeo X5450 Quad-Core Processor 
These are near the top of the line in performance in the server and workstation market.  These processors are running at a staggering 3.0 GHz with quad-cores, a FSB of 1333 MHz, and each processor has 12 MB of cache, which hardly any other consumer processor has on the market.  These processors are going to rock this system hard.
http://www.avadirect.com/product_print.asp?PRID=9972 

XFX GeForce GTX 280 Video Card 
At the moment, the Geforce GTX 280 GPU from NVidia is currently the world's most powerful single GPU solution available.  No other single GPU solution comes close to the graphical and processing power behind this amazing card.  It features 256 Stream Processors, 1 GB of GDDR3 memory at 2210 MHz, and a very bandwidth friendly 512-bit wide memory bus.  For a system like this, there is no other card that can match this performance in a single card layout.
http://www.avadirect.com/product_print.asp?PRID=11172 

Silverstone Strider ST1000 Modular Power Supply 
Obviously this system is going to use massive amounts of power to keep this system running at full blast round the clock.  This power supply was up to the challenge with the massive 1000 watt output and high 80% efficiency.  Being a modular system was well is also a major plus due to the restrictive space that the cables have to fit in.  Any other power supply with no modular support would have created a big mess of wires that would have interfered with cooling causing the system to be unstable.  Also the large 135 mm fan help keeps the system cool yet very quiet as well.
http://www.avadirect.com/product_print.asp?PRID=10816 

Seagate 1TB Barracuda ES.2 SAS Hard Drive 
This amazing hard drive packs so much storage into a tiny space it is a miracle of technological innovation.  There are three of these drives in this system in a RAID 5 array.  Although there is only 2 TB of available storage, the system is completely redundant and fail-safe.  If one drive fails, all the user has to do is swap out the failed drive for a fresh one, and the RAID array will automatically rebuild itself.  No data is lost and the system never has to be shut down.  This is great for systems that need days to compute large files and data.  Be certain this system has the storage you need and also the protection you need from data loss.
http://www.avadirect.com/product_print.asp?PRID=10939 

Here are the complete specs for all of you look over.

Case:

SILVERSTONE, Sugo SG04B-H Mid-Tower Case, mATX

Processor:

INTEL, 2 x Xeon™ X5450 Quad-Core Processor 3.0GHz, LGA771, 1333MHz FSB, 12MB L2 cache

Motherboard:

SUPERMICRO, X7DCA-L, LGA771 /2, Intel® 5100, 1333MHz FSB, DDR2-667 ECC 48GB /6, PCIe x16, SATA 3.0 Gbit/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, mATX

Video Card:

XFX, GeForce® GTX 280, GTX 280 602MHz, 1GB DDR3 2210MHz

Memory:

KINGSTON, 16GB (4 x 4GB) ValueRAM™ Dual-Rank PC2-5300 DDR2 667MHz CL5 1.8V

Hard Drive:

RAID 5 3x SEAGATE, 1TB Barracuda ES.2, SAS, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache, 3.5-Inch
HIGHPOINT, RocketRAID 2640x4 SAS/SATA 3 Gb/s RAID Controller, 4-port, Levels 0/1/5/10

Optical Drive:

LG ELECTRONICS, GGW-H20L Black 6x/8x/24x BD/DVD±RW/CD-RW Blu-ray Disc™ Burner w/ Lightscribe

Cooling:

SWIFTECH, 2 x MCX-VPro™ Universal Heatsink w/ 80mm Fan

Power Supply:

SILVERSTONE, Strider ST1000 Modular Power Supply, 1000W, 80 PLUS®

Operating System:

MICROSOFT, Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Edition w/ SP1

Want to config a system just like this?  Click the link below to go to our system page that was used for this build and select the options to match this system.
GAMING PC, Dual Quad-Core Xeon SFF Gaming PC / Workstation:  http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_configurator.asp?PRID=11176 