Conclusion
Utilising mostly best-of-breed components and housed in a well-designed and well-built chassis from SilverStone, there's very little to dislike about the Scan 3XS Intel X58 Core i7 system.
Sure, one or two component choices such as the CPU cooler and PSU aren't as good as they could be, but it's ultimately the high entry price of the Core i7 architecture that'll drag down the system's overall rating.
Scan has managed to somewhat reduce the impact of the price by utilising the lowest-end Core i7 currently available. By overclocking it beyond the clock speed of the current top-end Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition CPU, it's able to offer top-end performance out the box.
On balance, the Scan 3XS Intel X58 Core i7 is a generally well-built machine that delivers bleeding-edge performance in almost all of our benchmarks without charging an excessively-high premium for the privilege.
The good
Very tidy cabling
Excellent performance in multithreaded apps
Very quiet even when under load
Decent sound card supplied
The not so good
CPU temperatures are a bit on the high side
No additional cables fitted for an extra optical drive and only one fitted for an additional hard-drive
Very slow to boot
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
Scan 3XS Intel X58 Core i7
HEXUS Awards
The Scan 3XS Intel X58 Core i7 offers a fairly decent blend of high build-quality, decent performance and reasonable value for money. Coupled with a decent insurance backed warranty and Scan's good customer service and that's why we think it's worthy of a coveted HEXUS recommendation.
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Scan 3XS Intel X58 Core i7 can be purchased here.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any Scan representatives choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
09/12/08, right2reply from Scan 3XS manager Peter Davies:
In the review HEXUS mention that “Sure, one or two component choices such as the CPU cooler and PSU aren't as good as they could be, but it's ultimately the high entry price of the Core i7 architecture that'll drag down the system's overall rating.”
Due to the fact that Core i7 is relatively a new product the only better cooler in our opinion is the Thermalright TRUE Copper 120mm. However due to the fact that this cooler is twice the price of the Ultra 120mm eXtreme we feel that the chosen cooler was more than adequate. Even when all 8 cores are being run at 100% for over 12 hours the system was totally stable and quiet.
"It would have been nice, however, for Scan to make sure that cables were pre-fitted to allow for easy installation of an additional optical drive - a Blu-ray unit, for example."
Possible Scenarios
- Initial purchase of Blue Ray Drive when Purchased - This is carried out when the system is built.
- To make it easy for the end user to add one after they receive the system – If the customer requests this on initial purchase this is noted in OLQ when the order is placed. Customer mentions they have “X” parts at home. We either run cables ready for customer or the customer sends the unit in and we fit it into the build.
- None of the above, customer decides to upgrade further down the line – When the system is dispatched to the customer we send all accessories including spare cables, driver CD’s, Manuals etc therefore the customer would have the necessary Sata and Power cables for them to use when required. Yes, it’s not as easy as having the cables pre-fitted but then we prefer to keep the systems neat & clutter free to allow for maximum air flow and design.
"For some unknown reason, Scan opted to leave Splashtop functionality disabled in the BIOS by default, perhaps feeling it's better suited to a notebook - and it may have a point."
Reason behind this is that Express gate isn’t supported if the Controller is in Raid or AHCI mode and due to the fact that the chassis has a hot swappable caddy albeit an internal one we feel it best to have it disabled to allow for addition and removal of drive while powered.
"Powering all the kit is a high-quality Corsair HX620W modular PSU. Although it's perfectly capable of powering the specified 3XS X58 Core i7, it doesn't allow for much expansion capability. Being equipped with only two PCIe 6-pin power connectors, installing a second GeForce GTX 260 graphics card would require the use of PCIe-to-Molex adapters."
Reasoning behind our choice of PSU would be down to the fact that the review system was targeted at a single card setup and that the Corsair 620W is more than ample for running any single card configuration all the way up to either Nvidia GTX280 or ATI 4870 X2. If the customer thought they may upgrade at a later point or at point of sale, it is possible to configure a higher rated PSU to allow for this expansion using the Online configurator. We feel that this is a better option by not forcing a higher rated and more expensive PSU when it wasn’t needed for the review configuration.
