AMD's amazingly tiny and powerful Project Quantum dissected!

[Tim Drake]

Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn if this thing runs at decent temps?!

[dalekphalm]

Rebrand of an OCZ SSD. I've read only bad things about them. And I'm curious how hot that thing runs, and I have a feeling it might not be cool at all.

OCZ SSD's are totally fine for the most part. Yeah they had a few really bad runs back in the early SSD days, but their reputation for garbage SSD's is mostly undeserved now-a-days. Besides, you really think AMD would choose them as an OEM partner if their SSD's were complete garbage? Hell no.

 

The SSD running hot? That doesn't even make sense - most SSD's run fairly cool, compared to HDD's. See this benchmark:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r7_series_240gb_ssd_review,6.html

 

The SSD runs just over 50C at it's hottest point, WITH the metal shroud removed, which is part of the heatsink assembly of the SSD. To quote Guru3D:

 

Overall the SSD controller peaks to just over 50 Degrees C. HOWEVER - the controller uses the metal housing to cool down and we had to remove it to be able to take this thermal image. So yeah that's okay.

 

Heyyo,

Yeah sadly it was dead... but hey, I'm sure it'll cool just as well as any zip-tied CPU cooler on a GPU.  

 

Yeah no doubt. I'd be a monsterous little unit. Maybe it'll get the R9 Nano treatment too.

 

Indeed. The hardest part would probably be to setup the watercooling loop.

 

The first batch of OCZ SSD's back when it was $200 for a 60GB SSD? Yeah they weren't so great and suffered stability issues when used in RAID... but my bud got his RMA'ed for a newer revision that worked fine and sold me one a few years ago. It's still going and working great. OCZ does have a good warranty setup on their SSD's at least.

R9 Nano variant? Intriguing. Especially if they watercool that too - that would be very exciting to see.

[Prysin]

OCZ SSD's are totally fine for the most part. Yeah they had a few really bad runs back in the early SSD days, but their reputation for garbage SSD's is mostly undeserved now-a-days. Besides, you really think AMD would choose them as an OEM partner if their SSD's were complete garbage? Hell no.

 

The SSD running hot? That doesn't even make sense - most SSD's run fairly cool, compared to HDD's. See this benchmark:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r7_series_240gb_ssd_review,6.html

 

The SSD runs just over 50C at it's hottest point, WITH the metal shroud removed, which is part of the heatsink assembly of the SSD. To quote Guru3D:

 

R9 Nano variant? Intriguing. Especially if they watercool that too - that would be very exciting to see.

"AMD" SSDs are actually fairly good.

Not 850Evo good. But they sit close to the Crucial BX100. Not quite there but close...

 

"AMD" SSDs mop the fucking floor with any Kingston or Sandforce product ive seen benched so far. So atleast they are FAR from terrible.

[MageTank]

"AMD" SSDs are actually fairly good.

Not 850Evo good. But they sit close to the Crucial BX100. Not quite there but close...

 

"AMD" SSDs mop the fucking floor with any Kingston or Sandforce product ive seen benched so far. So atleast they are FAR from terrible.

Even faster than the Kingston Hyper X Predator M.2 SSD running 19nm Toshiba NAND and a Marvell 88SS9293 controller? Those things are basically Plextor M6e's with a newer controller in them, and run extremely fast.

[dalekphalm]

Even faster than the Kingston Hyper X Predator M.2 SSD running 19nm Toshiba NAND and a Marvell 88SS9293 controller? Those things are basically Plextor M6e's with a newer controller in them, and run extremely fast.

M.2 SSD's generally outperform SATA SSD's in most cases, so I'm going to assume that he's not talking about that one very specific SSD you've mentioned.

[MageTank]

M.2 SSD's generally outperform SATA SSD's in most cases, so I'm going to assume that he's not talking about that one very specific SSD you've mentioned.

He said any   

[dalekphalm]

He said any   

True, but he said any that he has seen. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he hasn't seen that one benched yet

[MageTank]

True, but he said any that he has seen. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he hasn't seen that one benched yet

Curses! you beat me at my own game. I concede.

 

But yeah, i understand his point. Kingston SSD's in general suck, but their HyperX line is pretty sweet. They use stronger controllers and higher durability NAND than the weaker, cheaper stuff.  I normally stick to Samsung and Plextor when it comes to my SSD needs, but Kingston did a great job with their recent HyperX SSD's. They are highly reviewed too.

[Bouzoo]

OCZ SSD's are totally fine for the most part. Yeah they had a few really bad runs back in the early SSD days, but their reputation for garbage SSD's is mostly undeserved now-a-days. Besides, you really think AMD would choose them as an OEM partner if their SSD's were complete garbage? Hell no.

The SSD running hot? That doesn't even make sense - most SSD's run fairly cool, compared to HDD's. See this benchmark:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_radeon_r7_series_240gb_ssd_review,6.html

The SSD runs just over 50C at it's hottest point, WITH the metal shroud removed, which is part of the heatsink assembly of the SSD. To quote Guru3D:

R9 Nano variant? Intriguing. Especially if they watercool that too - that would be very exciting to see.

On phone so snip is complicated, and about temps I meant the whole PC.

[PlayStation 2]

it's kinda bad when even AMD acknowledges that the FX line is bad

I would kill for one but eh. No ca$h.

[That Norwegian Guy]

It looks very interesting. I wonder how temps are with a 180mm radiator though (and to that effect, how well the Furyx2 would cool in it.)

 

180mm is my favourite fan diameter, offsetting the poor pushing distance of 200mm+ fans while still having almost the same CFM and more static pressure. If there's a Silverstone Air Penetrator 180mm on that rad, it'll be damn cool.

[dalekphalm]

On phone so snip is complicated, and about temps I meant the whole PC.

Oh okay. For the whole PC? I highly doubt it, based on the designs we've seen of the interior. It's compartmentalized, so the heat is exhausted out the top, which is totally isolated from the bottom.

 

I could see it being quite efficient at cooling the unit.

 

Of course this is entirely speculation, since I don't believe any reviewers got their hands on a working unit.

[dalekphalm]

180mm is my favourite fan diameter, offsetting the poor pushing distance of 200mm+ fans while still having almost the same CFM and more static pressure. If there's a Silverstone Air Penetrator 180mm on that rad, it'll be damn cool.

You could install one, if it didn't, no doubt

[HalGameGuru]

-snip-

FX Series wouldn't have been as brawny as an i7 in this use but I think we may be making leaps and normative statements over a hard fact... there are no ITX boards for FX CPU's to begin with. They would have had to have gone APU or Intel.

 

FX aren't bad, but they don't perform like i7's. To be expected they are years old architectures. We don't really carp on Core2Duos in today's market, AMD just hasn't updated their FX line recently enough. Hopefully with Zen.

[PlayStation 2]

FX Series wouldn't have been as brawny as an i7 in this use but I think we may be making leaps and normative statements over a hard fact... there are no ITX boards for FX CPU's to begin with. They would have had to have gone APU or Intel.

 

FX aren't bad, but they don't perform like i7's. To be expected they are years old architectures. We don't really carp on Core2Duos in today's market, AMD just hasn't updated their FX line recently enough. Hopefully with Zen.

To be fair, the FX line originally competed with Sandy Bridge CPUs.

[HalGameGuru]

To be fair, the FX line originally competed with Sandy Bridge CPUs.

Yep, and unfortunately never really went past that. The APU's make decent i3 analogs though. And we can always hope for more from Zen.

[Guest]

Actually it doesn't looks like it's a terribly difficult project to pull off: cpu and gpu blocks from EK, 200mm rad and a small pump/reservoir, 3d printed case with a funnel shape and another funnel shape on top, that's about it.

 

You'd better be good at CNC then:

 

[Misanthrope]

You'd better be good at CNC then:

-pic-

 

 

1) I wasn't planning on creating my own water blocks, I clearly said EK waterblocks.

2) That's also kinda the point of mentioning a 3d printer: you can get close enough results without a CMC

 

Yes that's overall better for a potentially production model but for a mod, 3D printed parts work just fine.

[Guest]

1) I wasn't planning on creating my own water blocks, I clearly said EK waterblocks.

2) That's also kinda the point of mentioning a 3d printer: you can get close enough results without a CMC

 

Yes that's overall better for a potentially production model but for a mod, 3D printed parts work just fine.

Didn't notice the EK wb part. What I was trying to say was that the CNCed block is much more space saving, so modded builds won't get near as compact as Project Quantum. So sad it will never make the market, or any likeness of it.

[Nowak]

Love how it has an Intel CPU 

AMD does high-end GPU testing with Intel CPUs too, they know their FX line would bottleneck high-end GPUs so they use Intel instead.

[Doobeedoo]

I really like it, love how it looks.

They may sell this later on when they have their new CPU and GPU architectures, cause it would be awesome to have PC in this kind of case, also water cooled. While most of the things in this is custom, they could make it more upgrade/maintenance friendly if they make it as a product.

[dalekphalm]

I really like it, love how it looks.

They may sell this later on when they have their new CPU and GPU architectures, cause it would be awesome to have PC in this kind of case, also water cooled. While most of the things in this is custom, they could make it more upgrade/maintenance friendly if they make it as a product.

Granted it would be a pain in the ass to disassemble it, but even in it's prototype stage, you could upgrade CPU, RAM, and SSD, as is. The only thing really lacking upgradability is the GPU - but even in that case, you could probably mod a GPU's mounting bracket to fit, remove the cooler and use the built-in watercooling.

[sof006]

You know AMD admits defeat to Intel when they show off an AMD rig with their competitors CPU inside it.

[dalekphalm]

You know AMD admits defeat to Intel when they show off an AMD rig with their competitors CPU inside it.

Ehhh what?

 

Would it make you feel better if AMD used an FX-9590 inside of this PC?

 

That's 100% illogical. AMD has their new high-end performance architecture in the works - ZEN - which, if delivered, will really ramp up the competition, and put AMD right up there with Intel.

But until that architecture is finished, AMD wants to use the best there is for this project. They know where their limitations are - that's why they are spending Millions of Dollars creating ZEN - to fix that limitation.

[sof006]

Ehhh what?

 

Would it make you feel better if AMD used an FX-9590 inside of this PC?

 

That's 100% illogical. AMD has their new high-end performance architecture in the works - ZEN - which, if delivered, will really ramp up the competition, and put AMD right up there with Intel.

But until that architecture is finished, AMD wants to use the best there is for this project. They know where their limitations are - that's why they are spending Millions of Dollars creating ZEN - to fix that limitation.

Justifying my post by saying exactly this "That's 100% illogical" true, it is illogical which is why they didn't use one of their own inferior chips

 

#stokingtheflames