I would like to thank Antec for supplying the review sample.
Antec's website has a very refreshing "About Antec" page, with the following text:
Antec, Inc. is the global leader in high-performance
computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and
Do-It-Yourself markets. Founded in 1986, Antec is recognized as a
pioneer in the industry and has maintained its position as a worldwide
market leader and international provider of quiet, efficient and
innovative products. Antec has also achieved great success in the
distribution channel, meeting the demands of quality-conscious system
builders, VARs and integrators.
We are taking a look at the newest chassis of the Gaming Cases line.
Antec has named this one "Eleven Hundred", which is on the higher end of
the spectrum.
Specifications
Packaging
The chassis comes packaged in a full color cardboard box with a large
Antec logo and a partial image of the chassis on the front of the box.
Turning it over you will find an array of smaller images, showing you
the features of the Eleven Hundred. Antec has placed the specifications
on the top of the box, while both smaller side panels hold even more
images of the chassis.
The unit is protected by two foam spacers along with a cardboard sheet
in the front of the chassis. A plastic bag has been placed over the case
to keep scratches or finger prints away.
Contents
You will receive an adequate set of parts to get everything up and
running. Two bags of screws, a few zip ties and the required hard drive
rails to fill all six bays within the Eleven Hundred. A simple piece of
paper is also part of the extras, but cannot really be considered a
manual.
If you are a normal desktop user or even a power user with plans to run at over 4GHz, the vanilla LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge platform
is good enough. You get some of the fastest CPUs on the market today
paired with reasonably priced motherboards and the ability to use Quick Sync to transcode video...er...quickly. If that's not enough, Intel launched a higher end platform last month: the LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge E.
Take a regular Sandy Bridge, add PCIe 3.0 support,
increase the number of PCIe lanes that branch off of the CPU (from 16
to 40 lanes), double the number of memory channels (4 x 64-bit DDR3
memory controllers) and you've got Sandy Bridge E and its LGA-2011/X79 platform.
SNB-E is currently available in two forms: a $999 6-core Extreme
Edition part (Core i7 3960X) and a $555 6-core unlocked version (Core i7
3930K). Neither is exactly cheap but if you need the PCIe lanes, core
count and memory bandwidth, they are your only ticket.
LGA-2011 SNB-E (left) vs. LGA-1155 SNB (right)
Sandy Bridge E is a fairly niche platform to begin with, but what about
the niche within the niche (extremeception?) of users who just need the
LGA-2011 platform but not necessarily a 6-core behemoth? For those
users, there's the Core i7 3820:
LGA-2011 SNB-E (left) vs. LGA-1155 SNB (right)
The Core i7 3820 is the first (and only) quad-core Sandy Bridge E CPU.
It's so new that the chip isn't even available for sale nor will it be
until early 2012. Unlike the relationship between the 3960X and 3930K,
the 3820 is an entirely new die.
The chip features four Sandy Bridge cores and is paired with a 10MB L3
cache, giving it a slight advantage over the highest end LGA-1155 Sandy
Bridge CPUs on the market today. The result is a die that's bigger than a
regular SNB but significantly smaller than a 6-core SNB-E:
There's a small improvement in base clock frequency over the fastest SNB
(3.6GHz vs. 3.5GHz) but max turbo remains unchanged at 3.9GHz. For
single threaded applications the 3820 should be just as fast as a Core
i7 2700K or a 3960X. The same is true for if all heavily threaded
workloads, at least when compared to other quad-core parts (the
3960/3930 still maintain an advantage because of their two additional
cores).
There's no on-die GPU, no heatsink/fan in the box and this isn't a
fully unlocked part so the 3820 is actually cheaper than most of the
high-end Sandy Bridge CPUs: it's priced at $285. If it weren't for the
fact that you'll still need to spend over $200 on a motherboard I would
say that the 3820 is a steal.
Overclocking
Let's start with the basics. All Sandy Bridge CPUs are clock locked by
default, they can't operate at frequencies other than what they're sold
at. There are two exceptions to this rule. All Sandy Bridge CPUs that
support Turbo Boost are partially unlocked. Not only can they turbo up
to frequencies that are higher than their default clock, but they can
also be overclocked to frequencies even higher than their turbo speeds.
By default, all Turbo enabled Sandy Bridge CPUs can be set to run at up
to four bins (4 * bclk or 400MHz by default) higher than their standard
turbo frequencies:
The second exception is any of the K or X-series SKUs. If your Sandy
Bridge model number ends in a K or X, then the chip is fully unlocked
and can be overclocked up to 5.7GHz using only clock multiplier
adjustments.
The Core i7 3960X and 3930K fall into the latter category, which makes
overclocking them a breeze. The 3820 on the other hand is partially
unlocked, which means that we can run it at up to 4.3GHz using
multiplier adjustments alone. Note that the 4.3GHz limit only applies to
the 1-core active state, in the worst case scenario of all cores active
with no room to turbo the highest operating frequency of the chip when
overclocked would be 4.0GHz.
The max 3820 overclock without touching bclk settings
While these aren't bad targets, they're not all that exciting either.
Thankfully Sandy Bridge E makes it even easier to overclock through the
use of a few higher bclk frequencies. By default Sandy Bridge uses a
100MHz bclk, but SNB-E allows for 125MHz, 166MHz and 250MHz options as
well. The 166/250MHz settings are a bit too aggressive, but the 125MHz
bclk setting proved to be the perfect companion for the 3820.
Intel's DX79SI makes it extremely easy to overclock, especially with
the latest BIOS update. There are built in overclocking profiles for
each bclk setting that you can choose from. I simply selected the 1.25x
(125MHz) profile option and then went through the list of target
frequencies until I found one that seemed promising. I also went in and
tweaked some of the settings myself to get a bit more clock speed
(4.63GHz is the fastest profile this board allows by default) and
improve stability. In the end I was fairly pleased with what the 3820
could do: 4.75GHz with Intel's RTS2011LC closed loop cooling system.
Now we're talking
I couldn't get the 3820 as stable as I would like at 4.88GHz and 5GHz
was unfortunately out of the reach of my sample. I can't really complain
about 4.75GHz from a $285 chip though, especially without resorting to
anything too exotic from a cooling standpoint. Overclocking is also
extremely effortless thanks to the new bclk options on SNB-E. Although
the Core i7 3820 isn't an unlocked part, that doesn't limit how far (or
how easily) it can be overclocked. A big part of the ease of
overclocking is due to how good of a job Intel did on the DX79SI BIOS
options, but from what we've seen the third party boards also do a
decent job of simplifying the process.
The Test
To keep the review length manageable we're presenting a subset of our
results here. For all benchmark results and even more comparisons be
sure to use our performance comparison tool: Bench.
Motherboard:
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (Intel Z68)
ASUS Crosshair V Formula (AMD 990FX)
Intel DX79SI (Intel X79)
