Internal thoughts, and other musings
Popping the aluminium top and showing the left-hand side first, the chassis has an 80mm intake fan that's directed at the two hard drives situated directly behind. Internal cabling is generally neat and, for the sake of disclosure, the only hardware problem we came across was an unsecured soundcard that was slightly unseated in the review sample, causing it not to be recognised by Windows. It's important to note that the review sample was a prototype shipped to us in expedient fashion.
An aerial shot of the same side highlights the XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB XXX Edition card (bloody long name, eh?) that Armari chose to run with. Not only is it, arguably, based on the fastest current 3D GPU around, it's an pre-overclocked version that runs at 580MHz core and 1730MHz memory. There's little space between it and the Creative X-Fi card, yet thanks to the excellent heatpipe-based cooler used on 512MB 7800 GTX models and thought that Armari has put into building the Pantheon, idle temperatures were reported as 52c and load's at between 75-80c, well within card tolerances. Indeed, the only method of gaining extra performance would be to go down the SLI or CrossFire dual-card route.
A switch over to the other side shows the snug fit of the micro-ATX ASUS nForce 430 motherboard. In keeping with the balls-out performance ethos of the Pantheon, a couple of fluid dynamic bearing motor (FDB) Hitachi T7K250 250GB SATA hard drives are pre-configured in zippy RAID0 flavour. Speed and not security seem to be the watchwords here, and we can appreciate why Armari has chosen them. 2GBytes of Corsair's medium-latency DDR400 is included; we wonder why a low-latency (2-2-2-5) pack wasn't used, especially in view of the other high-performance components chosen.
Slipping in under the large PSU fan and using a revised heatpipe cooler, is AMD's dual-core Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU. Our recent review surmised that it was, on balance, the best x86 CPU that money can currently buy. Armari has gone a step further than just plonking in a 2.6GHz-clocked (default) model. Rather, thanks to the multiplier-unlocked nature of all Athlon 64 FX processors and the decent yields that AMD is currently enjoying, Armari has bumped the multiplier up from 13x to 14x, giving 2.8GHz clockspeed as standard. A weekend of Prime95 testing highlighted no stability errors at the overclocked speed, either. That gives the Pantheon's FX-60 single-threaded performance on a par with the equally expensive Athlon 64 FX-57 and dual-core performance to die for.
Software, support, and extras
At the time of writing, the software package wasn't finalised. The system shipped with Windows XP Professional SP2. Armari offers a standard 1-year onsite warranty support that can be extended by a further year for £190+VAT and by an extra two years for £295+VAT. Support is obtained by initially phoning the technical support number and providing Armari with your serial and invoice numbers. Also included in the bundle is a high-quality HID set from Logitech, comprising of the excellent G7 cordless laser mouse and G15 corded gaming keyboard.
Overall thoughts
The Armari Pantheon is a system that's designed for the user that wants the best of everything, built for them by an experienced company, and housed in a stylish SFF chassis. Build quality is excellent throughout, as befits a top-end system. The choicest components, headlined by an overclocked Athlon 64 FX-60 and pre-overclocked GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB, don't come cheap. As a base unit, the Pantheon is listed at £2,395 including VAT (+£29.37 for delivery). That sounds exorbitant until you consider that buying the components alone would cost a touch over £2,100. Hell, just the CPU and graphics card sting the wallet for £1200.
Armari also offers a number of upgrades to this already powerful package. For the most part, these centre around upgrading the twin Hitachi hard drives to either faster models (dual Western Digital 10K 150GB Raptors - £250+VAT) or ones with larger capacities, twin Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 400GB models, for example. Users looking to pay for their prospective machine via credit cards will need to factor in a surcharge of 2%. That's adds almost £50 to the above price, though. Armari advises us that delivery dates are usually 10 days from the time that payment has been made in full. The Pantheon will be available from today, so start raiding the piggybank if it has taken your fancy thus far.
In terms of practical usage, the Pantheon FX was as fast as the specification's suggest, and, at 8kg or so, makes for a monster of a LAN machine. One aspect we did note, however, was that the review sample's noise profile was a little louder than we'd hoped for, especially in relation to the super-quiet SFF units that have passed through HEXUS Labs. recently. We appreciate that it uses some of the fastest (ergo hottest) components around, yet we'd need to turn our speakers' volume up to drown out the increased sound that came from, primarily, the CPU's fan spinning at high RPM. Armari is aware of this and a revised cooling solution will be used on shipping models that will include a SilverStone FX121 crossflow fan mounted on the rear and an 18dBa fan directed at the CPU, at a slight additional cost. Armari reckons this drops the load temperatures by at least 5C and consequently reduces some of the noise that was apparent on the prototype review sample.