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Decibel-Free: The VoodooPC Rage F-50Loyd Case
Voodoo is part of the triumvirate of boutique PC makers (along with Falcon Northwest and Alienware) that have managed to gain cachet beyond simply making prettier versions of the standard beige box. Sure, you can buy a Voodoo rig decked out with snazzy paint job, but it's the unusual levels of service -- including upgrade warranties -- that sets it apart from other manufacturers.
The latest Voodoo PC, though, is something special. Voodoo has taken the $1,200 Zalman TNN 500A chassis and built a high performance PC into it. Given the premium case components, the Voodoo Rage F-50 isn't cheap, at roughly $5,300. But for that money you get a PC that offers little or no compromises in performance and is as quiet as a mouse.
When you first see the F-50, it's easy to believe you're looking at a portable radiator. The heavy cast aluminum case weighs in at 55 lbs empty and sports rows of radiator-style fins on both sides. Assembling a PC with the TNN 500A is quite a chore, so if you want a silent, high performance PC, paying Voodoo to build it for you suddenly gets interesting.
The components are mounted into the chassis and the F-50 has no bezel to speak of. Sturdy metal doors, held shut with spring latches, keep prying eyes and little hands away from the internal components.
The power supply, like the rest of the system, lacks a cooling fan. Shaped like a small pizza box, it's mounted flat on the side of the case to aid heat dissipation. The power plug is actually mounted separately from the supply, higher up on the chassis for easy access.
Front USB access, power switch and reset buttons are located behind the front door, near the bottom. Cable management guides are part of the case casting. Once the front and rear doors are closed, no cable connectors are visible. Instead, you route the cables through the cable guides, which are cast at the top and bottom of the case, both front and rear.
Drives are mounted into cages near the front of the case. The cages are firmly connected to the side of the case, which minimizes drive vibration and assists in heat transfer.
The Rage F-50 truly lacks any form of cooling fans. Instead, the CPU, north bridge and graphics card all have passive coolers attached. Heat pipes transfer heat from the passive coolers to thermal transfer units attached to the side of the case.
Booting up the F-50 is an eerie experience the first time, but it grows on you quickly. All you hear is the chatter of the hard drives. When the rather substantial front and rear doors are closed, even that sound is minimized. The only time it became "loud" -- and we're talking relative terms here -- is when we defragged the RAID 0 array.
Actually running applications on this PC is also unnerving at first. We've all come to expect our PCs to make noise when they're running. You keep wanting to check to make sure it's running properly, because you can't hear it. To date, the quietest standard desktop PC we've seen to date have been Dell 4600 and 8300 minitower PCs, but even those make some sound. Heck, the F-50 is quieter than your average laptop.
So now we've established that the Rage F-50 makes no noise, aside from a bit of hard drive clatter. But we've seen VIA C3-based PCs that are fanless and quiet. You wouldn't call those high performance systems, though. What's inside the box?
The Rage F-50 we tested shipped with a substantial set of components that qualify it as a high performance PC. Let's contrast it with some of the testbeds we use at ExtremeTech:
Component Intel 875P System VoodooPC Rate:F-50 Nvidia nForce3 Ultra system Processor Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3.4GHz, socket 478 Athlon 64 3800+ at 2.4GHz (512KB L2 cache, socket 939) Athlon 64 FX-53 at 2.4GHz (socket 939) Motherboard Asus P4C800-E, Intel 875P chipset, 1014 BIOS Asus A8V Deluxe, VIA K8T800 Pro chipset MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, 1.0 BIOS Memory 2 x 512MB (1GB) Corsair XMS PC3200, CAS2-3-3-7 2 x 512MB (1GB) Corsair XMS 3200 low latency memory 2 x 512MB (1GB) Kingston HyperX PC3200, CAS 2-3-2-6 Graphics Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP, 61.45 drivers ATI X800XT Platinum Edition, Catalyst 4.6 drivers Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP, 61.45 drivers Hard Drives 2 x WD740 10,000RPM SATA drives configured as a RAID 0 striped array, 128K block size 2 x WD740 10,000RPM SATA drives configured as a RAID 0 striped array, 64K block size 2 x WD740 10,000RPM SATA drives configured as a RAID 0 striped array, 128K block size Optical Toshiba DVD-ROM Plextor PX-708A 12X DVD-RW/+RW multiformat drive Toshiba DVD-ROM Audio Creative Labs Audigy 2 Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZX Creative Labs Audigy 2 Networking Intel Pro1000 CSA Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet (802.11g also available, not tested) Nforce3 Gigabit Ethernet Chassis Antec SX-830 Zalman TNN 500A Antec SX-830 Power Supply Vantec Stealth 470W Zalman 300W silent Antec 400W Operating System Windows XP Professional SP1, all current patches installed; DirectX 9 and Windows Media Player 9 installed Windows XP Professional SP1, all current patches installed; DirectX 9 and Windows Media Player 9 installed Windows XP Professional SP1, all current patches installed; DirectX 9 and Windows Media Player 9 installed
Each system was initially configured with a clean install of Windows XP (service pack 1). Then all current critical patches were downloaded and installed from the Windows Update site. We also installed DirectX 9.0b and Windows Media Player 9. Virtual memory was set to a 2048KB fixed swap file. The hard drives were defragged before any major test requiring significant hard drive access. VSync was disabled for all real-time graphics tests. We executed the following command before any test cycle: rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks. This completes any background idle tasks and improves benchmark score reproducibility.
Simply put, this system does not suck. The Athlon 64 3800+ isn't the fastest AMD CPU -- but it is a close second. The X800XT PE is the fastest 3D accelerator made by ATI -- and may be the fastest consumer graphics card around, period, though it admittedly doesn't support DirectX 9.0c's shader model 3. The 74GB Raptor hard drives, when configured into a RAID 0 array, certainly offer speedy mass storage. All in all, this is a highly capable system. How capable? Let's check out performance.
Our benchmark suite has evolved over time. However, our suite covers a wide range of applications which are significantly affected by CPU performance. The suite consists of a mix of synthetic and real-world applications, but is heavily weighted towards real applications. Here are the tests we ran for this processor preview:
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 is the latest version of VeriTest's Winstone benchmark suite. It consists of a variety of common desktop applications, run in a scripted sequence that resembles actual user usage patterns. Most of these consist of Microsoft Office applications, including Microsoft Project and Access. Also included are Norton AntiVirus Professional 2003 and WinZip 8.1. We're now using the 1.01 version.
New this year is a second set of four inspection tests designed to yield information on multitasking performance. The first runs Outlook and Internet Explorer in the foreground while performing a file copy in the background. The second runs Excel and Word operations while WinZip runs in the background, archiving files. The final test runs a Norton AntiVirus scan in the background while Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Access, FrontPage and WinZip perform foreground chores.
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004
The latest release of Content Creation Winstone updates most of the applications to recent versions. It also shifts away from Windows Media Encoder 7.1 to the current Windows Media Encoder 9. Sound Forge has been replaced with Steinberg's WaveLab. We run the LightWave portion as a dual-threaded application, using the recent patch for Multimedia Content Creation Winstone that allows you to set the number of LightWave threads used.
Both Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone can be ordered from VeriTest and delivered on CD-ROM for a nominal shipping charge. They cannot be downloaded.
Adobe After Effects 6.0 Professional
This is an updated version of our earlier After Effects 5.5 test, using the newer version from Adobe. After Effects is a professional video compositing and editing tool. This test runs a scripted set of typical After Effects composting and filter operations and generates a log file with elapsed time data at the end.
DivX 5.1.1 Encode
We use the freeware VirtualDub and the latest DiVX 5.1.1 codec to compress a 330MB AVI file extracted from the DVD The Rock and originally encoded at full resolution with Indeo 5.1 to about 80MB. The AVI file offers both rapid action and high contrast scenes, making it a challenge for any compression scheme. The same file is also used in our other video compression tests.
WMV 9 Test
We use Windows Media Encoder 9 to encode the above video to a 60MB WMV file. Audio is compressed to 70kbps and the total bitstream is encoded at roughly 2050 kbps.
QuickTime 6.5 / Sorenson Test
We used QuickTime Professional 6.5 and the highly regarded Sorenson 3 codec to compress our 330MB AVI file to about 75MB, using its highest quality settings.
MusicMatch 8.2 MP3Pro Encode
We use the latest version of MusicMatch to encode a 248MB WAV file to an 11.8MB MP3Pro file at 64 kbps and note the time.
WMA 9 Encoder
We use Windows Media Encoder to compress a 248MB WAV file to 11.3MB at a 70kbps data rate and record the time.
Cinebench 2003
We run Cinebench 2003 to test the software 3D rendering performance using Maxon's Cinema4D engine. Cinebench also allows us to see how performance varies with multiple CPUs, virtual or real.
LightWave 7.5 LightWave is a highly popular 3D modeling and rendering applications used extensively in Hollywood and elsewhere. We run three different renders from LightWave's benchmark folder to hammer on the CPU. All LightWave renders take place with two threads enabled.
Discrete 3D Studio Max 5.1
Another popular professional 3D modeling app, 3D Studio Max, is multithreaded. We run a variety of rendering tests and report several results. We rendered five consecutive frames and recorded the rendering time.
PCMark 2004
The latest iteration of FutureMark's suite of synthetic tests has expanded on the limited repertoire of the original. FutureMark has added several multithreaded tests, as well as expanded to include storage and graphics. We focus on the memory and CPU tests here.
3D Mark 2003
The latest version of 3D Mark has had its share of controversy. However, it's useful for gauging how a processor might fare in real-time 3D applications.
3D Gaming Tests
Perhaps no applications exercise the system more than current-generation 3D games. We use the following to test the processors' performance levels. All results are reported at low resolutions and, in most cases, low detail. While you'd never play a game at these resolutions, running that way serves to isolate CPU performance and negate any potential impact from the graphics card. The games we use include:
Halo for the PC Dungeon Siege Flight Simulator 2004 Comanche 4 Call of Duty Unreal Tournament 2003 Splinter Cell
Just for grins, we took Far Cry for a spin on the F-50 as well, which we'll report separately from the other games. We'll likely be adding Far Cry and possibly Painkiller (as of the 1.3 patch) into our future benchmark mix.
Business Winstone 2004/Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004
Curiously, the Business Winstone performance seemed a bit lackluster, trailing every other system. We're not sure if it's the video card or some other factor, such as the smaller L2 cache, plays a factor here. Note, however, that the F-50 placed second in the Multimedia Content Creation Winstone test and only to the Athlon 64 FX-53.
Media Encoding
Video processing, including applying filters, video compression and transcoding are increasingly important applications in today's media-rich computing environment.
The Video encoding tests don't fare well on the F-50, either, though DivX encoding is pretty much on par with Intel. The F-50 holds its own with audio encoding, placing near the middle in WMA encoding and MP3 Pro encoding.
3ds max, LightWave, and Maxon's Cinebench 4D are professional modeling and animation tools. Here, we test rendering performance, enabling multithreading where needed (3ds max is multithreaded by default).
The P4s have always held an edge in the software 3D rendering tests and that's true here as well. However, the F-50's performance versus the FX-53 is a mixed bag, hanging in there in one test, trailing slightly in another and falling back badly in a third. The F-50 also fares poorly in Viewperf. Clearly, content creation isn't the strong suit for the 3800+.
These are synthetic tests, but can reveal the behavior of key subsystems.
The F-50 once again trails in these tests, falling noticeably short in the 3DMark CPU tests. So how will it perform in actual games?
We'd expect the results of any memory test that completely fits in the L2 cache to be a tie between the two Intel CPUs. So instead, let's look at the PCMark 4MB tests, which are bigger than the total onboard cache.
The Newcastle core, upon which the 3800+ is based, seems a tad less efficient than the FX-53 in memory tests. Some of this may simply be due to the smaller L2 cache, but we wonder if there are some subtle differences in the memory controller and the cache architecture.
3D Games
Our 3D game tests offer a mix of CPU-intensive and memory bandwidth hungry tests. We keep the resolution low, so that the graphics card doesn't unduly affect the CPU impact.
When we get to games, however, the F-50 starts to hold its own. It's not the fastest kid on the block, but performs pretty well. Note, however, that it does trail behind Intel in some of the tests. Clearly, the larger L2 cache seems to have a big impact on Athlon 64 performance.
We also took the F-50 for a spin with Far Cry, the demanding first person shooter from Crytek and Ubisoft. In the built-in tests that ship with the 1.2 Far Cry patch, the F-50 maintained frame rates at 1024x768 ranging from 85 to 125 frames per second using default high graphics settings.
It's striking how much difference the L2 cache size seems to make with the Athlon 64 architecture. The Newcastle core used in the F-50 offers only 512KB of L2 cache, and that seems to hobble the performance a bit. But in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a slow PC -- it's simply not among the fastest systems. The Rage F-50 isn't the fastest PC we've seen. But it is still a pretty speedy PC, nonetheless. But its nearly complete lack of noise, coupled with fairly high-end components, make the F-50 a desirable commodity. We do wish the performance was a bit higher. Perhaps if Zalman can ship a beefier power supply without needing a fan, we'll see FX-53 or Prescott 3.6GHz systems. Given the power supply size and the purely passive cooling, this is likely a poor candidate for serious overclocking.
Despite the lack of fans, the F-50 was rock solid in all our testing. We encountered no glitches or system crashes, even during CPU and graphics-intensive testing. So not only is the F-50 quiet and relatively fast -- it's also stable.
If you factor in price, though, it's a bit more sobering. As configured, the system weighs in at $5,300--so you have to consider just how valuable the utter lack of noise is to you. If you place a high value on silence, the F-50 may be your cup of tea, indeed.
Product VoodooPC Rage F-50
Web Site: www.voodoopc.com
Pros: It's the quietest PC we've ever (not) heard; great component choice; stable
Cons: Relatively slow compared to speedier (and much noisier) systems
Summary: The Rage F-50 allows you to enjoy music and other audio without the constant hum of fan noise, but its performance is only average for a high-end PC.
Price: $5,300 (as configured)
Score:
Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.