Update for Xi Computer review

This past summer I bought a long-overdue new desktop. Specs at the link, but the main idea was that it was an i7 3820 3.6 ghz overclocked to 4.5. I figured it was time to post an update on my status with the machine.

The setup with this machine was pretty smooth. I ordered it just the way I wanted it, so there was no messing around when it got here. I did put a couple of hard drives in it, one for data and another for long-term storage (which is usually turned off in the device manager so there are no mishaps). Aside from the box being huge, everything was cool.

For a while.

Then it wouldn’t boot. The bios was giving a message that the overclocking wouldn’t work, so I should go into the bios and turn it off. I did that, and for some reason didn’t call tech support right away. Remember, tech support should be part of the review, and part of your buying decision.

So then I had to mess around with the video card. And here I will take a second to rant a little.

I took some advice, which didn’t cost me anything, and bought the AMD FirePro V4800. The good news was it was cheap. It was causing a number of problems in SolidWorks and in other places. It was slow, and when I did benchmarks, my video scores were all disproportionately lower than the rest of the machine. Fast processor (although not as fast as if it were the overclocked beast I paid for), fast SSD drive, fast memory, and slow video.

One of my big video complaints turned out not to be the card at all, but SolidWorks. I had a problem where about once every 3 minutes, a small window on the screen would be the only thing that worked, and the rest of the SW display just froze. This turns out to be a conflict with non-Aero Windows settings. They say it in a pretty way, but essentially, this is as bad a video bug as they make, aside from outright crashes. To avoid it, you have to make sure that Aero is turned on. Of course Wiley (my publisher) has guidelines that say Aero should be off for book images. Ayyy. Try to explain to a publisher that has been in business for literally 200 years that you can’t follow their rules because the rules suck, and because the software you’re writing about isn’t much better. No good news there.

Fortunately, back on the video card, I was able to replace the V4800 with a FirePro W7000 (more on that later), which bumped the Windows Experience Index from 7.0 to 7.8. I needed help to do this, though, because the old card was PCIe 2.0 and the new one was PCIe3.0, which required a bios flash. Which is where the XI techs came into play. They got me the new bios, and eventually we revisited the overclocking problem.

It turns out that a lot of people (not just Xi customers) have had problems with overclocking this particular processor all the way to 4.5 ghz. Xi’s testing said they could only really guarantee 4.1 ghz out of it, and that they would refund me the $150 difference between 4.1 and 4.5. So, the update is that I’m now hollering (as opposed to screaming) along at a respectable 4.1 ghz, with a greatly improved video card, and enough money for a night out in my pocket.

In the end, the support at Xi has been excellent. They might have been a bit more proactive, knowing I had bought hardware that didn’t measure up to stated specs, but I’m happy about the outcome in the end. Xi has long been a darkhorse in engineering workstations, but I’m seeing them mentioned more frequently in SolidWorks circles. This is the second Xi I’ve purchased for my own use, and I’ll go back to them again. For the money, you just can’t beat it. It’s the next best thing to building it yourself, but just imagine the nightmare if I had built this myself, and was on the hook to figure out this overclocking problem on my own. The small premium of having these guys spec, build, burn in, and support this hardware is WELL worth it.