Sony's Core 2 Quad (yes, quad) Vaio R Master: answers "who's your daddy?"

Looks like Sony is first from the gate with a consumer PC wrapped around Intel's new Core 2 Quad processor. Damn straight Jack, Sony's Vaio R Master split-tower, flagship desktop now sports Intel's beefiest of consumer procs: the 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600. That, on top of a Blu-ray Disc drive, up to 3GB of DDR2-667 memory and 3TB of SATA disk, and nVidia Quadro FX 1500 graphics makes this one smokin' fast box. Only thing is, a fully spec'd -- and we mean fully -- model VGC-RM900CPS with 24-inch, 1920x1200 LCD will set you back ¥995,800 (about $8,241) when these hit Japan February 10th. Still interested?

[Via Impress]

[james @ Jan 17th 2007 11:00AM]

Very interested. But you could built for $1000's less. But what a sweet package. plus looks good

[shirizaki @ Jan 17th 2007 10:28AM]

Ugly.

That's all i haev to say. It looks really ugly.

[mike @ Jan 17th 2007 10:28AM]

Id steal one.

[Jeff @ Jan 17th 2007 10:27AM]

With a Quadro card in there, looks like they're going more for the cheap workstation market than the home market. $8,000 is not a ridiculous price at all for a graphics workstation.

[kOa7 @ Jan 17th 2007 10:30AM]

3 GB max? Give me a break. Who is this thing for?

[brian @ Jan 17th 2007 1:06PM]

What a joke! 3 GB max. Typical vendor crap.

[Alex @ Jan 17th 2007 10:34AM]

nVidio? dont you mean nVidia?

[PeteC @ Jan 17th 2007 10:35AM]

Can I get two, one for each eye?

[icepop4who @ Jan 17th 2007 10:37AM]

sw33t

nvideo? hey hey.

i'm still interested..

[Rick Lyon @ Jan 17th 2007 10:40AM]

Hmm, first the white hat box and now this? WTF is Sony thinking in it's design department? Did they have a bunch of old 'desktop' cases from the 80s laying around?

[Revels @ Jan 17th 2007 10:40AM]

Glad the early-80s aesthetic is making a comeback. I hope the next Mac Pros have walnut veneers and brushed steel dials.

[HEY @ Jan 17th 2007 10:41AM]

i think gateway has had a quad core for months now?? i may be wrong

[Rainier @ Jan 17th 2007 10:42AM]

That's one ugly looking mouse!!

[Dave @ Jan 17th 2007 10:50AM]

The short answer is, yes, yes I would. And the fact that it's a big, ugly black pile of ugliness is a major plus for me. It looks almost military. It's the WOMPR!!!

[Scooter @ Jan 17th 2007 10:51AM]

styling cues from B&O, circa 1985.
But combine this with the (standard) 100MB/s fibre internet in Japan, and you're in business.

[mike @ Jan 17th 2007 11:10AM]

yes, i am a gateway employee, and we HAVE had the quad core processor the 6600 for a little over a month, in our FX530XT and 530XL...so for this article to say Sony is the first...not so correct...

[Xenoterranos @ Jan 17th 2007 11:14AM]

Holy cRAP! I though that was a speaker pod or something...not a mouse! Good eye Rainier.
Oddly enough, this is what I imagined that computers from Neuromancer and the like looked like in my head...you know that book from the 80's.

[lou @ Jan 17th 2007 11:34AM]

Why 3GB of memory and not 4???

[Leonard Nimrod @ Jan 17th 2007 11:38AM]

Looks like Sony missed the mark.

They could have used that slim form factor and made this another media center PC.

Only this time, one that easily mounts on your wall just below your Sony HDTV.

I'd actually be interested in something like that.

[xaeth @ Jan 17th 2007 12:10PM]

you guys do realize that the large of the 2 parts of the chassis is a disc carousel(about 200 discs iirc), ryt? the pc part is nice and slim.

[William McGough @ Mar 18th 2007 11:07PM]

No thats wrong. That is the VGX-XL series. The Main box has 6hdds, the motherboard, ram, power supply, Graphics card and PCI Slots. The Small slim box is connected by a PCI-Express cable, and contains the 2 optical drives (including a Blu-Ray Disc Drive) as well as a media card reader, a PCMIA slot (on the back) and Bluetooth.

[scott @ Jan 17th 2007 12:16PM]

All that money and they throw $20 2.0 speakers in there? 70% of what you see is cued by sound, i pity whoever pays a $4000 premium for a nice matched set and then has to go and find some studio quality speakers that look ok with it. Plus, that mouse makes my hand hurt just looking at it

[LMAO @ Jan 17th 2007 12:20PM]

Kinda weak for an $8,000 machine. You're paying about 5,000 for the Sony name. And $1000 for the BluRay drive.

Why aren't they using workstation grade processors such as Opterons or Xeon? (Heck even a 2 QX6700 Processor for 8 Processors total) Or even SCSI Interface? Or 800MHz ECC RAMS?

For $8000 you could get a RIG Much better.

[Dan @ Jan 17th 2007 3:01PM]

"Kinda weak for an $8,000 machine. You're paying about 5,000 for the Sony name. And $1000 for the BluRay drive."

Ok, so for $2,000, you're telling me you can get a computer with a Core 2 Quad, 3GB of RAM, 3 TB of disk, nVidia Quadro FX 1500, and a 24-inch 1920x1200 LCD????

Dumbass.

[Anthony @ Jan 17th 2007 3:51PM]

I didn't know IBM made VAIOs now.

[jerrt @ Jan 17th 2007 12:19PM]

if i had that much expendable cash, or i had a business that needed that machine, i would be first in line. the computer boggles the mind.

[toti @ Jan 17th 2007 12:28PM]

Ok, the 3gb ram limit aside, whats up with 667mhz ram? Surely putting a quad core processor into this machine, the least they can do is try get some faster ram in.

[Matthew Hillman @ Jan 18th 2007 3:44AM]

Congrats Sony on being the first to jump on the Quad core train. But I must say did you hire a monkey to deisign that thing or did you just have some old cases laying around you wanted to get rid of, come on you can do better than that....maybe not.

On another note the processor sounds like a beasty package but with only 3GB you must be joking, I have that amount of memory in my laptop. Take your fingers out your butts and make a decent computer with decent specs that you don't have to rob the bank to buy.

[Stranger @ Jan 17th 2007 12:34PM]

I think it looks awesome, reminds me of the design used by IBM (black and with physical "stripes") on their workstations and some desktops.

[Karl Viklund @ Jan 17th 2007 1:02PM]

What's Intel's problem? I mean, to be honest. Can't they name a processor these days without causing confusion. Core 2 Quad... Is it 2 quad cores or 8 cores or what are they talking about. Intel's naming is so stupid... They really have to stop.

[Galley @ Jan 17th 2007 2:16PM]

What's that thing next to the mouse, some kind of crazy jog shuttle?

[Kentucky Wildcats! @ Jan 20th 2007 4:07PM]

The mouse looks like someone placed it upside down. I thought the item next to it was a thumbprint reader, which should have been built into the keyboard.

[mdbj @ Jan 17th 2007 4:21PM]

first out the gate? Dell has had quadcore duo's for a fair piece of time now..
at dell home they list the xps710 and 690 workstation as both available with the quadcore 6700 proc

[HT @ Jan 17th 2007 4:01PM]

They are at least trying hard with the design, give them some credit. The blackhawk down rig would look pretty spanky on a desk. But the specs are pretty underwelming for the $$$$.

[Chris Merchant @ Jan 17th 2007 3:40PM]

The 'Sony Name' part was an obvious exaggeration Dan. So was the 'Blu-Ray' name part.

It's still way overpriced. Anyone with an IT department with a budget this big, is intelligent enough to know they can build one for much cheaper. This certianly isn't aimed at the home-user market. If anything, I can see this as a professional video/sound mixing/editing system, but I'd go get a Mac Pro. Sorry - knocks it out the water.

Chris

[Nestor C. @ Jan 17th 2007 6:52PM]

"Anyone with an IT department with a budget this big, is intelligent enough to know they can build one for much cheaper."

Since when big budget equals intelligence?

[Nestor C. @ Jan 17th 2007 6:54PM]

"Anyone with an IT department with a budget this big, is intelligent enough to know they can build one for much cheaper."

Since when big budget equals intelligence?

[myscrnnm @ Jan 17th 2007 4:02PM]

$8,000 and no wireless keyboard and mouse? The rest of the specs are great, but you'd think you'd get some better peripherals.

[LMAO @ Jan 17th 2007 5:49PM]

Dan,

Hey smarty pants,

All prices are from newegg

Quadro FX 1500 = $475.99
Core 2 Quad QX6600 = $879.00
Motherboard = $100-200
DDR2667 3GB RAM = $314.97 (1GB $104.99x3)
WD 3.5" SATA 2.0 3TB = 959.94 (500GB $159.99x6)

Giving a total of approximately $2,800

Blu-ray Drive = $599.99

Case = $100-200
Powersupply = $100-200
24" display with much higher resolution then 1080p = $300-500

That is still short of $8000 by a long shot.

I can't believe I just wasted some time doing that...
Gawd some people are just too smart.

[vrb @ Jan 17th 2007 9:13PM]

"24" display with much higher resolution then 1080p = $300-500"

1920x1200 is not much higher than 1920x1080

"I can't believe I just wasted some time doing that...
Gawd some people are just too smart"

[R2B2 @ Jan 18th 2007 1:39AM]

This looks like something Darth Vader might use...

[Porsche 911 @ Jan 17th 2007 10:16PM]

I must have this, I need it now.

[moma @ Jan 17th 2007 11:02PM]

I love these Sony computers.. if only they ran OSX!!

[Isaac @ Jan 18th 2007 12:46PM]

One funny thing I noticed was that the 3GB package is 2x1Gb and 2x512GB... so there's 4 physical memory slots... did they just pick the wrong motherboard by accident? "Oh look, the shipment of 10,000 motherboards for our new Vaio are in... hey... wait a sec... the chipset on these only allows up to 3GB! Sonofa... and we already paid for them, we can't return them... damn, we might as well try to sell them and see if anyone buys..."

[Isaac @ Jan 18th 2007 12:46PM]

I'm jealous of anyone who works in an IT department where the manager actually lets them build their own systems. I've worked in the IT departments for at least 7 or 8 companies, and I've never seen one that let you build your own. I've suggested it, even begged for the budget just to build my *own* workstation, and come up with the numbers... "LMAO", that was huge waste of time, you realize that? Sony's target audience is not you. Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Sony, all of them, their targets are NEVER you (or me for that matter).

This system is obviously targeted at A) companies that need powerful workstations from a single name-brand. More than likely they won't be buying this directly from Sony anyway, it'll come through a vendor that they already work with who can give them 1-or-2 stop support/RMA services. The other target, to a much lesser extent, is rich people who just want the latest and greatest, but aren't technically savvy.