Scan's 3XS Great White gaming rig is extreme, not quite �11,000 extreme

British computer maker Scan is mighty, mighty proud of its 3X Great White. Aside from blasting a Silverstone TJ07B case with an astonishingly corny logo, the outfit is also charging a staggering £11,171.18 ($20,225) for the soon-to-be-outdated rig. Granted, it does pack an impressive amount of cutting-edge hardware -- three 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 HDDs (alongside two 64GB OCZ SSDs), a 4.4GHz overclocked Core 2 Quad Q9650 CPU, 2GB of Corsair DDR3 RAM, three 1GB NVIDIA GTX 280 GPUs and enough LEDs to light up a small basement (among other things) -- but we still can't justify trading out a good portion of your kid's college education for a machine very capable of dominating Crysis. But if you can, the buy link is just a few clicks away. Just don't tell the wife, nor anyone that we told you not to tell the wife.

[Via WebCrunchDeals]

[Chris Anderson @ Sep 1st 2008 6:37PM]

only a moron would pay for this....

[Techie @ Sep 1st 2008 9:17PM]

I remember the good old days where you just use some silver heat sink, silver thermal gel and some liquid nitrogen.

[Jin @ Sep 1st 2008 10:13PM]

HP blackbird 002 Exhilaration Edition FTW

[toxicpiano @ Sep 1st 2008 6:39PM]

only 2gb of ram for 11 grand?

[Towncivilian @ Sep 1st 2008 6:47PM]

I was about to post the same thing. WTF? It should have at least 16GB.

[bethel03 @ Sep 1st 2008 6:49PM]

Uhm...$ 20,101.42 after currancy conversion....thanks again G.W.B!!

[Reader @ Sep 1st 2008 6:55PM]

Well unless you install 64bit on this you've already gone at least a gig (with those three vid cards included) over the 4gig limit.

[Reader @ Sep 1st 2008 6:57PM]

Well I take back my comment... Looking at the fulls spec sheet this actually comes with FOUR gigs of ram (2x2GB) and 64bit vista installed.

I blame it on Engadget's faulty info :P

[Jman @ Sep 1st 2008 7:16PM]

bethel03 is right, why did he get ranked low? Our dollar is extremely weak because of the spending problem.

[deyanimay @ Sep 1st 2008 7:51PM]

Is ddr3 ram that much better than ddr2 ram that you only need 4gb of ddr3 in a "state of the art" pc when you could put 8gb of ddr2?

[Wolfticket @ Sep 1st 2008 7:54PM]

It's 1 better, isn't it?

[Dave @ Sep 1st 2008 8:04PM]

bethel got low ranked because he's the kind of mouth-breathing idiot who cant leave his personal politics behind him, even when he's reading a simple gadget blog. You got low ranked because not only are you encouraging him, you're encouraging others by defending his atrocious behavior.

If you want to talk politics, go do it somewhere else.

[Kamokazi @ Sep 1st 2008 8:50PM]

"Well unless you install 64bit on this you've already gone at least a gig (with those three vid cards included) over the 4gig limit."

I'm astonished at how stupid and smart someone can be at the same time. RAM on video cards is independent from system RAM, unless it's a crummy piece of shit integrated card that leeches off the system RAM.

[Cal @ Sep 1st 2008 9:11PM]

Kamokazi, go build a rig with 4GB RAM, graphics card with onboard VRAM and a 32-bit OS and see how much RAM the system can use...

[Trevor @ Sep 1st 2008 9:33PM]

Really! I mean, there's more video card memory than RAM!

[sotec_productions @ Sep 1st 2008 9:57PM]

"only 2gb of ram for 11 grand?"

I'd pay no more than $6,000 for a machine with 32GB RAM and the rest of those specs, and I'd throw in an extra $1,000 if they'd sand off that stupid logo on the side.

Two more rigs I'd pay for without hesitation before I even considered this obsolete machine would be:

1. A maxed out Alienware rig coming in somewhere in the ballpark of $11,000
2. The Mac that costs $25,000 that DOES have impressive specs, such as 32GB RAM for starters. I'm not really into Mac's since they are essentially too expensive for my habit; I run linux on a daily basis, both on my desktop and laptop, but I'd still consider the $25,000 Mac before this machine as I prefer unix-based OS's.
3. and There are plenty more rigs out there that I'm sure some commenter here on Engadget has more readily available in the linkage dept. that can currently blow this ridiculous rig out of the water...

(I haven't booted into Windows in months.)

[vadim @ Sep 2nd 2008 1:57AM]

I think it actually has 4 gb of ram. I read through the specs and it says 4gb ( 2 x 2gb ). Come on engadget, you should catch stuff like that ;)

[▐▬▌▐▌ @ Sep 2nd 2008 3:21AM]

Cal, yes you can't make use of 4Gb RAM on 32bit Windows but the point he was making is the amount of video card RAM is totally irrelevant. Video card RAM is not directly addressable and doesn't use the same bus to communication (video card RAM is usually on a 256bit wide addressable bus).
Reader was suggesting that having 3 video cards could push it over the 4Gb limit when video card RAM is totally irrelevant.

[Reader @ Sep 2nd 2008 4:17AM]

Although not speaking from personal experience Kamokazi/▐▬▌▐▌ , I've read that it does so. "Those two 768Mb graphics cards you can totally justify buying will eat one point five gigabytes of your 32-bit memory map all by themselves, cutting you down to a 2.5Gb ceiling before you even take the other reservations into account" Source: http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm

Really, most of it is beyond me, but I go with what I've read on many sites. If you test it out someday tell me sometime, but I'm not brave enough to drop the money just to make sure it's right.

[eiki @ Sep 2nd 2008 6:45AM]

the £ is actually at its lowest against the $ for quite some time, 1.7812 in fact

[teetdogs @ Sep 2nd 2008 3:04PM]

You can actually use more than 4gb of ram with a 32-Bit OS its called physical address extension, look it up I use 32-bit server 2003 with 16 GB of RAM and windows can see all of it

[Kamokazi @ Sep 3rd 2008 12:33AM]

Unfortunately that article you link is from a guy who was an expert in the early 90's, but has since fallen behind the times (That's my rough guess anyway). He picked up a few new tricks, but not enough to see what was going on. I'm not going to pretend to know all the specifics myself, but those address ranges he shows are provided by the video drivers so games and other applications can directly address video RAM, but they are not discounted from the total.

I can pretty much verify this myself without getting into messy details to definitively prove it. My gaming PC has 4GB of system memory and 1GB of video memory. It dual-boots XP 32 and Vista x64. In Vista, it sees the full 4GB, in XP, it sees 3.25GB, and when it starts up, less than 10% of the memory is currently being used. I just double-checked Age of Conan, which I was playing on my 768MB card as well, and memory utilization is right about the same as what it was before the upgrade (~55-60%).

[Alex Padilla @ Sep 1st 2008 6:40PM]

But can it play Doom?

*low ranks himself*

[andy @ Sep 1st 2008 7:32PM]

lol@low ranks himself.. that made me lol
3tb on a gaming computer is dumb. 128gb ssd on a gaming rig=pimp

[OprahDustX @ Sep 1st 2008 7:47PM]

yes it plays doom, and it also comes with 32-bit Windows Vista preinstalled!

[Eric @ Sep 1st 2008 8:36PM]

@andy

Read it again, it has 3 1tb drives along with 2 64 gb ssds.

[Shinigami @ Sep 1st 2008 9:03PM]

$6000 SSD on a gaming rig would really be great! Would make your loading times 0.1 second smaller!!! And its totally worth paying $5,700 more for the HDD!!!!!

[nick @ Sep 2nd 2008 12:18AM]

@Eric: what's 64x2? 128. See also: basic math. I do believe andy was commenting on both storage factors of the computer.

[Thi mam(kris120890) @ Sep 1st 2008 6:41PM]

Thats just stupid price for an impressive machine. At that price no ones going to buy it.

[Reader @ Sep 1st 2008 7:00PM]

Don't be so sure that no one will buy it. There has to be a couple tasteless trust fund baby-nerds out there...

[Thi mam(kris120890) @ Sep 1st 2008 7:09PM]

wHOS GOING TO USE GOOGLE CHROME TOMORROW.bETA I BELIEVE

[Thi mam(kris120890) @ Sep 1st 2008 7:09PM]

Woops caps lock crazy.

[ethana2 @ Sep 1st 2008 9:29PM]

I'll try to run it in WINE..
My keyboard layout doesn't have a caps lock, but I get by fine with shift :)

I wouldn't buy it. There is such thing as overkill, and time goes by so fast. Software has been the bottleneck for a while now, especially with physics.

[Ethan Illfelder @ Sep 1st 2008 6:44PM]

what? no skulltrail; honestly i think with 22k i could build a rig with at least a decent amount of memory- 2gb? nethelam is coming out soon along with a all new cast of the very best cpu's not a very good time to burn ones money on equipment that was available 3 years ago.

[ImSpartacus @ Sep 1st 2008 9:00PM]

I agree. This thing isn't really that impressive. I want freakin dual Q9770's at 4 GHz and 8 GB of DDR3.

No to mention you could build a computer identical to this PoS for about 6-7k USD if not less.

[TareX @ Sep 1st 2008 6:44PM]

Is this "rig" meant for the commerical market, or to be placed in a computer museum?

Because kids rich enough to have this, are probably already playing in their virtual reality custom-made console-rooms.

[Shadowise @ Sep 1st 2008 6:45PM]

As you can see from the picture, this thing took home the Custom PC Dream PC 2008 award. Stupidly expensive, but I wouldn't say no if someone gave it to me.

[a @ Sep 1st 2008 6:46PM]

too much unnecessary (for now) hard drive and not enough RAM. like the CPU and GPUs tho. still too much money for the value.

[GenoMalice @ Sep 1st 2008 6:48PM]

If im gonna pay 20 grand on a computer........ i would atleast hope it came with more than 2 gigs of ram............... fail??

[Josh @ Sep 1st 2008 7:05PM]

...............................................................

I have more periods, therefore i must be cooler than you.

Q.E.D.

[phanbouy @ Sep 1st 2008 7:10PM]

i woulda put on ", beotch" after the QED. icing on the cake and all that

[Anthony H. @ Sep 1st 2008 8:00PM]

@josh:

Or you're just a woman?

[ethana2 @ Sep 1st 2008 9:31PM]

Josh, you've got that right. Hot flashes are a killer, be glad with periods while you've got 'em ;)

[blueangel00100 @ Sep 1st 2008 6:59PM]

For just under £8,000 you could buy the best computer from Falcon Northwest which includes:
- 8GB 1066MHZ DDR3
-4tb storage space
-3 gtx 280s
-etc etc

[RiddleMeThis @ Sep 1st 2008 7:00PM]

This item is definatly aimed and marketed for rich kids who have daddy buy all their swag. love of money=foolishness. they should give it to the intellegent poor to invest it in I dunno, maybe a safe alternate fuel source. this type of thing leaves me sick. the rich get richer and we middle classers burn below, seriously?

RiddleMeThis!

[svtpickemup @ Sep 1st 2008 7:46PM]

The rich get richer because they keep doing the things that make them rich. The poor keep doing the things that make them poor. And, yup, you guessed it, the middle class keep doing the things that keep them somewhere in between.

[gad get @ Sep 2nd 2008 3:44AM]

The rich go bankrupt by buying expensive crap, because they have no concept of money management.

[Peste @ Sep 1st 2008 7:02PM]

22$?
With that money I could build a better computer, seriously, who needs 3TB of space? o.O!

[neoAkira @ Sep 1st 2008 7:06PM]

Let alone the 550 Watts of continuous power needed by the beast on idling

[neoAkira @ Sep 1st 2008 7:09PM]

Let alone the 550 watts on continous power needed by this beast on idle.