Just received my Vadim last week ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh "Suit me sir!"
Now I know what all the fuss is about!!!!! This is one mean PC....
Just a quick reminder of my order:-
1 x Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset
1 x APC Back UPS RS 1500VA 230V
1 x Lian-Li PC-343B Black CASE (NO PSU)
1 x Plain Precise Machine-Cut Window
1 x Supreme Cable Management and UV Modding - Blue
1 x Non-LED fans
1 x LiquoCool Antarctic TXD (CPU+2xChipset+2xVGA+2xMosfets)
1 x Enermax Galaxy Modular DXX 1000W PSU
1 x Asus Striker II Formula 780i SLI (nVidia 780i - 1333 FSB Penryn)
1 x Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 Extreme Retail (4x3.00GHz 1333FSB 12Mb)
2 x OCZ DDR2-1200 2x1024MB FlexXLC Edition Dual Channel Kit
3 x 150Gb Raptor X 10000 16mb E-SATA
1 x 750Gb Barracuda 7200.11 32mb Cache SATA II NCQ
2 x BFG nVidia 8800GTS New OC 512Mb PCIe HDCP
1 x LG GBW-H10N Blu-Ray IDE DVD-RW Silver
1 x SONY-NEC Optiarc AD-7173A 18x DVDRW Black OEM
1 x Creative 7.1 X-FI ExtremeGamer Fatal1ty
1 x Windows XP Professional SP2 OEM
1 x X-Image on 2.5" 120Gb, Vista opt. and Genesis CD
1 x Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit DVD OEM
1 x Safe Stable Over clocking (5-40% - CPU/VGA)
1 x Saver Build (10-20 working days)
1 x Deluxe 2 Year Collect and Return-Onsite Warranty
1 x Aluminium Custom Trunk (Lian-Li 343)
1 x Vadim Computers Baseball T-Shirt (M)
Upgrade / Downgrade History
Component 1 x LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray RW-HD-ROM Black SATA changed FOC to component 1 x LG GBW-H10N Blu-Ray IDE DVD-RW Silver 0
Component 1 x Plextor PX-810SA/T3B SATA 18x DL DVDRW Black Retail changed to component 1 x SONY-NEC Optiarc AD-7173A 18x DVDRW Black OEM £-23.80 (ex Vat)
Component 1 x X-Image on 2.5" USB 120Gb HD and Vista optimisation changed to component X-Image on 2.5" 120Gb, Vista opt. and Genesis CD £+15.00 (ex Vat)
Component 1 x Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset added at cost £+24.99 (ex Vat)
Component 1 x APC Back UPS RS 1500VA 230V added at cost £+179.64 (ex Vat)
Component 2 x BFG NVidia 8800 Ultra OC 768Mb PCIe HDCP changed to component BFG NVidia 8800GTS New OC 512Mb PCIe HDCP £-353.98 (ex Vat)
Component 1 x Toshiba H802A HD-DVD-ROM changed to component LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray RW-HD-ROM Black SATA £+130.99 (ex Vat)
After all that:- £6303.98
Also Vadim upgraded a couple of things for free!
2 x New blastflow blocks (the new ones)
2 x 8800GTS BlastFlow Siberian Cooling Plate's
They said the LG GBW-H10N Blu-Ray they gave me was more expensive then
the LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray and again upgraded it for free.
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some Attached hardware
I definitely recommend getting a UPS for an over clocked PC, any brand will do but 'APC' are the longest running manufacturer and friends swear by them.
Now I apologise as I think the pics do not do this beast justice from the room being rather dark and hard to photograph, I'm not moving the PC now it's happy... hopefully Vadim have taken some pics too.
(Any excuse for my poor photography skills)
in the bottom pic you can see that the DVI-VGA converter does not screw in ...this was because the Lian-Li back plate was to thick?
Although Vadim tried to make everything work they came across multiple BSOD problems on the last day involving the SATA optical drives compatibility with Vista 64bit (everything worked just fine in XP 32bit)
So the only answer was changing the DVD writer/Blu-Ray SATA for IDE but they only had a white coloured IDE Blu-ray in stock (so I lost the overall Black design) I was not to fussed with this.
Also the sides panels would turn up 5 days later, and Vadim forgot to over clock the Graphics Cards before they sent it out, but 3 days later gave me a bootable Bios upgrade utility that would.
Don't take this as bitching but Vadim need to know that most people, and especially myself, would wait a bit longer for the perfect -and finished- PC instead of a last minute rush to get it out on time.
Here you can see that I've had to improvise and add a piece of paper because the LED's on the front were so bright it hurt to look at them.
The only problems I've experienced so far is software related and nothing to do with Vadim, NVidia still need to work a lot harder on compatibility for HDTV screens in XP and have no support at all in Vista 64. The VGA/S-Video to component don't sadly carry the HDCP signal to the HDTV so using Blu-Ray is still DVI-HDMI only so maybe in the future I'll be able to use my Blu-Ray drive bug free. i.e NVidia's next cards 9XXX comes with HDMI out, but that still could not help if the drivers are "buggy".
The table my new beast sits on was not a easy job and I had to design everything in 3DMAX to make sure I had enougth room for the Lian-Li 343b case, plus my other PC bits.
My room now ...with the Vadim centre stage.
Ok this rig got 21605 in 3Dmark06 and I have no idea what the best setting for the cards are... SLI is enabled and I think I'm using the right SLI performance mode?
Vadim told me they got 22000+ just before they sent it, and that was before they over clocked the graphics cards... so I must be doing something wrong. Now the Gpu/shader clock/ memory are over clocked at 750/1875/1000 instead of 675/1674/972.
I play mainly Call of Duty 4 (COD4) online and Crysis (Power Struggle) - and since receiving my Vadim I've come top of the board 3 times in Crysis - a first for me!
I can now run Crysis in 1920x1080 with everything on very high, no AA and no motion Blur - but it looks and runs so goooood!!!
Multiplayer would normally run slower then the Single-player but I must have been running at 40+ frames even when there was complete mayhem on screen! Still get the occasional crash and sound issue, but that is all down to the flakiest game known to man.
(plus I found "Force alternate frame rendering 1"...works best)
Here's some Crysis snapshots in game ......in the zip is FRAPS captured shots showing the FPS I was getting. (my HDTV helped a lot in making these look really GOOD! as it has a 12000-1 contrast)
Plus this is all under Safe Stable Overclocking... my GPU's temp is a cool 37C doing nothing and 45C in Crysis, I have no idea about my CPU but it can not be much more. The 14 fans not only run very quiet but seemed to have cooled the room a little!
A HUGE thank you goes to the team at Vadim for making this a great process and pleasure to buy such a cutting edge PC and also thanking my builder Adrian as he really has surprised me with the build and quality, top marks all the way!!!!
THANK YOU VADIM!!!!!
P.S. My next Project is to buy one of these...cost second hand even cheaper then my Vadim....Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo.
Last edited by dmc on Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
Nice review dude and im glad your happy with it. i also understand your problems as i have hit most of the same like sata drives and 64 bit are like fire and water they just wont work.
Nice set up and really really nice work by Adrian who happens to be my builder poor guy must be rushed of his feet
Interesting to see your XPS sitting on the side of your room, but it's great how you've designed the room to fit together so well with the Vadim as a showpiece, instead of a fireplace like in most people's houses! I hope you got brakes on those castors, hate to see it roll off!
Anyhow a rate is flung your way for the efforts of posting on here.
Cant add anything others have said, I can imagine how you feel!
I must repeat what at 2 of the others have mentioned and thats the way you have your room set up, its so neat and tidy. Ive been doing some design work for when I get my other Vadim hope you dont mind me copying your layout, it's perfect.
mental ray?
....my baby 
