Specifications
iBuypower
LAN
Warrior II
Remember those “kids” in Little League who
shaved and had college-age girlfriends yet
their birth certifi cates said they were 14 years
old? iBuypower’s LAN Warrior II is kind of like
that.
What else can you say when the LAN
Warrior II looks an awful lot like a small
mid-tower case. Or maybe a mini-tower.
We had a tough time actually fi guring out
whether the LAN Warrior II even qualifi ed
for our SFF roundup. In its defense, the
actual volume of the case is roughly 2,000
cubic inches. That’s about the same as the
Origin PC and the AVADirect, so any bias is
strictly superfi cial.
Like those other two rigs, the LAN
Warrior II takes advantage of its volume by
packing in the hardware. Its Core i7-2600K
is overclocked to 4.6GHz, with Turbo Boost
taking it to 4.9GHz for some workloads. In
the GPU department, two GeForce GTX 590
cards push the frame rates through the
roof, and two 120GB Intel 510 SSDs in RAID
0, a 3TB HDD, and Blu-ray burner fi ll in
the gaps.
To keep the system cool, a massive fan
and mesh side keep air moving over those
hot-as-hell GTX 590 cards. Originally, we
thought the LAN Warrior II’s acoustics were
excessive when compared with the nearly
silent CyberPower and Falcon systems, but
actually, the noise level wasn’t bad. Notice-
able, certainly, but probably only half as
loud and half as annoying as the Origin and
AVADirect boxes.
In performance, the LAN Warrior II does
quite well. It’s a pinch behind the very fast
Origin system, in most of the app tests and
gaming. The LAN Warrior II’s lone win was
an oddly fast score in our Lightroom test.
Considering the similar clock speeds of the
systems tested, the only thing that might
explain that result is the storage subsys-
tem and choice of SSDs.
Frankly, the LAN Warrior II’s form
factor and performance would have put it
in second place to either the AVADirect or
Origin machines, but with those two rigs’
intolerable acoustics, the LAN Warrior
II leaps to the front of the line by easily
clipping the Falcon’s wings in pure frame
rates and app performance.
If you don’t mind the nontraditional SFF
shape, the LAN Warrior II’s performance,
stellar price, and confi guration make it the
contender to beat.
iBuyPower LAN Warrior II
$4,000, www.ibuypower,com
BENCHMARKS
VEGAS PRO 9 (SEC)
LIGHTROOM 2.6 (SEC)
PROSHOW 4 (SEC)
REFERENCE 1.6 (SEC)
STALKER: CoP (FPS)
FAR CRY 2 (FPS)
Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked
to 1,750MHz, on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and 64-bit
Windows 7 Ultimate.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
3,049
356
1,112
2,113
42.0
114.4
2,376
233
829
1,595
122.9 (193%)
190.9
ZERO
POINT
SPECIFICATIONS
PROCESSOR
Intel 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K
(overclocked to 3.7GHz)
MOBO
Asus P8P67-M Pro (Intel P67
chipset)
RAM
16GB DDR3/1600
VIDEOCARD
Two GeForce GTX 590 cards in SLI
SOUNDCARD
Onboard
STORAGE
Two 120GB Intel 510 SSDs in RAID
0, 3TB Western Digital 7,200rpm
HDD
OPTICAL
Optiarc Blu-ray burner
CASE/PSU
NZXT Vulcan / Corsair 1,200 watt
It might look like a mini-tower,
but the LAN Warrior II actually
offers no more internal space
than the AVADirect rig.
Air blown directly onto the GPUs seems to tame the noise of the
GTX 590 cards.
9
VERDICT
7”
18.25”
15.75”
39
MAXIMUMPC
JUL 2011
maximumpc.com