Holly SLI Venom Extreme

Verdict: Quiet and very customisable, but it's a lot of money for a single-core system

Eight months ago, commenting on another Holly Venom, I made the rather flippant remark that 'this is just one example of what Holly can do ... so if you'd rather have a Venom in daffodil yellow with a window in the shape of Krusty the Clown then Holly is the company to call'. Little did I realise that Holly would take me at my word and produce just that.

Holly used to house all of its Venoms in the the excellent but rather cramped Antec P160 case, but the Venom Extreme resides inside the much more spacious Cooler Master Stacker. This particular model has been painted yellow with a giant side window etched with the image of Krusty the Clown. However, as I said before, this is just one example of what Holly can do. You choose the colour and etching, and Holly will endeavour to make it for you.

The award-winning DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR motherboard makes a welcome appearance in the Holly, and is configured with four different performance profiles. These overclock the Athlon 64 FX-55 CPU from its default 2.6GHz all the way up to 2.9GHz by adjusting a combination of the FSB, memory speed, clock multiplier and CPU voltage. The fastest the Holly would pass our overnight folding stress test was at 2.75GHz, which is achieved by dropping the multiplier from 13 to 11, and raising the FSB from 200MHz to 250MHz, which forces the OCZ EL Platinum RAM to run at 500MHz. Only 1GB of RAM is fitted, but the DFI motherboard has two free DIMM sockets for a later upgrade.

The CPU is kept cool by an Innovatek V6 waterblock, which is attached to a 120mm-fan radiator. The two 8x PCI-E slots on the motherboard are filled with Leadtek GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, which are pre-overclocked from 425MHz to 450MHz for the GPU, and from 1.1GHz to 1.17GHz for the RAM. Both cards are water cooled by a meaty dual 120mm-fan radiator mounted at the bottom of the case. Both radiators are fitted with fans on either side, for a total of six fans, so, with the intake fan at the front of the case, there's a grand total of seven 120mm fans. Holly has also fitted the Cross Flow Fan, which blows cool air over the RAM and VRMs. Even so, the Venom Extreme is pleasantly quiet, emitting far less noise than most of the other Dream PCs.

A vast quantity of data storage is provided by four hard drives. The operating system is installed on a pair of Western Digital WD740GD Raptors configured in a 148GB RAID 0 array, while a duo of Western Digital WD3200SE drives are set up in a 600GB RAID 0 array. Trusting 600GB of data to multiple drives in a RAID 0 array seems a trifle daring to us; you'd have more data security if each drive was configured separately. There are also two optical drives, an NEC dual-layer DVD writer and a Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM. The DVD-ROM drive seems like a superfluous inclusion, although it does allow for disc-to-disc copying, in partnership with the DVD writer. The whole system is powered by a Tagan TG530-U22 PSU, which has twin 12V rails, each able to output 20A.

The two graphics cards are hooked up to an NEC MultiSync LCD2070NX. This 20.1in TFT is one of the better monitors in this Labs test. Its 16ms response time means it doesn't display any ghosting during fast-moving games and movies. Audio is generated by the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card and a set of ear-busting Logitech Z-5500 Digital speakers. A Logitech Cordless keyboard and MX1000 wireless mouse round off the bundle.

PERFORMANCE

Although the Holly is supplied with four different performance profiles, it would only pass our overnight folding stress test with the CPU overclocked to 2.75GHz. As the only Dream PC with a single-core CPU, the Holly performed very poorly in the multithreaded video encoding test, with a score that was 66 per cent slower than the slowest multi-CPU system, the Real Machines RX Alpha. In contrast, thanks to its overclocked CPU and RAM, the Holly performed very well in the single-threaded CD ripping and image editing tests.

It's also a great gaming system, as shown by its average 72.3fps frame rate in Far Cry at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF, sinking to 28.7fps at 1,600 x 1,200 with 0x AA and 8x AF, with HDR enabled. However, you can forget about multitasking with the Holly. Its single-core processor struggles to run more than one intensive task at a time, which is why the frame rate in Far Cry dropped to 38.8fps, and the CD ripping score went from 1.55 to 1.31 when both tests were run simultaneously.

CONCLUSION

As the only non-multicore, or SMP, system you'd expect the Holly to be cheaper than the other Dream PCs, but in actual fact, it's only £200 cheaper than the Alienware and Armari. The main reason for this is the price Holly charges for customising each Venom Extreme. Having said that, it looks great, even if the daffodil-yellow paint job and Krusty the Clown side panel aren't what I'd choose.

Another selling point of the Holly is how quiet it is; only the Voodoo PC is quieter and it costs nearly £650 more. The Holly is certainly a Dream PC, but it doesn't grab our attention in the way as the Armari and Voodoo PC systems.