Xidax X-8 Gaming PC Review: Skylake-X And Dual GTX 1080 Ti Cards For The Win
Xidax X-8 Gaming PC: Software And BIOS
When ordering a Xidax system, your software bundle will depend on which options you choose. For example, you can add Office 365 during the configuration process. And if there are game bundles available for your specific selection of hardware—AMD and NVIDIA often entice buyers with free games when purchasing a graphics card—Xidax will include those as well, if you want.
Firing up the X-8 for the first time led to a mostly clean desktop, save for a few bits of pre-installed software. One of those is ESET Nod32 antivirus, which implored us to enter a license, purchase a license, or activate a free trial. One year of Nod32 comes with the system, along with SuperAntispyware being pre-installed. Ideally, we'd prefer that Xidax leave this out, though if it's going to ship an AV product, Nod32 is one of the better ones.
We already mentioned Xidax's lifetime warranty on hardware, which is essentially unheard of when buying a pre-built system. For other issues, Xidax's support line is open during the week, though closed during the weekends. Should you need Xidax's help, the company will remote into your system, if needed, and with your permission of course. There's a shield icon on the desktop with Xidax's logo that brings up the support portal should you need it.
The UEFI BIOS on the ROG Extreme VI Rampage is pretty straightforward and easy to navigate, though we don't recommend mucking around if you don't know what you're doing. We did some poking and discovered that Xidax customized some of the settings for the CPU and RAM. Word to the wise—if there is a newer BIOS revision available and you plan to update it, be sure to save your existing BIOS profile/settings to a USB flash drive. If you save a profile to the BIOS itself, it gets erased when updating. At that point, you'll have to run with stock settings or customize the options yourself.
With the CPU multiplier set at 41x, the Core i9-7900X bumps up to 4.1GHz, from its stock 3.3GHz base clock. In the BIOS, Xidax configured the overclock setting to sync across all 10 cores, versus having only some of them run at faster speeds.
Xidax did not goose the GPUs in our system, though the boutique builder offers that as an option if you want it. The overclocking service carries a $35 up charge for a single graphics card, and $50 for two of them. Xidax promises a 10-20 percent performance boost when opting for an in-house overclock the GPU(s).
Even though the two GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards in our X-8 unit were not overclocked, they tended to heat up quickly when stressed. These are Founders Edition cards, so the cooling isn't as potent as some of the custom solutions by NVIDIA's hardware partners. Xidax does offer a few custom-cooled cards though, including MSI's dual-fan GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X 11G model.
Let's move onto the benchmarks...
Firing up the X-8 for the first time led to a mostly clean desktop, save for a few bits of pre-installed software. One of those is ESET Nod32 antivirus, which implored us to enter a license, purchase a license, or activate a free trial. One year of Nod32 comes with the system, along with SuperAntispyware being pre-installed. Ideally, we'd prefer that Xidax leave this out, though if it's going to ship an AV product, Nod32 is one of the better ones.
We already mentioned Xidax's lifetime warranty on hardware, which is essentially unheard of when buying a pre-built system. For other issues, Xidax's support line is open during the week, though closed during the weekends. Should you need Xidax's help, the company will remote into your system, if needed, and with your permission of course. There's a shield icon on the desktop with Xidax's logo that brings up the support portal should you need it.
BIOS And Overclocking
The UEFI BIOS on the ROG Extreme VI Rampage is pretty straightforward and easy to navigate, though we don't recommend mucking around if you don't know what you're doing. We did some poking and discovered that Xidax customized some of the settings for the CPU and RAM. Word to the wise—if there is a newer BIOS revision available and you plan to update it, be sure to save your existing BIOS profile/settings to a USB flash drive. If you save a profile to the BIOS itself, it gets erased when updating. At that point, you'll have to run with stock settings or customize the options yourself.
With the CPU multiplier set at 41x, the Core i9-7900X bumps up to 4.1GHz, from its stock 3.3GHz base clock. In the BIOS, Xidax configured the overclock setting to sync across all 10 cores, versus having only some of them run at faster speeds.
Xidax did not goose the GPUs in our system, though the boutique builder offers that as an option if you want it. The overclocking service carries a $35 up charge for a single graphics card, and $50 for two of them. Xidax promises a 10-20 percent performance boost when opting for an in-house overclock the GPU(s).
Even though the two GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards in our X-8 unit were not overclocked, they tended to heat up quickly when stressed. These are Founders Edition cards, so the cooling isn't as potent as some of the custom solutions by NVIDIA's hardware partners. Xidax does offer a few custom-cooled cards though, including MSI's dual-fan GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X 11G model.
Let's move onto the benchmarks...
