Polywell X5800i Performance Desktop PC

Jun 11 2010 - The Polywell X5800i offers buyers a wide range of customizations to make a performance desktop exactly how they would want it. This is particularly true for the wide range of storage options that can allow the system to have as much as 16TB of storage space. The problem is that the base system price is already a fairly high $1500 and the customizations can quickly increase the price well beyond this. Add to this that the base configuration lacks some performance compared to similarly priced systems and this is really a system with a limited audience.

Jun 11 2010 - Polywell's X5800i system has been on the market for some time and has undergone some minor adjustments over time. The base platform has changed relatively little from its introduction and year and a half ago which is probably the biggest drawback. It still uses the Intel X58 chipset and the socket 1366 Core i7 processors with the new i7-930 providing the base. This is combined with 6GB of DDR3 memory in a triple channel configuration top provide it with a strong level of performance even if it falls a bit short of the 8GB that many competing systems provide.

The storage features on the Polywell X5800i are still one of the most unique among the performance systems. Rather than using a single large drive, Polywell uses three 500GB drives that can be strung together into a RAID 0 array for the most performance or a RAID 5 array for some extra data reliability at the loss of some storage. If this doesn't work, the company offers a huge range of selections of large and small hard drives as well as solid state drives that can be configured just about any way imaginable. A standard dual layer DVD burner handles playback and recording of CDs and DVDs while several Blu-ray players and recorders are upgrade options.

The area where the base Polywell X5800i suffers the most is in the graphics. The system still retains the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 graphics card that could be found in the system over a year ago. The card has enough performance that it can handle graphics up to the 1920x1200 in certain cases but is more likely restricted to a 1680x1050 resolution. This makes the base system less suitable for PC gaming unless the graphics card is upgraded from the huge selection of options.

In fact, the wide range of customization is probably going to be the biggest selling point for the Polywell X5800i. Users can pretty much build any type of performance system they want tailored with the hardware that will best match their intended use for the PC. The problem is that the system starts with a relatively high base price tag of $1500 and the customizations can quick add up to push that price even higher. In many cases, a user with the knowledge of how to build a PC on their own will be able to build a similar system from scratch for less.