EVGA Classified SR-2 Review

Scan SLIK SR-2 Xeon Bundle Review

UK price (as reviewed): £2,455.74 (inc VAT)
US Price (as Reviewed): Not available

If you’re one of those strange few who’ve never overclocked or are concerned about the warranty implications of overclocking, but really want to build your own SR-2 system then there is another route to supercomputer heaven. That route is a pre-overclocked bundle from Scan that includes everything you need to start building your own personal supercomputer.

For this SR-2 bundle Scan has taken the sensible decision to accompany the motherboard with a pair of Xeon X5650 CPUs. These chips are mid-way up the Xeon 5600-series, and so provide the best bang per buck. Scan has increased the value for money of this bundle even further by overclocking the CPUs from 2.66GHz to 3.8GHz, using the same BIOS settings as we did in our review of the SR-2. This means the CPUs in the bundle are clocked higher than the £1,007 more expensive Xeon X5680s, which out of the box run at 3.33GHz.


The CPUs are kept cool by a pair of Prolimatech Megahalems which have each been modded with a pair of 120mm Akasa Apache fans. These fans are configured to push-pull air through the Megahalems, and do a good job of keep the CPU temperature under control, even when overclocked. However, due to the shape of the Megahalems, the fans are mounted so that they move air up and away from the graphics cards towards the top of your PC case. This not only conflicts with the front-to-back airflow of most cases, but also means that the fans suck hot air off the back of the primary graphics card. Still, we suspect this would be a problem with any large high-performance CPU cooler.

Six of the 12 DIMM slots are pre-filled with 12GB of Corsair Dominator 1.6GHz unbuffered DDR3. However, as the Xeon X5650 CPUs only support a maximum memory strap of 8x, the memory in the Scan bundle is limited to running at 1.52GHz.

As none of our benchmarks utilise more than 12GB of RAM, we can say with certainty that the Scan bundle will produce exactly the same benchmark scores as we did in our overclock of the SR-2. Thus, as it would cost you £2,396.16 inc VAT to buy these components separately, the £2,455.74 inc VAT asking price of the bundle strikes us as really quite reasonable. After all, particularly for businesses, a mere three per cent premium is a tiny price to pay for the peace of mind of a two year warranty coverage for a pre-overclocked bundle.

Alternatively, for those worried about the SR-2 overheating with four graphics cards you may want to consider Scans £2,725.99 inc VAT fully watercooled bundle, the SLIK SR-2 Xeon H20, which is overclocked to the same level as the air-cooled bundle but is pre-fitted with a full cover EK-FB SR2 motherboard waterblock and a pair of EK Supreme HF CPU waterblocks.

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• 10/10

• Features
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• 8/10

• Value
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• 9/10

• Overall
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• 9/10

Score guide