Intel recently released their Core i7 platform, taking over the PC land by storm. So we figured .. it is inevitable that we'll be testing on such a speedy platform anyway, so now's the time to start thinking about building a new test system.

X58 as you guys know can support both SLI and Crossfire, allowing one PC to test both, and for a reviewer that's pretty wicked really, as we do not have to build multiple similar configured systems. One to rule them all. We figured, let's make a new system and go a little crazy.

So the guys over at Smooth Creations decided to help us out by taking care of a custom paintjob. I wanted blue Guru3D colored flames with our logo stamped in there, with a black coating. And so they made that happen on a Silverstone chassis.

A while ago the chassis came back from the USA (towards Europe) and I have started building the new primary graphics card test PC. We wanted it to look good though, so we had the guys from Smooth Creations do a bitching paint-job on the chassis after which we needed to make some choices regarding the rest of the components.

Here's what Guru3D.com graphics card test-platform will look like for the reviews in 2009.

• Chassis - Silverstone Temjin TJ-10 aluminum
• Motherboard - ASUS X58 Rampage II Extreme ROG
• Intel Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz
• Memory - OCZ DDR3 6 GB 1600 MHz 9:9:9:24
• PSU - 1200 Watt
• 3x HDD (one OS for ATI, one OS for NVIDIA, one 64-bit generic PC testing)
• 1x Optical drive

Now this is the chassis (still) in early stages. We still are seeking a proper water-cooling block for Core i7 as this system screams H20. So with that in mind, we are still building it. We already received a lot of questions about this rig as some of you spotted a photo on it in a couple of out articles.

So this is a small pictorial of our new test system called Project-X. Let's have a peek shall we? Then please head on over to the next page.

There she is: "Project X" ...