Vigor Colossus knocks gamers senseless with a 2x4

Intel may not be as good at code-naming its enthusiast platforms as its OEMs are at naming its PCs. Today, enthusiast system builder Vigor announced its Colossus system, and "Vigor Colossus" has a more enticing ring to it than "Skulltrail," the Intel platform on which it's based.

The Vigor Gaming Colossus, an Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform-based PC that is the company's most powerful system. Colossus ships with two Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 quad-core processors clocked at 3.2 GHz while stock, though initial overclocking tests reveal stable speeds up to 4 GHz.

The Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 features 12 MB of L2 cache, clock speed of 3.20 GHz, and support for 1600 MHz FSB, making it the fastest desktop-level Intel processor currently available. Intel ships its Core 2 Extreme processors with unlocked multipliers, allowing overclockers direct access. By itself, each QX9775 has a list price of $1,499. But the thing is, you need two.

Vigor's Colossus is able to utilize four graphics cards and, by virtue of those dual CPUs, eight processing cores. The basic buildout costs $6,799 and has two overclocked NVidia GeForce 8800GT video cards, 4 GB of DDR2 800 memory (note, not the 1600 MHz kind), 2 TB of storage, an Enermax Galaxy 1,000 watt power supply, and with a custom Vigor Cooler Master Stacker case. Vigor is willing to ship the PC already overclocked to a stable speed, if consumers request it.

Using Vigor's configurator, we were able to quickly rig a Vigor Gaming Colossus with a price of $9,450. Add monitor and optical drives, and you could easily go past $10,000.

Founded in 2004, Vigor Gaming joins an already crowded gaming PC scene dominated by powerhouses Alienware (now part of Dell), VoodooPC (now part of HP), and Falcon Northwest (still on its own). As we noted yesterday, Alienware's Area-51 ALX CrossFireX gaming desktop has two ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards and four GPUs, 2 GB of GDDR memory and a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Extreme CPU. And the HP Blackbird 002 gaming PC pushes the boundaries with multiple options that include dual ATI HD 3870 graphics cards and a high-end Intel Core 2 Duo CPU.