Verdict: Nearly as cool as having your own pet rhino

Scan likes naming its Dream PCs after rare and unusual animals. We've already seen the Cobra and the Chameleon, and now we have the Black Rhino. The Black Rhino has the dubious distinction of being one of the world's rarest animals that's tottering on the brink of extinction. In part, this is due to mad Chinese doctors who grind up the horns to make antipyretics instead of walking down the road to a chemist and buying a box of aspirin, and knife collectors who mistakenly think that carrying around a rhino horn-handled weapon makes them look cool.

Believe it or not, the Black Rhino (the PC, not the animal) started off life inside a butt-ugly Yeong Yang YY-0221 server chassis. However, Scan has done so much modding to the case that it's barely recognisable anymore. For starters, the insides have been almost completely gutted to make room for the massive cooling system. Scan has also glued imitation rhino skin to the outside of the case, which gives it a unique look and feel compared with conventional spray-painted PC cases.

However, even with such a big case, Scan couldn't fit all the cooling hardware inside the Black Rhino. It has two cooling loops - one for the CPU and another for all of the other components. And when we say all, we mean all. The CPU is water-cooled by a traditional-looking Alphacool NexXxos waterblock, but the coolant is pre-cooled by a massive external Alphacool Titan 150 waterchiller. This sits a couple of feet away from the Black Rhino, and comprises a small refrigerator compressor and heat exchanger. Scan has configured the Titan 150 to output the coolant at 10ûC, which is much cooler than standard water-cooling systems, which can only output coolant at room temperature or higher.

The cold coolant allows Scan to overclock the Black Rhino's Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU to a frequency higher than that of the CPUs in the other Dream PC. However, as compressors are notoriously noisy, Scan has also modded the Titan 150 by replacing its fan with a quieter model, and fixing Akasa PaxMate sound-absorbing foam to the inside of the case. So, while the Titan 150 is audible, it's far quieter than a phase-change-cooled PC or a domestic refrigerator.

All the other components inside the Black Rhino are also water-cooled via a massive loop comprising a mixture of Alphacool and Aqua Computer components. The loop begins at the Laing DDC Ultra pump, which circulates the coolant to a massive, triple 120mm-fan radiator at the front of the case, before passing it through the equally massive Aqua Computer waterblock that cools both GPUs and both sets of RAM on the GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card. From here, the coolant is fed to a single 120mm-fan radiator at the rear of the case to dissipate some of the heat it soaked up from the graphics card, before moving through an Alphacool Heattrap waterblock that cools the motherboard's VRMs. The coolant is then further cooled by another 120mm-fan radiator before passing into two Aqua Computer waterblocks, which cool all four RAM modules, and into an Alphacool Northbridge waterblock. The coolant is then piped to the right side of the chassis, where it's pumped through three Alphacool HDD3 hard disk waterblocks. Finally, the coolant passes into a voluminous Alphacool Cooplex 25 reservoir, from which it's circulated back to the Laing DDC Ultra pump to begin the loop again.

As you can probably gauge from this description, the water-cooling system is pretty amazing, and worth showing off, which is why Scan has cut a window into each side panel, and illuminated the interior with a mixture of UV and blue cold-cathode lights. If you find the lighting too distracting then you can turn off each UV and cold cathode separately using the Aqua Computer Multiswitch control panel that sits in one of the 5.25in drive bays.

With so many fans, noise could easily be an issue, so Scan controls the fans' spin speeds with an Aqua Computer Aquaero system monitor, also mounted in a 5.25in drive bay. It's been configured so that the fans only spin up when the temperature in the cooling loop reaches 25ûC or higher but, even when they do rev up, the Black Rhino isn't offensively noisy.

Scan has obviously spent a huge amount of time and money designing and building the cooling systems that chill the guts of the Black Rhino but, without an excellent choice of components, it would be like owning a jet fighter with the engine removed. Fortunately, Scan's engineers are just as good at overclocking as they are at modding, and have raised the frequency of the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 to 3.84GHz. This is achieved by raising the multiplier from 11 to 12, and the FSB from 266MHz (1,066MHz effective) to 320MHz (1.28GHz effective). By using an 2:3 FSB to RAM ratio in the BIOS of the Asus 975X motherboard, Scan has also overclocked the four 1GB sticks of Corsair XMS2-8500 DDR2 RAM to 480MHz (960MHz effective) at 5 - 5 - 5 - 15 timings. The GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card also gets some attention, and Scan has increased the GPU speeds from 500MHz to 580MHz and the RAM from 600MHz (1.2GHz effective) to 700MHz (1.4GHz effective).

This monster graphics card is partnered with an equally ostentatious Dell 2407WFP 24in widescreen TFT, which has a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200. Also present is a Sound Blaster X-Fi connected to an awesome set of Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 speakers. The input peripherals comprise a Logitech G5 mouse and the rather over-the-top Logitech G15 keyboard.

The three water-cooled hard disks comprise a single 150GB Raptor X for Windows and games, plus two rhino-sized 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10s for all your other data. Plus, there's still room inside for a further four hard disks. To transfer data to these disks, Scan has provided a Samsung DVD writer.

Unlike all of the other Dream PCs, the Black Rhino has Windows Media Center Edition 2005 installed, which takes advantage of the Hauppauge dual DVB-T TV tuner. The bundle also includes a Logitech force-feedback gamepad and joystick.

All this kit requires a serious amount of power, so, to keep everything fed with current, Scan has fitted a 700W Tagan Dual Engine TG700-U25 PSU, which has two transformers designed to increase voltage stability. Surprisingly, this is the loudest part of the system, including the waterchiller.

PERFORMANCE

All of this year's Dream PCs are extremely fast, thanks primarily to the awesome Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU. In the Black Rhino, this CPU has been overclocked to a kryptoturbopolyzoomwell level of performance, and it achieved an amazing overall score of 2.50 in our Media Benchmarks. The Black Rhino is also great at gaming, thanks to its water-cooled, overclocked GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card. Apart from Oblivion, which appears to run better on ATi GPUs, the Black Rhino was faster than any of the other Dream PCs in Tomb Raider: Legend, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Prey and Rome: Total War. In short, this is a powerhouse PC.

CONCLUSION

It isn't enough for a Dream PC to be ludicrously fast; it also has to be so well designed and constructed that it would be hard for anybody else to reproduce the same system, and this is certainly true of the Scan Black Rhino. It not only has a unique appearance but its customised cooling system allows it to be the most heavily overclocked and fastest Dream PC on test. Add in the dedicated support bundle and it's a monster package. Here's hoping that Scan donates some of the profits from sales of the Black Rhino to saving a few real Black Rhinos.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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