PC Specialist LS-X01 Watercooled Titan X System Review

Conclusion

We’ve reviewed systems all over the PC Specialist price bracket. Whether you want one that is most definitely at the good value end or, like today’s system, only available to those with very fat wallets, they all have the same carefully selected hardware and incredible build quality and attention to detail.

The LS-X01, LS for Liquid System, X for Titan X, is very much at the extreme end of the price range but wherever you look through the specification sheet you can see where that money has gone. We’ve often sung the praises of the ASUS Strix X99 motherboard and so it’s no surprise to find it here underpinning the whole show. Its capabilities are shown with the meaty overclock on the hexcore Core i7-6850K. The AURA lighting of the Strix also has the benefit that you can have your coolant in any colour you like and be sure that the motherboard will match it.

Bandwidth is well catered for with 32GB of 3200 MHz Kingston HyperX DDR4. Even if you’re editing 4K video there wont be a problem with running out of memory. Should you do so though the Intel NVMe SSD is blisteringly fast. This has obviously benefits to the responsiveness of the operating system as a whole, as well as how quickly you can be in the thick of the action.

Let’s not kid ourselves though. All of those elements are outstanding but they are still the prawn cocktail before the steak that is the nVidia GTX Titan X. Confusingly there are now two GTX Titan X cards available, but this is the Pascal GPU equipped model that comes with all the latest features one would expect to find, yet has levels of performance that feel futuristic. An argument can be made that the GTX 1070 is equivalent to the GTX 980 Ti, and therefore the GTX 1080 is the top dog. Well the GTX Titan X manages enough performance to be somewhere between the GTX 1080 and a GTX 1070 SLI setup. It’s mind-bogglingly fast. Some of the scores you can achieve on the PC Specialist LS-X01 are so staggering that if we hadn’t seen them with our own eyes we’d probably not believe them.

If we had to criticise, and at this price point we definitely have to nit pick, then we don’t think it looks particularly special once you’re past the searing blue hues of the coolant. The single white LED strip is fine, but we’d like to see an RGB offering at minimum. Equally the case is big enough for everything in it, but it’s neither imposing nor has it any special touches that rise it above the norm. Finally the 240 radiator worried us that it would be too small. It isn’t, and the temperatures bear this out, but a triple rad would allow you to run slower fans to keep the – admittedly tiny – amount of noise down even lower. Plus by the time youve spent 3500 beer tokens another 30 of them to have a radiator that fills the top of the case isnt really that big an increase and makes it look and feel a bit more ‘premium’. 

With exceptional build quality, cooling and quietness from the water loop coupled with overall performance so spectacular that you’re left open-mouthed with amazement the PC Specialist LS-X01 might have a lofty price tag but it’s so capable it almost feels like a bargain, and thus wins our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

  

Thanks to PC Specialist for supplying the LS-X01 for review. Next time build it orange. Discuss it in our OC3D Forums.