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Originally launched in 2013, the Polaris MK1 was 8Pack's ultimate gaming machine featuring an i7-3770K and two NVIDIA 6GB GTX Titan cards, it was an incredible machine even by modern standards.
Today however 8Pack is proud to announce the release of the new Polaris MK2. Powered by a 4.7GHz 12 core i9-7920X. The MK2 has been overclocked by Ian to it's maximum potential for those who demand the very best 4K HDR gaming has to offer. Combined with two overclocked 11GB GTX 1080Ti in SLI, the Polaris MK.2 also doubles as the ideal workstation solution too, able to tackle rendering and simulation based tasks with ease.
So the price - It actually Starts at £9599.99 but the Polaris MK2 is a tailor made system in every sense of the word, featuring chassis modifications, custom acrylic pass through plates and even a redesigned motherboard mount. It's truly a show of master craftsmanship. We've learnt a lot in the last 5 years and it really does show.
Extreme Performance Thanks to the Most Exceptional Hardware
The motherboard of choice for this powerhouse is the ASUS Rampage Extreme X299 which is a fully featured flagship X299 chipset board from the Asus' Republic of Gamers series. This ensures stability of the cherry picked Core i9 7920X, 12 Core, 24 Thread CPU at the highest possible clock speeds while also enabling 64GB of 3200MHz 8pack Edition memory, made with hand selected Samsung dies to improve stability and efficiency. We've chosen 64GB because this is the ideal amount for rendering and coding.
This system contains two of NVIDIA's flagship GTX 1080Ti 11GB cards in SLI, water-cooled, overclocked and complete with their own hand braided cables.
In terms of storage the Polaris MK2 offers two 1TB Samsung 960 Pro NVME SSDs, one for primary OS storage and applications with the additional for gaming or multi-media.
Finally there's the monstrosity of a PSU which is a 1600W SuperFlower Leadex Titanium Power Supply.
SO THE JUICY BIT - Let's talk dual water-cooling loop.
The Polaris has been built inside a Lian-Li PC-V3000WX, featuring not one but two 8Pack branded reservoirs, four custom acrylic pass-through plates and an array of EK hard-piping. The case itself has been improved, replacing the standard motherboard mount with a custom made black acrylic version. This mount provides the support needed for the entire acrylic back-plate, as well as having additional cable management slots CNC'd into the mount itself to rout the CPU, GPU and 24 pin custom braided cables.
Beginning with two EK Revo D5 pumps the Polaris runs two separate water-cooling loops, one for the CPU block and another for the two GTX 1080Ti in SLI.
The GPU loop feeds through the bottom pass through plate, up into the GPU water blocks and back down into the 480mm RAD located in the lower compartment. If you look closely however you'll notice not only is that RAD supporting the bottom acrylic pass through plate, but it's actually mounted on it's own additional black acrylic mount, designed specifically to support the pass-through plate.
The GPU loop doesn't stop there however, it then feeds back through the entire block and up into the rear mounted pass through plate to the first of it's own 8-PACK branded reservoirs.
Lastly the GPU loop finishes by running across and through the identical 8Pack reservoir seen in the fourth and final acrylic plate.
The CPU loop is considerably more straightforward - following the left hand side of the 8Pack logo, into the CPU block, to the top mounted 360mm RAD and finally passing back through both of the 8Pack branded acrylic reservoirs.
Unlike previous 8Pack machines, the acrylic pass-through plates have been created using a CNC machine rather than laser cutting, which whilst a more costly technique gives a more premium finish. The precision cutting also allowed the Polaris build to use two acrylic layers in each plate rather than than three in previous models.
There's also a specially guarded inhouse technique which allowed the elimination the industry standard o-rings normally used in this process!
If that's not enough however and you'd like to see more about the Polaris MK2 check out the full product here
Behind the scenes
So with Computex around the corner - the team were really against the clock to put together the prototype for the Polaris to show off in Taipei, and when we say against the clock we mean they had 3 days. 58 solid hours and a few crates of RedBull later and they'd done everything from CADCAM concept to full build. Honestly, the dedication, skill and sheer willpower by the team was incredible. Here's just a few photos taken by part of 8Pack's team one Chris Montgomery (Technical Manager and master of the cable braid) Dan Shirley (CADCAM engineer and supplier of sarcastic remarks) and Scott Bentley (Lead System Designer at OverclockersUK and Project Cars Pro)
11AM - first of the Acrylic panels arrive from the CADCAM designs arrive.
2.55am - Case modifications done, build in progress.
5.45am - "They're coming outta the goddamn walls!"
Nobody likes swarms of cables.
6.55am - Done by dawn.
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