General Analysis Continued

Taking into account the Sky X9E3 strengths and weaknesses, I would say the unit as configured is not of great value. At $4750, it is insanely expensive. It is nice to have a single power brick for a unit of this magnitude, but that alone will set you back an extra $288 over a single 330 watt adapter and another $63 over a dual 330 watt configuration. As such, the overall price is high, but you do get sky high performance as well.


The Intel i7-7700k performs admirably even with the limited thermal throttling that has its max clock under load hit 4.1 Ghz. Even with a 100 Mhz handicap, the limitation does not stop it from being a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, the SLI GTX 1080s absolutely decimate most games and synthetic benchmarks once you get everything configured. While 1080p and 60 Hz (75 Hz with G-Sync enabled) don't let the cards truly shine, they do however make for a comfortable user experience. The option to hook up to an external 4k display is available should users want to go that route. The unit can also be configured with a 4k display; however, it's currently limited to 60 Hz.

While using G-Sync will generally limit performance to an extent, depending on the title and the refresh rate, I found the higher frame rates more useful in, say, Battlefield 1, while using G-Sync in Grand Theft Auto 5 made for a buttery smooth experience in a title that generally can stutter at higher frame rates, or encounters other oddities. Overall, SLI at 1080p is of course complete overkill. However, as time inevitably moves forward and more demanding games come out, the Eurocom Sky X9E3 will still be maxing out games.

Storage performance is exceptional thanks to the NVMe Samsung 960 Pro. With read speeds hitting 3000+ MB/s, everything feels silky smooth with applications loading quickly. While not a huge improvement over a regular SSD, there are still some gains, and it's nice knowing that even when it comes to storage, performance is of the same caliber as with the CPU and GPUs. USB 3.0 storage performance is adequate, but didn't take home first place. That said, I would consider it acceptable considering the external dock I am currently utilizing.

Meanwhile, battery life is a bit surprising. At 30 and 60 FPS in Unigine Valley, the Sky X9E3 performed quite well; at 60 FPS, it stayed in the middle of the pack at 45 minutes. However, at 30 FPS, it finished second - just a minute better than the MSI GS73 Stealth Pro 009 and 11 minutes behind the MSI GL62-6QF. Sadly, features that are useful once again just don't work with SLI enabled. NVIDIA's Battery Boost feature does not work with SLI, and it also doesn't work with SLI disabled because two GPUs are present. When you look at the performance of the GL62, the battery performance of Eurocom's beast of a notebook is quite good. The PCMark 8 Home Conventional test had the Eurocom Sky X9E3 again falling into the middle of the pack. Most surprising is the DVD test. The Eurocom notebook just flat out came in last here, which is quite funny as it shows power consumption to be high enough at low loads to eat away at battery life considerably compared to other systems. Obviously, with a lot of optimization, such as reducing brightness and using a more efficient power profile, battery life can be improved. However, considering the hardware stuffed in this system, I am pleasantly surprised by the battery life as is.

While I feel Eurocom has a truly top-of-the-line unit here, a configuration with a single GTX 1080 and 120 Hz 1440p G-Sync display would have likely resulted in a generally better-balanced experience as many features, such as Battery boost, would have worked correctly. Meanwhile, the lesser power draw and overall cost make for a much more attractive price. For a desktop replacement offering the best bang for the buck, I would recommend a different configuration with SLI GTX 1070s and a 1440p 120 Hz display. You would get far more bang for your buck while still having a system that is built like a tank, and the higher refresh rate lets the GPUs stretch their legs. If after that, you still want to do 4K gaming, I would buy an external monitor rather than go with the 17" inch 4k display, mostly because DPI scaling in Windows with various applications can still be hit or miss. However, all this takes us back to a big strength of the Eurocom Sky X9E3 - it has a plethora of configuration options. This unit can be configured in a myriad of ways to make just about any user happy as long as you can handle the gut punch of a price for this top-tier unit. As for promising students out there with money to spend - you can get a 10% discount which helps? I guess?