Team Exile vs Sequential Gaming - iM Cup BattleField 3

On Sunday night at 8:30pm two prominent teams competing in the Team Immunity Battlefield 3 Cup clashed. The match was fought between Team eXile5 and Sequential Gaming who were both ready for one of the most anticipated cup matches to date. Grand Bazaar was chosen for the match and is known as a map which combines tight corners for infantry and choke points for the 2 infantry fighting vehicles.

Round 1 had Team eXile5 play on US and RUS for Sequential. The map started with Sequential pushing strong towards to the points E, C and B put x5 on the back foot on the start. SQL had the flag hold and the tickets started to bleed in their favour. x5 fought back from this forcing a swap of flags to a 4 to 1 hold. The rest of the round consisted of flag swaps as teams flanked and rotated to defend or attack points. First round saw Team eXile5 take the lead with 98 tickets.

98 tickets is a small margin so round 2 meant that both teams had to work hard to ensure a win. SQL’s rollout smashed x5 to a point where it was a 4 to 0 flag hold and gaining a lead by the second. x5 pushed back however, gaining two flags to slow the bleed. SQL continued to hold although they left a few holes in their defence that allowed x5 to gain the upper hand and fight back on the ticket bleed. Some fantastic work from the IFV meant that x5 gained back the bleed and slowly started to push SQL back to one flag.

The round ended in a 119 lead to Team eXile5 giving them 217 tickets for final result.

The tickets really don't reflect the quality of the game as it was an intensely close game which had both teams going in for the win from the start. Team Exile 5 would like to say a massive GG to SQL and to all other teams in the ladder battling it out, it’s been a great start for the BF3 community here in Australasia.

2012 looks like its going to be a HUGE year for Battlefield 3.

Exile 5 vs Carnage 10v10 iM Cup Tuesday 9pm 13/12

Round 1 Had Carnage play US and eXile5 play Russia. x5 had a two flag hold off rollout as the choppers engaged and the air space went to Carnage. Carnage pushed hilltop as the tanks went down and Forest was under fire. The air had some conflicts mid game but Carnage managed to maintain the hold. First round went to an incredible hold by Carnage that managed to maintain air and holding 3 flags; 126 Ticket lead to carnage first round.

Round 2 Went incredibly fast as x5 were pushed back to one flag after carnage got a hold of Hilltop and prevented pushes by the air. A few flank attempts meant that the flag bleed went to neutral although that didn't last as the Armour man ThrasK pushed. Carnage managed to maintain the bleed to a 106 ticket lead.

Game ending with a 232 lead to Carnage which was an awesome game and we enjoyed the sights from the uncap, definitely some beautiful scenery.

Western Digital sent us a couple of their latest premium, performance hard drives to have a look at. We decided to do an up to date review on the monster known as “The VelociRaptor”.

The drives are from the “Enterprise Storage” family, and are the highest quality drives manufactured by the storage device giant. Knowing that Enterprise storage drives are designed and manufactured to suit the demands of servers, and enthusiast systems, and backed up with a 5 year warranty, we can be sure the quality is second to none.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty, and see what exactly we are looking at here!

What we find quite interesting from the specifications listed, and also from our image, is that the VelociRaptor is actually a 2.5”drive! To make it into a 3.5”drive, Western Digital have wrapped it in a huge heat sink, which I think is a clever idea. This obviously explains the rumoured reliability, as the heat sink acts as not only extra physical protection if needed, but also dramatically reduces heat build up on the super fast spinning drive. Besides the practical facts, the heat sink actually makes the drive look genuinely cool!

Our test system used is a recent build by Exile5 team Manager “1MMort4L”, in which he used CM Storm, CoolerMaster and Western Digital products to complete.

Test system:

We started by putting the drives into our new CM Storm Enforcer case, and I must say, this was a breeze with the clip in design CM Storm have used on this case. The Enforcer itself was amazingly well priced at only $99 au, and i was genuinely surprised at how well designed it is.

The simple process of installing the VelociRaptors into the CM Storm Enforcer, was literally as easy as the following pictures show.

Just like that, we had the drives installed, and we were ready to go!

There is something great about the feeling of having consistency with a pc build, and as you can see from this image, having 3 Hard Drives from Western Digital sitting in the drive bays with each other, really does look the goods! Notice the Caviar Black on top, and the 2 VelociRaptors below.

With all the pretty stuff out the way, let’s get down to the results!

HD Tune Pro tests:

We decided to compare “The fastest SATA HDD on the Planet” with a more common configuration that is found in the PC gaming world. We all know that WD VelociRaptors are fast but how much faster than the WD Caviar Black configurations are they?

Let’s have a look at some graphs. The WD Caviar Black 1TB drives can be purchase for approx $160 each where as the WD VelociRaptors are approx $260 each. Although there is a bit of a price jump from the Caviar Blacks to the VelociRaptors, is the performance jump really worth it?

From the tests run we can see that the VelociRaptor configurations are much faster than the Caviar Black configurations. The result is much more noticeable in the HD Tune read tests above. This will be party explained because the VelociRaptor HD’s are a 10,000 rpm drive compared to 7,200 rpm for the Caviar Blacks. Also the VelociRaptor drives we tested (WD3000HLHX) are the 5^th Generation drive from Western Digital with the latest goodies packed into the drive.

In conclusion, the WD3000HLHX VelociRaptor is a very quick hard drive. It may not be as fast as the latest SSD but is still the fastest SATA Hard Drive on the planet. The tests we ran above reinforced this claim.

Sure the VelociRaptor hard drives are at a premium price compared to the Caviar Black hard drives but if you want a solidly built hard drive with outstanding performance both in game and while working with your favourite applications, then the 5^th generation VelociRaptor hard drives are for you.

Whilst the VelociRaptor isn’t really marketed to compete with an SSD, it does suit many buyers that have performance and speed in mind and want substantial storage space available.

Hopefully this review will give you a better understanding of your needs and allow you to make a more informed choice for your next storage solution. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them up in our tech section of the website here

http://www.team-exile5.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4688

Thank you for reading this review of Western Digital’s latest 5^th Generation VelociRaptor hard drive, from Exile5

1mmort4l