Nearly useless background: I bought that bike from CC last year and had them ship me Aksiums at the same time; I changed the brakes to Rivals shortly thereafter. I found a new Rival crank on eBay with bearings for cheap, which I'll install at some point. I have 2500 miles on it now, and so far (fingers crossed) no creaks. I've been happy with the bike.
I've never compared it to their higher end models, but from what I gather, those would be somewhat less forgiving, but somewhat lighter--this isn't light for a carbon frame. With the Ultegra groupset, this seems like a very nice deal to me.
Last edited by GuitarBob; 08-28-14 at 07:39 PM.