It also has a powerful GPU, the AMD Radeon HD 7950 with 3GB of memory. It’s responsible for the PC’s phenomenal gaming performance, which gave us frame rates of 88fps in Dirt3 and 37fps in Crysis 2, both at the games’ highest quality settings. You won’t need to upgrade for a very long time indeed. It’s worth noting, though, that the graphics card makes an audible and somewhat annoying whine when you’re gaming.
The motherboard is an Asus P8Z77-V LX, and it has a reasonable selection of expansion slots, although it’s slightly imbalanced. It has three PCI slots, all of which are vacant, but only two PCI-E x1 slots, and one of those is blocked by the graphics card. There’s also a second PCI-E x16 slot, but it actually runs at x4. The PC also comes with a 700W power supply. It’s Chillblast’s own-brand PSU rather than a more prestigious name, but it should pack enough power to fuel any upgrades you desire. Also impressive are the four 4GB memory modules that provide 16GB of 1,600MHz RAM, more than enough for video- or photo-editing.
The motherboard has six SATA ports, two of which are SATA3 and are connected to the hard disks. The PC’s main system drive is a 120GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD, which provides blistering boot speeds and plenty of room for applications. For data storage and less critical applications, there’s also a massive 2TB HDD. It also has two free 31/2in bays and three free 51/4in bays, so you can add plenty of extra storage.
Sadly, we’re not great fans of the case. It’s solidly constructed without being inconveniently heavy and has a well finished interior, but it doesn’t have adequate soundproofing, which makes it one of the noisier PCs we’ve seen from Chillblast. Even so, the PC isn’t distactingly loud when it’s running (annoying noises from the GPU fan notwithstanding), largely thanks to some fairly quiet case fans and a discrete Akasa CPU cooler. The wide vent grilles in the side panel and at the bottom of the case mean there’s little to stop fluff and dust getting in.
In terms of ports, the PC has a couple of USB ports at the front and six at the rear. Two of the latter are USB3. There’s also a PS/2 port at the back, as well as the usual Gigabit Ethernet and audio ports. For sound output, there’s an optical S/PDIF port and three 3.5mm stereo ports for analogue surround sound. The front panel has 3.5mm microphone and headphone ports.
The mouse and keyboard are a Logitech wireless MK260 set and the monitor is a 23.6in Asus VS247H monitor. It’s a good choice, and has an HDMI, VGA and DVI inputs.
This is a brilliant system, packing in a Blu-ray re-writer, 16GB of memory, an large SSD and an extremely good graphics card. Gamers might prefer the additional graphics power of Wired2Fire’s Diablo GTX, but this is the best all-round PC you can get for a grand. It’s a true Best Buy.
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