PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM Gaming System Review

1. Introduction2. PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM Gaming System3. PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM Gaming System (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology & Configuration5. Synthetic: PCMark 76. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra10. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit11. Synthetic: SSD Testing12. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.013. Real World: 3D Rendering14. Real World: BluRay Playback15. Real World: Flash HD Playback16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 218. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs19. Gaming: F1 201220. Gaming: Dirt Showdown21. Gaming: Max Payne 322. Technical: Thermal Performance23. Technical: Acoustics Performance24. Technical: Power Consumption25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

Today we are looking at the latest gaming system from PC Specialist, the Vanquish 670XM. This PC features an overclocked Intel Core i5 3570K, 8GB of Kingston Hyper X memory, a 120GB Kingston SSD with 1TB HDD and a 2GB GTX670.

On paper it looks to be a well balanced configuration at around £999 inc vat, but how does it perform?

PC Specialist are offering multiple configurations of this system, with a CMStorm Enforcer or HAF-XM case and GTX660Ti or GTX670 discrete graphics. Wisely they don't force a Bluray optical drive on the gamer, but it is available for a slight premium.

Name: Vanquish 670XM

Processor: Intel Core i5 3570K @ 4.6GHz
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V
RAM: 8GB Kingston Hyper-X
SSD: 120 Kingston Hyper-X 3K
HDD: 1TB SATA III 6Gb/s
Graphics card: 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
ODD: 24x DVD-RW
Power supply: Corsair TX650V2
Cooler: Spire Gemini Rev.3 + Arctic MX4 Paste
Case: CoolerMaster HAF-XM

Price: £999.00 inc VAT & Delivery

The PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM system arrives in a huge, plain cardboard box.

The bundle is impressive. PC Specialist include all the manuals for the motherboard, which can be useful as a reference point. There are also driver discs, power cables and adapters. The system itself it protected underneath a plastic wrap and secure foam side panels.

Our review sample uses the excellent Cooler Master HAF XM chassis, which we reviewed back in May this year. The appearance is serious, with vented front panels ensuring a high level of air intake.

The front panel is impressively featured, sporting 2xUSB 2.0 slots, 2x USB 3.0 slots in addition to the standard headphone and microphone jacks. Close by is a hexagonal front fan LED toggle, with Power & Reset buttons. There is a DVD optical drive underneath.

There are several vents on the right hand side (from back) side panel to help ensure the graphics card can remain cool. The other panel has no vents or fans.

The rear of the case sports three rubber grommets for water cooling support. Below them is a vent with an internally mounted 140mm fan, however the mounting system also supports a 120mm variant should you want to swap it.

At the bottom of the case is a quality TX650W Corsair power supply.

The PC Specialist Vanquish is a very clean system build with all cables carefully routed behind the motherboard tray. The Kingston Solid State drive is mounted vertically on the back of the motherboard tray.

The Spire Gemini Rev.3 cooler is quite large, although not that heavy, so it shouldn't cause a problem during shipping. The system is using high grade Kingston Hyper X gaming memory.

The 1TB hard drive is installed into the top drive bay. All cables are cleanly routed.

A few images showing the routing at the bottom of the motherboard behind the tray.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

PC Specialist have only installed the barebones drivers and software, along with CPUZ and CPUID Hardware Monitor. A very clean install and one that earns a bonus point.

When we first booted the system, we noticed the 1TB drive was not appearing. A quick check shows that the drive has not been formatted.

In a similar fashion to the OCUK Prodigy Arctic system which we reviewed earlier this week, this 1TB is integral to the system booting.

The system builders in PC Specialist have placed the system boot partition on this drive, even though the Vanquish is booting from the Solid State Drive. This isn't a major issue and most people will not notice, but be aware that if this 1TB drive is either removed, or fails then this system will not boot directly from the Solid State Drive.

The Windows Experience Index shows a final score of 5.9, however this is incorrect. This lower than expected score is caused by the software accessing the 1TB mechanical drive, and not the Kingston Solid State Drive. This can be caused by the software reading the boot partition location, which is installed on the wrong drive on this system.

The final score should be around the 7.5-7.6 mark, rather than being limited by the mechanical storage hard drive.

An overview of the Vanquish 670XM system in CPUz and GPUz. The Core i5 3570k processor has been overclocked to 4.6ghz and the memory is configured to 1,600mhz with 9-9-9-24 1T timings. There is an Intel HD4000 graphics processor built into the Intel chip.

PC Specialist have installed an Nvidia GTX670 graphics card for the serious gaming duties. The GTX670 is clocked at 915mhz with the 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective). This GDDR5 is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The GTX670 has 32 ROPs and 1344 Cuda cores. It is a powerful, well priced gaming solution.

We compare some of the synthetic tests against a mixture of desktop processors.

Validation of the PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM Gaming system is available over here.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
Intel E5 2687W x 2
Motherboard: Asus Z9 PE-D8 WS
Coolers: Corsair H80 x2
Memory: 64GB Kingston Predator 1,600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: Seasonic 1000W Platinum Modular
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000FN
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron GTX SSD
Secondary Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron SSD

Intel E5 2660
Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 16GB G.Skill ARES 2,133mhz @ 9-11-10-28
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000a
Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Intel i5 3570K @ 4.2 – OCUK Prodigy Arctic Gaming System
Motherboard: ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel Z77
Cooler: Coolit Liquid
Memory: Corsair Vengeance White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Power Supply: OCZ ZS 750W PSU
Chassis: Bitfenix Prodigy Mini ITX Case – White
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB HDD

AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Intel Core i7 990X
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x
Cooler: Corsair H100
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB
Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred

Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Intel Core i7 2700k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3.
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory
Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD.

Intel Core i7 2600k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Intel Core i5 2500k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2.
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HQV Benchmark 2.0
SiSoft Sandra

Games:
Max Payne 3
Total War Shogun 2
F1 2012
Dirt Showdown
Sleeping Dogs

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

The overall score of 6,036 points is very strong, aided by the substantial overclock and fast Solid State Drive speed.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

Good scores due to the overclocked processor and fast GTX670 graphics card.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Good scores from this Direct X 11 benchmark. The overall score of 8,509 points is a good indication of potential Direct X 11 gaming performance. We will look at this more thoroughly, later in the review.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We set the test to 1080p resolution, with 4x Anistropy, shaders high, anti aliasing disabled. Full Screen.

The system averaged 83 frames per second, which is a very strong result at such a high resolution. The GTX670 is very capable with this tessellation heavy Direct X 11 benchmark.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The overall system scores are good, especially thanks to the 4.6ghz final clock speed on the 3570k.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The final score of 7.49 points is excellent, indicating that this machine would be perfectly usable as a rendering station for intensive duties.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64. We use this program to test the onboard Kingston Solid State Drive.

These scores are very strong, almost 520 MB/s in both sequential read and write tests. The 4k QD32 performance is also very strong.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Very stable bandwidth figures across all the transfer sizes. The drive peaks at around 550 MB/s read and 525 MB/s write. Excellent results.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Nvidia GTX670
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The hardware scores 192 points out of a possible 210 which is excellent.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.

The Vanquish system performs exceptionally well in this test, taking 6 minutes and 41 seconds to complete.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of ‘The Road’.

There are no performance concerns playing back BluRay high definition content.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

Excellent results again in this test, averaging under 8 percent CPU Time.

Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file.

Good results again, matching the reference clocked 2600k at 5 minutes and 34 seconds.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We use the built in STEAM benchmark with this game, so you can compare directly against your own hardware.

The performance with this demanding Direct X 11 engine is excellent. Shogun 2 is perfectly playable at 1080p, even with high image quality settings.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We configure the game to use high resolution textures and extreme quality Anti Aliasing. You don't want to buy a dedicated gaming system to play with image quality compromises.

This game is demanding at these very high settings. The end result is playable, although the frame rate is borderline, dropping to 25 a couple of times. We would lower the anti aliasing to improve the minimum frames rates a little.

F1 2012 is a video game developed by Codemasters. It is based on the 2012 Formula One season, and is the sequel to F1 2010 and F1 2011. It is the fourth Formula One game developed by the Codemasters studios after the company renewed its licence to develop the official games of the series. It was announced on March 18, 2012, co-inciding with the first race of the 2012 season. The game features all twelve teams and twenty-four drivers competing in the 2012 season (except for mid-season changes), as well as the twenty circuits and Grands Prix — including the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas — included in the championship.

We configure the game to use the ULTRA built in profile. We then set the Anti Aliasing to 16XQ CSAA, delivering an incredibly high level of image quality. AA is very important in a racing game as it can help to smooth the edges of the vehicles, improving the experience.

Superb Results, averaging 90 frames per second. The game maintains fantastic image quality throughout.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We use the ‘High' preset and set the engine to use 4 times Anti Aliasing.

This game is particularly demanding and Anti Aliasing can cripple the frame rate. We managed to get a compromise with 4 x AA, delivering smooth frame rates and only a single drop to 24 frames per second.

Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable. In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession.

We use Direct X 11 and a mixture of high image quality settings with 2 times Anti Aliasing. At these settings the game demands 1117MB of video memory.

At these settings the system averages 62 frames per second, dropping to 47 fps in the most intensive sections of the environment. A perfectly smooth gaming experience throughout. There is some additional headroom for higher AA settings if desired.

Our room environment is held at 23c, which is a comfortable temperature for most people. We measure temperatures of the processor, memory, motherboard and graphics card when idle, and under load.

Idle results are measured when the system is resting at the desktop. After 20 minutes the results are recorded. CPU load results are measured when tasked with Cinema4D. Gaming results are measured when loaded with Crysis.

The system maintains good thermal response throughout our stress testing. The Core i5 3570K @ 4.6ghz peaks around the 74c mark under load which is safe long term. The Cooler Master HAF XM case produces a high level of airflow which helps.

The Nvidia GTX670 peaks at 72c when gaming – this rises to 80c when loaded with the synthetic Furmark stress test. The fan runs at around 45% when gaming and 56% when primed with Furmark.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

Cooler Master adopt high quality fans in this case and it helps lower overall noise emissions significantly.

This is a very silent system, and although there is some noise it could certainly not be classed as intrusive. An excellent choice of components by PC Specialist. This is the first time ive experienced a Spire Gemini Rev.3 cooler and it is surprisingly good, both fans are very quiet.

We used a calibrated meter to measure the power at the wall. No monitors were factored into the readings. The system power drain was measured in the following states:

Idle: when resting at the desktop.
load: when primed with Cinebench R11.5 64 bit. Only the processor is stressed.
Gaming Load: running the ‘combined’ test in 3dMark 11. Processor and graphics card are stressed.

This system is very efficient, demanding around 250 watts when gaming, and 160 watts when the overclocked processor is tasked to 100% on all cores. When idle, the power consumption drops to 83 watts.

This is the second system we have reviewed this week to feature an overclocked Intel Core i5 3570k processor. PC Specialist have pushed the processor to 4.6ghz, and at this speed it actually makes a viable option for not only gaming, but more serious duties such as 3D rendering and video encoding.

The PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM has been well built and the development team in the company clearly know what works well together.

They have used a check list of components that we would recommend ourselves, including the Nvidia GTX670, Kingston Hyper-X 3K Solid State Drive, ASUS P8Z77-V Motherboard and CoolerMaster HAF-XM chassis.

The only component I was initially unsure about was the Spire Gemini Rev.3 CPU cooler, however our testing has highlighted that it is capable of handling this overclocked 3570k without producing much noise. While not in the same league as a Corsair H60 or H80 ‘all in one' liquid cooler, it is relatively inexpensive and ensures the price point can hit the sweet spot of £999 inc vat.

As a gaming machine, the Vanquish 670XM delivers exemplary results. Even the most demanding Direct X 11 games such as Max Payne 3, Shogun 2 and Dirt Showdown are perfectly playable at 1080p with the eye candy cranked.

Importantly, the acoustics performance of the system is especially good. The Cooler Master HAF XM chassis ships with high quality fans, and the dual Spire Gemini Rev 3 fans also don't produce much noise. The loudest component in the system is the GTX670 when placed under load. Thankfully the latest Nvidia cards are relatively quiet so noise from the Vanquish 670XM system is genuinely never a concern.

We have no reservations recommending the PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM as a dedicated gaming machine for the discerning enthusiast who has neither the time or skill to build a system.

PC Specialist offer several configuration options to adjust the price point to suit – if you want to save some money you can downgrade the chassis to a CM Storm Enforcer and graphics card to a GTX 660 ti. Both still very good options.

Check out this link for a full list of the specifications.

Pros:

• Good price point.
• excellent for gaming.
• Cooler Master case kicks ass.
• quiet.
• decent power consumption.
• stable.
• excellent cable management.
• high overclock.

Cons:

• No shortage of competition at £1,000.

Kitguru says: PC Specialist have delivered another well balanced, high performance gaming system.

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