YOYOTech Warbird SB2500-460 System Review

1. Introduction2. The YOYOTech Warbird SB2500-460 3. Testing Methodology4. PCMark Vantage5. 3DMark Vantage and 116. SiSoft Sandra 20117. Cinebench R10 and R11.58. Super Pi Mod 1.59. KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark V1(4)10. Media Encoding: Cyberlink MediaEspresso 611. Grand Theft Auto: EFLC12. Crysis Warhead13. F1 201014. Temperatures and Noise Level15. Closing Thoughts16. View All Pages

We reviewed an impressive XDNA system from YOYOTech a few months back which impressed us with a tasty overclock and CPU water cooling ‘out of the box'.  Sadly, this was priced for those people with deeper pockets, so we were very excited when YOYOTech offered us one of their latest Sandy Bridge systems –  around half the price of the XDNA.

Today we are going to look at the YOYOTech Warbird SB2500-460 which, as its name suggests, contains Intels Core i5 2500 chip, in the unlocked ‘k' form, alongside a GTX460 graphics card.  Despite not having water cooling like the XDNA, YOYOTech have still achieved an impressive overclock on this system, at 4.6GHz.

Specification

• 2nd Generation Intel Core i5 processor 2500k
• Overclocked to 4.6GHz
• Thermaltake Contac29 CPU Cooler
• Intel P67 Motherboard
• 1GB nVidia GTX460 Graphics Accelerator (3D/CUDA/PhysX)
• 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 Memory
• 1TB SATA II Hard Drive
• 22x DVD MultiBurner
• Silverstone PS03 Chassis
• Thermaltake 550W Modular PSU

Like many system builders, YOYOTech has decided to cut costs by using the box that the Silverstone PS03 was supplied in instead of a custom branded one.  This is no bad thing, though, as the Silverstone box has ample protection built in to protect the system during transit.  Unlike many manufacturers, YOYOTech package inside the machine with bubble wrap to prevent damage to the internals.  There is a note inside the box which instructs the user to remove it before firing the system up. Our particular review sample doesn't include any of the extras.

YOYOTech have decided to use the Silverstone PS03 chassis for the Warbird which is a great value case at around £40 inc. VAT.  It isn't the most attractive looking chassis design in the world, but it is well-featured for the price and is quite compact considering it supports full-size ATX motherboards.  The front is made entirely from perforated steel, broken only by the DVD writer and a YOYOTech badge.  Due to the design of the case, the DVD writer isn't flush with the rest of the front panel.

Although there are only two USB2.0 ports visible next to the power and reset buttons on top of the case, there are actually four front panel USB2.0 ports altogether and two 3.5mm jacks.  The other two USB2.0 ports and the 3.5mm jacks are located under a cover on the top of the system which is perfect for storing all your USB drives and other accessories.  There is also a roof vent further back on the top of the case but YOYOTech haven't felt the need to populate this with an exhaust fan.

Around the back of the case we find the exhaust fan alongside a generous selection of I/O connections.  These consist of eight USB2.0 ports, two USB3.0 ports, an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, optical and analogue S/PDIF connections and six 3.5mm audio jacks.  There is also a YOYOTech sticker which displays a support telephone number.

Our real excitement begins when we remove the side panel of the case using the provided thumbscrews.  YOYOTech have decided to use Gigabyte's latest P67A-UD3P motherboard as the backbone of the system which features their new black colour scheme.  Depending on available stock, this may be switched out for an Asus P8P67 board (pictured above). The Intel Core-i5 2500K CPU is cooled using a Thermaltake Contac29 CPU cooler which provides ample cooling for the overclocked chip.  This is accompanied by 4GB of 1600MHz Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM. Much has been made of Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset recently, here is KitGuru's most recent opinion.

The Asus GeForce GTX 460 DirectCU graphics card should provide enough power to play all the latest games – something we'll test later on in the review.  It is great to see that YOYOTech are using a high quality Thermaltake Toughpower 550W power supply for the system rather than the questionable unbranded ones used by some system builders.

To keep the cost of the Warbird down to a minimum, YOYOTech have opted for a Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB 7200rpm hard drive rather than a solid state drive.  This should provide enough room for all your media but you obviously pay a speed penalty.  YOYOTech have spent some time with the routing, positioning all the cables behind the motherboard tray.

Unlike some manufacturers, YOYOTech don’t fill their systems with crapware.  In fact the only programs that are pre-installed on the system are a few performance benchmarks, demos and drivers.

We used a Viewsonic VX2260WM 22″ monitor for testing as we feel it reflects what people who buy this system will use.  All testing was carried out at 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution. This is by far the most popular among the enthusiast audience.

Case: Silverstone PS03
Power Supply: Thermaltake 550W
Motherboard: Gigabyte P67A-UD3P
Processor: Intel Core i5 2500k OC’d @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Contac29
Memory: Kingston 2x 2GB DDR3 RAM
Hard Drive: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 SATAII Hard Drive
Optical Drive: DVD Wruter
Graphics Card: Asus GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Warranty: 1 year return to base

Windows 7 64bit – all latest patches/updates
Valve’s Steam Platform

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark Vantage
Super Pi Mod 1.5
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 7
FRAPS Professional
SiSoftware Sandra 2011
Cinebench R10
Cinebench R11.5
KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4)
Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC
F1 2010
Crysis Warhead
Medal of Honour

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

We were a little disappointed with the overall PCMark score for this system but this is a result, in part, of having a mechanical hard drive instead of a solid state drive.  An SSD would boost the HDD score significantly.

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.

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.

The score achieved by the Warbird in 3DMark Vantage was very good, especially when we look at the CPU component.  We recently tested an AMD Phenom 1090T based system which achieved a CPU score of just over 16000, so a score of over 23000 is a very impressive for a mid-range Intel CPU.

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) 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 SiSandra results are also impressive, especially when we compare them to results from the high end AMD processors.  There are certain areas like Arithmetic where this Sandy Bridge chip beats AMD's best chips by quite a margin – with around 86 GOPS compared to 63 GOPS.

Cinebench R10 has since been replaced by V11.5, but many people have a better indication of relative performance by the results from R10 – after all it has been around for years. We will however include R11.5 results on the following page. For those who don’t know Cinebench is not just a mere synthetic benchmarking application, it is based on the rendering engine from Cinema 4D.

The CPU test renders a 3D scene photo-realistically while applying performance intensive functions such as area light sources, procedural shaders, Ambient Occlusion and multi level reflections. Especially when used on faster, multi core CPU systems, MAXON CINEBENCH R10 delivers much more accurate results.

Cinebench R11.5 is the newest revision of the popular benchmark from Maxon. The test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral “No Keyframes” animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores.

In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

The Cinema 4D rendering performance is very good across both versions of the benchmark.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 32 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

The time achieved by the Warbird in this test is very good, especially considering the AMD 1090T struggles to complete this test in 20 minutes.

For as long as we can remember enthusiasts around the world have been keen to see how their systems perform with many commercially available benchmarks from such companies as Futuremark.  While these applications are extremely useful to a wide audience sometimes it can be helpful to focus on a ‘real world’ application which many of us use on an almost daily basis.

You can get the KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark 1(4) here. Please note lower times are better as this means less time is taken by the system to process the commands.

	Warbird	1090T@ 3.80GHZ
1. Texturiser (1)	1.1	3.5
2. CMYK	1.2	1.7
3. RGB	1.3	2.0
4. Ink Outlines	25.6	32.3
5. Dust & Stratches	2.2	2.8
6. Watercolor	23.4	32.5
7. Texturiser (2)	1.3	3.7
8. Stained Glass	19.2	46.2
9. Mosiac Tiles	10.5	17.4
10. Extrude	122.7	201.4
11. Rough Pastels	10.6	18.6
12. Smart Blur	75.4	112.2
13. Underpainting	24.3	48.9
14. Mosiac Tiles	13.1	18.2
15. Spherize	2.0	3.3
16. Palette Knife	24.8	41.9
17. Sponge	32.0	41.7
18. Smudge Stick	5.6	8.3
Total	387.8	636.6

This impressive score shows just how well these new Sandy Bridge CPUs cope with real world tasks like Photoshop compared to an overclocked AMD 1090T based system.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 91 second 1080P AVI file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. We will also be converting a 15 track album from MP3 to M4A format. These are common procedures for many people and will give a good indication of system power.  We tested without hardware encoding enabled so these results are reflective of CPU encoding performance only.

These times to convert our video file and 15 track album are some of the best we've seen and show how the Warbird packs quite a punch in terms of real world performance.

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City is a standalone compilation of the DLC episodes for Grand Theft Auto IV, containing both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony on one disc. It was released alongside the DLC release of The Ballad of Gay Tony on 29 October 2009 for the Xbox 360 and released on 13 April 2010 for Microsoft Windows and Playstation 3. It does not require a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV to play, nor is an Xbox Live or PSN account necessary (except for multiplayer).

The engine is still extremely demanding for this game – even months later for the newest hardware. The latest version changes some of the rendering calls and is used partially within the latest Max Payne engine.  We tested the game using near maximum settings as displayed below.

The system performed well in this test, showing off the awesome processing power of the Sandy Bridge Chip in this system.  The GTX 460 graphics card also contributes to the impressive frame rates, although we weren't able to max out all the settings as it only has 1GB of graphics memory.

Crysis Warhead, like the original, Crysis, is based in a future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of (Former SAS) Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns.

In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft’s new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering.

We are using several sections of gameplay which feature some of the most intensive action in Crysis. You can therefore base these results on a firmly ‘worst case’ scenario situation.  We used ‘gamer' settings and gamed at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 during this test.

Gone are the days when you have to spend over £1000 on a system to play Crysis at reasonable settings.  Sure you can't max out the settings with the Warbird, but the 2500K and GTX 460 provide a good amount of gaming grunt which should tackle pretty much any game out there.

F1 2010 is the first multi format high def Formula one title, having been in development for almost 2 and a half years now you can tell Codemasters are not messing around when it comes to releasing the best game they can. F1 2010 is packed with everything, from fine tuning your car setup, practising laps with goals to achieve, detailed stats, various difficulty settings for newbs and pros and even a helmet selection!

We maxed out all the settings and played at a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

These are great results for a mid-range system and, especially considering the high minimum frame rate of 58 fps.

Temperature Performance

To measure temperatures we started the system and let it idle for 30 minutes. To test load temperatures we used Prime95 and loaded the CPU for 30 minutes.  We measured temperatures with Everest Ultimate and room temperature was maintained at 20c throughout the tests.

The Thermaltake Contac29 cooler does a reasonable job of handling the overclocked CPU in this system but the temperatures are a little on the high side for our liking, but they shouldn't have a huge affect on the longevity of the system. We think Yoyotech should contemplate a higher grade cooler for this system such as the Thermaltake Frio.  The graphics and hard drive temperatures are exactly what we would expect.

Acoustic Performance

We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

Today to test the chassis we have taken it into our acoustics room environment and have set our Digital Sound Level Meter SL-824 one meter away from the case

As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
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 takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When idle, the Warbird is certainly audible but we could exactly describe it as loud.  Under load, though, the system noise becomes much more noticeable and this isn't surprising considering the temperatures reached by the CPU.  But if you're gaming with a headset or speakers, you won't notice the system at all – so this isn't a huge issue.

We believe the YOYOTech Warbird SB2500-460 system is perfect for gamers who want to play all the latest games at reasonable settings but are a little budget-limited.

The Intel Core-i5 2500K CPU provides a decent amount of processing grunt thanks to the hefty overclock and is supported well by the Asus GeForce GTX 460 GPU which lets you crank up those graphics settings in the latest games. Sure, it doesn't have the power of the recently released GTX 560 but this would increase the price of the system considerably. We would however recommend that YOYOTech use a higher grade CPU cooler, as the 2500K load temperatures were a little high. Either that or lower the overclock and voltage.

YOYOTech pack all the components into the compact Silverstone PS03 which remains light, despite being constructed almost entirely of steel.  This makes it perfect for lugging to LAN events across the country.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the system is the price; after all it is the limiting factor for most consumers.  The Warbird SB2500-460 is available at the very reasonable price of £769 inc. VAT from YOYOTech.  This makes it very good value for money, especially compared the rivals like OCUK who are currently offering a similarly specified system with a lesser overclock for £30 more.

KitGuru says: A good all-round system that provides great bang-for-buck. If you're interested, then we'd definitely suggest you upgrade to a different cooler like the Frio. Also, check on the warranties given in respect of the mainboard – nice to know you're covered.

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