Cube Gaming PC Core i7 Overclocked Assassin /w MSI GTX 770

1. Introduction2. Cube Gaming PC Core i7 Overclocked Assassin3. Cube Gaming PC Core i7 Overclocked Assassin (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. PCMark 86. 3DMark Vantage7. 3DMark 118. 3DMark9. SiSoft Sandra10. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit11. Cinebench R1512. Media Encoding13. SSD and HDD Performance14. USB 3.0 Performance15. Tomb Raider16. GRID 217. Total War: ROME 218. Thief19. Thermal Dynamics20. Acoustics Performance21. Power Consumption22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

Is a traditional tower PC chassis just too big for your home? Would you like to get something smaller, and quieter for your bedroom but capable enough to power the latest Direct X 11 games? Today we look at a new system from UK company BOX UK. Their Assassin Cube Gaming PC features a checklist of fantastic components – an MSI GTX770 Twin Frozr 2GB graphics card, partnered up with an Intel Core i7 4770K CPU. They are using an MSI Dragon Water Cooler and the Kitguru award winning Aerocool Dead Silence Chassis with matching fans. At £1119.99 inc vat is this a system you want to be including on your final shortlist?

The Aerocool Dead Silence Gaming Cube may be a small chassis, but it has been designed to accommodate high end hardware, including full length graphics cards. BOX have several powerful systems available in this ASSASSIN range, including less expensive Core i3 and i5 configurations with prices starting at £849.99. You can see the five configurations available over here. Today we are looking at the most expensive Core i7 model priced at £1119.99 inc vat.

BOX have overclocked the Intel Core i7 4770k to 4.2ghz.

Features

• The Latest 4th Gen i3, i5k or i7k Processors
• 2 x 4Gb Kit Kingston Hyper-X Beast 2400Mhz performance memory
• Kingston Hyper-X 120Gb SSD & 1Tb Hard Drive
• MSi Geforce GTX 770 Twin Frozr 2Gb Dedicated Graphics
• Built-in Wireless
• Aerocool Dead Silent Cube Gaming Case
• Aerocool Dead Silent 120mm Fan
• MSI Dragon Water Cooler
• Windows 8.1 64 bit

Our review sample was shipped double boxed for added protection. It is well packed and should be secure enough during transportation. Inside is the main chassis, along with the MSI Z87M Gaming motherboard box including driver discs and some left over parts from the system build.

Kitguru loves the Aerocool Dead Silence Gaming Cube chassis. We love it that much that it won best small chassis in the KitGuru annual awards 2013, surpassing even the excellent Bitfenix Prodigy. If you want to see a full indepth review of this chassis then check back here.

Even better, BOX are using the windowed version of the chassis.

BOX built this system in the beautiful red version of the chassis. Aerocool specifically use a leathery style material which does not mark or attract fingerprints. Overall, it is very resilient to rough handling. The curved front panel looks very stylish and modern, especially when we compare against other small chassis, from companies such as MSI.

Box have installed a black DVD writer. Incorporating mixed colours on the front panel normally wouldn't look great, however the side panels of the Aerocool Dead Silence chassis are black, so it coordinates well.

Plenty of connectivity along the top panel including a power button, reset button, microphone and headphone jacks. The right hand side is home to 2x USB 2.0 and 2x USB 3.0 ports. We received the ASSASSIN system with both the ordinary red panel and black MESH top panel. Depending on how the machine is configured this will vary – BOX say a watercooled version of this build works better without the MESH panel, due to airflow front to back.

BOX have included a colour coordinated MSI GTX770 2GB Twin Frozr OC Gaming Edition graphics card.

The build is based around the MSI Z87M Gaming Edition. We reviewed this motherboard back in January and it claimed our highest award at the time due to the incredible capabilities. It is even more impressive when we factor in that it is a Micro-ATX design.

Motherboard rear ports:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port
• 2 x USB 2.0 ports
• 1 x Clear CMOS button
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port
• 6 x USB 3.0 ports
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector
• 2 x eSATA ports
• 6 x OFC audio jacks
• 2 x HDMI port
• 1 x DisplayPort

The Aerocool Dead Silence chassis is easy to work with – both side panels are removed with thumbscrews. We can get a better look inside now.

The lower section of the chassis houses the power supply and drives. BOX are using the Aerocool Strike X 800W modular power supply, which is the weak point of the system build. We reviewed this back in November and it disappointed in a few areas.

If you wanted to add another GTX770 graphics card to the system then you would need to attach another PCIe connector. The other cable was not supplied with our review sample, however BOX did tell us that a customer will get all the left over cables in an accessories box.

This build features a 3,5 inch 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD and a 2.5 inch 120GB Kingston HyperX SSD. BOX have Windows 8.1 installed on the faster Solid State drive.

Installed in front of the MSI graphics card is a small TPLink wireless networking card – a very useful addition to the build. This can be easily removed if you wanted to add another graphics card to the build.

We removed the other side panel to get a look in behind the graphics card. We can see that BOX are using extender cables on the PCI e power cables. We removed these extender cables and found the primary Aerocool power supply cables directly stretched to the graphics card. We aren't quite sure why BOX have decided to use them.

We can see that BOX have installed the MSI Dragon Water Cooler with a 120mm fan on the radiator. Additionally however they have installed an extra Aerocool Dead Silence Fan in matching red and black. This will increase cooling performance.

These are without question some of the best fans on the market – you can read our review, over here.

The front of the case has a large intake fan fitted to ensure cool air is sucked into the chassis, from front to back. You can see this from our ‘stripped down' picture above.

Another KitGuru award winner installed in the Assassin System. 8GB of Kingston HyperX Beast 2,400mhz memory. You can read our review on this memory, over here.

All of the power supply cables are mainly hidden in the lower compartment, as shown in the image above.
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.








BOX have installed very little software, just the main drivers, including Nvidia's Forceware 334.89. We always like to see a system without bloatware so BOX get bonus points for this.

We would advise new customers to install a quality antivirus client such as Avast, AVG or Kaspersky as soon as possible.


An overview of the processor and graphics card. The Core i7 4770k is overclocked by BOX to run at 4.2ghz under load, although BOX have enabled BIOS power saving features to reduce power when idle, which makes sense. If you know what you are doing you can obviously turn this off in the BIOS. The 8GB of Kingston HyperX Beast is correctly running at 2,400mhz with timings of 11-13-13-30 @ 2T.

The MSI GTX770 Twin Frozr OC is built on the 28nm process and has 32 ROP's, 128 Texture units and 1,536 Cuda Cores. The core is clocked to 1,085mhz, and the 2GB of Hynix GGDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The memory is clocked at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective).

CPU validation of the system is available over here.

Today we are using an Apple 30 inch CinemaHD Display.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):

Dead Silence Kaveri Gaming BattleRig:
Processor: AMD 7850K Quad 3.7Ghz R7 GFX
Cooler: STD CPU Cooler (Supplied)
Mainboard: ASUS A88XMPLUS FM2+ Chipset
Memory: 8GB ADATA XPG 2133Mhz
Video: AMD Radeon HD R7 APU 3D GFX
HDD: 1TB Seagate 7200RPM – 64Mb
PSU: 500w Cooler Master B500 Power Supply
Optical: 24X Samsung DVD-RW Drive
OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64Bit

Mesh Elite Mini Gamer Plus:
Power Supply: 750W Cooler Master GX RS-750, 85% Eff’, 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire.
Motherboard: MSI Z87I WIFI – Mini-ITX Motherboard Socket 1150.
Processor:  i7-4770K Quad Core Processor (3.5GHz, 8MB Cache) @ 4.2ghz.
Memory: 16GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory (2x8GB) Kit.
Graphics: 4GB AMD Radeon™ R9 290 – 4GD5 Gaming Series Graphics.
SSD: 240GB SSD – Solid State Drive.
HDD: 2TB SATA III 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms Hard Drive.

PCSpecialist Vanquish 230X:
Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K @ 4.2GHz
Memory: 16GB Kingston HyperX BEAST @ 2400MHz
Motherboard: ASUS Z87-A Motherboard
SSD: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD
HDD: 1TB SATA III 6Gb/s HDD
Graphics: 3GB AMD Radeon 280X Graphics
Cooler: CoolerMaster Seidon 120M Liquid Cooler
Power Supply: Corsair TX650M Modular PSU

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
3DMark
PCMark 8
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cinebench R15
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
SiSoft Sandra

Games:
GRID 2 (Direct X 11)
Thief 2014 (Direct X 11)
Tomb Raider (Direct X 11)
Total War: Rome 2 (Direct X 11)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
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.

Special thanks to Daniel Arnold-Mist for his Equilibrium robot render.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
PCMark 8 is the latest version in our series of popular PC benchmarking tools. It is designed to test the performance of all types of PC, from tablets to desktops. With five separate benchmark tests plus battery life testing, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance. PCMark 8 is the complete PC benchmark for home and business.

The system delivers strong, well balanced performance results aided by the excellent Kingston Solid State drive.
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.

The final score indicates potential strong performance with older Direct X 10 games. The overclocked Core i7 4770k processor scores almost 85,000 points.
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.

Excellent scores in Futuremark's last generation Direct X 11 benchmark, scoring 11,023 points.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

We kept getting an invalid score in this benchmark which we couldn't isolate, however the final scores closely match previous test runs with a GTX770 / Core i7 4770k. Obviously an isolated glitch. Strong overall results overall.
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 Cube Gaming PC Core i7 Overclocked Assassin scores very well in Sandra. The overclocked Core i7 4770k and fast 2,400mhz Kingston memory deliver excellent results.
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.

A score of 9.11 shows that this system could actually be utilised for semi-serious rendering duties.
CINEBENCH 15 is a cross-platform testing suite that measures hardware performance and is the de facto standard benchmarking tool for leading companies and trade journals for conducting real-world hardware performance tests. With the new Release 15, systems with up to 256 threads can be tested. CINEBENCH is available for both Windows and OS X and is used by almost all hardware manufacturers and trade journals for comparing CPUs and graphics cards.

Excellent results and based on previous 4770k testing we can see that the MSI cooling system is able to handle the hot running 4770k in an overclocked state without any thermal throttling.
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 favourite movies, songs and photos not just 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 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

We are enabling full CUDA acceleration from the MSI GTX770 graphics card.

A final encode time of 7 minutes and 13 seconds is one of the fastest we have documented to date. The overclocked i7 4770k combined with the overclocked GTX770 and fast Solid State drive ensure great real world performance characteristics.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.1 x64. We test the Kingston HyperX 120GB Solid State drive on this page.

Performance of the drive is good, averaging 461 MB/s and 477 MB/s in the sequential read and write test, respectively. The mechanical hard drive is as fast as you would expect, scoring between 190 MB/s and 200 MB/s in the sequential test.

Excellent results, The Kingston HyperX SSD peaks at 545 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write. The mechanical drive results peak at around 190 MB/s in both read and write tests.
To test the USB 3.0 capabilities of the MSI motherboard, we use one of the fastest drives we have – the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB. We reviewed this way back in February last year.


Performance from the USB 3.0 ports is as good as we would expect – scoring just over 300 MB/s in the sequential read test.

ATTO never scores quite as highly in our USB 3.0 tests, although read performance is around 270 MB/s. Write performance suffers when compared to Crystaldiskmark.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We decided to maximise the image quality to the ULTIMATE profile setting, as shown above.

A very smooth overall experience, holding well above 40 frames per second at all times. In real world terms, Tomb Raider is extremely smooth and looks fantastic at the highest image quality settings.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We test at 1920×1080 with the ULTRA image quality preset, as shown above. We also enabled 16x QCSAA to increase image quality and utilise the power of the overclocked MSI GTX770 graphics card.

No problems powering this engine at 1920×1080 with the Ultra high quality image settings. The frame rate actually held above 60 at all times.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We used the ULTRA profile to increase image quality at 1920×1080.

A very smooth gaming experience, averaging 77 frames per second and holding close to 50 frames per second, even in the most intensive sections of the game.
In Thief 2014 Players control Garrett, a master thief, as he intends to steal from the rich. Similar to previous games in the series, players must use stealth in order to overcome challenges, while violence is left as a minimally effective last resort.

We maximised the settings at 1920×1080 to give the best image quality possible.

Smooth performance, averaging over 50 frames per second and holding above 30 frames per second at all times.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The cooling capabilities of the Aerocool Dead Silence Gaming Cube are excellent. If you have been reading the review from the start, then we can see that the extra 120mm Aerocool Dead Silence fan mounted on the radiator has helped ensure the MSI Dragon Cooler can cope with the hot running 4770k, even under heavy, sustained load.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. It isn’t a real world situation to be measuring with a case panel off only a few centimeters away from a video card.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

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

The Cube Gaming PC Core i7 Overclocked Assassin is one, if not the quietest high performance gaming systems we have tested in the last 24 months. When idle it is basically silent and under load it is barely audible, even from only 1 meter away.

Credit has to be given to BOX for their choice of components in this build. We already know the Aerocool Dead Silence Gaming Cube is extremely quiet, but BOX have supplemented the build by adding in Aerocool Dead Silence Fans. We have already analysed these fans in another review, and I rate them up there with the quietest that money can buy.
We measure system drain at the socket via a calibrated meter – the monitor is not included in the final result.

We measure wattage when idle, then we load the processor with Cinebench. Finally we test with the combined test in 3DMark11, which loads both processor and graphics card.

When idle, the system consumes around 60 watts at the socket. When the i7 4770K is running at 100% load, this rises to 150 watts. When running the combined test in 3Dmark11, the system hits 307 watts peak. The 800W power supply is more than enough for this load and shows potential on hand if you ever wanted to upgrade the video card for instance.
I have been living with the Cube Gaming PC Core i7 Overclocked Assassin for the last week and I can't help but feel that BOX have created one of the finest systems we have ever reviewed. Visually it is also very appealing as BOX have colour coordinated all the components in red and black.

When we look down the list of components in the ASSASSIN, it is almost as if BOX had specified the build based on Kitguru's highest award winners.

The MSI Z87M Gaming mATX motherboard is an engineering tour de force. My colleague Luke reviewed this diminutive mATX board back in November 2013 and it walked away with our highest award. This is the first time I have had a ‘hands on' with the Z87M Gaming since it was launched and I can only agree with everything that Luke said at the time.

Not only is the board layout first class, but the onboard audio is dynamic and a perfect partner for a gamer using high end speakers or headphones. SATA and USB 3.0 performance is stellar and the Killer E2205 NIC helps ensure that those online games are given network priority.

BOX have installed an Intel Core i7 4770k in the MSI Z87M Gaming board, and overclocked it to 4.2ghz, adding some minor tweaks for stability. These are hot running processors, so BOX opted for the capable all in one MSI Dragon Water cooler. They upgraded the cooling performance by adding another Aerocool Dead Silence 120mm to the radiator – another gold award winner in the KitGuru labs.

In real world terms, the BOX Assassin runs cool and even under forced synthetic stress situations the Core i7 4770k didn't exhibit any thermal throttling. BOX probably could have pushed the processor a little further, but we like the fact they opted for a reasonable, safe overclock without pushing all the components to the absolute limit. The Kingston HyperX Beast 2,400mhz memory delivers plenty of bandwidth, helping to ensure the Assassin is capable of handling intensive 3D rendering and video editing duties without a problem.

The MSI GTX770 Twin Frozr OC is a great choice. The Nvidia GPU can power through all the latest Direct X 11 titles at 1080p with the highest image quality settings. Thanks to the excellent Twin Frozr cooler, even under load it remains quiet, fitting in with the ethos of the ‘Assassin' moniker.

This brings me to one of the main selling points of this system. The complete lack of noise.

I last reviewed a system around 10 days ago, the MSI Nightblade. While I liked the Nightblade immensely, it was extremely loud under load. This distracted from the well designed chassis and powerful component selection.

After a week of testing MSI's Nightblade my ears had adapted to the high noise levels. When I moved to the BOX Assassin immediately afterwards I thought there was actually a fault on first start up. It was only the hard drive light that indicated the system was actually running. I couldn't believe how quiet this system was, even when gaming.

A week later and I still manage a smile when I start the Assassin. At idle, you wouldn't know the system was actually turned on. When gaming, there is a slight whisper of fan noise from the GTX 770 Twin Frozr cooler. BOX have managed to reduce the overall noise levels thanks to the adoption of class leading Dead Silence fans on the CPU radiator. We really do advise readers check out our previous review of these cutting edge Aerocool fans, over here.

Inside, there are many nice little touches to indicate that BOX have a good handle on how to build a great gaming system. The cables are mainly hidden in the lower compartment, out of sight of the windowed panel. There is a handy wireless card inside, ideal for the audience who move their system around regularly out of reach of network cabling. All of the components are colour coordinated in red and black to improve the appearance dramatically.

The only real weakness of this system is the inclusion of the Andyson sourced Aerocool Strike X 800W power supply. There is no doubt it is very quiet power supply, up to around 600W load, however it would not be our first choice for a powerful gaming system. We didn't experience any issues in the last 100 hours of intensive stress testing so we are willing to overlook this today. BOX include a 2 year warranty with the Assassin system so you can rest assured if problems did develop, they would look after you.

You can buy this Assassin system direct from BOX, for £1,119.99 inc vat from this link.

If the asking price is too high, BOX have other configurations starting at only £849.99 inc vat. Check them all out over here.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• compact.
• extremely quiet.
• powerful gaming machine.
• overclocked 4770k can handle serious tasks as well as just gaming.
• MSI Z87M Gaming is an incredible motherboard.
• colour coordinated.
• pre-overclocked.
• built in wireless.

Cons:

• The Aerocool Strike X 800W wouldn't be our first choice of power supply.

Kitguru says: The Box Assassin is attractive, powerful and very very quiet. If you are tired ‘listening' to your old system and don't want to build a new one yourself, then this deserves some serious consideration.

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