OCUK Titan 8500i Vortex System Review (Z77)

The Titan 8500i Vortex System is built specifically to a tight price point, targeting a wide enthusiast audience who are in the market for a balanced, all round system.

While Overclockers UK could have focused entirely on basing the system around the most powerful discrete graphics card, they have opted to maintain the price point by adopting the HD7770 and focusing on other key areas.

The HD7770 is a reasonably powerful graphics card which delivers smooth frame rates with a variety of modern gaming engines. As our testing highlighted it delivered smooth frame rates with Alan Wake, Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3 and F1 2011 … all at 1080p with high image quality settings.

The Bitfenix Shinobi case is actually one of the best choices in the bargain arena, combining decent cooling performance, low noise levels and a quality finish. The I/O panel at the top has two easily accessible USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 connectors, more than enough for connecting a variety of pen drives, media devices and hard drives.

Internally, the build standard is excellent. The engineers have devoted time and resources to routing all the cables carefully behind the motherboard panel, ensuring a clean system build while maintaining maximum airflow.

This system is supplied in a heavy overclocked state and the Gigabyte Z77X-D3H motherboard proved to be perfectly stable throughout the last week of testing.

The Core i5 2500k receives a clock boost from 3.3ghz to 4.6ghz and runs cool and stable, thanks to the high end liquid cooling. The 2500k is a fast processor even at reference speeds, but when overclocked this system can be utilised for more serious duties, such as 3D rendering and video encoding. At 4.6ghz, is is faster than the more expensive, reference clocked, hyperthread enabled 2600k.

Many systems can suffer in the hands of less experienced system builders who incorporate ill advised drive configurations. Thankfully we have no concerns with the Titan 8500i Vortex as OCUK have carefully selected the OCZ Agility 3 60GB drive for the boot drive/operating system, with a Hitachi Deskstar 1TB equipped for storage and backup duties. The use of quality Corsair Vengeance memory with heatspreaders is reassuring.

Some people may find the HD7770 borderline for their gaming requirements, but there is the potential for adding another at a later date to run in Crossfire, if added horsepower is needed.

The Titan 8500i Vortex is a well built system that can be used in many environments. You can buy it from OCUK for £884.99 inc vat.

Pros:

• 1.3ghz overclock ‘out of the box'.
• excellent SSD performance.
• plenty of storage capacity.
• Another HD7770 could be added later if the need arises.
• Competitive pricing.
• efficient power consumption at socket.

Cons:

• HD7770 might not be enough for a diehard gamer.

Kitguru says: Well worth checking out at OCUK if you are in the market for a well built, cost effective system.

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