KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Our other articles today focus on building a new Intel Haswell system with ASUS and GIGABYTE motherboards, but what if you don't have the time to start creating your own gaming masterpiece? We turned to the award winning UK system builder PCSPECIALIST who sent over their latest ‘Vanquish Enforcer' system, outfitting it with the flagship Intel Core i7 4770k processor and Nvidia GTX780 graphics card. With an asking price of £1,499 does this system meet the strict build standards all Kitguru readers expect?
We have reviewed many PC Specialist systems before and while they all haven't been able to claim our highest ‘MUST HAVE' award, they are clearly a step ahead of many other UK system builders.
From my own point of view it has been interesting to see the standards increasing over the last year, especially when it comes to cable routing and fine tuning of BIOS settings. We certainly wouldn't say that all pre built systems meet the grade, but if you buy from the right dealer you have no reason to hide your head in shame anymore.
PCSpecialist grace the Vanquish Enforcer with a full 3 year return to base warranty and offer lifetime technical support in case of issues.
PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer
CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K @ 4.4GHz
RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz
Motherboard: ASUS Z87-A
Graphics: 3GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
SSD: 240GB Kingston Hyper-X 3K
HDD: 2TB Serial ATA III 6GB/s HDD
Optical Drive: BluRay / DVD-ROM
Power Supply: Corsair HX750 Modular
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 + Arctic Cooling MX-4 Thermal Paste
Case: CM Storm Enforcer
Operating System: Windows 8 64bit (32bit available same price if needed)
Software: MS Office Starter 2010
Warranty: 3 Year Silver RTB Warranty (1 Yr Collect & Return / 1 Yr Parts / 3 Yr Labour / Lifetime Tech Support)
Price: £1499.00 inc VAT & Delivery
The PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer ships in a large, well padded box. A smaller chassis box houses the system itself, wrapped inside a plastic bag and protected with foam panels.
Another thin flat box contains all the left over modular power supply cables, a PC Specialist welcome guide and motherboard driver disc.
The company are using the CM Storm Enforcer case. I have to be honest, this isn't my favourite Cooler Master design, however it is well built and should withstand some rough handling.
Along the top are several USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. These flank a microphone and headphone jack. Underneath is a power button. There is a door underneath which opens up to expose the optical drive. PC Specialist have included a BluRay drive in this particular system, which is very useful if you want to watch the latest high definition films.
Underneath are some vents, which hide a very large intake fan.
The side panel is windowed – highlighting the system components inside.
At the top of the chassis – another large fan, configured in an intake position. This is unusual, as warm air naturally flows upwards and system builders tend to place a top mounted fan in an exhaust position. PC Specialist say they are trying to force as much cool air inside the chassis to enhance CPU cooling. The warm air is then all expelled out the rear of the case via the Corsair radiator fan.
Above the white exhaust fan are three rubber mounting watercooling holes.
The ASUS Z87-A is fully featured – including several USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. There are also several ports which are covered. These are DVI, HDMI and VGA connectors, covered intentionally so the customer will use the discrete graphics card underneath.
The Corsair HX750 power supply is mounted at the bottom of the case.
After removing the protective foam inside the system we can get a first look at the build quality, which is exceptional.
The Corsair Hydro H60 handles the Core i7 4770k at 4.4ghz. PC Specialist use Arctic Cooling MX4 thermal paste between CPU and cooler block to improve the thermal transfer efficiency.
The Nvidia GTX780 graphics card – very nice.
PC Specialist have only used some of the modular cables, the rest of them are safely stored in the peripherals box.
The Bluray drive is installed at the very top of the chassis and in the bay underneath we find the 240GB Kingston Hyper-X 3K Solid State Drive (with Windows 8 installed) and a 2TB mechanical drive, ideal for storage duties.
The 2TB drive in our review system wasn't accessible (not formatted), so we keyed in ‘diskmgmt.msc' in the search and set the drive up.
All of the cables are carefully routed in behind the motherboard tray, out of sight.
The cables hidden out of view are neatly routed along a path in the middle of the case – cable tied in place. Getting the side panel back on wasn't too difficult, but the cables do make contact, so a little force is required.
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.
The PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer ships with Windows 8 preinstalled. This operating system doesn't seem to be that popular with our audience, based on our polls. We are sure PC Specialist will ship with Windows 7 installed, if you wanted.
A breakdown of the system in CPUz and GPUz. We can see the Core i7 4770k is overclocked to 4.4ghz with a setting around 1.23 volts. The Asus Z87-A motherboard has the 3008 BIOS in place. The 16GB of Kingston Hyper-X 3K memory is running at 2,400mhz with timings of 11-13-13-32 @ 2T.
The GTX780 ticks over at 863mhz with the GDDR5 memory at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective). The 3GB of memory is connected via a 384 bit memory interface. It is a powerful solution with 2304 CUDA cores, 48 ROPs and 192 TMUs.
The software installation is very clean with only basic drivers and Google Chrome installed. I installed my licensed copy of StarDock Start8 software, as I really do miss the traditional Windows 7 style start menu. Sad, but true.
We are using a 30 Inch Apple HD Display for this review today with a native resolution of 2560×1600.
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
3DMark
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 (DX 11)
Total War: Shogun 2 (DX11)
Dirt Showdown (DX 11)
Sleeping Dogs (DX 11)
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 combination of overclock, fast Solid State Drive and high performance graphics card deliver an excellent all around score of 6,694 points.
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 4770k Haswell processor scores very well, especially with such a healthy overclock.
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.
An excellent overall score, well balanced results in all areas.
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.
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.
The system scores a very strong 8,640 points in the demanding Direct X 11 Fire Strike test.
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 test at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions.
The GTX 780 is a powerful graphics card, able to handle a high level of tessellation without struggling. These frame rates are a very positive indication of excellent Direct X 11 gaming performance. We will look at this later in the review.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark.
The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal.
This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
We test at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions.
Again, the performance is good, averaging 105 frames per second at 1080p and 60 frames per second at 2560×1600.
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 Core i7 4770k scores extremely well in this test, almost in line with a Core i7 2700k – clocked 600mhz higher (4.4ghz v 5.0ghz). The memory result shows around 25 GB/s of bandwidth.
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 4770k at this speed can outperform the last generation 990x Extreme Edition, which has two extra physical cores. A score over 9 points means this system is ideal for serious rendering duties.
We test the USB 3.0 performance on the PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer system with one of our fastest portable flash drives – the Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB. We reviewed this back in February, check it out over here.
Superb sequential performance from this drive, averaging over 300 MB/s in the read test, and just over 180MB/s in the write test. Due to the nature of this kind of flash, and via the USB 3.0 interface, 4k and 4k QD32 performance is substantially worse than from a native SSD drive across a SATA connector.
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.
ATTO Disk Benchmark highlights impressive scores again, averaging around 270 mb/s read.
On this page we test the performance of the 240GB Kingston Hyper-X 3K SSD.
Performance of the Kingston SSD is strong, averaging around 492.7 MB sequential read with incompressible data. This increases a little when we enable the compressible mode (0x00). Write performance more than doubles from the normal test to the ‘0x00' test.
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.
ATTO shows exceptional performance from the Kingston Solid State Drive. The 2TB HDD mechanical drive peaks at around 155 MB/s read and 140 MB/s write.
Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.
Cyberlink PowerDVD 13 Ultra 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 BluRay Disc of The Hobbit: An UnExpected Journey.
The system is barely ticking over when playing back 1080p Bluray media, averaging around 8 percent CPU time. Plenty of CPU cycles left over to handle other duties without interfering with playback.
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.
Fantastic all round results from the PCSpecialist system, scoring 6 minutes and 4 seconds – ahead of the last generation 990X Extreme Edition processor, which has 6/12 cores.
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 run the DX11 Graphics High 1080p benchmark, available for this game in STEAM. You can therefore directly compare against your own system. Frame rates are rounded up or down to the nearest digit.
On the next page, we test real in game performance at 2560×1600, but we like to include these results so you can directly compare against your own system.
The PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer averages 102 frames per second with the built in benchmark. Time for some real world testing now…
We test Total War: Shogun 2 at the native resolution of our 30 inch panel (2560×1600) and measure frame rate performance across several different levels ingame. We repeat the tests three times and average the results.
We configured the game to very high settings at 2560×1600.
Performance at these very high settings is superb, averaging well over 100 frames per second and dropping to just under 80 frames per second during some of the most intensive battles with hundreds of units onscreen.
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 configured the game to use the ultra high 16xQCSAA anti aliasing mode with the ‘ultra' profile. Pretty much the best image quality settings you can get at 2560×1600.
The frame rate was held above 40 at all times, averaging 56 frames per second. In real world terms it is perfectly smooth at all times and the image quality is superb.
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 cranked the image quality settings at 2560×1600, enabling 4x MSAA. Texture Quality was set to very high, Shader quality was set to high, Shadow Quality, Reflection Quality and Water Quality were all set to very high. Tessellation was set to normal.Total memory draw was 1999MB.
This game engine is demanding at 2560×1600, especially with our high image quality configuration. The system averaged 43 frames per second, dropping to 31 frames per second a couple of times. In real world terms, it was perfectly smooth at all times.
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 set the resolution to 2560×1600 and configured the image quality settings to the ‘Ultimate' profile. This greatly enhances the detail in game, but places an added load onto the GPU.
The PC Specialist Vanquish Enforcer manages to maintain smooth frame rates at all times, maintaining a 35> variable at all times. At these settings the game also looks marvellous.
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 Cooler Master Enforcer case shifts a high volume of air, thanks to the large fans at the front and top of the case. Our own sample of the 4770k runs quite hot under load, and we can see that the processor in the Vanquish Enforcer is similar, peaking at 82c (1.225 volts) @ 4.4ghz. The GTX780 peaks around 75c when gaming and this rises to 80c in the synthetic Furmark stress test.
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.
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 big fans in the Cooler Master Enforcer spin quite slowly, not producing much noise. The graphics card and Corsair CPU cooler when combined under load, rise to around 37 dBa. In real world terms, this system is always audible in a quiet room and clearly heard under load.
We wouldn't call the levels of noise intrusive, but if you want a quiet build we doubt this would meet your requirements.
We measure power consumption at the socket via a calibrated meter – system wide. The monitor is not included in the draw.
Power results were measured at idle and when loading the system in the final ‘combined’ test in 3DMark 11.
The system only takes less than 80 watts when idle. Under load, this rises to around 310 watts. The Corsair 750W in the system will be loaded at around 40 percent of total power when the system is gaming – not far from peak efficiency.
The Vanquish Enforcer is an extremely impressive gaming system built to the exacting standards we would expect from UK system builder PC Specialist.
The system is shipped within an oversized double thickness box, which is always a good sign. Rough treatment from couriers can cause a wide range of problems before the customer would even get the chance to open the box.
To try and negate internal damage, PC Specialist ship their systems with blue moulded ‘instapack' foam. This is sculpted to the shape of the internals of the system and will stop the motherboard and attached components from moving during transit.
The Vanquish Enforcer we received for review is priced at £1,499 inc vat and it really is a lot of system for the price. The new GTX780 is a very potent graphics card, perfectly able to power the latest titles at 2560×1600, the native resolution of a 30 inch screen.
Our testing today highlights that image quality settings could be cranked to the limit and frame rates were still held above thirty at all times … even with intensive Direct X 11 engines such as Max Payne 3.
The internal build quality is exceptional. All of the cables are routed and tied down in key positions, carefully fed behind the motherboard tray, out of sight. Even on the other side of the case PC Specialist have clearly spent time figuring out the best way to route the cable groupings.
The performance of the new Intel Core i7 4770k is impressive, although it really isn't that much of a step up from the 3770k. The 4770k may be faster on a clock per clock basis, but the 3770k tends to achieve a higher overclock, so any initial benefits are generally negated.
The i7 4770k onboard graphics capabilities are a commendable step forward for Intel, but they won't make any difference in systems such as the Vanquish Enforcer. Gamers want powerful discrete capabilities, and PC Specialist have certainly delivered the goods in this regard.
What can we say about the GTX780? This is a remarkable video card which is an ideal pairing for a new 30 inch screen @ 1600p resolution. Image quality settings can be set at the highest level at native resolution and the system will still produce perfectly smooth frame rates. This is a huge saving over the GTX Titan, and the GTX780 more than capable enough for a hardcore gaming system such as this.
Even though it is overclocked, the Vanquish Enforcer is well optimised in regards to power draw. at idle it only consumes around 80 watts, rising to around 310 watts under full, gaming load. The modular Corsair HX750 power supply is ideally suited to a load between 300 and 450 watts, as maximum efficiency will be achieved during this range. In this regard, the system is very well balanced.
Acoustically, the large fans built into the CM Storm Enforcer chassis spin slowly but push a high level of air, and they keep the components suitably chilled. With the Corsair H60 under load, the system isn't the quietest we have ever tested, but it is very unlikely to annoy a dedicated gamer. There is always the awareness of fan noise in the background, but it did not reach a level that I would consider intrusive.
We really do think this is one of the most balanced gaming systems we have reviewed this year. PC Specialist have hand selected a range of award winning products and built the system with plenty of forethought and attention to detail. The only thing I would change myself would be the chassis, but as PCSpecialist told us before launch, there are plenty of options available via their configurator tool.
You can buy this system direct from PC Specialist over here (please note it may not update until 2nd June 2013).
Pros:
- GTX780 is a frame rate beast.
- good power draw.
- exceptionally well built.
- an award winning list of products.
- overclocked out of the box.
- excellent cable routing.
Cons:
- Not the quietest system we have tested.
- We would spend a little more on the case.
Kitguru says: A well built, well rounded gaming system with plenty of power on tap for 2560×1600 gaming, rendering and video encoding duties.
brilliant system, im sorely tempted to just not bother upgrading my system, could probably get £600 for my own still.
Hate spending weeks tuning the build, this one looks very nice inside.
Its a nice build, but I agree with author id spend a little extra for the cosmos IMO, well worth it.
Thats a good price working it out, its a very low overhead considering the wrranty. My mate would love this, will link him later
Not on their site 🙁 im interested to see the configurations available as I would like a differetent case – such as Corsair. have you any kitguru codes for reductions in price?
When will it update on their site on 2nd? i want this!
Thats a very good system build. I dont like some of the systems you review, but this is spectacular. Ill wait till it updates and see about working out a different configuration.
Shame PC SPecialist dont do a special deal for kitguru readers, like 5% off or something :p
Hey, quick one to let you know that they will be available to order at midnight tonight! We have a slightly different launch time to the media 🙂
PC Specialist
Kinda gutting the £1499 is purely for the stock model. Seeing this I thought I’d found my dream prebuilt system, a tweak to a nicer case as per reccomended. Going to configure the system seems to make the price jump up a good £250 purely for the pleasure of getting to spend more money on it.
Hey CH,
If you call our Sales Team, they’ll sort you out with the case of your choice 🙂
Great PC spec for the price but that case is hideous – I tried giving the sales guys a call to change to the Fractal R4 but they were only able to offer the CM Storm Enforcer at the price point, otherwise as CH pointed out. Putting an R4 on instead would add 200 odd quid on. Damn shame!
Can you make this possible to ship to Philippines?
looking at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/view/Vanquish-Enforcer/ its £1702 in vat not £1499
PC is good for sure! But 100% overpowered! Waste of ur money! Dont buy it.