PC Specialist Inferno 11.6 inch Laptop review

1. Introduction2. PC Specialist Inferno Laptop3. PC Specialist Inferno (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology & Configuration5. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit8. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Synthetic: 3DMark 1110. Synthetic: SSD Drive Performance11. Real World: BluRay Playback with PowerDVD 1112. Real World: MKV 1080p Performance13. Real World: Flash HD Performance14. Real World: Media Encoding15. Gaming: World Of Warcraft16. Gaming: Battlefield 317. Technical: Battery life18. Technical: Acoustics Performance19. Technical: Thermal Performance20. Closing Thoughts21. View All Pages

If like me, you don't like lugging around a super size 17 inch laptop then today's review product will be interesting. PC Specialist have created a super small 11.6 inch system and they are aiming to make it one of the most powerful on the market, by incorporating the powerful Intel Core i7 3630QM – a quad core processor with hyperthreading. Yes, 8 logical cores within a tiny 11.6 inch chassis. The system may only cost £650 inc vat, but PC Specialist have managed to include a 128GB Kingston V200 SSD, 8GB of memory and Windows 8.

There are no shortage of options today if you are in the market for a new laptop, but there are very few 11.6 inch laptop systems which feature a top of the range Quad core/HT enabled Core i7 processor. Obviously some of the challenges in doing this, will be cooling and stability.

PC Specialist Inferno Laptop Review Sample:

Screen: 11.6” Matte HD LED (1366 x 768)
CPU: Intel Core i7-3630QM
RAM: 8GB Kingston HyperX RAM
SSD: 128GB Kingston V200 SSD
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M
Wireless: Intel N135 802.11N + Bluetooth
Battery: 6 Cell Lithium Ion (62.16WH)
Weight: 1.8Kg (inc battery)
OS: Windows 8 64bit
Warranty: 2 Year Silver

Price: £649.00 inc VAT & Delivery

PC Specialist ship the laptop in a strong, large brown box which isn't that heavy. A lot of the weight is due to the padding.

Inside the larger box is the notebook box itself. Double boxing is a good way to ensure that the goods do not get damaged.

Inside the bundle includes a user manual, power adapter, optical media and battery.

The power supply is a Delta Electronics design, rated 19v – 6.32A. It will work anywhere in the world, being a 100-240V design.

The laptop is protected between two thick pieces of foam, with a plastic wrap covering the chassis.

The PC Specialist Inferno is finished with a nicely textured surface with a little stripe section in the middle covering the full width.

The chassis is tiny with several rows of cooling vents on the underside of the chassis. There is a multi card reader positioned at the front of the chassis, easy to miss.

The left side of the PC Specialist Inferno 11.6 inch Laptop features a GB lan , VGA, HDMI and headphone and microphone ports. There are also two USB 3.0 ports here. The right side of the laptop has a USB 2.0 port, power connector and security lock.

The PC Specialist Inferno is a neat little machine, very light and portable.

PC Specialist are using a matte screen surface which helps to minimise reflections. Screen resolution is set natively at 1366×768. Viewing angles are average for the class, and colour reproduction is acceptable. This isn't a high grade, expensive screen, but considering the very competitive price point of this system we can't really expect that.

The system incorporates a chiclet style keyboard which is well spaced out and surprisingly good to use. Men with large hands (like myself) will certainly find it a little restrictive, but I can't say ive used an 11 inch machine which has addressed this issue, after all there is only so much physical space available.

The trackpad is pleasant to use and is quite large too, considering the size of the machine. The whole surface of the machine is textured, so there is some feedback offered. A colleague tried this machine and didn't like the feeling of the trackpad surface under his finger, so again this will be very much based on personal taste.

The laptop has a row of keys along the top which can be used in conjunction with the function key to control various settings, such as screen brightness, volume and wifi. The power button resides at the far right of the system, just above the keyboard.

Onboard sound from the PC Specialist Inferno is disappointing, delivering a weak, thin sound without much volume, a victim of the limited physical dimensions.

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.

The Windows Experience Index shows a final score of 5.2, held back by the graphics. The SSD scores well, at 7.9 points.

We certainly couldn't claim that PC Specialist have loaded this system with a multitude of crapware and bloatware. A very basic driver and software setup, leaving the end user in full control of his or her choices. You may notice ‘Start 8' in the installed Applications list which brings back the missing Start Menu. We installed that ourselves, as it makes Windows 8 much easier to use. You can grab it here for yourself – although sadly it isn't free. Microsoft are you listening?

An overview of the system courtesy of CPUz. The system is based around the very powerful Intel Core i7 3630QM processor which has 6MB of cache and can turbo up to 3.4ghz (from 2.4ghz). PC Specialist are using 8GB of Kingston DDR3 memory (2x4GB) which is running at 1,600mhz with 9-9-9-27 timings.

It is worth pointing out that the systems below have all been running Windows 7 – so there will be minor variables between Windows 7 and Windows 8. That said, in offline testing we have found Windows 7 and Windows 8 to report very similar results.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):
MSI GX60 (AMD A10 4600M)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (featuring Core i5 3427U)
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge S430 (featuring Core i5 3210M)
PC Specialist Vortex III HD72 (featuring Core i7 3610QM).
Asus G74SX-91013Z (featuring Core i7 2360QM).
Dell XPS 14z (featuring Core i7 2640M).
AlienWare M18X (featuring Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition).
MSI CX640 (featuring Core i5 2410M).
Intel Core i7 2600k desktop processor.
Intel Core i5 2500k desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
World Of Warcraft
Battlefield 3

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 taken with courtesy from Wikipedia.

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

Great all round performance from this system, thanks to the mighty Intel Core i7-3630QM processor. It even manages to outperform the i7 2960XM (Extreme Edition from last generation) that was in the Alienware M18X system. Memory performance is also excellent.

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 fast processor and quick solid state drive help to boost overall performance, reflected in this high score of 4,497 points.

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 PC Specialist Inferno scores almost 5 points in this test, meaning that it would ideal for moderate rendering duties on the move. You can't often say that about an 11.6 inch laptop!

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 used the following settings for this test, running at the native 1366×768 resolution of the panel. Direct X 11, Stereo 3D disabled, Shaders high, Tessellation normal, Anisotropy 4, Anti aliasing off.

A decent ‘average' score at this setting, however there are several sections of the test when the frame rate drops into single digits. Not ideal for a smooth experience.

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.

Not the most powerful gaming system, scoring 3762 points at the entry level settings. The processor may be powerful, but the graphics power of the laptop is in a much lower class.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate performance from the onboard Kingston V200 Solid State Drive.

Solid State drive performance isn't outstanding, being tied into the SATA 2 interface. This is significantly better than any mechanical unit however.

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 drive performance shows a peak of around 300 MB/s read and 210 MB/s write.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new extended Bluray Disc of Lord Of The Rings.

The system only takes around 13 percent CPU time to display the native bluray content.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of Sniper Reloaded to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.

1080p MKV files are demanding of the partnering hardware. The system loses 32 percent of processor time to render our high load test file. Still plenty of time left over for multitasking however.

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

Flash playback demands between 7 and 23 percent CPU time in this test.

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 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) 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 using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

Hardware acceleration is enabled for the testing today.

A final time of 10 minutes and 59 seconds is fantastic, again highlighting the power of the Intel Core i7 3630QM processor.

World of Warcraft (often abbreviated as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard’s previous Warcraft release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001.

We set the graphics to the highest possible quality settings.

No problems powering this popular game at the highest image quality settings.

Battlefield 3 (commonly abbreviated BF3) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. It is a direct sequel to 2005′s Battlefield 2, and the twelfth installment in the Battlefield franchise.

We configure the graphics options to a balance set of medium/high settings to maintain a good framerate at 1366×768.

No problems powering this excellent game at 1366×768, smooth throughout.

To test today, we are putting the machine through a variety of ‘real world’ situations, mirroring the real world usage of a potential customer.

One as a media movie lover on the move (wearing headphones), a person wanting to watch high definition media on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness.

Second as a businessman, with screen brightness around half way. Wireless was enabled. A mixture of checking, answering emails using Microsoft Office and editing pictures in Adobe Photoshop.

Lastly as a gamer, playing Left4Dead until the machine turned itself off.

The battery life of the machine is not going to be breaking any records as the high performance Core i7 does have a negative impact when the machine is constantly active.

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

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

When idle, the PC Specialist Inferno is quiet, but when loaded, the noise levels quickly rise. For modest duties it isn't too bad, but for intensive, prolonged 100% CPU duties the volume level is easily heard, even from a modest distance.

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 running Furmark and Cinebench together. Room ambient temperatures were 23c.

We measured results with CPUID Hardware Monitor software. The CPU was loaded with Cinebench in a loop and Furmark stress test.

The small chassis cooling system has to work hard to ensure the system is stable, which is why the noise levels are a little higher than usual. The Core i7 3630QM is a powerful QUAD core chip with hyperthreading, however the fan works well, maintaining a load threshold around 80c in our test environment.

We attached five diodes to the back of the chassis and measured the temperature (Celcius) after one hour of intensive work and gaming.

The underside of the chassis gets very warm under load and is rather uncomfortable to use long term. We would recommend using a gel based cooling pad between legs and machine if this is important.

The PC Specialist Inferno 11.6inch laptop has been designed by the company to deliver as much performance as possible within the confines of a tiny laptop chassis. It is the only 11.6 inch machine we have tested which incorporates a Quad Core i7 processor with hyperthreading.

Intel's Core i7-3630QM processor is unquestionably the star of the show and is normally seen installed inside larger 15 inch or 17 inch laptop systems. During testing we found this machine extremely responsive and capable of handling more serious duties, such as 3D rendering and video editing.

A final encoding time of just under 11 minutes for instance in our Media Espresso test is a new record for this market sector and obliterates any other sub 13 inch machine we have tested previously. Additionally, the responsive Solid State Drive ensures data bottlenecking is never a concern.

While gaming isn't this machines forte, the PC Specialist Inferno is capable of holding smooth frame rates at 720p with many titles and relatively high image quality settings, although we don't feel that a serious mobile gamer would be contemplating such a small system for full time gaming duties anyway.

The keyboard and touchpad are quite good, and we could happily use this machine for general office duties on the move, although as I am quite a large man I always have a problem dealing with small laptop keyboards. If you have experience of using a smaller laptop keyboard, then we see no problems with the PC Specialist Inferno.

Onboard sound is understandably weak, and a decent set of headphones or external speakers would be a prerequisite for fully enjoying a media experience.

The 11.6 inch 1366×768 panel has a matte covering and is bright enough to be used in most environments, although it won't be usable in direct sunlight. Viewing angles are distinctively average for this class, however PC Specialist are aiming to reach a wide audience, with a competitive asking price. Adding a state of the art IPS panel would raise end user costs.

The small size and fantastic processor power, does come with a caveat. The cooling fans have to work hard to maintain stable operating temperatures, and the undersize of the chassis can get very warm if the processor is highly stressed for long periods of time. This is the counterbalance with offering such a powerful Core i7 processor inside such a diminutive chassis.

The system we reviewed today is priced around the £650 inc vat mark which I think is fantastic value for money. You are not likely to find such a powerful, tiny laptop anywhere else right now at this price point. If you have always wanted to own a very small laptop, but didn't want to deal with low powered, feeble processing power then we feel that the pros of the PC Specialist Inferno far outweigh the cons.

You can buy this direct from PC Specialist, over here.

Pros:

• Fantastic processing power.
• excellent memory bandwidth.
• Very competitive price point.
• Decent keyboard.
• only 11.6 inches.
• SSD helps boost overall system responsiveness.
• 8GB of memory.
• stable.
• 3 USB ports.

Cons:

• Can get very warm.
• Clearly audible under load.

Kitguru says: In the sub 13 inch market, The PC Specialist Inferno is the clear performance king.

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