PC Specialist ‘Vanquish 230XT’ Gaming System Review

Hard Drive Performance

AIDA64 Storage

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds.

Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

• Sequential reads/writes
• Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes
• Text copy
• Change dialog design
• internationalization (i18n)

Systems Comparison

Earlier in the review I made a note about how the model of GPU is not listed, allowing different brands of card to be used to keep down the price for the end-user and when we look at the hard drive we find the same situation. The SSD as we know has more of an influence on the overall system performance whilst a mechanical drive is there simply to make up the overall storage capacity. Consequently we may find one system with a Western Digital drive inside whilst another may have a Toshiba drive (such as our review system). Because of the undisclosed drive model, we will see slight fluctuations in performance, although all the drives do perform in the same ball park as each other.