PC Specialist ‘Vanquish 230XT’ Gaming System Review

Introduction When browsing through the countless pre-built systems that are on offer from the likes of Overclockers UK, Scan, CyberpowerPC and PC Specialist as we have here today; most of the time we find users spending on average around £1400-1600 (~$2300-2700 USD) for their new gaming rig and whilst you do get a great amount of power for your money, we do wonder how much extra pixel pushing power do you really get from a system that is around 20% cheaper to buy. Obviously there are going to be some obvious differences in the systems specification and this mainly includes the motherboard, processor and graphics card; but are you really getting 20% extra performance for your money or is it worth spending that bit less and spending that extra cash on a better monitor for example? With the number of system integrators in the UK slowly increasing, staying one step ahead of the competition in terms of pricing and quality is a never-ending battle. Each company out there has their own little twist on what makes a great system and in the case of PC Specialist, it's not just the system that you are paying for - customer service is important as well. Since we took our first look at one of PC Specialist's budget gaming systems; namely the Vanquish X200, back in the first half of last year, we have come to learn that offering a top rate of customer service from the pre-sales end of the line right through to after-sales technical support is of a high priority to this devoted team of enthusiasts. Not only is this a passion driven business, but the extra care that they put into their systems does not constitute to a hefty price tag and it soon becomes clear that the price is far more justifiable with all the hidden extras that you get included - as standard. The Vanquish 230XT that we've got in today comes with a delivered to your door price tag of £1137.00 inc VAT and inside it packs a strong mix of mid-to-high range components that have a better bang-for-buck appeal to them over some of the top end components that we see out there on the market today. Built onto an Asus Z87-A motherboard we have an overclocked and water-cooled quad-core 4670k running at 4.2GHz, teamed up with 16GB of 2400MHz HyperX Beast Memory from Kingston and an AMD R9 280X graphics card ready to deliver a joyful gaming experience. On top of all of that we get a 120GB HyperX 3K SSD and a 1TB hard drive for all of your games and media content to go on and all of this is packed into a budget friendly 230T mid-tower chassis from Corsair. Name: Vanquish 230XT Case: Corsair 230T Mid-Tower MB: Asus Z87-A CPU: Intel Core i5-4670k @ 4.2GHz Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 120M RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB HDD: 1TB SATAIII HDD (Toshiba) GPU: Powercolor AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB PSU: Corsair TX650M Modular ODD: 24x Dual-Layer DVD Writer Misc: Arctic MX-4 Extreme Thermal Paste OS: Windows 8.1 Warranty: Standard 3 Year Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) Price: £1137.00 inc VAT & Standard UK Delivery Bundled into the shipping box alongside the chassis, we find a smaller box inside of which PC Specialist include all of the extra accessories that one would typically find inside the box of each individual component used - after all, you are paying for all of these little extra accessories , and should you wish to upgrade one or two bits at a later stage you may find yourself in need of something that's in this box. A Closer Look Opening up the welcome pack, inside we find all of the various bits of paperwork, CD's and accessories that come with each of the system's components. On top of all of this there is an additional PC Specialist branded CD for reinstalling Windows 8.1 on to the system and beside this a welcome booklet which takes you through all of the various steps required to get your system up and running as well as what to do when things are not running quite as smooth as they should be. On the outside of the chassis is a bold note stuck in place with masking tape (so not to damage the chassis or leave a sticky residue) warning that inside the system is a foam insert to protect the internal components during transit. Whilst this chassis has a window, through which the foam can easily be seen, we have to remember that not all cases have a window, so the note in that circumstance is even more valuable to avoid any damage from turning the system on. Accessories and packaging aside, we can now get a closer look at what Corsair's 230T chassis and the Vanquish 230XT has to offer. Alongside a fairly standard front I/O lineup which includes two USB3.0 ports, the 230XT has been kitted out with a dual-layer DVD-Writer. Optical drives for many users may seem like a worthless component to include in their own systems, but for any pre-built system it's a fundamental item to bundle in. Below the optical drive there is little else to see apart from a small Corsair logo that lies at the bottom of the chassis. The 230T comes with three fans as standard, two of which are found behind the front panel to draw air in and through the system. On the top of the case there is plenty of additional space for installing fans, although as we did find when Pete took a closer look at the 230T in our in-depth review, there is a restriction with 240mm radiators, so take this into account when looking to upgrade your cooling options. Running down the rear of the Vanquish 230XT we get a good range of output options from the Asus Z87-A motherboard and to save confusion between which display outputs to use when setting your system up, the three display outputs on the motherboard have been covered, leaving the GPU options to work with. Around the GPU there is heaps of ventilation on offer which, when paired with the two large fans on the front of the case, gives a good level of airflow on tap to keep things cool. When reviewing a pre-built system, one of the things that I look out for is how well the cables have been worked around the chassis. In a number of instances the end-user will never open their chassis to see what's inside, but having all the cables neat and tidy inside is crucial for airflow and as a result there can be a huge impact on the system temperature. Thanks to the modular power supply that has been selected for this system, the Vanquish 230XT has a minimal number of cables inside making the tidying process quick and simple. Turning the chassis around and looking inside the main body of the Vanquish 230XT, we can see how air has plenty of space to flow through the system and keep items such as the GPU nice and cool when under load. On top of this there is no obvious theme of colour running through the system, although the vast majority of components are black/grey, though coloured accents on the motherboard and GPU make them stand out a little. When listing the system specifications vendors tend to leave the graphics card undefined. There is a very good reason for this as we've seen in the past and it all comes down to cost and availability. By listing the system with a specific card, the overall cost of the system as a whole will be influenced by the price of that particular graphics card. Consequently we see system integrators using cards that offer the best price at the time of building and the saving from this is then passed on to the end user in turn By only listing the type of card that is included in the build, PC Specialist are able to use whatever card is available at the time and also one that keeps the overall cost of the build down. To put this another way, whilst we have got a Powercolor branded card in our review system, there could be a chance that you may get an MSI or Sapphire branded card in yours. Closed loop water cooling products have dramatically changed the cooling market and they are now one of the most popular options to go for when buying or upgrading a system. In the Vanquish 230XT a Seidon 120M has been selected, keeping the overclocked 4670k cool under the collar whilst also keeping the acoustics to a reasonable level. Memory wise we find a full 16GB of Kingston's HyperX Beast line of DIMMs on tap. With a clock speed of 2400MHz this is by no means a slouch of a kit and will help to keep the overall performance of the system up where possible. In the vast majority of systems that we look at, system integrators tend to go for a two drive storage array with a full fat mechanical hard drive for bulk storage and a solid state drive for the boot drive. The Vanquish is no different and with 120GB of SSD and 1TB of hard drive to play around with there is more than enough to keep the average gamer happy. The last bit of the system that we have to see is the power supply. With 650W of power available there is adequate headroom left for a second graphics card to be added at a later stage if desired. Test Procedure To test this system, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this system. This particular system comes pre-installed with Windows 8.1, but of course this can be customised upon checkout. A wide variety software applications are used to gain the broadest spectrum of results and this allows us to get the best and fairest set of results for comparison as possible. Hardware used: Acoustic dBA meter AC power meter Software used: 3DMark 11 3DMark 2013 AIDA64 Cinebench R11.5 Cinebench R15 CrystalDiskMark CPU-Z HW-Monitor PCMark 7 PCMark 8 Super PI Unigine Heaven 4.0 Unigine Valley 1.0 Games used: Bioshock Infinite Dirt Showdown Metro Last Light Sleeping Dogs Tomb Raider CPU-Z GPU-Z PCMark 7 PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry-level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive. Systems Comparison In PCMark 7, the Vanquish is one of the lower results on the performance charts as we expected, although it is not right at the bottom. The reason for this really comes down to the processor with Intel chips having a better level of performance for all-round use over AMD's APUs. PCMark 8 CMark 8 is the latest version in our popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. Systems Comparison PCMark 8 shows a similar level of overall performance as PCMark 7 and whilst this is not a high level score, it is good for the money. 3DMark “The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets, to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it’s not just for Windows. With 3DMark you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It’s the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we’ve ever created. Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.” 3D Mark 2013 FireStrike 3D Mark 2013 Fire Strike Extreme Systems Comparison The 3D graphics performance that we see from the 4670k and R9 280X combo fits in with the performance curve from the other systems we have looked at and fits neatly in between the results of the two systems that we have seen from Cyberpower PC. 3DMark 11 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. 3DMark 11 Performance 3DMark 11 Extreme Systems Comparison 3DMark 11 gives us another strong result for the components used in the 230XT, throughout the benchmark the frame rates may not be as high as those from a top end system, but they are smooth and consistent - this is what matters the most. Unigine Heaven 4.0 Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 1680 x 1050 1920 x 1080 Systems Comparison Heaven follows the same trend that we see in both of the 3DMark test suites with a level of performance that is a bit higher than that of a 4670k teamed up with a GTX 770. Unigine Valley 1.0 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. 1680x1050 1920x1080 Systems Comparison When running at 1920 x 1080 we do see the minimum frame rates in the Valley benchmark drop to just below 25fps, however this is only for a split second and the average frame rate of ~48fps shows that the card is able to run at a smooth level overall through the benchmark. Bioshock Infinite BioShock Infinite is the third game in the BioShock series. It is a first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games, and published by 2K Games. It supports higher-resolution textures and fully utilises DirectX 11 capabilities. Moving over to the real world gaming benchmarks, Bioshock sees this system running at close to 100fps with both of our test resolutions. Since we started using Bioshock as a gaming benchmark, AMD's drivers have been tweaked and tuned to bring more pixel pushing performance to the surface and the result is frame rates that are more than adequate. DiRT Showdown Dirt Showdown is a video game from Codemasters and is part of the Colin McRae Rally games revolving around a tour of events to compete in allowing you to win money and prizes to spend on new cars and upgrades as well as unlocking new events and races. The game uses high-resolution textures and AA settings to simulate dust particles, terrain and damage to the vehicles. Being optimised for AMD cards is an advantage for Dirt Showdown and like Bioshock we see a strong set of frame rates, even with the quality turned right up. Metro Last Light Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver.he game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. It utilises DirectX 11, Tessellation and heavy shadows. Whilst Dirt Showdown tends to sway in the direction of AMD cards, Metro Last Light is more suited to NVIDIA cards. This however is not a problem for the 280X as it easily pushes past the 70fps mark in both test resolutions. Sleeping Dogs Sleeping Dogs is a 2012 open world action-adventure game based around Wei Shen; a Chinese-American police officer going undercover. The game utilises DirectX 11 features as well as high quality intensive reflections and high-resolutions textures. Sleeping Dogs continues the performance trend that we have seen in the other gaming benchmarks and like Bioshock we get frame rates of around 100fps - more than enough to enjoy your game with. Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a video game franchise which also includes comic books, novels, theme park rides and movies, centering around the adventures of the English archaeologist Lara Croft. Square Enix have rebooted the franchise with a DirectX 11 utilised game with Anti-Aliaising features and lighting effects. We know that Tomb Raider has TresFX at its disposal and thus will favour AMD cards a lot more and to keep the playing field far more even we leave this disabled. With this option disabled we do get yet again a strong set of frame rates - enabling TresFX will obviously drop the performance, but it's nice to know that there is plenty of space available to accommodate the extra detail. HD Video Playback We opted for some Iron Man 2 to assist us with this test, utilising the 1080p HD MKV file to check on CPU utilisation. Running the movie using VLC Player and using a predefined action scene, we check the CPU usage to see how it fairs with HD video playback. CPU Benchmarks Cinebench CINEBENCH 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. R11.5 R15 Systems Comparison With the 4670k only having one thread per core by design, we do find the Cinebench scores a little lower than we would normally see on an Intel chip, however the scores are still strong for a chip of this type. CPU Benchmarks Continued Super PI Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point—up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss–Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits. Systems Comparison Like Cinebench, the single tread design of the 4670k does result in a lower level of performance over say a 4770k which offers two thread per core. With the processor being overclocked the gap in performance is reduced right down an a 32M calculation is only a matter of seconds behind a 4770k. Memory Benchmarks AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth 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. Systems Comparison When I reviewed Kingston's HyperX Beast memory kit last year, one of the things that I praised it for was its astonishing level of bandwidth for the money. Whilst we typically see 1600 or 1866MHz memory kits being used in pre-built systems, the 2400MHz kit that is inside the Vanquish 230XT helps to bridge the performance gap. SSD 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 Having reviewed the HyperX 3K SSD on its own we can see that there is a bit of a bottleneck in the drives performance. Taking the drive out of this system and testing it away from the Asus motherboard allowed us to identify that there is a bottleneck with the motherboards SATA controller. Whilst this may deter some potential buyers, we have to remember that when running at speeds of over 400MB/s, the difference in performance that one would actually experience is not as wide as the figures may suggest. 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. USB 3.0 Performance AIDA64 USB 3.0 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 Whilst the SSD performance is a little down when compared to what we know the drive can do, the USB3.0 performance is right up. With a write speed of just over 160MB/s we are able to get the highest level of performance that we have seen to date from our Supersonic Magnum flash drive. The read speeds are also similarly impressive with just over 300MB/s on offer. Acoustics Noise is generally the bain of most consumers lives and in the hope of finding the quietest operation, we feel it's necessary to show you the audio level of components. Typically with a desktop system we would fit a When we look at the overall acoustic properties of a pre-built system, one of the components that we look at in particular is the graphics card. Having reviewed a large number of cards, we can easily get a feel of their performance, both acoustically and thermally. Powercolor's fans are not the quietest out there and are the main reason for the slightly higher acoustic levels of the Vanquish 230XT as a whole, although this is recorded as a worst case scenario when the GPU is under a very heavy workload. Day-to-day gaming may not incur so much GPU load and the acoustics therefore may be slightly lower. Power Consumption To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment. By dropping down to a 4670k and using a mid-range R9 280X, the Vanquish is a lot more conservative in its power draw. Topping out at just over 350Watts under load and just under 100W idle, there are not only savings to be made when buying the system - the running costs are going to be lower as well. Temperatures Measuring temperatures is all about being consistent therefore we keep a steady eye on monitoring the ambient room temperature to make sure that it stays the same. While this is constantly being monitored, we measure the idle temperature of the card using HWMonitor over a 15 minute period. Once this has been recorded, we set FurMark into motion for 15 minutes and record the results again. In the same way that dropping down to a 4670k reduces the power draw, the core temperature of the CPU is also a bit lower - even though it is overclocked. The graphics card temperatures in our review system are a little bit towards the top end of the scale and this is reflected by the acoustic levels. Final Thoughts Pricing The overall purchase cost of the Vanquish 230XT and its relative performance is one of the most important aspects of the system. As mentioned back at the start of this review, we typically see systems in the region of £1400-1600 being chosen, but dropping the bar down to a slightly lower level doesn't necessarily mean that you are losing out on a lot of performance. With a price tag of just over £1100 delivered in the UK, PC Specialist's Vanquish 230XT has a lot of performance on offer for the cost. To sweeten the deal even more, eTeknix readers can order this system for a limited time at an even more astonishing price of £999.00 delivered - that's a saving of £138.00. To get this offer price, head over to PC Specialist using this link where you can select and buy this well-balanced system (upgrades will incur additional costs). Overview When buying a pre-built system, we obviously want to get as much performance as we can for our money and in a few instances ,gamers tend to go over their initial budgets simply to get bragging rights of having a high performance system. The Vanquish 230XT however is a system that carries a more modest price tag and the performance that it has to offer for that price is very good as well. Naturally we don't have a top end graphics card or processor, but when we come to think about it, does the average gamer even need that high level of performance and will they even notice the difference? The simple answer to this is no. In most scenarios, the end-user will typically have a single 1920 x 1080 monitor hooked up to the GPU and with the strong frame rates that the R9 280X is able to deliver, to be perfectly honest, you've got more than enough performance on tap. When looking at the choice of components, we have said time and time again that with technology the way that it is today, you really don't have to go to the extreme to get decent performance and this statement cannot be made any clearer than as we have here in this review. Obviously there is going to be one or two users that will want to have a bit more SSD capacity over the standard 120GB drive or a bit more hard drive storage space, however for the average Joe, 120GB of SSD and 1TB of hard drive space is more than enough to keep you going for a while. The build quality and service is something else that I have to commend PC Specialist on - we do see that every system integrator will put a lot of effort into making a quality system, but the addition of the welcome pack with a PC Specialist branded user manual and all of the information on what to do when things don't go quite as planned is something that sets this vendor apart in my eyes. You don't need to pay over the odds to get great customer service. What's the disadvantage of this system over some of the more expensive choices I hear you ask - after all there are pro's and con's to every system out there. With this system there is going to be a certain plateau of performance the you will get - especially if you want to overclock the processor that little bit more. Having a mainstream board over one built for high performance systems is in some respects a bit of a bottleneck, but what we also have to remember is that most people who buy systems like this are not hardcore enthusiasts - they simply want a system that will work out of the box and they won't need to touch the back-end to get it going. If people are wanting to overclock it further then they'll automatically be looking at the upper end of the price scale anyway. Overall I have to give the Vanquish 230XT a thumbs up, it has impressed me with its strong performance level for the money and with PC Specialist's renowned customer service coming as a standard addition to any order, you are safe in the knowledge that if something doesn't go quite as planned you have a highly experienced team of people behind you that will help you every step of the way and have you back in your favourite game in no time at all. Pros Renowned customer support Wallet friendly price tag Well balanced performance for the cost. Three year standard warranty Lower running costs Plenty of space for future upgrades Cons The graphics card used in some instances may raise the acoustic levels up a shade. "We all want to get as much performance as we can for our money and this is certainly the case when we look at buying a pre-built system. With cost a huge deciding factor in what we end up having, spending a little bit less and getting a system such as the Vanquish 230XT will give you a more than average level of gaming performance; with the savings free to spend on getting a better monitor and peripheral set to enjoy your games on." Thanks to PC Specialist for providing this review sample.