CPU & Memory Performance
Cinebench R15
Rather surprisingly, the Zoostorm Stormforce 340 manages to outperform its nearest competitor by a decent margin despite utilising the same CPU frequency. This is a superb result and illustrates the i5 6500’s power in CPU dominated workloads. Of course, the lower frequency and lack of hyperthreading inhibits it in synthetic benchmarks compared to high-end options but I highly doubt this will be a concern for budget users.
Super Pi
In terms of compute time, the system recorded a very good figure and the deficit to an overclocked i7-6700K was less than I anticipated.
AIDA64 Engineer
The system’s single channel DDR4 memory operating at the basic 2133MHz speed cannot compete with higher end alternatives. I still find it perplexing that a dual channel kit wasn’t used but perhaps it’s to leave further headroom to upgrade in the future. Putting these criticisms aside, the memory isn’t going to be a limiting factor outside of synthetic testing.
