Overclockers Titan Prodigy Arctic review

£1471
Price when reviewed

PC Pro’s labs are no stranger to hulking desktop PC towers, but with numerous empty slots, bays and sockets that may never be used, it’s becoming clear that these monoliths are overkill for the average PC user. Overclockers has set out to prove this with its Titan Prodigy, which crams big-case components into an endearingly compact chassis.

The case in question, BitFenix’s Prodigy, stands 404mm off the desk and is 359mm wide – significantly smaller than the average tower. It’s better looking than many full-size PCs, too: the white façade and handles contrast strongly against the black borders, and the soft plastic used for much of the front of the machine feels good, even if it does have the tendency to get a little grubby.

Overclockers Titan Prodigy Arctic

The metal side panels are extremely sturdy, the plastic used for the front of the machine is strong, and the handles on the front and rear of the system have a little give in them – but that, according to BitFenix, is down to design. The metal used inside feels strong, and the only low point is the ill-fitting side panel that rattles when moved.

Removing the side panel makes it immediately obvious just how much hardware Overclockers has crammed into its system. One side is dominated by a graphics card that stretches almost the entire length of the chassis; the mini-ITX motherboard is screwed onto a platform halfway up the rear of the enclosure that sits on top of the full-size PSU; and an Overclockers-branded watercooling loop, with two Xigmatek fans, hangs above the motherboard. Cables are generally kept out of the way, with many stored beside the PSU or held together towards the rear of the case, but there’s limited scope for pernickety cable-tidying in a chassis so small.

One thing that’s lacking, unsurprisingly, is upgrade room. A Blu-ray drive occupies the single 5.25in bays, both 3.5in bays are occupied, and the ASRock Z77E-ITX motherboard is fit to burst. Its two memory slots, single PCI Express x16 socket and three of its four SATA ports are occupied and, even if you were to add more storage or an additional optical drive, there’s nowhere for it to go. The backplate offers four USB 3 sockets, eSATA, a clear CMOS button and single-band 802.11n wireless.

Overclockers Titan Prodigy Arctic

Not that you’ll need much upgrade room for several years. The processor’s speed boost from 3.4GHz to 4.2GHz is modest by high-end PC standards – we’ve seen the chip used here, the Core i5-3570K, hit 4.8GHz – and it helped the Titan Prodigy return a benchmark score of 1.09. That’s a little slower than the fastest systems we’ve seen, but it’s more than enough grunt to cast aside any application, and the 8GB of RAM helps keep things fluid during multitasking, too.

Gaming horsepower comes from an overclocked Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 provided by KFA2. Its core has been boosted from 1,006MHz to 1,150MHz, and it delivered some of the best benchmarks we’ve seen for a long time. In our Very High test the Titan Prodigy returned a score of 79fps – nine frames quicker than the GTX 680 manages at its stock speed. The Wired2Fire Hellspawn Predator, one of our favourite base units, scored just 63fps.

Warranty

Warranty 1 yr return to base

Basic specifications

Total hard disk capacity 1,240GB
RAM capacity 8.00GB

Processor

CPU family Intel Core i5
CPU nominal frequency 3.40GHz
CPU overclocked frequency 4.20GHz
Processor socket LGA 1155
HSF (heatsink-fan) Overclockers water-cooling

Motherboard

Motherboard ASRock Z77E-ITX
Motherboard chipset Intel Z77
Conventional PCI slots free 0
Conventional PCI slots total 0
PCI-E x16 slots free 0
PCI-E x16 slots total 1
PCI-E x8 slots free 0
PCI-E x8 slots total 0
PCI-E x4 slots free 0
PCI-E x4 slots total 0
PCI-E x1 slots free 0
PCI-E x1 slots total 0
Internal SATA connectors 4
Internal SAS connectors 0
Internal PATA connectors 0
Internal floppy connectors 0
Wired adapter speed 1,000Mbits/sec

Memory

Memory type DDR3
Memory sockets free 0
Memory sockets total 2

Graphics card

Graphics card Nvidia GeForce GTX 680
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards? no
3D performance setting High
Graphics chipset KFA2 GeForce GTX 680
Graphics card RAM 2.00GB
DVI-I outputs 0
HDMI outputs 3
VGA (D-SUB) outputs 0
DisplayPort outputs 1
Number of graphics cards 1

Hard disk

Hard disk Mach Extreme SSD
Capacity 240GB
Hard disk usable capacity 223GB
Internal disk interface SATA/600
Hard disk 2 make and model Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D
Hard disk 2 nominal capacity 1,000GB
Hard disk 2 formatted capacity 931
Hard disk 2 spindle speed 7,200RPM
Hard disk 2 cache size 64MB

Drives

Optical disc technology Blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo

Additional Peripherals

Sound card Realtek HD Audio

Case

Chassis BitFenix Prodigy
Case format Small form-factor
Dimensions 250 x 359 x 404mm (WDH)

Free drive bays

Free front panel 5.25in bays 0

Rear ports

USB ports (downstream) 2
PS/2 mouse port no
Modem no
3.5mm audio jacks 6

Front ports

Front panel USB ports 2
Front panel memory card reader no

Operating system and software

OS family Windows 7

Noise and power

Idle power consumption 78W
Peak power consumption 389W

Performance tests

3D performance (crysis) low settings 99fps
3D performance setting High
Overall Real World Benchmark score 1.09
Responsiveness score 1.15
Media score 1.06
Multitasking score 1.06

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