Wired2Fire Hellspawn Xtreme review

£1486
Price when reviewed

Wired2Fire’s Hellspawn Xtreme is the first system to arrive in the PC Pro Labs touting AMD’s Radeon HD 6850 graphics. And in typical Wired2Fire fashion, it comes with not one but two of the monstrous things.

They’re not the highest-end cards, but plonking two of them together makes for some predictably strong benchmark results. An average of 65fps in our 1,920 x 1,080 Very High-quality Crysis benchmark is as good as we’ve seen in a PC, just edging ahead of our tests of the dual-GPU HD 5970 card. It’s also a massive 29fps faster than last month’s Yoyotech XDNA 760 with its Nvidia GeForce GTX 470.

The pair of cards excelled as we moved up the difficulty scale, with a score of 34fps in our 2,560 x 1,600 Very High-quality benchmark with 4x anti-aliasing. Nothing we’ve tested can match that, not even the brand new Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580 – although of course this is two cards against Nvidia’s one.

Wired2Fire Hellspawn Xtreme

So it’s our new fastest gaming PC, and it’s built inside Corsair’s Graphite Series 600T chassis. It’s striking despite the familiar meshed front, thanks to its matte black surround and squat, curved shape. Build quality is top-notch throughout, with thick, steel side panels that are released using a pair of clasps.

There’s more matte black finish inside, which, when combined with the black cables that snake from the modular PSU, makes for a stylish machine. The motherboard tray contributes to a tidy build, too; cables are hidden, and rubber-ringed holes allow cables to emerge only to access relevant ports and sockets.

The case is peppered with neat touches elsewhere. The bottom half of the meshed front can be removed with a click to access the 120mm fan and its dust filter, and detaching the top of the case allows installation of more case fans and half-height water-cooling reservoirs. There’s also a small lock that can secure the side of the chassis.

The front provides one USB 3 port – albeit routed from the backplate – alongside four USB 2 ports, audio jacks and FireWire. The rear provides a single USB 3 port alongside four more USB 2, two PS/2 ports, S/PDIF sockets and Gigabit Ethernet. Disappointingly, there’s no eSATA, but the USB 3 ports offer a different route to faster external storage.

Warranty

Warranty 2 yr return to base

Basic specifications

Total hard disk capacity 1,128GB
RAM capacity 6.00GB
Screen size N/A

Processor

CPU family Intel Core i7
CPU nominal frequency 2.80GHz
CPU overclocked frequency 4.00GHz
Processor socket LGA 1366
HSF (heatsink-fan) Corsair H70 water-cooling

Motherboard

Motherboard Asus P6X58D-E
Motherboard chipset Intel X58
Conventional PCI slots free 0
Conventional PCI slots total 2
PCI-E x16 slots free 1
PCI-E x16 slots total 3
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 1
PCI-E x1 slots total 1
Internal SATA connectors 4
Internal SAS connectors 1
Internal PATA connectors 1
Internal floppy connectors 0
Wired adapter speed 1,000Mbits/sec

Memory

Memory type DDR3
Memory sockets free 3
Memory sockets total 6

Graphics card

Graphics card AMD Radeon HD 6850
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards? yes
3D performance setting Low
Graphics chipset AMD Radeon HD 6850
Graphics card RAM 1.00GB
DVI-I outputs 4
HDMI outputs 2
VGA (D-SUB) outputs 0
DisplayPort outputs 0
Number of graphics cards 2

Hard disk

Hard disk Corsair Nova 128GB SSD
Capacity 128GB
Hard disk usable capacity N/A
Internal disk interface SATA/600
Spindle speed N/A
Hard disk 2 make and model Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ
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 32MB
Hard disk 3 make and model N/A
Hard disk 3 nominal capacity N/A
Hard disk 4 make and model N/A
Hard disk 4 nominal capacity N/A

Drives

Optical drive Samsung SH-B083L
Optical disc technology Blu-ray reader
Optical disk 2 make and model N/A
Optical disk 3 make and model N/A

Monitor

Monitor make and model N/A
Resolution screen horizontal N/A
Resolution screen vertical N/A
Resolution N/A x N/A
Pixel response time N/A
Contrast ratio N/A
Screen brightness N/A
DVI inputs N/A
HDMI inputs N/A
VGA inputs N/A
DisplayPort inputs N/A

Additional Peripherals

Speakers N/A
Speaker type N/A
Sound card Realtek HD Audio
Peripherals NA

Case

Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Case format Full tower
Dimensions 265 x 592 x 507mm (WDH)

Power supply

Power supply rating 750W
Power supply efficiency N/A

Free drive bays

Free front panel 5.25in bays 3

Rear ports

USB ports (downstream) 8
FireWire ports 1
PS/2 mouse port yes
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports 1
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports 1
Modem no
3.5mm audio jacks 8

Front ports

Front panel USB ports 5
Front panel memory card reader no

Mouse & Keyboard

Mouse and keyboard N/A

Operating system and software

OS family Windows 7
Software supplied N/A

Noise and power

Idle power consumption 194W
Peak power consumption 508W

Performance tests

Overall application benchmark score 2.79
Office application benchmark score 2.46
2D graphics application benchmark score 2.96
Encoding application benchmark score 2.29
Multitasking application benchmark score 3.44
3D performance (crysis) low settings 141fps
3D performance setting Low

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