Wired2Fire Hellspawn Xtreme review

Upgrade room is reasonable. Three DIMM sockets lie empty between the tall heatsinks affixed to the Corsair memory, and three 5.25in bays can all be used without tools. Four empty hard disk bays face the side of the chassis and, while the bays are fitted with caddies, they’re made of plastic and weak.

The graphics cards restrict room on the motherboard: the pair of PCI slots is totally obscured and, while there’s a single PCI-Express x1 socket free, the one empty PCI-Express x16 slot runs at just x1 speed. It’s unlikely you’ll want to add a third graphics card, but it’s worth knowing.

The lack of upgrade room is less critical when the rest of the specification is considered. Taking centre stage is Intel’s Core i7-930 processor, overclocked from its stock speed of 2.8GHz to 4GHz. It’s a boost that pays dividends: the Xtreme’s overall score of 2.79 in our benchmarks isn’t far behind the record-breaking 2.87 of the Yoyotech. It’s worth noting that the combined processor and graphics power on offer here contributes to a high power draw of 508W at peak performance.

Elsewhere, 6GB of 1,600MHz Corsair DDR3 RAM is more than enough, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is loaded on a Corsair Nova 128GB SSD, and traditional storage comes in the form of a 1TB Samsung drive. There’s a Blu-ray drive, too.

The processor is chilled by Corsair’s H70 water-cooling kit, a small unit made up of a reservoir sandwiched between a pair of 120mm fans. While it reined in the overclocked CPU to a palatable maximum temperature of 71°C, we were wary about noise; our previous experience of the H70 saw its loud whirr prove unpalatable.

Wired2Fire has assuaged our concerns by replacing the Corsair fans with Sharkoon Silent Eagle units, which are far quieter. It’s a shame the same can’t be said of the rest of the Hellspawn Xtreme; the GPU fans worked themselves up into a high-pitched frenzy during our more demanding graphics tests. The noise is dampened by the beefy chassis, but it’s still pretty loud.

It’s that pair of graphics cards, though, that provides the Xtreme’s main selling point: the strongest gaming performance we’ve seen in a PC. The Wired2Fire can’t quite compete with the Yoyotech in other areas, though, thanks to the XDNA’s faster application performance, quieter operation and more sophisticated build.

But it depends what you’re looking for in a high-end machine. For most of us, looking for a bit more all-round polish than this raw system can give, the Yoyotech is still the better PC. But if you’re a hardcore gamer on the hunt for the fastest system going, the Wired2Fire Hellspawn Xtreme won’t disappoint.