Yoyotech Fi7epower 4.8 review

Intel’s latest generation of processors (codenamed Sandy Bridge) has ushered in a new era of blistering performance, with the Core i7-2600K providing the best set of benchmark results we’ve ever seen. We’ve been eager to see how the chip performs in a full PC, and Yoyotech has beaten its rivals to the punch with the Fi7epower 4.8.

Of the four new processors, Yoyotech has employed the K edition of the Core i7-2600, taking advantage of its unlocked base clock to bump up the stock speed from 3.4GHz to 4.8GHz. And with Intel’s new improved Turbo Boost system in place, those impressive numbers should rise even further with the processor under load.

Predictably, the result is record-breaking performance. The Yoyotech’s overall score of 3.49 in PC Pro’s application-based benchmarks is the best we’ve seen by a colossal margin: the previous record-holder, the Palicomp Kinetic Hydro-X, scored “only” 2.91 with the help of its previous-generation Core i7 processor.

That’s enough power to sate power users for some time to come, and gamers will be similarly happy. An AMD Radeon HD 6970 – the company’s current flagship card – provides graphical grunt. A score of 44fps when we ran our Very High quality Crysis benchmark at 1,920 x 1,080 and with 4x anti-aliasing activated is a good result, but it’s beaten by the Chillblast Fusion Dimension, which scored 51fps thanks to its Nvidia GeForce GTX 580, and the Palicomp system, which extracted 69fps from its pair of Radeon HD 6850 cards.

Elsewhere, there’s 8GB of RAM, twice as much as we’re used to seeing in all but the most expensive of machines, and plenty of storage, courtesy of a 2TB hard disk; Yoyotech hasn’t found room in the budget for an SSD or Blu-ray drive.

Yoyotech has packaged this blistering power in a lovely looking chassis. The curvaceous BitFenix Survivor is a model we haven’t before seen in PC Pro Labs and, while its can’t compete in size with the likes of the NZXT Phantom or Cooler Master HAF X, it makes a good first impression thanks to a slick design and elegant, hard-wearing matte finish.

Removing the side panel is slightly tortuous – you have to unscrew the pair of curved ends on the rear of the system before using thumbscrews to remove the panel – but you’ll be glad you did. The black finish is carried over to the interior, and Yoyotech has employed a modular PSU to help create an extremely tidy system.