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It has been a while since we looked at a prebuilt system designed for the enthusiast gamer who has little time, or interest in building a new kick ass system. With this in mind PC Specialist sent over their Vortex XT-270FB system which on paper looks very impressive. Is a liquid cooled overclocked Core i7 2700k @ 4.8ghz with 120GB Solid State drive and an AMD HD7970 enough to get the gaming juices flowing?
PC Specialist Ltd are a company who were established in 2003 and in the last couple of years have became one of the largest T2 custom PC and notebook manufacturers in the United Kingdom.
But what happens six months down the line if you want to upgrade the system? Many PC builders won't cover any user upgrades, but PC Specialist allow the user to upgrade and modify the system (within reason) without invalidating their warranty, they even offer ‘one on one' advice and phone support to ensure the process goes smoothly.
| PC Specialist Vortex XT-270FB | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-2700k @ 4.8GHz |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 |
| Memory | 8GB Kingston Hyper-X 1600MHz |
| Graphics Card | 3GB AMD Radeon HD7970 |
| SSD/HDD | 120GB Kingston Hyper-X SSD 1TB WD Caviar Black 6Gb/s HDD |
| DVD/Blu ray | 24x DVD-RW |
| CPU Cooler | CooliT ECO II FatBoy + Arctic Cooling MX4 Paste |
| Case | CoolerMaster HAF-932 Case |
| Operating System | Windows Home Premium 64bit |
| Monitor | N/A |
| Keyboard & Mouse | N/A |
| Speakers | N/A |
| Warranty | 3 Year Silver Warranty |
| Price ex VAT | £1,249.17 |
| Price Inc VAT | £1,499.00 |
very nice build indeed. They could have saved a few quid with the 2600k, as it hits the same speeds. maybe used a slightly better SSD?
I like that CPU cooler, seems brilliant. dont think our local store has them however.
normally I have a chuckle at systems you review, such as the ever crap DELL, but when the insides were opened, that is a better wiring job than I could do.
Nice pictures by the way.
It is a very good system, no doubt about it, but I think to be a successful system builder in the UK (i mean really successful) then you need to do something different. Something no one else is trying.
Dell and Alienware may get slated, however they have their own case designs which you cant get elsewhere (alienware anyway). This is why Dell bought them out, they work well as a system builder and offer something that no one else can.
I dont mean to sound like im discrediting PC SPECIALIST, but really I think anyone can make a system like this in, pick good components, and a nice case and get the best motherboard for overclocking then copy settings over. Its not that hard.
In closing, good review, nice system, but nothing that I will remember in a day or two.