PC Specialist Vanquish 670XM MkII Review

Featuring Intel’s Core i5-3570K overclocked to 4.4GHz and a burly GTX 670; Does the Vanquish 670XM MkII system from PC Specialist offer good value for money?

Product on Review: Vanquish 670XM MkII
Manufacturer and Sponsor: PC Specialist
Street price: £999 inc. VAT (At time of review)

Under the glare of our spotlights today is the Vanquish 670XM MkII from PC Specialist. PC Specialist have used the CoolerMaster HAF-XM to house all of the components for this system, this is a case which has a great reputation for solid build quality and pleasing feature-set. The processor is a third-generation Intel Core i5-3570K processor which is overclocked to a nippy 4.4GHz and the graphics card is a GTX 670 which powers through most games of today with ease. There is 8GB of RAM installed in this system and it is rated at 2400MHz which will be ideal for those needing maximum memory bandwidth.

Our sample comes preconfigured with Windows 8 installed on the 120GB SSD which makes for a rapid boot up time and fluent experiences within the operating system. For the nonessential items such as documents, music, games etc., there is a 1TB hard drive installed as a secondary storage solution. Lets take a look at the specs of this system and then venture on into the review.

Specifications

The system consists of the following components:

System Specs
CPU Intel Core i5 3570K @ 4.4GHz
CPU Cooler Corsair H60 + Arctic MX4 Paste
Motherboard ASUS P8Z77-V LK
RAM 8GB Kingston Hyper-X Beast 2400MHz
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB
Storage Kingston Hyper-X 3K 120GB SSD & 1TB HDD
Power Supply Corsair TX650V2
Case CoolerMaster HAF-XM
Operating System Windows 8
Warranty 1 Year

Packaging & Accessories

If you are expecting to receive this system in nothing more than the box in which the case originally shipped, you would be horribly mistaken. It comes in an enormous box which you may struggle to fit through your front door on its side. Yes really, it is that big of a box! The good news is that the system comes very well protected within its packaging which should be able to withstand some courier bashing. The box in which the system is shipped is so large; it doesn’t actually fit within the photo tent which we have set up. Below is an image of the system standing next to the box to give you an idea of its sheer size. (Apologies for the green carpet!)

Within the ginormous box, you will also receive a box filled with accessories. They comprise of things such as the booklets for the components which are within the system and a few driver DVDs. Nero Burning ROM 10 is included as well as a power cable, the blanking plates which were taken out when the GPU was fitted and some screws, cable ties and a SLI bridge. If you need a DVI to VGA adapter, there’s on too.

A Closer Look

Before we begin, we have to remove the foam insert which is in place to keep the components secure during shipment. The main focus of this protection is on the graphics card as that has the most play when it is moved around due to it only being secured in the PCIE slot and with two screws on the back plate. In order to get it out, all you need to do is give it a wiggle and pull gently, it should come straight out and then the system is ready to roll.

The front of the system has a clean look to it thanks to the cables having been routed behind the motherboard tray. From what we can tell, the optimum routes have been selected for most of the cables but the SATA cables could have been routed behind the motherboard tray rather than dragging them from the board and then behind the HDD caddy. It’s only a minor quirk and by no means is it a negative thing.

At the back, we have the cables which are routed to various locations around the case to supply power for the components. It can be quite a task to hide the cables from a power supply, especially those which aren’t modular – but PC Specialist have done a cracking job with their cable management.

The inputs and outputs on this system are plentiful. We will list them in our usual fashion by going from the top to the bottom.

1x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
2x USB 2.0 ports
1x Optical S/PDIF connection
1x HDMI
1x DisplayPort
1x D-sub
1x DVI
4x USB 3.0 ports
1x Gigabit Ethernet port
6x Audio jacks

On the graphics card, we have:
1x DVI-I
1x DVI-D
1x HDMI
1x DisplayPort

A Closer Look (Continued)

Within the Vanquish 670XM MkII is a set of Kingston Hyper-X Beast 2400MHz RAM. For this price range, the typical RAM used is usually 1600MHz or 1866MHz. It is rare to find such high performance RAM in a system of this value. Many people argue that the performance difference is negligible between 1600MHz and 2400MHz RAM (or faster for that matter). Slower RAM could have been used to make the system slightly cheaper, but having fast RAM can’t be a bad thing… right? Also illustrated in the image below is a glimpse of the cooling system used for the CPU. It is a Corsair H60 all-in-one water cooling solution. Some may prefer to have a high-end air cooler installed instead of one of these cooling solutions, but having one of these installed means there is a smaller chance of something getting damaged as it is much lighter load on the motherboard compared to a bulky air cooler.

Providing all of your graphics power is a single GTX 670, which is manufactured by Palit (this may be subject to change). It has 2GB of VRAM and it’s a reference design which means it may be a bit louder than other cards available on the market. However, it generally runs cool, and therefore the fan should stay in the lower RPM range rather than the upper end.

Powering everything within the MkII is a Corsair TX650W power supply. Corsair is known for their reliability and performance figures and this is definitely a solid unit that should not have any issues powering this sort of hardware.

The solid state drive in this system derives from the Kingston Hyper-X range. It is 120GB in capacity so there is enough space for the Windows install and most (if not all) of your programs with a little space to spare for a few of your frequently used games. Secondary storage is provided by a 1TB hard drive which at present is of the Seagate variety.

Test Systems & Benchmarks

PC Specialist CoolerMaster HAF-XM MkII
CPU Intel Core i5 3570K @ 4.4GHz
CPU Cooler Corsair H60 + Arctic MX4 Paste
Motherboard ASUS P8Z77-V LK
RAM 8GB Kingston Hyper-X Beast 2400MHz
GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 2GB
Storage Kingston Hyper-X 3K 120GB SSD & 1TB HDD
Power Supply Corsair TX650V2
Case CoolerMaster HAF-XM
Operating System Windows 8
Warranty 1 Year

Dino PCs Phantom GTX 670
CPU Intel Core i5 3570K @ 4.5GHz
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt
RAM Corsair Vengeance 4x4GB (16GB total) 1866MHz
GPU Gainward Phantom GTX 670 2GB
Sound card ASUS Xonar DGX
Storage Corsair Force3 120GB SSD & 2TB SATA 3 HDD
Power Supply Corsair TX650M
Case Fractal Design R4
Operating System Windows 8

We will be running the following benchmarks to give you a variety of results and to give you a vivid idea of how this system from PC Specialist performs:

AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
CineBench 11.5 – CPU score
SiSoftware Sandra 2012 – CPU and Memory benchmarks
x264HD Version 4 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
3DMark 11 – DX11 3D Performance and Extreme preset
Unigine Heaven 3.0 – FPS and Scores
Games – Crysis 2, DiRT Showdown, Far Cry 3 and Sleeping Dogs

Power Consumption

First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use. Then the system is loaded with 3DMark 11 to stress the system – watts are again monitored throughout the period of testing and the highest and lowest rated watts are then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

Please note that for some very strange reason, 3DMark 11 refused to run on our test system. We tried everything bar a full reinstall to get it to run but it just plain refused. We had to use a game benchmark to test which still portrays a result but it is not directly comparable to the other system from Dino PCs. The power usage should be very similar due to the specs being close to identical.

2D Benchmarks: AIDA64

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example – with HyperThreading disabled – the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs. 31-step long pipeline. The CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

2D Benchmarks: Cinebench 11.5

CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor is.

2D Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2012

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but we believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering the CPU and memory tests.

2D Benchmarks: x264HD Version 4

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. We think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently

3D Benchmarks: 3DMark 11

Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance, 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

3D Benchmarks: Unigine Heaven 3.0

Unigine’s benchmark is to showcase the benefits of DX 11 and the use of tessellation as opposed to normal rendering techniques. The demo has impressive visuals that give an insight into what we can expect from gaming in the future.

Gaming Benchmarks: Crysis 2 & DiRT Showdown

Whether played in 3D or standard 2D, Crysis 2 drops players into a devastated New York in the midst of an attack by a frightening alien species. The alien enemies are armed with deadly weaponry and exceptional sensory abilities that test players’ skill and push them to the limit. These terrifying invaders stalk the streets of New York, leaving the streets in chaos and the skyline in flaming ruin.
Surrounded by catastrophic destruction, players harness the superhuman abilities of the Nanosuit to level the playing field, becoming the ultimate weapon on a mission to save New York.

Note: We did not use FRAPS for the Dino PC results which means there is no maximum in the above graph, but we expect it to be very similar to that of the MkII.

An expansion on the rough-riding racing action of Dirt 3’s gymkhana competition, Dirt Showdown offers three modes focused on the wilder aspects of off-road driving: Race, Showdown and Demolition!

Gaming Benchmarks: Far Cry 3 & SleepingDogs

Beyond the limits of civilization lies an island, a lawless place ruled by piracy and human misery, where your only escapes are drugs or the muzzle of a gun. This is where you find yourself, trapped in a place that’s forgotten right from wrong, a place that lives by the principles of violence.
In Far Cry 3, players step into the shoes of Jason Brody, stranded on this mysterious tropical island. You dictate how the story unfolds, from the battles you choose to fight down to the allies or enemies you make along the way. Slash, sneak, detonate and shoot your way across the island in a world that has lost all sense of right and wrong. Beware the beauty and mystery of this unexplored paradise and live to outwit its roster of ruthless, desperate characters. You’ll need more than luck to survive.

Inspired by classic Hollywood and Asian cinema style action thrillers, Sleeping Dogs is a gritty open-world cop drama set in the vibrant city of Hong Kong. Sleeping Dogs catapults players into the role of undercover cop Wei Shen, tasked with taking down one of the world’s most fearsome criminal organizations from the inside… the Hong Kong Triads. As players explore the bustling and crowded Hong Kong Island, through its neon-lit side streets and sprawling street markets, an incredible story unfolds of loyalty and betrayal where Wei begins to question his own motives as he is sucked in deeper than he could ever imagine.
Offering players an island packed with action, every street corner, market stall, harbour dock or city skyscraper can become an opportunity for intense shoot-outs, adrenaline-fuelled street races and intense, brutal martial arts combat. Featuring one of the most intuitive and imaginative combat systems, Sleeping Dogs empowers players to perform an extensive set of martial arts moves, singlehandedly taking on numerous opponents. Players perform bone-crunching kicks and combos, vicious counters and a cinematic set of environmental takedowns making use of countless real-world items from circular saws to phone booths, incinerators to refrigerator doors.

Conclusion

After putting the Vanquish 670XM MkII from PC Specialist through its paces, it is time to give you our full verdict on the system. So, what do we think of it?

Let us begin with the packaging and work our way through it. As mentioned in the review, the box in which this machine ships in is simply enormous. Laid on its side, you will probably struggle to get it through your front door. Considering its size, you would probably be expecting to get a full system with a monitor, a mouse and keyboard within the box, rather than just the machine and the accessories box on their own. However, it does ensure that your new gaming rig arrives through your front door safely. The foam insert within the system is also another assurance that your system will be just fine once delivered.

The chassis is solid which is pretty much what you would expect from a CoolerMaster HAF-XM. The system is well built and from a visual stand point, we feel that the cable management has been taken care of. Whilst it is arguable that some of the cables could have been routed differently, overall there is nothing wrong with the way that it has been done.

On the performance front we feel that it has held its own when it comes down to the gaming and computational benchmarks. Sure, it is not as quick as the system it was up against but it is also £400 lighter on your wallet which is definitely something to take into consideration. However, even though it may not be as quick as the more expensive rig, the Vanquish 670XM MkII is by no means a slouch and it is certainly more than capable of providing you with high FPS in all of the recent titles. Thanks to the third-generation Intel Core i5-3570K which is running at 4.4GHz, an NVIDIA GTX 670 and its incredibly fast RAM running at 2400MHz, this machine oozes high-end components and delivers in the performance sector.

As this system uses the standard fans which ship with the HAF-XM, it does get quite loud once the system is placed under load. Noise is subjective though as not everyone finds the same noise levels a bother, some can tolerate louder noises whilst others cannot. You could play with the BIOS configurations and reduce the fan speeds if you know what you are doing – but, this should be done at your own risk as it will affect the cooling performance which may cause instabilities.

Judging by the performance of the system, the build quality as well as the components that are used within the Vanquish 670XM MkII, we feel that it is worth a gold medal as it provides excellent performance for the money.

If you are in the market for a new gaming system and have a budget of £1000 then the Vanquish 670XM MkII should definitely be on your short-list. This system is loaded with high-quality components which will assist with both 2D and 3D tasks. Solid build quality, great components and cable management set the Vanquish 670XM MkII aside from other options currently available and we are pleased to give this system our Gold award.

Pros
+ High-end components used throughout
+ Good cable management
+ Rock solid performance

Cons
– Noisy under load