Wired2Fire Velocity XFire review

We've recently been inundated with systems that use AMD’s new six-core Phenom processors and Wired2Fire’s is yet another. Inside it boasts an overclocked Phenom II X6 1055T processor, ATI Radeon HD 5000-series graphics card alongside 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. The difference with the Velocity XFire, though, is that it offers something a little different: it has a Blu-ray drive instead of a DVD writer.

As such it's a prime candidate for use as a media centre PC, especially if you’re buying on a budget. The ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card is plenty powerful enough to churn through 1080p content, too, although it won't be powerful enough to appeal to hardcore gamers.

Scores of 46fps in our High-settings Crysis benchmark and a near-playable 28fps in the Very High-settings test aren’t disastrous, however.

More impressively, Wired2Fire has overclocked its AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor from its stock speed of 2.8GHz to 3.6GHz. The result is a storming result in our 2D application-based benchmarks. The Wired2Fire achieved 2.13, which is enough to motor through most applications and one of the best scores we’ve seen from this particular CPU.

It isn't quite as good as we’ve seen from the best Intel-based systems – Wired2Fire’s own Hellspawn Ultima currently sits atop the A List and scored of 2.38 from its overclocked Core i3-530 processor – but it’s more than good enough.

Better still, it's housed in a Xigmatek Asgard chassis - one of the best-looking budget cases on the market, and it continues to impress when the side-panel is removed. All the free drive bays offer tool-free access, and the motherboard tray has a hole in it so you can swap out the CPU cooler without having to unhook everything. Wired2Fire has been fastidious about its cable tidying, too, so it’s a neat system that’s easy to work with.

There are problems, however, and the first is with flexibility. As with many others machines in this price bracket, the Asus motherboard doesn’t offer too much upgrade room: there’s no free PCI Express x16 slot, for instance, and one of the two spare DIMM sockets is blocked by the CPU cooler. At least the Xigmatek Red Scorpion is easier to remove than most.

The other problem, unfortunately, is noise. While the CPU cooler and PowerColor graphics card are barely audible, the Thermaltake power supply is a different story and delivered a near-constant hum. It's disappointing for media system and could prove annoying during quiet moments in movies.

The Velocity XFire is a competent all-round machine, then, with good performance and sound media PC credentials. But it falls down in a couple of key areas - noise and upgradeability - both of which put us off recommending it.

Author: Mike Jennings