Wired2Fire Diablo GTX review

Wired2Fire has relied heavily on Xigmatek enclosures in recent months and, while the Asgard isn’t the largest or flashiest chassis on offer, it’s easy to see why it keeps cropping up.

The inoffensive looks hide an air of understated practicality, with the matte interior offering tool-free entry to the empty drive bays, of which three 5.25in and 3.5in bays are empty. Fastidious cable tidying throughout makes upgrading and managing the PC simple, even if the Xigmatek’s modest dimensions mean it’s slightly on the cramped side. It also lacks a motherboard tray.

There’s a good amount of upgrade room, though. The pair of empty DIMM sockets aren’t impeded, and the second PCI Express x16 slot runs at x8 speed, providing enough additional bandwidth for all but the most powerful graphics cards.

The neat build and Xigmatek Scorpion CPU cooler also contribute to an extremely quiet system that’s barely audible when idling, although the graphics card does emit a fair amount of noise when running at full pelt.

The understated design certainly doesn’t correspond with a lack of processing power. Its overclocked Core i5-2500K runs at 4.8GHz, and an overall benchmark score of 3.27 is impressive, so there’s plenty of juice for handling the most demanding software, even if the Palicomp Phoenix i5 Sniper was faster.

Elsewhere, the standout part is a Blu-ray drive – not often seen in a system this cheap – and it’s partnered with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk.

Gaming power is provided by a relatively rare Nvidia card, the GeForce GTX 460. It’s a fine product, but disappoints when stacked up against the AMD Radeon HD 6950 cards we’ve seen in other systems at this price: it helped the Wired2Fire score 25fps in our 1,920 x 1,080 Very High quality Crysis test, with the Palicomp running through at twice that speed.

It’s a shame, because Wired2Fire has chosen an impressive monitor. The Hanns.G HH251DPB has an unusual 25in diagonal and offers quality up there with the best 24in panels we’re used to seeing with a mid-range system, complete with fine colours and detail. There’s a slight lack of brightness and some backlight bleed, but the size makes up for that.

That impressive TFT helps propel the Wired2Fire into the reckoning, but it doesn’t gel comfortably with the lack of gaming performance. It’s a good combination for watching Blu-rays - and it's slightly cheaper than rivals, too - but don’t expect a do-it-all PC. If that’s what you’re after, the Palicomp’s a better bet.

Author: Mike Jennings