James Mirran
Member
Good Day All,
After having my PC for the best part of a month I thought I'd post a review; should anyone be interested!
Case: NZXT PHANTOM 410 BLACK GAMING CASE (Including x3 Fans)
Pros:
(1) This case provides plenty of room allowing for good access to most parts inside; nice when giving it a clean and has allowed for most cables to be stored out of the way.
(2) Fan controller is good for anyone who prefers a quiet PC when not using demanding programs or gaming.
(3) Side window allows for a good look at the main components inside with an intake grill (upgrade-able to include another fan).
(4) Plenty of available space for future upgrades.
(5) Personal preference from me but I like the styling.
Cons:
(1) As seen in many reviews of this case the secondary setting for the fan controller does create a slight buzzing sound;although not a disaster it can be quite noticeable. For me however I only use settings 1 (Web Browsing or Microsoft Office) & 3 (Gaming).
(2) Dust! My word does this case show up dust and fingerprints!
Processor: Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570 (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
In a word, Good. So far this processor has easily run everything I have to throw at it with absolutely no problems; being a fan of the Total War series I can recommend this CPU (Hopefully I can still be saying this when Rome 2 arrives).
Temperatures have been very good so far with the highest on record coming in at 50c.
Motherboard: ASUS® P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX & RAM: 8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Not much I can say here except both are working as expected and no issues to report.
Graphics Card: 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Now considering that my previous PC contained a GTS 240 it would be fair to say that I am impressed with this card, for one it has saved me alot of time.
Whereas I have had to carefully choose settings for every game to try and achieve the best possible balance of performance / quality, now all I do is enter the menu, select Ultra/Highest and away I go.
Current FPS Scores: (Averages / Highest Settings)
Shogun 2 Total War - 59.5fps
Sleeping Dogs - 59.9fps
The highest temperature I have recorded for either of these two games has been 70c.
Hard Disks: 120GB INTEL® 330 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 450MB/sW) & 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
With an SSD used as the boot drive for the Operating System this PC will fully boot and be ready to use in approx 25 seconds and while gaming the Caviar Black has reduced the majority of loading times to between 1-6 seconds.
Disk Drive: 12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
It works.
Power Supply: CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE
Silent and no issues to report with the current components.
CPU Cooler: SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER
Although I am not an expert regarding CPU heat levels this cooler appears to be doing a good job and is very quiet.
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D PCI-E Soundcard
I am very pleased with this sound card; my previous PC used a built in sound card which did its job but this is a massive step up. I use 5.1 headphones for music and gaming and this card has noticeably improved the quality of everything (The sound of an error message has never been so good).
PC Specialist & DPD Delivery
In terms of price I am very happy with my PC, having previously been a customer of Dell I can only praise PCS as I was kept informed throughout my PC's build as to its current status and the packaging of the PC was superb and would require a significant force to cause damage in transit.
In terms of the speed of the build I must say that I was impatient and went for the 5 day express build option however as you can see below my PC was built and out the door to me in just 3 days.
Processed Date 14-08-2012
Build Date 15-08-2012
Test Date 16-08-2012
QC Date 16-08-2012
Awaiting Dispatch Date 17-08-2012
Dispatch Date 17-08-2012
Thanks to all that built my PC:
Built By Cihan Yucesoy
Tested By Garnet Heller
QC'd By Adnaan Marban
Packed By Anthony Cunliffe
Many thanks as well to Rubensolowho helped me with this build.
I will try to include some photos below, these were taken on my phone so I expect them to be average at best.
After having my PC for the best part of a month I thought I'd post a review; should anyone be interested!
Case: NZXT PHANTOM 410 BLACK GAMING CASE (Including x3 Fans)
Pros:
(1) This case provides plenty of room allowing for good access to most parts inside; nice when giving it a clean and has allowed for most cables to be stored out of the way.
(2) Fan controller is good for anyone who prefers a quiet PC when not using demanding programs or gaming.
(3) Side window allows for a good look at the main components inside with an intake grill (upgrade-able to include another fan).
(4) Plenty of available space for future upgrades.
(5) Personal preference from me but I like the styling.
Cons:
(1) As seen in many reviews of this case the secondary setting for the fan controller does create a slight buzzing sound;although not a disaster it can be quite noticeable. For me however I only use settings 1 (Web Browsing or Microsoft Office) & 3 (Gaming).
(2) Dust! My word does this case show up dust and fingerprints!
Processor: Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570 (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
In a word, Good. So far this processor has easily run everything I have to throw at it with absolutely no problems; being a fan of the Total War series I can recommend this CPU (Hopefully I can still be saying this when Rome 2 arrives).
Temperatures have been very good so far with the highest on record coming in at 50c.
Motherboard: ASUS® P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX & RAM: 8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Not much I can say here except both are working as expected and no issues to report.
Graphics Card: 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Now considering that my previous PC contained a GTS 240 it would be fair to say that I am impressed with this card, for one it has saved me alot of time.
Whereas I have had to carefully choose settings for every game to try and achieve the best possible balance of performance / quality, now all I do is enter the menu, select Ultra/Highest and away I go.
Current FPS Scores: (Averages / Highest Settings)
Shogun 2 Total War - 59.5fps
Sleeping Dogs - 59.9fps
The highest temperature I have recorded for either of these two games has been 70c.
Hard Disks: 120GB INTEL® 330 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 450MB/sW) & 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
With an SSD used as the boot drive for the Operating System this PC will fully boot and be ready to use in approx 25 seconds and while gaming the Caviar Black has reduced the majority of loading times to between 1-6 seconds.
Disk Drive: 12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
It works.
Power Supply: CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE
Silent and no issues to report with the current components.
CPU Cooler: SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER
Although I am not an expert regarding CPU heat levels this cooler appears to be doing a good job and is very quiet.
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D PCI-E Soundcard
I am very pleased with this sound card; my previous PC used a built in sound card which did its job but this is a massive step up. I use 5.1 headphones for music and gaming and this card has noticeably improved the quality of everything (The sound of an error message has never been so good).
PC Specialist & DPD Delivery
In terms of price I am very happy with my PC, having previously been a customer of Dell I can only praise PCS as I was kept informed throughout my PC's build as to its current status and the packaging of the PC was superb and would require a significant force to cause damage in transit.
In terms of the speed of the build I must say that I was impatient and went for the 5 day express build option however as you can see below my PC was built and out the door to me in just 3 days.
Processed Date 14-08-2012
Build Date 15-08-2012
Test Date 16-08-2012
QC Date 16-08-2012
Awaiting Dispatch Date 17-08-2012
Dispatch Date 17-08-2012
Thanks to all that built my PC:
Built By Cihan Yucesoy
Tested By Garnet Heller
QC'd By Adnaan Marban
Packed By Anthony Cunliffe
Many thanks as well to Rubensolowho helped me with this build.
I will try to include some photos below, these were taken on my phone so I expect them to be average at best.
(+rep)