Wired2Fire Hellspawn Gaming PC Review

Wired2Fire Hellspawn Gaming PC Review

Overall then Wired2Fire has put together a good PC. While it won't play all the latest games on maximum detail at higher than Full HD resolutions, it will play all of them very well indeed if you're willing to compromise a little, and it will remain relatively frugal and quiet while doing so. The only real negative is that the choice of motherboard means adding a second Radeon HD 5850 in CrossFire at a later date is not a viable option.

When it comes to value, the Hellspawn is decent if not outstanding. It's possible to put together a similar system from most assemblers for just a bit more, though this won't include the guaranteed overclock which is a sweet extra. Warranty is par for the course with one year collect and return and a further year parts and labour.

Of course the most obvious competitor that we've reviewed is DinoPC's i7-Osaurus. This Award-winning beast offered a better i7 860 processor with hyperthreading (which the Hellspawn's i5 lacks) albeit running at stock speed with the unimpressive stock cooler. More significantly for gamers, it had an AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5870, which is currently the fastest single-chip graphics card on the planet, all for only £50 more. Considering this will give you far more gaming headroom than the fastest-overclocked CPU in the world, the DinoPC's configuration is far superior.

Verdict

A well-built and reasonably quiet PC with an aggressive but stable overclock to bring its Intel Core i5 CPU up to 4GHz, the Wired2Fire Hellspawn certainly impresses, and if you want an all-round system with good gaming credentials it's a decent choice. The only real fly in the ointment is that its motherboard doesn't properly support CrossFire, limiting future upgrade potential. MORE DETAIL...