Review: Wired2Fire Velocity and Hellspawn XFire PCs: Intel Core i7 and AMD Phenom II @ 3.6GHz

by Tarinder Sandhu on 9 April 2009, 13:30 3.5

Tags: Hellspawn XFire (Intel Core i7), Velocity (AMD Phenom II), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Wired2fire, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qarsp

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Hellspawn XFire: Core i7

Hello! Seen this before? Yup, it's the same Cooler Master HAF 932 chassis as the Velocity: why change a good thing, right?



A different motherboard - Gigabyte X58-UD3R - means that the rear shot isn't identical. The Sapphire card has moved up a slot, but that's wholly cosmetic. We're fans of the Gigabyte range of Core i7-supporting motherboards so view this as a good, solid choice. Gigabyte, too, has SLI and CrossFire validation on its range of boards, so that you can opt for an NVIDIA multi-GPU setup at the time of purchase or at a later date.


Like the AMD system, the Hellspawn is generally quiet in 2D. The aural performance is punctured by the noise of the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 2,048MB card, but, as noted earlier, BIOS updates have now quietened it down some.



Just like the AMD model, the front-mounted ports are at the very top. Should you plug in a USB device via a cable there exists a possibility of fouling the operation of the DVD drive, which can be annoying.