Through the transparent side panel of the Cooler Master K350 system case the bright red of the VTX3D Radeon R7 graphics card is complemented by an equally red fan, fitted to the Rajintek Themis heatpipe CPU cooler. Wired2Fire has boosted the clock speed of the Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition from 3.2GHz to 4.4GHz using the unofficial overclocking features provided by the Asus H81M-E motherboard with its low-cost H81 Intel Express chipset. However, several of our performance measurements yield higher results than PCs clocked at 4.5GHz. This is thanks to the 1TB Seagate ST1000DX001 SSHD hybrid drive, which uses built-in flash memory to deliver storage performance much faster than that of a hard drive alone. This won’t help with gaming frame rates, but it can shorten boot times and reduce waiting time when loading up games and moving from level to level within them.
Wired2Fire VX-6 review: gaming performance
In our gaming performance tests the VX-6 performed around the same as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti with some small gains in the Alien Vs predator test. In real-world usage, these cards are quite evenly matched but games optimised for AMD hardware will run considerably faster on the Radeon card than the equivalent from Nvidia and vice versa. So, the performance achieved will depend largely on the games you play. A cost saving has been made by including a relatively small 22in TN display in the form of the AOC 2250SWDA. While it offers the same 1920 by 1080 resolution of the larger displays in the group, it won’t deliver such an immersive experience at this size. We were also rather disappointed by the basic two-year return to base parts and labour warranty – the shortest and least accommodating of all the warranty terms in this group. Also included is a DVDRW drive and a Cooler Master Xornet gaming mouse, matched with an Octigen keyboard. See all budget PCs reviews.
