Zoostorm Core i7-920 Gaming PC review

This is the first PC we've seen with one of Intel's new Core i7 processors.

In this case, it's the i7-920, the slowest of the three current designs, which runs at 2.66GHz. It has four processing cores, each of which is Hyper-Threaded and so can execute two tasks simultaneously, so Windows sees the processor as having eight cores in total.

Despite being the cheapest Core i7 on offer, the 920 is still quicker than most of the PCs we've seen recently, scoring very well in our PCMark Vantage benchmark. In fact, the same processor is around 13 per cent faster than when we tested it last month on a prototype motherboard. The Scan 3XS scored higher still, but had been overclocked to increase its performance, while the Zoostorm's Core i7 is running at its recommended settings.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 is a very powerful graphics card and it showed this in our benchmarks, scoring 69.6fps in Call of Duty 4 and 33.3fps in the more demanding Crysis benchmark. The i7-920 will handle any modern game at high detail settings. If you want to relax a little, the LG optical drive can play Blu-ray movies.

The 750GB hard disk provides an adequate amount of storage for a PC at this price. There's 3GB of DDR3 RAM in a triple-channel arrangement. This configuration is new to the X58 chipset used on Core i7-compatible motherboards. This gives increased memory bandwidth over the old dual-channel DDR2 memory. It should increase performance in memory-intensive tasks, but we didn't notice this in our benchmark results.

The chassis impressed us with its stylish front, and the interior is tidy with plenty of room for expansion. There's space for several extra hard disks inside and potentially two more graphics cards, as the motherboard supports a Triple SLI configuration.

The 650W power supply handles the i7-920's significant needs. It drew 292W when at peak performance and 144W when idle. These are worryingly high figures, but about the norm for a high-powered PC. The large graphics card gets very hot when in use, but the i7-920 is reasonably quiet and doesn't prove unduly distracting.

The i7-920 may have performed well in both our application and game benchmarks, but we're not convinced by its value for money. In our recent PC group test (Labs, Shopper 250) we found that for around £100 more you can buy a PC that's almost as quick as the Core i7-920 but with all the peripherals included. The i7-920, on the other hand, comes without monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers.

This isn't exploitative pricing, but instead the very high cost of X58 motherboards are to blame. At around £250 including VAT, they cost at least twice that of a Core 2 equivalent. We can't recommend buying a Core i7 PC at present, unless you absolutely must have the fastest possible PC.

Author: Mike Jennings