Arbico OC5470 CS review

Arbico’s OC5470 CS is designed to have enough processor power to run the latest software, excellent 3D performance and a high quality range of peripherals. That’s quite a big ask for a budget of £650.

Fortunately, the company has made the numbers add up by opting for a powerful but relatively low-cost Intel Core i3-540 processor and overclocking it to 3.8GHz. We know the i3-540 can be overclocked even more, but even at this speed, it’s fast enough to run whatever software you want. Its performance in our benchmark tests, including tasks such as image editing and video encoding, produced a solid score of 135 overall.

The processor is fitted to one of our favourite LGA1156 motherboards: the microATX Asus P7H55-M/USB3. It has two PCI-E x1 slots, but one is blocked by the graphics card in the single PCI-E x16 slot above it. There’s also a PCI slot which, like PCI-E x1, can be used to add sound cards, wireless cards, TV tuners and more. Although the motherboard is small, it has eight SATA ports, including two SATA3 ports. Both of those are already in use, but that still leaves six SATA2 ports. There are four memory slots, supporting up to 32GB RAM. Arbico has installed two 2GB memory modules.

The case is rather plain looking, but has plenty of room for extra storage. A 1TB hard disk and a DVD writer should be enough for most people, though. The case is well ventilated, with plenty of fans, which makes the PC rather noisy, but its low hum isn’t particularly distracting. There are two USB ports at the front, but we were annoyed to find that the FireWire port next to them isn’t actually connected: there’s no corresponding header for it on the motherboard. There are six more USB ports at the back, including two USB3 ports. There’s also a PS/2 connector and three 3.5mm stereo ports and an S/PDIF output.

The motherboard’s integrated HDMI and VGA connectors aren’t used, because the OC5470 CS has a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770. Although it’s getting on a bit, it’s still one of our favourite graphics cards. It returned a playable 29fps in Crysis and a blistering 71fps in CoD4. A frame rate of 22.7fps in Stalker is still a little jerky, but adjustments to a few quality settings should make it playable. The supplied 22in LG Flatron E2240T monitor has a matt screen finish, vibrant colours and is evenly lit, and has both VGA and DVI inputs. The Logitech keyboard and mouse are basic but they’re functional and comfortable to use.

The OC5470 CS is a great PC, with a two-year warranty (albeit return-to-base cover) and a good balance between processor power and gaming performance. It’s not quite up to the Chillblast Fusion Aurora, which has a more powerful processor and did almost as well in our 3D game tests, but we prefer Arbico’s choice of monitor and would still be quite happy to own this little gaming powerhouse.