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Wired2Fire’s entry-level Fury VX-4 departs from the company’s usual emphasis on gaming. The case has a shiny curved front panel, and is more compact than most. The interior is cramped and the plain steel feels improperly finished in places with the odd sharp edge. There are two spare 5 1/4in bays and seven free 3 1/2in bays, one external. Two bays are occupied by a Blu-ray reader and 1TB hard disk respectively.
Wired2Fire’s choice of a six-core AMD Phenom II X6 1055T is an odd one. We’ve previously found the processor to be underpowered, despite the advantages of extra cores for applications such as virtualisation. However, Wired2Fire has managed an impressive overclock, raising the external bus speed to 240MHz and bringing the processor up to 3.3GHz. This produced an overall score of 93 in our benchmarks – close enough to our reference Core i5-2500K for the difference in performance to be indistinguishable.
Unfortunately, while the latest Intel Core i5 and AMD Fusion processors have their graphics processor built into the CPU, the 1055T must rely on the graphics chipset built into its motherboard. The Asrock 890GM Pro3 R2.0 motherboard has a built-in Radeon HD 4290 with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs. It wasn’t even powerful enough to run the menus in Dirt 3, let alone play the game. If you want to play 3D games, you’ll have to buy a dedicated graphics card – or opt for a different PC.
At least the power supply – a 430W Corsair CX430 – is a good choice if you plan on upgrading, as its cables include 6-pin PCI-E power and plenty of extra Molex and SATA power connectors. Despite the hefty overclock, large CPU can and flimsy case, the Fury doesn’t get too warm or make too much noise.
The motherboard has a PCI-E x16 slot, a PCI-E x1 slot and a pair of PCI slots, one of which will be blocked if you add a big graphics card. Two of four memory slots are occupied by 1,600MHz 2GB modules and there are three spare SATA ports. At the front of the case are two USB ports, with another six at the back. Two of the latter are USB3 and there’s also a FireWire and an eSATA port. You also get a PS/2 keyboard port, Gigabit Ethernet, an optical S/PDIF output and 7.1 analogue surround sound outputs. The generic keyboard and mouse are weak points. The mouse is tiny and the unbranded keyboard is loose and rattly.
Although its specification is unusual and unsuited to any sort of 3D gaming, its application performance is surprisingly good. There’s also the Blu-ray drive, but if this is on your list of essentials, the Palicomp Phoenix i5 Supreme has one, plus a much longer warranty.
