New products tested by our experts
22
Reviews
New products tested by our experts
decent speeds on most routers, even if it
will need upgrading should you decide to
move to Wi-Fi 6 in the future. It also
has a Gigabit Ethernet port for wired
networking, and Bluetooth for easily
connecting wireless peripherals.
Speaking of peripherals, you can
connect most devices to this machine,
which has a decent range of ports. These
include three types of monitor port
(DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA), five USB
3.0 ports and three USB 2.0 ports. A
glaring omission is USB-C, which is
unexpectedly absent.software will benefit from its
speed.
Let’s look at the performance first. In
our Geekbench 5 multi-core benchmark
test, the Workstation achieved a score of
9,545. The Fusion Master only reached
8,832. It’s also faster in our Windows test
than the Chillblast Sentinel RTX 3050
Gaming PC (reviewed in Issue 628),
beating it in Windows tasks by 17 per
cent. And because it’s also over £250
cheaper, it’s replacing the Sentinel as our
new favourite PC (see page 30).
It’s worth noting, however, that games
performance on the Wired2Fire isn’t
stellar. Its overclocked processor gives it
an edge over the Fusion Master, gaining a
few frames per second in 1080p games
with high graphical detail settings
switched on, but it lags behind machines
with a dedicated graphics card, such
as the Chillblast Sentinel RTX 3050.
If you want gaming as well as general
Windows performance, this isn’t the
right PC for you.
On the other hand, one big benefit of
losing the graphics card is that the PC
runs surprisingly quietly. Most Windows
tasks shouldn’t push the processor hard
enough for it to get too warm, even
though it’s overclocked. It only needs two
fans to keep it cool, one in the case and
the other on the cooling system. We could
only hear their gentle whir if we pressed
our ear against the PC case.
There was one other area where the
PCSpecialist Fusion Master cut a corner
too far, and that was with the wireless
options, limiting the wireless networking
to Wi-Fi 4. Thankfully, this PC has Wi-Fi 5
installed, so should be compatible withVERDICT This affordabe turbo-
charged Windows PC snatches our Buy
It award, though it’s not recommended
for gamers★★★★★
ALTERNATIVE Chillblast
Sentinel RTX 3050 £1,050
For gamers, this PC comes
with an Nvidia RTX 3050
graphics card that’s well
worth paying extra forSPECIFICATIONS
Eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 5700G processor •• 16GB
memory •• RX Vega 8 graphics •• 1TB SSD •• Wi-Fi 5 •• 1x
Gigabit Ethernet port •• 1x HDMI port •• 1x DisplayPort- • 1x VGA port •• 5x USB 3 ports •• 3x USB 2 ports ••
Windows 11 Home •• 400x210x415mm (HxWxD) ••
Five-year warranty http://www.snipca.com/41500
PC ❘ £750 from Wired2Fire http://www.snipca.com/41500
Wired2Fire
Ultima WS Home Office Workstation
Our new favourite
Just like the PCSpecialist Fusion Master
we reviewed in Issue 629, this PC is
built around the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
processor. The ‘G’ in the name indicates
the chip is designed to be used in PCs
without a separate graphics card, as it
has AMD’s RX Ve g a 8 graphics hardware
built into the main processor. So, as with
the Fusion Master, there’s no separate
graphics card and, as a result, Wired2Fire
has kept this PC’s overall price to an
affordable £750.Wired2Fire has trumped PCSpecialist’s
specification in a couple of significant
ways, however, lifting this PC to a whole
new level. The first is that the processor
has been safely overclocked, which is a
way of pushing it to its limits to get more
performance from it.
The second is that, instead of coming
with a small SSD and a secondary
mechanical hard drive for storage, it has a
generous 1TB M.2 SSD, so installedBeats recent
five-star PCs
for value, speed,
storage and Wi-Fi
27 April – 10 May 2022 • Issue 630