Velocity XFire: inside
An ASUS DVD ReWriter takes up a 5.25in bay and a solitary hard drive, a 500GB Western Digital model, provides storage. Considering the lack of price differential between 500GB and 1TB drives now - some £30 - we'd have raised the price and specified a larger-capacity model as standard.That said, one won't be left wanting for upgrade space: the chassis has room to spare. We'd like Wired2Fire to 'pre-plumb' cabling for a second and third hard-drive, as well as a second GPU, to make it easier for the user to upgrade the system when needs be.
Backed up by a high-quality 700W PSU and drawing some 300W under load, you could add a second GPU the mix, but make sure it's not the wattage-eating Radeon HD 4870 X2.
The system ships as the base-unit alone, meaning no further hardware in the form of a keyboard or mouse - or discrete sound-card for that matter. Also, there's no software other than Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit, and we have no problem with that at all, but, at a basic level, we'd like Wired2Fire to add a card-reader to the chassis, as well as provide extra hardware gubbins such as coaxial digial cable.
The manual is pretty good, though, and covers all the salient points in easy-to-understand English.
Warranty
As standard, the system is backed by a one-year collect-and-return warranty that covers parts and labour. Systems usually ship in 10 working days (two weeks) but can take as long as 15 working days for custom SKUs. We reckon this is a little too long, especially as most enthusiasts cannot wait to get their grubby mitts on the purchase.
Priced at £1,109, including VAT and delivery, the Velocity XFire's components and operating system would cost, if building it yourself, just under £1,000, including VAT - suggesting that the system ships with a retail-plus-£100 premium. Of course, it's fully-built, includes warranty, and a decent overclock, so it's priced at competitive levels. No Dell-beating pricing, sure, but it's not mass-produced and generic, either.
Moving on to the Intel-based system now.
