Wired2Fire Diablo Ultima review

Wired2Fire has opted for a well-balanced PC in the Diablo Ultima, with most of the expense of this system going on the internal components rather than the outside. The Raijentek Arcadia tower isn’t a great looking case with a basic matt black paint scheme and honeycomb front grille. It’s not exactly inspiring, but it does the job of insulating the internal components and keeping the noise down. It also leaves room for a little future expansion.

Open up the Diablo Ultima and you’ll find a conventional PC build inside. Cables are neatly routed through the case’s panels and most wires are kept tidy, aside from the PCI-E power connectors, which are left hanging loose next to the graphics card. There’s one 120mm case fan at the rear.

The processor is a quad-core Intel Core i5-4460 that runs at its base clock speed of 3.2GHz, turbo boosting to 3.4GHz when thermal conditions allow. It’s cooled by a stock Intel heatsink and fan, and placed alongside 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory. It scored very well in our benchmarking tests, scoring 100 in the image-editing test, 93 for video conversion and an impressive 91 in the multitasking test. This is an extremely capable CPU perfect for processor-intensive tasks and is more than a match for simple desktop activities and web browsing. This is a great choice for someone who wants to get things done quickly but on a budget.

Core i5 processors typically do very well in our benchmarks, although their high price means that other components in budget PC builds tend to be slightly downmarket. That’s not the case here; Wired2Fire has installed a VTX3D AMD Radeon R9 270, which is a decent mid-range card. VTX3D has applied a modest overclock to the chip, upping the clock speed from 900MHz to 955MHz. Dirt Showdown at Ultra settings and 1,920×1,080 resolution ran at a consistent 62.2fps, while the more challenging Metro: Last Light could only stutter along at 22.3fps. However, turning off super sampling anti-aliasing, we were able to bring this up to 41fps, which is easily playable while still looking fantastic.

There’s a small amount of room for expansion on the microATX Asus H81M motherboard, with two PCI-E x1 slots available just below the graphics card. There are also two spare SATA2 connectors; the DVD-RW drive and 1TB Seagate Desktop hard disk both have both been connected to the SATA3 ports. If you choose buy an SSD at a later date, you should move the DVD-RW drive into one of the SATA2 slots so your SSD can take advantage of the higher speeds of SATA3.

There’s no room for extra RAM, as both memory slots have been filled by 4GB sticks. If you want to double your memory to 16GB at a later date, you’ll have to buy two 8GB sticks and ditch your existing memory; 8GB should be enough for most users right now, however.

The rear of the motherboard has two USB3 ports with a further four USB ports while the case has two front-mounted USB ports, one of which is a USB3 connector. There are also three 3.5mm audio jacks at the rear in addition to the two at the front of the case. The graphics card has two DVI outputs as well as single HDMI and DisplayPort connectors, so you’ll easily be able to create multi-monitor setups if you wish.

The bundled LG 22MP55 monitor uses an IPS panel instead of the cheaper TN screens we normally see with lower-cost PCs. It has a pleasing quality to it, with high contrast levels and deep blacks, but colour coverage and accuracy is poor with just 83.6% of the sRGB colour gamut covered by the screen. Colour coverage isn’t everything, though, and if you’re not too fussed about seeing faithfully recreated colours, it’s perfectly adequate.

The bundled Octigen mouse is dinky but agreeable for those with smaller hands, but it doesn’t have any extra buttons. The keyboard, meanwhile, is awful thanks to the tiny backspace key, spongy action and wafer-thin build. You should budget for buying a better keyboard because this one certainly won’t cut the mustard even for the most casual user.

Wired2Fire’s standard warranty is one of the best in the business in terms of parts cover; you get two years of replacement parts and a total of three years labour cover; however, you’ll have to pay for the shipping of the PC back to base after the first month.

The Wired2Fire Diablo Ultima is a great all-rounder with a powerful processor and great mid-range graphics performance. That, in addition to its generous warranty, makes it a great buy. There are PCs with better graphics performance available at this price, such as the Chillblast Fusion Cyborg, but the Wired2Fire Diablo Ultima is unmatched in terms of CPU performance. If you’re looking for something completely different, our list of the best desktop PCs will help.