Yoyotech Fi7epower 4.7rcs review

Pronouncing Yoyotech’s Fi7epower 4.7RCS might take a bit of effort, but the PC itself doesn’t look like the gaming cliché we were expecting. The black, angular case is reasonably proportioned and its illuminated fan is tastefully understated. It’s louder than most PCs, though, with a whirring rush of noise produced by case fans running at full speed. There’s not much that even the case’s thick sides can do to reduce this, but at least there’s plenty of fine mesh to keep dust from getting in.

The case itself is easy to upgrade, with a properly finished interior. There are six 3½in drive bays, four of them internal with sliding draw-style rails that make it easy to install disks. The remaining two 3½in bays are external-facing, ideal for memory card readers, and use sliding clips to secure the drive. Four 5¼in bays – one of them containing a Blu-ray reader, DVD writer drive – use the same design.

There are seven SATA ports to connect extra storage – four SATA II and three SATA III. One of each type is already occupied. Two of the four memory slots are empty – the other two each contain a 2GB module. However, you’ll have to unbolt the CPU cooler if you want to add RAM to the first slot. There are three PCI slots, two PCI-E x16 slots and two PCI-E x1 slots, although one of the latter is blocked by the graphics card.

The 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTS 560 Ti looks slightly more modest than the long ATI Radeon 6950 and 6970 cards we’ve seen in similarly priced systems, but it’s almost as powerful, generating frame rates of 60.2fps in Crysis and 44.3fps in STALKER. It doesn’t support multi-monitor gaming, but with two DVI and one HDMI port, it can be used for dual-screen desktop computing.

The PC has plenty of sockets including a pair of USB ports next to the power buttons on the top, eight USB ports on the back – including two USB3 ports – and both Firewire and eSATA ports. There’s also a pair of PS/2 connectors, six 3.5mm stereo sockets for analogue 7.1 surround sound and an optical S/PDIF output.

Yoyotech has opted for an overclocked Intel Core i7-2600K processor, which produced a score of 134 overall. Some overclocked Core i5 PCs score even better, but the i7-2600K is a powerful processor that’ll be able to handle any software you throw at it for many years to come.

The PC comes with an Iiyama ProLite E2409HDS 24in widescreen monitor. It’s a favourite of ours, with excellent contrast and vibrant, natural colours. It’s HDCP-compliant and has a built in speaker, so you could use its HDMI input to connect a stand-alone Blu-ray player or digital TV box. The supplied Logitech MX250 wireless keyboard and mouse are basic but comfortable to use.

The Fi7epower 4.7RCS performed well in all our tests and comes with an excellent monitor. However, it’s a bit noisy and only has a basic one-year RTB warranty. We prefer the larger 25in monitor and even faster performance of the Wired2Fire Hellspawn XFire.