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Eclipse Viper i5357R795 OC review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £999.95
inc VAT

This quiet but powerful PC comes with a great GPU and monitor, but you can get more features for the same price if you shop around

Specifications

4.5GHz Intel Core i5-3570K, 8GB RAM, 23.6in 1,920×1,080 display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The Eclipse Viper i5357R795 OC’s case isn’t particularly remarkable (it gets rather warm despite a plethora of cooling fans and feels rather cramped inside), but the system runs quietly, doesn’t have too many large vents to let dust in and looks inoffensive. Eclipse’s habit of hot-gluing components in place so they don’t get damaged in transit can be a bit nerve-wracking when you want to upgrade, but the glue comes off easily enough with a little care.

Eclipse Viper i5357R795 OC

At the top of the case are two USB ports, a memory card reader and front-panel audio I/O. Behind the front panel are four 51/2in drive bays, one of which is occupied by a DVD-RW drive, an externally facing 3.5in drive bay and four internal 3.5in bays. Two of the latter are occupied. One houses a 120GB SSD system disk, and the other houses a 1TB HDD for data.

The SSD is connected to one of the Asus P8Z77-V LX motherboard’s two SATA3 ports. The optical drive and HDD are both attached to SATA2 ports. This leaves two free SATA2 ports and one vacant SATA3 port. The motherboard also has three PCI slots and two PCI-E x1 slots, although one of these is blocked by the graphics card. We’d prefer a board with more PCI-E x1 slots, but there’s plenty of room to add upgrades such as sound cards and TV tuners. There’s also a second PCI-E x16 slot, which actually runs at x4 and can handle any PCI-E card up to this speed.

Eclipse Viper i5357R795 OC

The system has 8GB of RAM. The motherboard can handle a maximum 32GB of RAM, but 8GB is sufficient. The PC’s processor is one of Intel’s powerful new Ivy Bridge CPUs, a Core i5-3570K which Eclipse has overclocked to 4.5GHz, aided by a quiet Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU cooler. It isn’t the fastest overclock we’ve seen on this processor, but with an overall score of 144 in our benchmark tests you’re not going to miss the extra couple of performance points here. The 3570K has enough power to handle anything you care to throw at it.

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Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor Intel Core i5-3570K
Processor external bus 100MHz
Processor multiplier x45
Processor clock speed 4.5GHz
Processor socket LGA1155
Memory 8
Memory type PC3-12800
Maximum memory 32GB
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V LX
Motherboard chipset Intel Z77

Ports

USB2 ports (front/rear) 2/6
Firewire ports (front/rear) 0/0
eSATA ports (front/rear) 0/0
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support none

Internal Expansion

Case midi tower
PCI-E x1 slots (free) 2 (1)
PCI-E x16 slots (free) 2 (1)
Free Serial ATA ports 3
Free memory slots 0
Free 3.5in drive bays 3

Hard Disk

Hard disk model(s) Mushkin Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB + Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003-9YN162
Interface SATA3 + SATA2
Total storage capacity 1,120GB

Graphics

Graphics card(s) 3GB AMD Radeon HD 7950
Graphics/video ports DVI, HDMI, 2x Mini DisplayPort

Sound

Sound Realtek ALC887
Sound outputs 5.1 line out, optical S/PDIF out, line out, mic in
Speakers none

Removable Drives

Supported memory cards SDXC, MMC, Memory Stick Pro
Optical drive type(s) DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Display

Viewable size 23.6 in
Screen model BenQ V2420
Native resolution 1,920×1,080
Screen inputs DVI, VGA

Other Hardware

Keyboard Logitech K260
Mouse Logitech M210

Software

Software included none
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option Windows disc

Buying Information

Warranty one year RTB
Price £1,000
Details www.eclipse-computers.com

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