PC Specialist Vanquish 300R review

Instead of a bulky air cooler, the overclocked Intel Core i5-3570K processor has a liquid cooler bolted to it. It’s no quieter than a good air cooler, but it’s efficient and its positioning means that the memory slots to the right of the processor socket are easily accessible. Only two are in use, each occupied by 4GB of ultra-fast 2,400MHz Kingston HyperX Beast RAM. As you’d expect from this specification, it did extremely well in our benchmark tests, producing an overall score of 131. That means you won’t have any problem running programs for a good few years.

The PC’s front panel has two USB3 ports and microphone and headphone ports that are hooked into the Sound Blaster Z. At the back of the motherboard you’ll find another two USB3 ports along with four USB2 ports. There’s also a PS/2 mouse or keyboard port and Gigabit Ethernet.

The Vanquish 300R comes with Nero 10 and a cluster of driver discs, and we had to install the drivers for the sound card ourselves. Creative’s audio hardware is heavily dependent upon its drivers, so it’s important to do this. PC Specialist’s Silver warranty only covers your parts for one year labour for three years. Although this is less generous that some rivals’ warranties, the PC does use good components.

PC Specialist has gone to great pains to make the Vanquish 300R an outstanding gaming system. We’re really pleased to see a system shipping with a decent sound card as well as a good graphics card, and the components used are all excellent quality. If you’re into gaming, the Vanquish 300R is a great buy.