Wired2Fire Velocity VX review

Getting a low-cost PC to look good, do well in applications and play games is a tricky challenge, but one that Wired2Fire has managed to navigate with its Velocity VX.

It has a rather snazzy looking case that’s tall and slim with a well finished, if slightly cramped, interior. There aren’t any drive cages; instead one 3.5in 1TB HDD is screwed to the side of a strut that runs up the front right of the case. There’s also only a single 5.25in bay, which is occupied by a DVD-RW drive. This cuts down on physical upgrade potential but is a good use of space within the compact case. There’s also a vacant mounting point for a 2.5in drive such as an SSD.

There’s little to block noise or dust from passing through the case, but the system isn’t very loud, despite an odd whispering tick that comes from the CPU cooler. There’s not enough room to install very long graphics cards such as an AMD Radeon HD 7850, but smaller expansion cards will fit.

Unlike most of the budget PCs we see, the Velocity VX actually comes fitted with a graphics card. A slim AMD Radeon HD 6760 with 1GB of video RAM occupies the motherboard’s main PCI-E x16 slot. It did fairly well in our gaming benchmarks, achieving a frame rate of 57.9fps in Dirt Showdown at a resolution of 1280×720 and high quality. At the monitor’s full resolution of 1,920×1,080, running the game at high quality produced a smooth 53.7fps. This makes this one of the best budget PCs for games.

The combination of Asus F2A85-M LE motherboard and A10-5800K performed as expected, producing an overall score of 65 in our benchmark tests. In combination with the two 4GB memory modules making up a total 8GB of RAM, this specification can do everything your average desktop user will need.

As well as the PCI-E x16 slot that’s occupied by the graphics card, the motherboard also has a PCI slot, a PCI-E x1 slot and a second PCI-E x16 slot. The latter actually runs at x4 while the PCI-E x1 slot is effectively blocked by the graphics card’s heat sink. The board has a total of seven SATA3 ports – far more than the case has space for drives. Two are currently in use. Both memory slots are occupied and there are two vacant USB headers and a USB3 header available on the board.

On the case’s front panel, you’ll find two USB ports, but not USB3, and the usual 3.5mm mic and headphone ports, while the rear of the case bears another six USB ports, of which two are USB3. There’s also an eSATA3 port, a PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard, Gigabit Ethernet, an optical S/PDIF output and three 3.5mm analogue audio outputs for up to 5.1 surround sound.

The PC comes with a bland but perfectly functional keyboard and optical mouse set and a 21.5in matt AOC e2250Swda monitor with VGA and DVI inputs. It’s one of our favourite budget models with excellent contrast and it managed a respectable 89.3 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. Yellow tones are a bit more vivid than other colours while blacks are particularly rich and detailed.

Wired2Fire has installed Windows 8 on the PC, but has opted to use a UI tweaker to replace the start screen with a Windows 7-style start menu. Unfortunately, this means that you can’t just hit the Windows key and start typing the name of whatever application you want to run or file you wish to sear for. Instead, you have to first haul the mouse pointer across the screen and click into the search both. This may bother users who favour keyboard shortcuts, but it’s mercifully easy to uninstall.

Although we were irritated by the UI Tweaker, it’s easy to remove and doesn’t detract from this PC’s excellent balance between processor power and 3D graphics capabilities. We’re fans of the monitor, too. If you’re after raw processor power and won’t want to play games, then the Palicomp Alpha Laser is a good choice, but the Velocity VX is a better all-round PC and wins a Best Buy award.