Overclockers Titan 400i Dagger review

This PC was provided to us as a base PC system with a variety of internal and external upgrade options, contact the manufacturer to get the exact specification you require

Even before you add any upgrades, the Overclockers Titan 400i Dagger costs a fairly heavy £710, so isn’t in contention for our Budget Buy award. However, it’s a powerful system that stands out among most anonymous PC black boxes thanks to its particularly snazzy-looking white case. As well as looking good, it’s well finished and gives you plenty of space to work in.

The PC is also unusual in that it has a water-cooling system for its processor. This makes a high-pitched whine, and the case also has fairly minimal soundproofing thanks to its copious air vents, which are designed to make it easy to fit extra fans if you need them. This makes the Dagger far from the quietest system we’ve seen, so we’d definitely recommend keeping this PC on the floor.

This cooling system should allow the PC’s Intel Core i5-4670K processor to be overclocked, although Overclockers hasn’t done so for you. The powerful processor produced an overall score of 109 in our benchmark tests. The MSI Z87-G43 motherboard is fitted with 8GB of 1,600MHz RAM, leaving space for two more modules.

The motherboard also has three PCI slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two PCI-E x16 slots. However, one of the x1 slots is blocked by the graphics card above it and, as with most motherboards, the second x16 slot only runs at x4 speed. There are six SATA3 ports and a vacant USB3 header.

The case’s front panel has just two USB ports and the usual 3.5mm mic and headphone connectors. At the back of the motherboard, you’ll find a PS/2 port for a mouse or keyboard, six USB ports and two USB3 ports. There are also six 3.5mm stereo outputs for 7.1 analogue surround sound.

The graphics card comes with the PC’s base specification, and is a 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti. We’d have liked to have the option to upgrade the card, as it doesn’t have the performance that hardcore gamers might hope for. Due to driver compatibility problems with the graphics card, we weren’t able to run our Dirt Showdown test, but we saw a fairly jerky frame rate of 23.9fps in Crysis 2 at Ultra quality and a resolution of 1,920×1,080. Drop the quality to Extreme, though, and you’ll see frame rates hit a nearly-smooth average of 29.9fps.

The PC is equipped with a DVD-RW drive and a 1TB hard disk. You can add an SSD for the minimal cost of £25. Unfortunately, this is only a 60GB SSD, which is so small as to be of rather minimal use. You can get a 120GB SSD for a very reasonable £44, which is a much better idea.

For £156 you can have a matt 23.6in Iiyama Prolite E2481HS monitor, which is about the market price for this display. While many monitors don’t really benefit from calibration, the E2481HS is an exception. At default settings, it could display just 89.4% of the sRGB colour gamut, and looked rather washed out. After calibration it could display an excellent 97% of sRGB, and colours looked much more lifelike. Unfortunately, a calibration tool will set you back around £100 anyway, so we wish the monitor could display more accurate colours out of the box.

While it’s easy to become overwhelmed by choice when given a range of upgrades to select from, Overclockers has perhaps narrowed the field a little too much by only providing the option of an SSD upgrade for its Titan 400i Dagger. Although the PC is well made and thoughtfully designed, neither the system’s base specification nor its upgrades are especially good value. If you’re on a budget, we recommend the PC Specialist Infinity A10 Pro Elite, while those looking to splash out are better off with the Chillblast Fusion Kestrel.