In a bit of a "blog" mode today, but with good reason; you may have noticed some small ads showing up around here recently for
Wired2Fire, and I wanted to give you guys the low down on why. Crass commercialisation aside, their presence is quite simply down to the fact that...I love these guys. In my opinion, they are the best PC manufacturers I've bought from yet...and I've been buying since the days of the 286.
Creating The Beast
I was in dire need of a PC upgrade you see, and for my latest rig I was originally planning to build it myself from scratch. In practice however, I soon realised that was gonna be a trickier proposition than expected.
I've built PCs in the past, true, but technology is constantly growing and expanding way faster than one can keep up with these days. In just the 3 or 4 years since I last built a system, we've seen dual SLI graphics cards hit the market, SATA raid hard drives, industrial strength cooling devices, 600w power supplies, motherboard level firewall hardware, CPU fans bigger than Dolly Parton's titties, and a heck of a lot more that just all means next to nothing to me.
The decision was shortly made to call in a professional to build the thing for me. I wanted a rig to set me up for life (which in PC terms, is approximately 1 year), something that could quite happily take a hammering from Battlefield 2, while simultaneously burn DVDs and download porn, all without the slightest flicker of a hitch. Truth be told, the first mother fuckers I set my sights on were Alienware.
Xenomorphs
 | | SC3 won't settle on a mid-range system |
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Alienware PCs are like the holy grail of the serious PC gamer. With all that power and beauty comes a price sent from hell though, unfortunately - Alienware rigs just aren't worth their asking price.
Take a look at the new
Star Wars themed machines currently doing the rounds for the best example of that - very nice to look at, until you realise all those glossy visuals are setting you back almost £500 more than a similarly specced no-name PC. And the clincher? Those "exclusive" Star Wars case graphics are fucking stickers!
In search of similarly high powered machines at a more reasonable price, I stumbled across numerous of these "create your own" PC manufacturers out there on the interweb, one of which was Wired2Fire.
Their web site works similarly to Alienware's admittedly brilliant online setup, but with the added bonus of
not putting you on Natwest's bounty hunter list. You select a basic rig from a choice of 4 or 5, then customise each component piece by piece to your liking, thus creating your own dream PC. Finally you submit the results and the bods at the other end are tasked with actually ya know, building the sucker, delivering it ready to go straight out of the box. It's great.
Here's the rig I settled upon, which has now been christened...The Beast;
Athlon 64 FX57 CPU
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
GeForce 7800 GTX 256mb Graphics Card
2gb TwinX Pro Corsair RAM
74gb Raptor Western Digital Hard Drive
200gb Caviar Western Digital Hard Drive
Wavemaster Case
Zalman Ultra Quiet CPU Fan
 | | Playing Far Cry feels like going on holiday |
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And all that power shows. Battlefield 2 now blazes along at highest settings with 4x AA like pure liquid. No stuttering, no lag - it's as smooth as Doom 1.
Best of all, that super high speed RAM means load times are blink-and-you-miss-'em fast. Ya know, while playing BF2 I used to have my PSP on stand-by to keep me company on each map load - that's how fucking long it took - but with The Beast, I turn the PSP on and BF2 is already twiddling its thumbs waiting for
me. Impressive.
Or how about Far Cry, which zooms along at "Very High" settings like butter. Seeing it in its element at last, finally proves something I've known deep in my heart for a very long time...this game thrashes Doom III.
And speaking of which, The Beast is the first system I've ever used that happily busts out Doom III on "Ultra Quality" settings without a hiccup. ID Software stated these extra high settings were reserved for future systems further down the line that would be decked out with 512mb onboard video RAM, but The Beast frowns upon at such rules, blasting the sucker around like it's Pong.
Back to the Old Skool
 | | No longer resembling a Windows slideshow, DX2 can finally shine |
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One of the greatest things about upgrading your PC though, is being able to revisit those long gone semi-has beens that you could never quite do justice to when they originally launched. Hence it's been particularly great to fire up Thief III and Deus Ex - Invisible War on this thing, two games that I always maintained came out way before their time.
The engines were just too taxing - odd for simultaneous console releases - but burning around these suckers with every single option ramped up to full, and yet still being able to experience them with a smooth frame-rate at
last is a sheer joy.
Both games have taken on a new life for me, and now feel like the long awaited classics they always should have been.
Out of the 50 odd games I threw at this thing, only two have disappointed. The recent FEAR demo fails to perform at the level of its peers, a shame too as it doesn't look particularly better than the likes of Far Cry. We can only presume Monolith's new engine isn't quite up to snuff and in need of some serious tweaking before launch.
 | | At long last, SWG's graphical potential is fullfilled. Shame the game is all but dead... |
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The other is EverQuest II - a game I have a love/hate relationship with already, further frayed by the fact that this system - which pretty much features the highest level components currently on the market -
still cant run it at anything higher than medium settings.
Bless 'em, but what the heck do SOE do to their MMOs to get such piss poor performance outta them? Especially when I can turn around and whack on Guild Wars or WoW with not one drop below 60 FPS, while still looking like a banquet on my screen.
These exceptions aside, The Beast handles himself like a genuine pro on the gaming battlefield. It's clear that Wired2Fire don't cut corners with their PCs, making sure all the components used in their systems are of the utmost quality. From memory speed, to hard drive seek times, there doesn't seem to be a bottleneck anywhere. Despite this, prices remain pleasing.
What is Thy Bidding?
 | | Where the hell's The Rock when you need him? |
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But the great thing about Wired2Fire is not only did they supply me with the most kick arseous rig on the planet, but the quality of service and workmanship were also impeccable.
Opening this thing up revealed a work of art beneath its shiny aluminium exterior, cables and fans tidied and placed meticulously for maximum airflow and cooling efficiency.
They not only had my PC built in a matter of days, but then put it through a rigorous day long optimisation and "breaking in" stage. For a custom built PC, it also came presented startlingly similar to something you'd expect from a pre-built Dell or some such, with full coloured manuals and personalised instructions for your one-of-a-kind machine. There's even extensive benchmarks in there.
Through many e-mail chats with the guys, I not only received decent advice as to what I should be buying, but also startlingly honest responses at that. When quizzed on the capabilities of SLI technology (aka dual graphics cards), they never tried to push the more profitable responses, cleanly laying out the pros and cons of SLI technology for me to make my own decision.
 | | Wired have a bunch of sweet cases to pick from |
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But the real piece de resistance of my Wired experience happened this week. I sent the guys a message about a problem that had cropped up with the motherboard on my system. It turns out that these SLI ASUS motherboards have a heatsink problem thanks to shoddy fans; the thing constantly speeds up, slows down, and has now started grinding away at my motherboard like a dog humping a leg. Now let's be clear - this is a problem 100% down to ASUS, who judging by messages on their tech support forum, have been less than helpful with fixing the defect.
Wired2Fire to the rescue though. Not only do they have replacement parts on their way in, but are shipping them out for
free to folks like myself, as well as making sure all future sales include the upgraded fan right out of the box. That my friends, is pure and utter quality service.
I'll quit the whoring there, but needless to say, if you think you might be in line for a new system to give BF2 that kick up the colon it so rightfully deserves, give these boys a
whirl. I was bloody impressed.
