4,049 megabytes per second
Wins on a photo finish
Record-breaking read speed of Chillblast’s Photo Zen PC
Most of the desktop PCS you’ll see these days aim to balance general performance, provided by an Intel or AMD central processor chip (CPU), with 3D graphics acceleration from an Nvidia or AMD graphics card (GPU). The latter isn’t only relevant to gaming – it also provides a helping hand to most creative graphics programs. However, if playing the latest games at more than Full HD resolution on the highest quality settings isn’t your priority, then spending more on the CPU will get you a lot more benefit than splashing it on a fancier GPU.
Produced the fastest score ever in our photo-editing benchmark test
That’s exactly the calculation Chillblast has made in this PC from its photography range (see www.snipca.com/35852), which pairs an adequate Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 graphics card with a top-end AMD Ryzen 7 3700X eight- core processor. The result, to cut to the chase, is the fastest score ever in our photo-editing benchmark test, helped along by a generous 32GB of memory. Scores for multitasking and video processing were beaten only by Palicomp’s AMD Orion RYZ9 (see our review, Issue 579, page 22), which uses the same processor overclocked to 4.25GHZ.
The speed doesn’t stop there. Windows 10 comes installed on a 500GB SSD that uses the new PCIE 4 interface. That in itself doesn’t guarantee top performance, but in this case a read speed of 4,049 megabytes per second (MB/S) in our file-transfer test really did feel ‘next generation’. At 2,377MB/S, the write speed was within the range for existing SSDS, but still very good. With this drive, the Photo Zen starts at £1,480. Our test model came with an additional 2TB hard drive at £78 extra, versus £121 extra for 4TB (click Customise for options).
You can increase the SSD to 1TB or even 2TB, and there’s a second M.2 socket on the Asus Prime X570-P motherboard, also supporting PCIE 4, making it easy to plug in an extra SSD. For tasks like working with a large photo library or editing 4K video, which require fast read and write speeds in real time, a dedicated drive separate from Windows is the ideal setup, so we’d probably stick with the 500GB startup drive, use the mechanical drive for backup and spend an extra £300-odd on a second 2TB PCIE 4 SSD.
Another internal drive is the only way to get comparable speeds, since there are no Thunderbolt 3 ports for the fastest external storage. Four of the seven USB-A sockets at least support the USB 3.0 Gen2 speed of 10Gbps, enough for more basic SSDS. We’d have liked to see some USB-C ports, and note that Wi-fi isn’t included.
Otherwise, there’s plenty of scope for internal expansion in the Fractal Design
SPECIFICATIONS
3.6GHZ AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core processor • 32GB memory • 6GB Geforce GTX 1660 Super graphics • 500GB SSD • 2TB hard drive • 4x USB-A 3 Gen2 ports • 2x USB 3.0 Gen1 ports • 2x USB 2.0 ports • PS/2 port • Gigabit Ethernet • HDMI, DVI and Displayport monitor outputs • Windows 10 Home • 465x233x543mm (HXWXD) • Two-year warranty www.snipca.com/35840
Define R6 case, a substantial bit of kit – as you’ll notice when you try to lift it on to your desk – with a rigid steel chassis and a brushed aluminium front. This swings open to reveal a multi-card reader, installed in the 5.25in front drive bay, that accepts a variety of common memory card formats to read files from your digital cameras.