UTOPIA COMPUTERS

UTOPIA COMPUTERS

A custom paint job and awesome speed –  what more could you want?

 If you really want a way to make your PC stand out from the crowd, then a custom paint job is definitely at the top of your list. Doing it yourself is fun, but it can also be expensive and very time-consuming. If you’d rather leave it to the pros, then Kilmarnock-based PC maker Utopia Computers offers professionally painted cases in six different colours. You can even mix and match exterior and interior colour schemes too, and all their systems include a ten-year warranty covering labour costs, with parts covered for the first year. It even turns up in a big wooden crate, which Utopia dubs Transit Armour.

 The Pandora is Utopia’s high-end offering, and it can be fully customised via the company’s website. Our sample sports a SilverStone FT03 Mini case, clad in what Utopia calls Dodge Challenger yellow. The finish is superb, as well as scratch-resistant, and it drew high praise from anyone who saw it in our lab. It’s certainly very racy-looking, but you can swap the colour or opt for the standard black case and save £89. If the paint job doesn’t do it for you, though, perhaps you’ll be convinced by what lurks beneath it. 

Utopia has opted for a similar specification to the Scan 3XS Z77 Node Titan we looked at last month (see Issue 118, p34), but with a few subtle differences. There’s an Intel Core i7-3770K, for a start, which has been overclocked to 4.4GHz. This is 200MHz slower than the Node Titan’s clock speed, but the latter’s CPU did run very hot under load. There’s also an ample 16GB of 1,866MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR3 memory, and Utopia has also chosen a different motherboard to Scan – Gigabyte’s Z77N-WiFi. 

As the FT03 case is limited to SFX PSUs, the Pandora is also equipped with SilverStone’s modular Strider ST45SF-G, which dishes out up to 450W of power – ample for a build of this calibre. 

To cool the overclocked CPU, the Pandora has a Corsair H60 all-in-one liquid cooler in the base. This is a slightly less capable cooler than the Antec Kühler H2O 920 Scan used in its Node Titan, but the Pandora sports a lower overclock. It’s the graphics card that’s the centrepiece of the Pandora though – an Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan 6GB, which necessitated a little chassis modding to get it in place. 

This has been factory-overclocked to a boost clock speed 52MHz higher than stock, and it exhausts air out the roof, sitting vertically in the FT03 Mini’s rotated motherboard layout. There’s ample storage space too, with a 2TB Seagate Barracuda sitting alongside a super-quick 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Utopia has also included a slot-loading DVD drive, which can be upgraded to a Blu-ray drive on its website. It has Windows 8 64-bit pre-installed too, although you can opt for Windows 7 if you prefer.

UTOPIA OFFERS SIX COLOURS, AND YOU CAN MIX AND MATCH EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR COLOUR SCHEMES

PERFORMANCE 
We put the Pandora through our usual battery of tests, starting with our Media Benchmarks suite. In the image editing test, it returned a score of 2,174, which is over 100 points slower than the Scan Titan Node. It was a similar situation in the video encoding test, where the Pandora’s fantastic score of 4,072 was still eclipsed by nearly 200 points by Scan’s system, although by less than 5 per cent. However, the multi- tasking test saw the Pandora creep ahead of the Titan Node by over 100 points, most likely due to its faster memory and SSD – a difference we also saw in the Shogun 2 benchmark. Despite its 200MHz disadvantage in CPU speed, the Pandora was less than 50 points behind overall, with a score of 2,736

Meanwhile, in Battlefield 3 at 1,920 x 1,080, the Pandora managed a minimum frame rate of 104fps. This was within spitting distance of the Titan Node, with the situation repeating itself at 5,760 x 1,080, where the Pandora’s minimum of 42fps was just 1fps slower. Crysis 3 told a similar story too, with the Pandora’s minimums of 46fps and 20fps at 1,920 x 1,080 and 5,760 x 1,080 respectively just a fraction behind those of the Scan system. 

With the CPU delta T peaking at 57°C and the GPU delta T levelling out at 56°C in our stress test – noticeably cooler than Scan’s system – we set about seeing if we could push the Pandora a little further. Sadly, the Gigabyte motherboard lacks vcore adjustment, and pushing the CPU any further resulted in stability issues. However, we were able to push the graphics card a little further by adding 50MHz to the GPU core and memory. This saw the minimum frame rate in Battlefield 3 rise 9 per cent to 113fps at 1, 920 x 1,080 with Crysis 3 at the same resolution increasing by 3fps – equivalent to four per cent. 

In terms of power consumption, the system drew 410W under full load, with the PSU making most of the noise. On closer inspection, we found that the PSU was installed with the intake pointing outwards towards the side panel – contrary to SilverStone’s instructions, meaning it only had a tiny gap through which to draw air. It didn’t appear to be overheating, but it would probably be a lot quieter installed the other way around.

CONCLUSION 
We love the fact you can easily customise your case directly from Utopia’s extensive PC configurator. What’s more, the paint job is top-notch, really setting it apart from other PCs we’ve seen recently. While it has a slightly lower overclock than the Scan Node Titan, the Pandora has a faster SSD, faster memory, a more expensive case and an optical drive, and it’s also cool. The custom paint job is also included so you’re certainly getting more for your money. The PSU mounting is a fly in the ointment that will hopefully be sorted out, but apart from it being a tad noisy under full load, we didn’t encounter any other issues. Our sample is clearly a beast of a PC, but even if you’re looking for a more modest specification, Utopia’s ability to offer affordable customisation, including chassis modding and great paintwork, is a fantastic selling point in our books.

 

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