Scorptec Venom Overclocked Edition

A well specced, well-priced gaming PC. But where have the corners been cut?

There’s a real sweet spot when it comes to speccing a machine for gaming or performance. You want the best possible gear, of course, but that adds cost. Finding that tipping point between price and performance is the challenge of every PC builder, and it’s a challenge that Scorpion Technology has risen to with gusto.

The Venom OC may not be much to look at, though. In an unprepossessing NZXT Hush case, it’s all old school alloy side panels and faux-brushed aluminium highlights. The blue LED slashing across the case’s swing-door front may not be to all tastes, but it’s a striking effect nonetheless. One thing that we did notice about the Hush, however, was that it lives up to its name. Even under load we couldn’t really hear any of the fans whirring away to help the fun bits deliver nothing but the choicest of pixels.

Opening up the case, there’s damping material on both side panels and the lower surface of the case – we guess that stuff really works! Looking beyond the dampening, the case is the very model of a modern cabling... um, something that rhymes with ‘general’. But it’s good, regardless, with everything cable tied away from airflow routes and kept away from major components. This machine would be a breeze to dig around, but for one little issue.

There’s a sticker over the seal between side-panel and rear-panel, with the dreaded words ‘Warranty void if removed’. Not what an inveterate tweaker and upgrader ever wants to hear! Scorptech do make good machines, there’s no doubt, but as we’ve said before it pays to open up any new PC just to make sure that everything is in working order, that nothing has been bumped lose in transit (which often happens to CPU fans or less than properly secured cabling). Doing that with a Scorptech machine would void your warranty, so you’re placing a lot of faith in the hands of others. You have been warned.

All that aside, the machine kicks some serious butt, especially given its price. Performance aside – we’ll get to it – you’re getting a lot of machine, with top end graphics card, all the peripherals you could want, and a reasonably solid overclock. How solid?

The 45nm E8500 in the Venom runs stock at 3.16GHz, and has been bumped up to 3.6GHz. We noticed no instabilities at all under load, and it really helped makes Vista feel a lot more spry. It also helped boost scores across all our benchmarks.

3DMark06 scores felt a little off the pace, at 14,350 at stock settings, but that’s still up there with the mid-range systems tested in our Gaming PC Roundup in issue 91. 3DMark Vantage returned a respectable 7,745 marks, which is just about bang on for an overclocked Dual Core and single card setup. Our usual gaming test, Crysis, romped in, though, with over 28fps average at standard settings, and even managing a fair 15fps at 1600 x 1200 with 4x AA. And all in wonderful silence.

The Venom OC certainly has the power, but if you’re at all interested in having a play with the innards of your machine – and really, we’d recommend that to any reader – you might want to look elsewhere. But if you’re happy with leaving well enough alone, at least until the two year RTB warranty (which, we admit, is pretty good) has run out, this is a hard system to look past.