Utopia Ballista Limited Edition Review

Performance Analysis

Attempting to use our media benchmarks suite on the Ballista's Windows 8 install resulted in an unavoidable error that caused the system to fail the image editing test, so we were only able to obtain results here for the video editing and multi-tasking tests. Thankfully, installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on a separate partition of the system's SSD resolved the issue, allowing us to get the full set of results using this OS.

Given that Utopia has taken one of the most powerful desktop CPUs on the market, overclocked it, and paired it with one of the fastest graphics cards available, it's little surprise to see it dominate in the media performance charts. Overall, it comes out as the fastest system we've looked at, and it beats the Fierce PC Prodigy GT by about 15 percent as well. In Cinebench, it's still left trailing Intel's flagship Sandy Bridge-E chip, but Utopia's overclock sees the system take a nice lead over a stock Core i7-4770K.

Gaming performance is also excellent, with the GTX 780 3GB making mincemeat of the once system-crippling Battlefield 3. It also keeps things really smooth in the super demanding Crysis 3 benchmark too, where it stays around 40 percent faster than the GTX 670 2GB in the Prodigy GT system.


We recorded the system's idle power draw as 68W, and this increases to 370W under load in Prime95 and the Unigine Valley benchmark, so the 750W could adequately cope with a second GPU if necessary. The stress tests also see the GPU hit 81°C, which is on par with what we saw in our GTX 780 3GB review, while the overclocked CPU peaks at 91°C, which is certainly on the hot side of things. Meanwhile, the SP120 and graphics card fans, while more audible under heavy load, never reach a point that we'd consider loud or annoying, and the system is generally a quiet one.

Overclocking

We were only able to squeeze an extra 200MHz from the CPU, taking it to 4.5GHz (45 x 100MHz) with a voltage of 1.24V. It booted fine at 4.7GHz, but overheated after a short while in Prime95; even at 4.5GHz, our thermal stress test caused it to peak at 99°C, just 1°C shy of its Tj max. This small overclock yielded only minor performance improvements in our media benchmarks and Cinebench.

Our efforts with the stock speed GPU were much more fruitful, as we managed to add 140MHz (~17 percent) to the core clock and also boosted the memory from 6GHz to 6.8GHz. This is just shy of what we achieved with our review sample, but pleasingly still produced approximately 15 and 20 percent frame rate increases in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 3 respectively, with barely any temperature increase and only a slightly louder fan noise. The system peaked at a 440W power draw with both the CPU and GPU overclocked.

Conclusion

There's no denying the capabilities of Utopia's chosen hardware combination for its Ballista Limited Edition, but the question still remains whether or not it represents decent value for money over building it yourself. Tallying up its components and operating system on the handy PCPartPicker website reveals a price in the region of £1,600. While the £400 premium Utopia charges over this would be ridiculous were it only for building, tidying and shipping the system with Windows installed, it thankfully goes toward quite a bit more. Factoring in the cost of the materials (as well as the time and effort) of the case window, the excellent paint job and the entire water-cooling loop makes the £2,000 price tag a much less absurd one.

The bit-tech mentality will always favour the do-it-yourself methodology, but it's difficult to deny the appeal of the Ballista Limited Edition, especially as there's a range of colours you can select from as well. The craftsmanship on the modifications is of a very professional quality all round, and coupled with the tidy interior and powerful hardware, it's a system that's sure to turn friends and onlookers green with envy.

Utopia has responded to our review and your feedback and has told us the following:

The idea behind this system was as a limited edition show piece, however, we’ve received a huge amount of enquiries and have realised that we had to provide more realistic coolant & cooling options.

Ballista Limited Edition changes:
1. We will now be using angled barbs to avoid any kinks in the tubing.

2. We’re now using colour co-ordinated tubing with colourless coolant rather than any additives/metallic coolant which can cause blockages & are high maintenance.

3. Corsair closed loops coolers are now available with the Ballista Limited Edition for anyone wanting to avoid water cooling (these were always available with our other Ballista systems)[i]