Fresh Tech Solutions Ultimate Collection 6700K Review

Performance Analysis

The Ultimate Collection 6700K makes light work of our benchmarks. An overclocked GTX 980 Ti is just about the fastest card currently on the market, and it achieves a constant 60fps or more at 1440p and never dips below 30fps at 4K. This system also definitely meets the criteria of being VR ready.

The PCMark 8 results are also good, especially the Photo Editing workload – the Core i7-6700K at 4.5GHz is a potent CPU indeed, and it shows. It does great in Cinebench as well thanks to its Hyperthreaded cores, though it still can't quite compete here with X99 CPUs and systems based on them, which is to be expected.

Idling, the system draws less than 100W and it stays below 500W even with the CPU and GPU both at maximum load. This reinforces our belief that 750W is overkill, but also not quite enough to support a second GPU. We could be wrong here – the GTX 980 Ti has a TDP of 250W, but this is an overclocked version and even if it didn't surpass 250W, the extra card would definitely be pushing this PSU too close for comfort by our reckoning.


Although the CrystalDiskMark numbers don't look very impressive next to systems featuring NVMe SSDs, the PCMark 8 workloads demonstrate very little benefit of these boosted speeds, especially for gaming, so we don't really consider this a weakness.

When idling, the system is quiet, though not silent. The GPU does disable its fans altogether, but the front fans and H80i V2 still make a quite thrum – thankfully, both are easy to lower the speeds of, whereby things become very quiet indeed.

Under full CPU and GPU load, the cooling system proves itself worthy. The CPU delta T of 73°C is a little high, but nonetheless it stayed at a constant 4.5GHz with no throttling. The same is true of the GPU, which had a delta T of just 53°C. Fresh Tech's custom Corsair Link profile limits the H80i V2 to 75 percent fan speed, which it did reach in the thermal test. At this speed (around 2,100 RPM), it is a little on the loud side, and is the main source of system noise by far – the GPU cooler never passed 1,200 RPM and remained virtually inaudible. Even with the front fans set to 5V and the H80i V2 set to Quiet mode (fans limited to 60 percent), the GPU delta T was unaffected and the CPU one only rose by 4°C. In short, if you choose to utilise the system's fan control options to lower noise, your performance is unlikely to be affected.

Conclusion

With this system, Fresh Tech was keen to show that it has what it takes to compete in the high-end SI market. While the Ultimate Collection 6700K is a pretty low-risk build in terms of not featuring custom water-cooling – something Fresh Tech does not offer – the component selection is mostly very solid. The build is also tidy and the thermals and noise levels achieved are pretty good too given the power on offer.

At £1,600, the price is also fair. We tallied up the components individually and reached £1,680, so you are saving a bit while also getting your PC built and overclocked for you and also supplied with a three year warranty. While that may take all the fun out of it for some, there's clearly a need for systems like this and Fresh Tech Solutions has demonstrated that it's able to meet that need very well. A few niggles like the PSU selection, slightly wonky graphics card and drive cage being left in hold the Ultimate Collection 6700K back from our top award, as this is a highly competitive space, but it is nevertheless a deserving recipient of our Recommended badge. If you're after a powerful but no-fuss machine capable of high resolution and VR gaming, the Ultimate Collection 6700K is a good choice and there's little to suggest that you can't buy it with confidence.