Corsair’s Graphite range of cases is finding favour among loads of enthusiasts and system builders at the moment. Eclipse is the latest firm to deploy the glass-panelled Graphite 760T in its i7 Liquid Vengeance PC, and it’s easy to see why. Those swinging glass not only look great, but they’re also practical, being much easier to unclip than conventional thumbscrews.
Eclipse has chosen the black version, making the Liquid Vengeance a big, dark, brooding machine, which makes the flashes of red stand out more. The power button is ringed with crimson, the two 140mm fans in the front panel are red, and Eclipse has fitted a pair of red 140mm fans to the Corsair liquid cooler. Even the logo on the Corsair cooler’s waterblock/pump unit glows red.
The red and black colour scheme looks excellent, and Eclipse has done a decent job on the inside too. The capacious motherboard tray hides cables, and they’re all black, so they’re barely visible when they do appear. The interior isn’t quite as neat as that of the Scan 3XS Z170 Vengeance, but it’s still a clean build. The Asus Strix graphics card, Corsair memory and Asus motherboard are all black and grey too, which makes for an imposing design.
The 760T also offers ample upgrade room. Two cages at the bottom house five spare side-facing hard disk bays with plastic, tool-free cages, and the top of the enclosure has two spare 5.25in bays. There are four 2.5in cages on the rear of the motherboard tray as well. However, the case’s size is possibly overkill for such a system. Few people are likely to use nine storage bays these days, and Eclipse hasn’t used the extra space to install a bespoke cooling system either. If you have room for it, though, it’s great to have the extra airflow space.
Eclipse isn’t the only manufacturer to head down this route. The Box Cube Predator, has a similar specification to the Eclipse inside an even larger Corsair Graphite 780T case. Meanwhile, Scan’s 3XS Z170 Vengeance uses the Corsair Obsidian 450D, which is only a little smaller.
The Core i7-6700K is Intel’s current top Skylake processor, and Eclipse has improved its 4GHz stock speed to 4.5GHz with a 1.35V vcore. Comparatively, the Box ran the same chip at the same speed, while the Scan ran it at 4.6GHz. The Liquid Vengeance also has an Asus Strix GeForce GTX 980, with a goodlooking design and a base clock boost from 1126MHz to 1178MHz.
The rest of the Liquid’s specification is impressive too. The 16GB of memory runs at 3000MHz, and storage is quick and capacious: the boot drive is a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD, and the secondary drive is a 2TB hard disk.
Meanwhile, the award-winning Asus Sabertooth Z170 looks fantastic. Its expansion slots sit inside Asus’ gunmetal grey Thermal Armor, and there are two tiny fans to ensure that components beneath the metal stay cool. It also has five LEDs to indicate parts of the boot process, and switches to control airflow from the tiny fans, although there are no on-board power and reset buttons. The backplate is crammed with features too, including USB 3.1 type A and C ports, a clear-CMOS button and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Finally, Eclipse’s machine has a three-year warranty with one year of parts coverage and 30 days of collect-andreturn service. That’s fine, but other firms offer better deals. For example, Scan’s warranty with the aforementioned 3XS Z170 Vengeance gives you three years of on-site coverage, including a year of on-site service.
Performance
The Eclipse’s overclocked processor means it matches its rivals on paper, but its application benchmark scores makes it a formidable force in our application benchmarks. Its video encoding result of 306,292 is decent, thanks to its four Hyper-Threaded cores, but the higher-clocked Scan system was a little quicker at 326,319. That pattern was repeated in the multi-tasking test too.
Interestingly, the Eclipse only managed a surprisingly low score of 34,078 in our image editing test (which has a knockon effect on the overall system score), and this result was repeated consistently after several runs.
However, given that we’ve seen its CPU and motherboard combination manage significantly better results elsewhere, we’re going to put this low score down to a software problem of some description that clashes with our benchmarks, rather than the Eclipse being slow, as there was no sign of thermal throttling, and it clearly has plenty of pace in our other tests.
The Liquid Vengeance was fine in games, for example, never dropping below 40fps in any of our 2,560 x 1,440 tests, although it isn’t capable of 4K gaming. Comparatively the aforementioned Box has the upper hand for highresolution gaming with its GeForce GTX 980 Ti card.
Where the Eclipse’s performance shines is in storage. The Samsung SSD 950 Pro’s sequential read and write speeds of 1,445MB/sec and 901MB/sec are excellent. The Eclipse’s thermal performance was fine too. Its CPU delta T of 66°C leans towards the hot side, but is within thermal limits, and its GPU delta T of 43°C is fine. It isn’t too noisy, and the sound is consistent, although there is in audible low rumble, making it a little louder than the Box Cube Predator.
Conclusion
The Eclipse’s £1,750 price sits below the aforementioned Scan machines, although prices have naturally changed since the Skylake supply shortage, with Scan’s spec as reviewed now coming in at £1,580 inc VAT. The extra money for the Eclipse buys you a larger Corsair liquid cooler, a superior motherboard, more memory and a slightly more powerful PSU, all of which are decent upgrades, and customising the Scan’s spec to a similar degree to the Eclipse on Scan’s website brings the 3XS Z170 Vengeance into the same price league as the Eclipse, so the Eclipse clearly offers competitive value for money too. However, the Scan still has a superior warranty.
The Eclipse i7 Liquid Vengeance is well built, fast, packed with decent components and has plenty of room to breathe. It isn’t quite capable of 4K gaming, but it’s a solid 2,560 x 1,440 gaming rig that justifies its £1,750 price tag with a great motherboard, fast SSD, large CPU cooler and loads of RAM. MIKE JENNINGS
VERDICT
Fast, well built and packed with decent parts, the Liquid Vengeance is a solid 2,560 x 1,440 gaming rig for a reasonable price.
SPECIFICATIONS
CPU 4GHz Intel Core i7-6700K overclocked to 4.5GHz
Motherboard Asus Sabertooth Z170-M1
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz DDR4
Graphics Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB
Storage 256GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD; 2TB hard disk
Case Corsair Graphite 760T
Cooling CPU: Corsair Hydro H100i GTX with 2 x 140mm fans; GPU: 2 x 100mm fans; front 2 x 140mm fans; rear: 1 x 140mm fan
PSU Corsair CS750 750W
Ports Front: 2 x USB 3, 2 x USB 2, 2 x audio; rear: 2 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 type C, 4 x USB 2, 2 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 5 x audio
Operating system Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Warranty One year parts and labour, plus two years labour only, One month collect and return, then return to base