Early days review, will update if anything comes up. Also, I'm a 1080 gamer, so any performance info below is based on 1080 gaming, nothing higher. I'm the weirdo who never cared about higher resolutions.
TLDR; I'm very, very happy. Read on for details.
I built my last gaming PC. When I realized that replacing the end-of-life parts would involve basically everything due to the age / tech gen, I decided to just buy a pre-built. 2020 has wiped out my patience for tinkering. I just wanted something usable for 1080 gaming, already put together, that I could get fairly soon. This fit the bill so I ordered it.
I unboxed it (it was VERY well packaged), took the packing materials out of the case, and put it up on the dining room table to open it up and get a better look and check all of the connections. (It's still on the table, because it came two days earlier than expected and I haven't moved out my old computer yet.) The builders did great cable management. Such a clean setup. It's going to cause me pain to undo those pretty bundles to power two more drives in a couple days. It's also going to be hard for me to make it look as good as they did when I'm done. Cable management has never been my strong suit.
The rear fan connector had come loose in transit, but that was a quick and easy fix.
NOTE: I've seen many people say that this computer only has room for one additional drive (the included SSD + 1) and that is NOT TRUE. It can take a total of 4 drives. There are the two top bays which will take either 2.5 or 3.5" drives, and there are also two hidden 2.5 drive mounting brackets hidden behind the white side panel. There are a total of 4 SATA3 connectors on the motherboard to connect the drives to. There is also an M2A socket on the motherboard but the GPU is pretty much taking over that whole area, so that won't be of much use.
The case is an InWin 101C, if you want to look for more details on that.
Now, these pre-built computers have quite a bit of variance in the brands of products used so what I got might not be what you get, but my parts were branded as follows:
MOBO: Gigabyte B450m DS3H-cf (v2 - which is important when looking up the manual)
RAM: Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z
GPU: Zotac
SSD: PNY
I saw in some reviews that some people didn't get the wifi antennas or that the card might not have been installed in theirs. I'm happy to report that mine was fine, and the two antennas screwed right on as expected.
So, after the pre-flight checklist was complete, I connected to a monitor and power and started it up. It started up FAST. At first I had no audio (it only detected digital) but I let Windows Update do its thing and it installed the correct drivers, and I had audio top and back on reboot. Everything seems to be working perfectly, and I actually enjoyed the included keyboard and mouse they included. (I'm picky about mice but I liked it.) Not sure how I feel about all the RGB stuff but it can be turned off so that's an option.
Oh, go into BIOS, turn on XMP. You're welcome.
Let's just skip to the performance, shall we? No Man's Sky, full Ultra settings, at a solid 60fps. (Yes, this is post-Next Generation update.) And that's really all I wanted. Even better? It barely broke a sweat temps-wise (both CPU and GPU). It runs so cool, and the fans are so quiet that the only reason I knew they ramped up their speed was because I was sitting next to it and felt it blowing on me. (The rear fan and two side fans all exhaust, air intake is from the bottom of the case, which has a removable filter underneath. You can optionally mount three additional fans in the bottom which would allow a negative pressure setup.)
So there you have it. Yes, there's a premium for not wanting to put one together myself, but it was worth it. I'll let you know if any problems arise.
| Standing screen display size | 1 |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Processor | 3.4 GHz ryzen_5 |
| RAM | 16 GB SDRAM |
| Memory Speed | 3000 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 500 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 |
| Chipset Brand | AMD |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 6.00 |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
