PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO BUY THIS PC - -
I literally just received this PC today. So why does it get only one star? The PC would have received two or maybe three stars if it wasn't completely DOA (Dead on Arrival). The PC turned on, the LED's lit up (pretty!), the fans buzzed and whirled... but there was no post beep, no video signal... just nothing. If this were a PC that I built myself, like every other computer I have ever owned, I would have opened the case and troubleshot it. But this is a retail item - meaning that it should already be assembled properly, tested, and ensured to work BEFORE it is sold.
If the unit had worked, it wouldn't be worth more than THREE stars: One star for the Ryzen 5 1600x, One more star for the GTX 1070 GPU, and One more star for the MSI B350M BAZOOKA motherboard. Everything else on this PC is not made for PC Gaming. The RAM memory that came with my PC were OEM sticks with no heatsinks. The CPU cooler was a single fan, not the water cooler pictured in most of the photos. There are no case fans along the top of the case, or on the sides - so forget about any decent airflow.
This means that the PC will, not might, but WILL run VERY HOT AND RISK DAMAGING YOUR COMPONENTS if you try to overclock it, run a robust application (like any AAA game with graphics settings maxed out), or push the PC performance in any way shape or form. The manufacturers added a few quality components, but cut corners on some others to keep the costs down.
Thankfully, Amazon is amazing, and I was able to already process the return. I plan to get quality components from either Amazon or Newegg, and build a decent rig on my own, even if I spend a little more. You might save a little buying this PC, and hopefully yours will not be DOA - but you are not getting a true gaming PC, and will have to invest more money to upgrade components very, very soon after purchase.
UPDATE - INCREASED to FOUR STARS
So What happened? Well, I was boxing the PC up, to send back to Amazon (because Prime's return policy rocks!), but the PC enthusiast in me just HAD to try to troubleshoot the problem. I thought it was a bad RAM stick, so I took one out and re-seated them both, but then noticed that video card was not seated properly. once I pushed it back in place, the video signal was restored and the PC was up and running.
I gave the PC four stars because this rig can be expanded. If you do not expand it, you have a 3-star rig. The pictures of this PC are misleading, so I will tell you what you really get:
CPU - Ryzen 5 1600x, running at 3.6 Mhz. No surprise there. It retails at present for $239.99.
CPU Cooler - The crappiest Thermaltake little CPU fan ever manufactured. It looks like a cooler for a Pentium 3. You can't buy a cheaper fan. It needs an immediate upgrade to even a $20 CPU cooler.
Video Card: GTX 1070 Founders Edition (FE). This card use to retail for $449.99 when it was first released , but you can't really find them now, unless you're ready to pay $600-$700 or more. At present you can't get any kind of GTX 1070 card for less than $549.00. The GTX 1070 FE is a re-branding of the original 1070 reference model from NVIDIA that sold out as soon as it was released last year in June. The plus side is that this card is a genuine NVIDIA manufactured card.
Motherboard: MSI B350M Bazooka. This board retails for $89.99 at present. It's a nifty little board, with decent onboard audio that you'll never use if you want serious sound. Thankfully the Motherboard has PCIe slots available for expansion. I already added an Asus Xonar card that I had on another PC.
RAM: 16GB of DDR4 running at 2133mhz. This is OEM ram, and the brand is GEIL. This will tied you over for a while, but you will have to upgrade very soon to sticks with heatsinks and get faster running RAM to get better performance on AAA games. The RAM is worth about $80.00 retail.
In addition to the 120GB SSD (on which Windows is installed) and a 1 TB Hdd, there are two extra SATA open slots, so you can add more drives, which I did already, for a total of four internal drives. The slots are located under the video card, so you'll have to remove it in order to reach them.
PSU: The power supply is a Thermaltake Smart Series 600W power supply. These are not Gold, Platinum, or Titanium certified. They currently retail for $45.00. It will get you by, but you'll likely upgrade it in 6 months.
CASE: The case is a Phanteks Eclipse P400S PH-EC416PSTG, which currently retails for $79.99 in most online vendors. This is an excellent case, with very good cable management. It comes with an RGB LED strip installed. Based on your taste you might move the strip to hide it better.
As a bonus, you'll also get a decent back-lit keyboard, and multi button mouse. The mouse has variable speed settings.
So that's it. Is this PC worth it? Yes, in that - at present - if you try these parts retail, and assemble them yourself, you will spend more than the cost of buying this PC. But if you are not into upgrading PC's yourself, and want a PC that you'll just run for the next three years as-is and run AAA games at high or max settings, prepare to upgrade within months of purchase. The new CPU cooler is non-negotiable, and the RAM upgrade is closely behind.
EDIT: I added pics of the PC, the GTX 1070 FE, and the BIOS utility which allows you to easily overclock the CPU.
UPDATE: 7/5/2017
I ended up RMA-ing the system because it kept overheating with the cover on. I replaced the CPU cooler and it didn't help - in fact, it wouldn't boot at all after that. I was going to simply exchange it, but Amazon wouldn't get another model until 8/1/2017, which was too long to wait without a PC. My review stands, however, in that this is a good PC, but with some questionable parts except for the CPU, Video Card and motherboard.
| Processor | 3.6 GHz |
|---|---|
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 |
| Hard Drive | 1024 GB 7200 RPM SATA III |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 4 |
