Arrived! Gaming PC

Well, the waiting is over...

Ordered Thurs 8th February
Reached "Pre-Production" Tue 13th February
Went straight to "Testing" Fri 23rd February
Dispatched Monday 26th February
Arrived Tuesday 27th February.

What arrived was a very hefty cardboard box. The cutouts on 2 sides of the box aren't really strong enough to carry the box with a side upright, even with the other hand underneath (necessary as I live up a tiny flight of stairs) - one of them ripped slightly, so I didn't use them after that.

Inside, there's plenty of padding protecting the PC, including a clear pastic bag around it:



As promised, a smaller box contains the Welcome Pack:



Inside



are
- the two screw-on Wifi aerials
- All the case bits (screws etc) which weren't used
- A PCS instruction booklet covering basic installation
- The mobo manual
- The manual for the CPU cooler
- The kit that came with the CPU cooler, including a tool to grip the nuts on the underside of the mobo, spare screws, and a tube of thermal paste.

It's good that PCS include all of this rather than throwing it away. Particularly useful in my case, as I'll get to later.

The Fractal Design R5 is a chunky case:



With the door open, you can see the front fan and the DVD drive:



Taped to the side of the case (with masking tape, leaving no marks - nice touch that) is an A5 PCS flier, reminding you that there is padding inside the case. Do NOT switch the machine on without removing this first.

(continued)

Open up the case, and there's the padding:



Easy to remove. Now I could see just how much extra space this case has:



Here's the GPU beastie. Quite normal-looking:



And here's the CPU cooler:



That's where the minor problems started. It was wobbling around terribly. Since I've never had a PC with a big cooler, I got on the phone to PCS. Yes, they confirmed, the cooler definitely shouldn't be moving around at all.

Here's where the inclusion of the cooler manual and all the parts made a huge difference. I was able to quickly figure out the problem. The plate on the underside of the mobo (attached by 4 nuts) was not sitting properly down against the mobo in one corner. Without the tool (that sits on the end of a screwdriver) included in the cooler pack, fixing this would have been far harder. And without the manual, I might have re-installed it incorrectly. In the end I complete removed the cooler and all its mounting bits and pieces, put on a bit of thermal paste, and refitted it.

Next problem. Switch on the PC, no signal to the monitor, no POST beeps at all. Another call to PCS (thank you Richard). He talked me through removing the memory to check that I got a "no memory" POST beep sequence. Then I replaced the memory one stick at a time. All good. I guess one of the memory cards must have not been sitting properly.

After that, it was just a case of setting up Windows 10 - and then, of course, altering all the Windows 10 settings that drive me nuts, which has taken me all week. Oh, and downloading a couple of the 12 games I got in the GOG sale the week before! So far, I've only played Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition, which hardly wakes up the GPU, but makes me laugh (highly recommended). At some point I'll enter the world of Witcher (have 1,2 and 3) and Saints Row 3...

I've hardly scratched the surface of this machine yet. With my legacy 1440x900 monitor, the full awesomeness of the 6Gb GTX1060 is obviously a bit wasted. Once I get my latest invoice paid, I have my eye on the AOC AG241QG.

What I do notice is just how smoothly this machine can handle things. The SSD makes an enormous difference: everything just happens instantaneously.

I thought of running some 3DMark tests, but was put off by the enormous 2Gb download. Instead, I ran the AIDA64 stress test for 5 minutes. The temperatures seem to be very much under control:

CPU: idle 30-32C, max 70C
GPU: idle 31C, max 75C

The Fractal Design case is unbelievably quiet. With my ears, I couldn't even tell that the stress test was happening. I had to look at the fan speeds on HWMonitor:

Case fan: idle 699RPM, max 885RPM
(for some reason HWMonitor doesn't notice the 2nd case fan)
CPU cooler fan: idle 720RPM, max 1111RPM
GPU fan: idle 850RPM, max 1513RPM.

So, I'm thoroughly pleased. I don't think I'm going to hit the limits of this machine for a long while.

Spec:

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE R5 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Six Core Processor i5-8400 (2.8GHz) 9MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF Z370-PLUS GAMING: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 - DVI, HDMI, 3 x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212X (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Firewire
2 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI-E Card (2 x 6 pin)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Insurance
Simplesurance Purchase Protection inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price £1,344.95 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z370-pc/ggzGfBWZ!c/

Great review. Love the R5 case, very quiet which is perfect because I watch a lot of films using it.

Did you leave the door on the case as it is, or did you swap it so the hinge is on the right hand side. It's the first thing I did. Just a simple task of remove the hinges and affixing them on the other side. It's in the manual if you do it.
Love being able to remove the HD cages too to create more room.

Looks like a good one. Hope gamer will love this one a lot. Thanks!

Nice post - great to see pics too