5900X, 3070TI, H150i Capellix and PCS GD27 Monitor

B4zookaw

B4zookaw

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Hey all,

Thought I'd share some pics and thoughts on my recent PCS purchase, my first.

Starting with the key specs:
Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX TD500 MESH ARGB GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.8GHz/70MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® STRIX B550-F GAMING (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 670p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR | 2500MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Corsair H150i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Monitor
PCS GD27 27" GAMING MONITOR - 1440p, IPS, 165Hz

Ordered on 26th Nov, and got a few quid off because of Black Friday. I had originally spec'd a lower PSU and cooler, but upped it based on some feedback I got via this forum. Was hoping to get it in time for Christmas as would have more time to set it up etc during my leave. And thankfully despite delays with Irish Customs and FedEx, it got here the week before.

Overall, I'm pleased with the build, I'm no expert but it certainly seems put together well, and everything was working out of the box, although I did have some niggles that I'll come to in a bit. But first, some pics.

Rear panel:
IMG_6677.jpg


I'm no expert on cable management, but this looks very neat to me, and everything is well secured, no wiggle in any of the cables.

Front panel off, PC off:
IMG_6678.jpg


And with the RGBs on:
IMG_6679.jpg


And a pic of my setup on my standing desk:
IMG_6690.jpg


And yes, the desk cable management could be neater, but it's hard to hide the cables entering the work laptop from the side....
 
JUNI0R

JUNI0R

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Oh wow, this is incredible! You don't often see 360mm AIO's top mounted in that case, it looks great! Also what are your initial impressions of the PCS monitor? it's a monitor we don't know much about so I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
 
B4zookaw

B4zookaw

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
So what niggles did I have?

My build came with a mixture of fans, Corsair ML120s as part of the H150i cooler, and three Cooler Master Sickleflow 120s as part of the case. The Corsairs are very easy to control from a speed and colour perspective using iCUE (a very easy application to navigate), but the Cooler Master fans require the use of Armoury Crate to manage.

And Crate was not installed by default by PCS, so I had to install it and figure out how to work it make changes to the RGB. I did find its ability to set RPM almost non existent beyond 4 set profiles (silent, standard, turbo, etc) so I then installed AI Suite to try and set some custom curves. That ended up being a right mess, as Crate and AI appear to be buggy and did not play nice with iCUE. Uninstalling the Asus products caused all sorts of error messages to appear so in the end I had to resort to a clean install of Windows 10.

Which is not a bad thing, a clean install is always good, but not necessarily what an average user might want to do in the first few days of getting a new PC.

I also had to install FireStorm to manage my Zotac 3070 TI Trinity OC card. So again, would have been better if PCS had installed this as default, rather than the user having to figure out which software to install, etc.

For now, I'm just using iCUE and Crate to manage the respective fans, but next week (once I get delivery) I'll be swapping out the Cooler Masters for three ML120s, which will allow me to control 6 of the 7 fans via iCUE and all of their RGB in a consistent manner. I'll do a post on that if anyone is interested. I'm also swapping out the generic back exhaust DC fan for a SilentWings 3 PWM.

In terms of cable management, I can't fault it at all really. The ML120 fans are wired out of sequence, but thankfully iCUE allows you to reconfigure in the software, so there's no impact to sequential RBG patterns. The power wiring to the GPU looks chunky coming out of the middle grommet, which would obscure any RGB RAM someone might have. But if you used the bottom grommet and brought the cables over the front of the GPU, you'd be obscuring the GPU RBG (as minimal as it is). So I think in my case, the routing is probably appropriate.

The GPU support arm didn't have the rubber supports attached, but again, they'd probably shake off in transit, so likely better to allow the user to fit them once it arrives, but PCS should probably include this info in their welcome pack.

And to be honest, so far that's about it in terms of niggles on the build. I've spent some time playing around with some basic settings, leaving the CPU and GPU at stock for now. I've learned a lot about the various components through that (and with reading these forums) so I think my next PC will be self build. But right now, with the GPU shortage, issues with logistics, Brexit removing some of the UK suppliers from my reach etc, PCS was the right choice, in terms of practicality and price.

Next post: my thoughts on the GD27 monitor.
 
B4zookaw

B4zookaw

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
So, I'll put my hands up and admit that there are definitely far better monitors out there than the GD27, but like I said above, my main priority was to get something as part of the PC delivery and not have to deal with a second supplier, second customs delays, second courier etc. My criteria for picking a monitor from the PCS selection was a) 1440p (I didn't think my budget would stretch to 4K, plus I think I would need a 3080 to do a 4K monitor justice) b) 27" (My work monitor was a Dell 24" P Series, but I thought a bigger size would be better for gaming) c) not curved (that's a step too far for me right now) d) IPS cos I got a random notion in my head that was a sign of a good gaming monitor, not at all based on any data :)

So looking through the PCS selection, the GD27 met all of these criteria, and at €295 did not break the bank after spending €2,765 on the PC!

The only info I had on the monitor was what PCS displays:
1641069471427.png


So not a lot to go on!

My thoughts after using it for 2 weeks or so - it's fine, it does the job, but definitely room for improvement in some areas.

Build quality wise, it seems very sturdy, the stand is heavy and solid, no danger of it tipping over. The stand allows you to adjust the height, angle and rotation of the screen. The arm at the back has some a slot to pass cables through to the connections. The red ring at the top of the legs looks a bit plasticky maybe. The rear leg is about 10cm long, so the monitor is that bit closer to me than my Dell was, as I can't push it as far back on the desk.

At the rear, there are inputs for 1 DisplayPort, 2 HDMI, 1 USB, 1 headphone and of course power. The power is via a laptop type convertor, rather than a kettle cord:
IMG_6689.jpg

The rear of the monitor also has a RGB ring that cycles through a range of colours, don't think you can control it in any way, and again, as the monitor has to be a min of 10cm away from the wall cos of the rear leg, the ring doesn't cast any noticeable light on the surface behind. So a bit of a gimmick really.

IMG_6688.jpg


The controls are on the bottom of the panel, set toward the back. To me, they're too far back and it took me a few mins to find them on day 1 (did I mention the included manual is a 2 page leaflet with almost no details?). They're fine to use, but one thing that does annoy me is switching between my work laptop (connected via HDMI) and the PC (connected via DP). I'd prefer if I just had to press a single button (with repeated pushes to cycle through the inputs) but I have to push three to make it happen (E to bring up the input menu, one of the arrows to change selection and then M to confirm the selection). Bit of a faff really.

In terms of the image quality, again I'd say there are probably better monitors out there. I'm not a pro gamer who will pick up on crap frame rates, sync issues etc. It's bright, text is crisp, etc to me. Out of the box, the colour calibration was well off, with greys appearing yellow, etc. So I had to spend some time in both the monitor and GPU settings to address this. Not sure I've got it dialled in perfectly, red colours seem to be overly red/bright/glaring to me. If anyone has tips on colour calibration I'm all ears/eyes?

So summary, it's grand, prob give it at 5/10. Hope that helps some people if they're looking for more info, I know I found it hard to get any, even on the forums.
 
Last edited:
B4zookaw

B4zookaw

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
JUNI0R said:
Oh wow, this is incredible! You don't often see 360mm AIO's top mounted in that case, it looks great! Also what are your initial impressions of the PCS monitor? it's a monitor we don't know much about so I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Click to expand...
Added some of my feedback after your post, but let me know if you have more questions?
 
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