My new PC and PCS review

[danamb]

Hi All!

Today is the day when my new PC has finally arrived! So here is a quick showcase of the machine and a review of PCS and my experience so far. I will update the post later when I finish testing some of the games I am playing with.

The config:

Case
PCS SR-621GG TEMPERED GLASS CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.25GHz/19MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
Gigabyte AX370 Gaming 3: ATX, 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 PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 128MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 1500MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
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

Price £1,193.00 including VAT and delivery

The story

After deciding the final build with the help of the forum members, I placed my order and had to complete the personal finance review at Hitachi Capital. It went quite easily and quickly, so within one day my order was already placed at PCS.

The pre-production stage was the longest. It took 16 days to finally leave that stage and to enter the building phase. It was a bit unlucky that the 16th day was a Friday, so I had to wait 'til the next Monday for the PC to advance in the stages, but the testing and QA part was done in a day and the next day it was finally dispatched.

PCS review

From ordering to receiving the PC all I can say I am perfectly satisfied with what I have experienced here. The support answered all my questions within an hour timeframe with not simply copy-pasted everyday phrases, but really helpful real-life experience helps. They really know what they are doing, so it's an A+!

I got the same impression here at the forum, too. I would also like to thank everyone's help, it is good to see that everyone is really helpful and friendly at this forum! A+ here, too!

The PC came in a big and durable box, that keeps the machine safe and make it easy to bring up from the ground floor to the 2nd (well, it is more important for the courier :-D ). Guess what, A+ again.

DPD courier was accurate and the tracking worked flawlessly. I had bad experence with them in the past, but today luckily everything went well.

My only bad feeling is regarding the inability to select the type of GPU (brand and type). I got the Zotac mini that does not fit in the actual look of the big picture of the machine. I know I am not a big PC builder and this machine is definitely not something that you can show to the public, but still... And yes, I know this is still a GTX 1060 6GB. And yes, I know I could have bought a GPU from elsewhere, but I did not want this option. I do not like this gambling feeling, but at least that is the only bad thing I can tell.

Pictures - part 1

 

[danamb]

Pictures - part 2









Edit: uploaded the images again, I hope now they are visible.

 

[ubuysa]

I think you may have screwed up the image links in your second post?

A very nice and balanced review, thanks for taking the time to post back on here. Glad you're happy.

 

[Lionheart]

Hi danamb I've been following your post and I'm so glad to see it arrived safely. I'm actually awaiting delivery of my second pc specialist pc right now. I got my first one about 3 years ago and at the time I went for the 980ti and got a Zotac to. I'm so glad I got that make it is still powering through today's games with ease. I sure understand the gamble looks wise but sure a great make for performance and staying power. Best of luck with your new machine I hope we have as much fun with our new pcs as I have with my first one.

 

[danamb]

I do not know what went wrong, on my machine they were visible yesterday. I hope now they are visible!

I am happy, yes! I only had 2 minutes to try Divinity 2 and it ran on max settings without any problems. I installed Rocket League, but I did not have time to give that a try, but I will do that today evening.

 

[danamb]

Waiting is the worst part of it. I am sure there will be no problem with your machine and I hope you will also enjoy using that!

My problem is not with Zotac, it is just the inability to select what I would like to see in my machine. If I had wanted a "cool-looking" PC for showcases, I would have called PCS before ordering and I am more than sure they would have helped me to pick the GPU I think would fit best in the final design. But in this "case" I would have chosen a different RGB light case as PCS SR-621GG TEMPERED GLASS CASE has only plain white led, while the motherboard is red.

 

[ubuysa]

Edit: uploaded the images again, I hope now they are visible.

Yes they are.

 

[Leeuk13]

Great review mate! PC looks lovely!

I agree with you about choosing the GPU brand though, mine came with a GTX1080, which from the review system I selected (Vulcan S 01) was a Zotac. It actually came with a Founders Edition (I wasn’t unhappy by any means). They also sent me the GPU case... which said Titan XP Stars Wars addition on it!? Haha!

Enjoy it mate!

 

[danamb]

I tried couple of games and also copied 500+GB of data from my laptop to the hard drive (the 7200rpm hdd, not to the ssd).

Rocket League, NBA2K16, Fifa17, Divinity Original Sin 2, Mortal Kombat X, The Crew 2 - these games ran at 1080p on max settings without any issues at 60fps.

Fifa Manager 14 - this game had hardware acceleration issues. I had to set the compatibility mode to Windows 8 but the game did not start in the first 2 days, but yesterday - I do not know how - it just started working. I did not upgrade any drivers, so I do not know what happened, I just kept on trying and suddenly: "EA Sports.....its in the game!".:yes:

When I connected my laptop and PC with a UTP cable, I copied the files at 150+mb/sec, sometimes reaching 170-180mb/s. I am not exactly sure how it was possible, maybe total commander was calculating something incorrectly, but anyways, the copying was lightning quick!

I also moved my Windows 10 Pro license to the PC and it worked for the first try. I was a bit scared when I saw the PCS desktop wallpaper with the "This is a test version of Windows...", because I thought there will be problems with the activation, but it looks like it was just an non-activated Windows 10 Home.

The PC itself is super fast (ok, I know, its fresh Win 10 installation and not just the hardware). It boots almost as quickly as slowly my Acer monitor starts up.

The sound level is quite good, too. Even during gaming, it is much less noisy than my laptop was.

I made a mistake with my order and I did not realize that until I received the PC. The mistake was that I added the slowest wifi card to it. I think originally the motherboard's built-in ethernet option was the default selected item in the list on the configurator and before I selected the parts the website had been changed. It is not a big issue, the wifi card was £9 and it turned out that when wifi AND the ethernet option are both enabled and you connect the PC to the router with the UTP cable, the network speed adds up, so instead of ~10mb/s my download speed was 13.5mb/s. Not that I download anything from anywhere....:sweatdrop:

Finally, the sound quality of the motherboard is excellent! I did not have any problems with my laptop's sound quality, but this mobo does it's sound-related job perfectly!

Update (08/08/2018):
I just realized that the case's fans do not have an option that only turns off the lighting, but not the fans themselves. It's a shame, because sometimes (e.g. when I either watch a movie or play some horror games) I would like to have my room to be as dark as it could be without doing any extra steps (i.e. to cover the PC with something). What a pity...

 

[danamb]

9 months passed and I feel I need to update my review slightly.

Unfortunately, there is some problem with the PSU as it makes some rattling noise. While it is not a big issue, after all it is a hardware and things like this can happen, furthermore PCS was really helpful and they replace it with a new one as the PC is still under warranty, I faced two really ugly problems here.

These are the case and the motherboard.

Case:
I do not know who designed this, but it is quite frustrating to remove the PSU as you need to disassemble the panel on the motherboard's side and you need to either unplug the cables while the PSU is in the case (quite impossible as you need a very small hand for this), or you need to take out the PSU while removing the cables when the PSU is only half-way out of the case, but that is also difficult as the cables are not long. Unfortunately, you cannot take out the PSU in any other direction as the holes at the back and at the other side of the case are too small for that. I am not even sure why there are small plates covering actually nothing, but attached to the case by screws? You cant use those holes for anything, other than wondering why they are there!

Motherboard:
I am not comparing this mobo to others, but I do not understand why the PSU connector is at the top left that is completely unaccessible?! You know, in order to remove the cable from the connector, you have to press down the safety button on the cap of the cable, but this is impossible to do as there is absolutely no space for your hands! I had to remove one of the top fans, but even after this it was still difficult to remove the cable. And for God's sake I do not want to take out the whole mobo just to be able to remove one cable from it!

The PC's cabling:
I have a feeling that the cables are not supposed to be changed by anyone else than the support. While the cabling looks pretty when PC arrives, when you need to do any changes it is hell of a work. All cables are attached to the case with aluminum locks (usually 3 or 4). It might be because of the warranty, but still when you need to remove them it is very dangerous as you can easily damage the cables and it just takes too long.

My advice:
Before you buy any of these cases (just dont), make sure that all hardware are easily accessible, unless you are fine for sending back your PC in case it has any issues.

Good news is that the PC still works as expected and on 1080p I still do not feel that I need to upgrade any of the parts.

 

[Oussebon]

The PC's cabling:
I have a feeling that the cables are not supposed to be changed by anyone else than the support. While the cabling looks pretty when PC arrives, when you need to do any changes it is hell of a work. All cables are attached to the case with aluminum locks (usually 3 or 4). It might be because of the warranty, but still when you need to remove them it is very dangerous as you can easily damage the cables and it just takes too long.

It's not a warranty thing. PCS try to cable the PCs neatly, and this usually involves routing and binding the cables to parts of the PC case.

If the cables are locked tightly by something in the case (some kind of aluminium bracket you were saying?) that sounds like a feature of the case. Often the cases just have little loops that you use plastic zip-ties on. My R4 has this kind of system.

Any kind of very neat cable management is likely to make it harder, initially anyway, to get at the cables. And I was sad to undo the cable management PCS did tbh.

A lot of the issues you're discussing above relate to the case, I think - the SR-621GG. Where you say:

My advice:
Before you buy any of these cases (just dont), make sure that all hardware are easily accessible, unless you are fine for sending back your PC in case it has any issues.

I think you have a good point. This is a case by Solleron who seem to specialise in cases for OEMs rather than ones that retail directly to consumers (like a Corsair Crystal 460x might for instance).

And unlike cases that retail directly to consumers, they don't get sent out for review. So it's much harder to find out exactly what you're getting.

I guess this is one of the consequences of that - i.e. because they don't need to appeal to hobbyists, only professional builders, they're not a huge amount of fun to build/work in.

 

[danamb]

I just checked and PCS does not sell this case anymore!

+1 to PCS because they were really quick and helpful when I opened a ticket about the malfunctioning of the PSU and they also quickly sent a replacement one.

Of course, the above "complaining" was not against PCS, but the case and mobo's weird connector placement.