Market Watch
A sampling of PC systems available in Australia this month.
PCCG Nightmare 1080 Ti SLI $5,699 | TINYURL.COM/APC460-PCCG
This is a fantastic PC alright, but right now is a complete waste of money. The i7-8086K CPU is just an 8700K with a 300MHz boost in single threaded situations only. For that, it costs $100 more! When the 8700K can be overclocked easily beyond that, why have the 8086K at all? And with the 8-core i7-9900K about to come out, likely for around the same cost, this CPU will be soon forgotten. Then there’s the dual GTX 1080 Tis. SLI is no longer officially supported by Nvidia except for some benchmark tools, so there’s $1,300 down the gurgler. And, the RTX series cards have just launched so you can do better if you want the best..
KEY SPECS: CPU: i7 8086K; Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H100i 240mm; M/board: Asus ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming; Graphics: 2x Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti; Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3000MHz DDR4 32GB; Storage: Samsung 970 EVO 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD, Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD; Power Supply: Corsair HX1000 Platinum 1000W; Case: Corsair Crystal 570X RGB Black
TI Infinity Gaming 2700X $3,099 | TINYURL.COM/APC460-TIC
Are you serious about gaming but also need to get work done? This system will suit any gamer and most prosumer needs too. The top of the line Ryzen 2700X will dominate any multithreading heavy situation. The GTX 1080 Ti is the best graphics card on the market at the time of writing too. However, with the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti launching this will be superseded as top dog very quickly. The included mass storage capacities and speeds are nice to see. The RAM on the other hand — while acceptable — doesn’t reach the CPU’s supported rate of 2933MHz. Minor things really, it’s tough to point out floors in an otherwise top of the line system that can do it all.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X; Cooler: Cooler Master Liquid Cooler; Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X470 –F Gaming; Graphics: GeForce GTX 1080Ti; Memory: 16GB DDR4 Kingston 2666MHz; Storage: 480GB Kingston M. 2 SSD NVMe, Seagate 2TB HDD; Power Supply: Fractal Design 750W; Case: Cooler Master H500P
Aftershock PC Apex-15R $2,193 | TINYURL.COM/APC460-APEX
The Apex 15R’s recommended specification is already great, but you’ll want some extras. The 6-core CPU has enough grunt for most power users and gamers, peaking at 4.1GHz. Matched with a GTX 1060, gaming on this machine will be no problem at all on its 1080p IPS colour-calibrated display. Paying an extra $200 to get the 144Hz display would be money well spent. A nice touch with this system is the inbuilt fully mechanical RGB keyboard. Not many are seen in laptops these days, so big points there. Mass storage is okay, with a single 512GB SSD. Adding a HDD or upgrading to an NVME SSD are options worth considering. The 8GB of RAM is a little disappointing for a gaming machine. For those who like a cherry on top, you can even request custom paint jobs for it!
KEY SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i7- 8750H; Display size: 15.6-inch; Graphics: Geforce GTX 1060 6GB; Memory: 8GB DDR4 2666MHz; Storage: 512GB M.2 SSD; Weight: 1.95Kg