PC Specialist Enigma 4K

The power of Ryzen at an impressively low price

We’ve seen how AMD’S Ryzen 7 and 5 processors (pictured below) boosted the performance of high-end and mid-range PCS. Now here’s a cheaper PC built around the more basic Ryzen 3 1300X, with an overclockable base speed of 3.5GHZ. It’s a full-power desktop processor with four cores, like Intel’s i5. The Ryzen is paired not with one of AMD’S own Radeon graphics cards, but Nvidia’s Geforce GTX 1050.

These are interesting components to find in a £600 PC, and PC Specialist has accompanied them with 8GB of fast memory and a 128GB SSD, on the high-speed PCIE interface, as well as the obligatory 1TB hard drive. That’s a sensible balance of speed and storage, with Windows and programs loading quickly from the SSD while the bigger mechanical drive gives you lots of space for files.

After Enigma models called the K2 (see Issue 498, page 21) and K3 (Issue 505, page 28), the computer-naming elves at PC Specialist have slyly flipped the K4 to ‘4K’, implying that this is a system powerful enough for advanced tasks like rendering high-resolution video. It just so happens that our most demanding laboratory tests feature exactly such challenges, and they found that the Ryzen 1300X processor could match the scores of a modern i5. Serious film editors would still need to buy a PC with a more powerful processor, but for casual video work and photo editing the Enigma 4K will cope fine, and multitasking with everyday Windows 10 programs is no problem at all.

The GTX 1050 may be a low-end graphics card, but it’s at the low end of a new range that marks a significant step up in performance, and has a generous 4GB of its own memory. In our gaming tests, even demanding titles ran very smoothly on high quality settings, and a card like this will also help substantially with photo and video effects rendering in programs that can make use of it (see your software’s system requirements for compatibility).

PC Specialist’s Enigma case remains an acquired taste, looking rather like the helmet a killer robot would wear. But it’s perfectly serviceable – not too bulky yet providing decent room for expansion. No DVD or Blu-ray drive is fitted as standard, but there are two free bays for 5.25in optical drives if you want to add one, plus space for up to four storage drives including the supplied SSD and hard drive.

You also get a good selection of external ports, including five USB 3.0 (four at the back and one at the front), three USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet, although there’s no USB 3.1 or intern internal M.2 connector for the fastest SSDS SSDS. For monitors there are HDMI, dual dual-link DVI and VGA ports. Our only gripe about the construction of this system was that not much has been done to minimise noise: the side fan does drone on rather loudly. It may not bother you if it’s under your desk, but it’s nowhere near as quiet as something like the CCL Elite (see Issue 493, page 23).

VERDICT: As long as you don’t need a silent PC, the Enigma 4K provides excellent all-round performance at a very reasonable price

★★★★★

ALTERNATIVE: CCL Elite £623 Not quite as powerful and slightly pricier, but this Intel/ Nvidia system has built-in Wi-fi and a more compact design

It’s fast and has plenty of storage, but is also very noisy

VERDICT: We’re still not convinced by laptop-tablets, but this usable and highly portable Windows machine gives Microsoft a run for its money

★★★★☆

ALTERNATIVE: Lenovo Ideapadap Miix 510 £599 Hasas a duller 12.2in screen,een, nno pen and poor batteryattetery life but twicece ththe storage