Alphabetapc
Turbot-charged
An illuminated PC with a touch of glass
Most desktop PCS are basically similar black towers, even if the manufacturers add grilles and stripes to make them look more intesting. This PC is different. By positioning the motherboard next to the power supply unit rather than above it, Alphabetapc has created something closer to a cube. Tinted glass plates have been bolted over four sides, leaving a standard backplate for inputs and outputs. The two large fans on the front and top are fitted with multi-coloured LEDS that you can adjust from a remote control. As the graphics card’s fans are
It looks like an aquarium, but this PC is fast enough for most tasks
also visible (note that the internal components may not exactly match the pictures), the entire PC is reminiscent of a small aquarium hosting a shoal of exotic jellyfish. The layout is practical, however, with space for various drives (although not DVD or Blu-ray) and PCI cards, as well as a useful carrying handle.
The graphics card is Nvidia’ss Geforce RTX 2070 Super,uper, which we’ve never beseen in a PC costing less than four figures. It’s accompanied by an Intel I5-9600KF processor, which isn’t particularly new or fast and held back performance in some of our 3D graphics tests. Even so, this is a great gaming PC, beating the rival combination of a faster AMD Ryzen 5 3600X CPU with a cheaper RTX 2060 GPU in the Palicomp AMD Navigator (see below right).
Alphabetapc supplies a sensible 16GB of memory, but only one storage drive – Crucial’s 480GB MX500 SSD. If you need to add more, you can use the two 3.5in and two 2.5in SATA bays, and specify a 1, 2 or 4TB hard drive when you order, at £50 to £84 extra. Rather than an NVME drive in a fast M.2 socket, however, the MX500 is a basic 2.5in unit, limited to 600 megabytes per second (MB/S) by the old-fashioned SATA interface. In our
SPECIFICATIONS
3.7GHZ Intel I5-9600KF 6-core processor • 16GB memory • 8GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 2070 Super graphics • 480GB SSD • 8x USB 3 Gen1 ports • USB 2 port • Gigabit Ethernet • HDMI and Displayport outputs • Windows 10 Home • 380x290x480mm (HXWXD) • Three-year warranty www.snipca.com/33663
tests, it managed 526MB/526MBS reading and 483MB/S writing, writin which is still lightning-fast compacompared with a mechanical hard drive, but not in the same league as today’s NVME SSDS, which can reach five times these speeds. For tasks such as 4K video editing or copying a lot of data, that’s significant.
With no M.2 socket and only USB 3.0 Gen1 external ports (which are slower than SATA, pictured below left), you can’t add really fast storage unless you install a PCI interface card. Realistically, though, this capable £999 system will never be a high-end creative workstation, and SATA SSD is adequate for most purposes.