PC Specialist Vortex Elite R
This well-balanced system shows you can still buy a good-value PC even during a worldwide chip shortage
SCORE
PRICE £833 (£999 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews
S o far, 2021 has been a difficult year if you’re trying to buy a new PC. Chip shortages for both processors and graphics cards have led to fluctuating prices, while pre-built systems from firms such as Acer and HP have disappeared from the virtual shelves quicker than we can recommend them. With the arrival of the PC Specialist Vortex Elite R, however, there are signs that normal service has resumed.
In truth, “Vortex” probably isn’t the right name. That word conjures extreme levels of noise and performance, wh when this is a more statesmanlike statesmanli system that will d do the job without fuss fu – and without challenging any speed records. I’m happy with that balance, especially as the chunky PC Specialistbranded air coole cooler ensures Intel’s 11th-generation Core C i5-11400 processo processor stays cool without making your ears bleed. With a single and near-silent 120mm fan for company, this is a quiet-running system.
The front-mounted fan is also the main generator of RGB colour, with its light shining through the logo carved on the front of the Corsair case. It’s plastic but has a convincing metal finish that complements the all-black innards, which you can see through the tempered glass side. The Asus TUF Gaming motherboard is similarly understated, with two subtle underlights at the right edge. The effect is classy rather than blingy.
It’s a compact motherboard, but there are still three PCIe slots available for expansion: two x1 slots and one x16 slot. But the most obvious areas for upgrades are to add more memory, with PC Specialist choosing to include a single 16GB stick of 2,400MHz DDR4 Corsair Vengeance RAM. Two empty slots are available, le, with the fourth h blocked by the air cooler.
You may also want to add more storage in the future, with three possible routes. The first is s to slip in up to two wo more M.2 SSDs Ds to join the 512GB GB stick PC Specialist list provides (you’ll need ed to remove a heatsink, but that’s a simple task), while the second and third routes involve removing the right-hand side of the chassis. This reveals two 3.5in hard disk bays with caddies, and two mounting plates for 2.5in SSDs. It’s only a shame that you’ll also need to undo PC Specialist’s neat cabling, but all of the power connectors and cables are ready and waiting.
If you want to upgrade the graphics card then note the 450W supply could prove a limiting factor, but in its current configuration the system peaked at 287W during our tests. Nvidia’s GeForce 1660 Super chipset has a thermal design power
LEFT The fans keep the noise down to a gentle breeze rather than a raging Vortex (TDP) of 125W, so that suggests more than enough headroom for a GeForce RTX 3060, say, with its 170W TDP.
I flag this because the 1660 Super is a fine choice for 1080p gaming but finds modern games more of a challenge at 1440p – still playable but not as smooth. For instance, at 1440p the Vortex Elite R averaged 41fps in Metro: Exodus,
61fps in Shadow of the Tomb
Raider and 20fps in Hitman 2 (at our nightmarish settings with 2x super sampling). Switching to 1080p saw those figures become 54fps, 82fps and 34fps. In Hitman
2, a drop to 1x super sampling saw rates jump to 73fps.
You can also forget about ray tracing, even in games that allow you to switch it on without dedicated ray-tracing cores. In
Wolfenstein with RTX switched on (and Mein Leben settings), it could only manage 23fps at 1080p. Switch RTX off and that leapt to 122fps. It really isn’t worth it.
Away from games, the Vortex
Elite R’s performance is strong. The Intel Core i5-11400 includes six cores and 12 threads that can boost up to 4.4GHz for short periods, and it impressed under the duress of the PC Pro benchmarks and Cinebench R23, as a multicore result of 10,210 in the latter shows. If you crave more speed then adding a second DIMM is an obvious choice to take advantage of both available memory channels.
Aside from its lack of storage space, which will be exposed once you install a few games, I have no complaints about the speed of the SSD. Results of 2,082MB/sec for sequential reads and 1,539MB/sec for writes are both respectable – though it’s still worth asking PC Specialist about upgrading to a 1TB SSD at the time of purchase.
It’s also worth getting in quick. With processors and graphics cards still in short supply, it’s it makes sense to push yourself to the front of the queue.
SPECIFICATIONS 6-core 2.6GHz (4.4GHz boost) Intel Core i5-11400 processor Asus TUF Gaming Z590-Plus WiFi motherboard 16GB 2,400MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super graphics PCS FrostFlow 150 Series air cooler 512GB PCS M.2 PCIe SSD Corsair 175R chassis Corsair 450W CV-450 PSU Windows 10 Home 210 x 428 x 460mm (WDH) 3yr warranty (1 month C&R, 1yr parts, 3yr labour)
“It even impressed under the duress of the PC Pro benchmarks and Cinebench R23, as a multicore result of 10,210 in the latter shows”