Yoyotech Warbird Gam3r

Yoyotech’s Warbird Gam3r certainly stands out from the crowd, thanks to the distinctive cuboid shape of the Themaltake Core 21 micro-ATX system case. Finished in matt black, the front of the case features an all-mesh design, while both left and right side panels are almost entirely transparent, revealing the components inside.

The width of the case allows the MSI Z97M-G43 micro-ATX motherboard to be installed horizontally, which offers the advantage of easy access from either side, but at the expense of an unobstructed top-down view of the components. It also partitions off the lower portion of the case, where the power supply and storage drives are located. Yoyotech has selected a 600W Aerocool Integrator PSU and provides a 240GB Patriot Blaze SSD, paired with a 2TB Seagate hard drive. Featuring an Intel Z97 Express chipset, the motherboard offers full support for overclocking as well as an M.2 socket for future high-performance SSD upgrades, but offers less expansion room due to its limited physical size, featuring a total of four PCI-E slots, two of which at the x16 type and two at x1.

Based on the highly popular the Intel Core i5 4690K, here overclocked from 3.5- to 4.2GHz, the Warbird Gam3r offers good computing performance for its price range, achieving a score of 5315 points in the PC Mark 8 2.0 Home test. We’ve seen slightly better numbers from this processor, but only when the overclock has been pushed further – something which you’re also likely to be able to achieve on this system. One disappointment is that, at this price, the Warbird Gam3r comes with just 8GB of RAM as standard.

The processor is cooled directly by a large SilentiumPC Fera 2 HE1224 heatpipe cooler which takes up a large proportion of the interior space, flanked by and MSIbranded nVidia GeForce GTX 970 with 4GB of memory. This graphics card has been factory overclocked and, working in tandem with the main CPU, delivers some blistering gaming performance results. It’s not uncommon for a £999 gaming PC to come with a slower GTX 960 installed, but the GTX 970 is considerably more powerful, allowing you to play your favourite games with higher quality settings. In our toughest test, Sniper Elite V2, with all quality settings maxed out at 1080p, the Warbird Gam3r achieved 49.1fps.

The PC comes bundled with an attractive-looking 23.6in AOC i2476Vwm IPS monitor, which offers a good balance of quality and performance at a reasonable price. Despite its generally higher picture quality, IPS might not be the first choice for gamers, but here the ‘m’ in the model name denotes the multimedia version of the monitor which has a slightly lowered response time of 5ms to add a bit of clarity to fast-moving graphics.

Also included is the Gamdias Ares keyboard and Ourea optical mouse combo set. Both are laden with gaming features such as LED backlights, programmable macros.

We were very impressed with the Warbird Gam3r, both in terms of build quality and performance. We were less impressed, however, with the warranty which offers only one year parts and labour (up to three years labour-only). We believe an overclocked PC, containing moving parts and components pushed to the limit, requires something longer such as the Yoyotech Gold three-year warranty, which is available at extra cost.

Verdict

The Yoyotech Warbird Gam3r delivers a lot of performance and features for your money, outperforming many others at this price it comes in an attractive compact gaming case and is bundled with gaming-focused peripherals, but the standard warranty is disappointing.