RED PLANET
THIS IS ONE classy machine. It just goes to show how far chassis development has come—the internal layout enables you to keep budget boxes so much tidier nowadays.
All in all, it was a painless build. The only real issue we had was with the hard drive caddy. Why the mounting slots don’t match the holes in WD’s 2TB Black 3.5-inch drives is beyond us. We got around this, though, by removing the two toolless clips from the caddy, then securing the hard drive in place with screws instead. It was also tricky to install the cables. We actually slid it out the front, installed the cables through the case, then slid it back into the hard drive cage. Having the extra wiggle room outside the chassis made it easier.
We had a slight issue when installing the motherboard, and it was nothing to do with forgetting the rear I/O shield either. Whether it was a cost-cutting measure in the P300, or the B350-Gaming 3’s budget sizing, there were no cut-outs to support the extreme right-hand edge of the motherboard. So, if you weren’t careful, you could accidentally flex the PCB when installing the 24-pin ATX power. To get around this, when installing the big juice, we placed two fingers underneath the edge of the board, before pushing the 24-pin into place. Interestingly, the P300 supports E-ATX boards, but only up to 275mm—impressive nonetheless, and an oddity in a $60 chassis.
On to the nitty gritty: performance. It isn’t a bad rig at all. The Ryzen 3 1300X is a potent chip for the price. Desktop performance is smooth as butter, combined with 16GB of DDR4, and that zippy 750 Evo is quick, too, and doesn’t bottleneck when running multiple applications. Now, we’re not saying you can have 15 Chrome tabs open, VoIP, two games, and screen recording on the go, but for everyday usage, office work, or more, it hits the spot perfectly. In game, it holds itself steady, hitting 54fps in TheDivision at 1080p, and 30fps in Riseof the TombRaider, at the nastiest of settings. The RX 570 isn’t the most cost-effective card currently available, we have to admit—and as cryptominers continue to snap up any AMD-branded card, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon—but it’s no slouch either. Perfect for 1080p gaming.
The upgrade path for this rig is fairly sound. A more powerful processor would be a treat, or to save a bit of dollar, you could invest in the cooling, and overclock the 1300X. Higher frequency memory makes a huge difference to Ryzen’s performance, too—a 3,200MT/s kit would easily add 10–15 percent to processing output. Of course, the obvious hit for gamers right now is that Nvidia is far more costeffective than the AMD alternative. It’s a good rig, for sure, we just wish AMD’s VGA division was a little more competitive.