THAT’S A WRAP
RIGHT, THAT’S OUR RX 590 build done and dusted. A $1,250 budget 1080p build, with color-coordinated sleekness, tempered glass, and a minimal number of classy RGBs. Is it perfect? No. The case is the weak point, and although the design is fairly understated and classy in contrast to many at this price, the thermal limitation from the front panel leaves a lot to be desired.
Building inside the Enso was painless, though; the only trouble we had was with the sticker on the side of the panel, and trying to find the bag containing the screws and stand-offs. If we were upgrading, it would be one of the first things we’d change, perhaps alongside a better cooling solution.
Overall, performance is where you’d expect. The RX 590, coupled with the 2600X, makes this a prime-time 1080p gaming machine, with most AAA titles easily hitting the high 50s. The Samsung 860 Evo also performs admirably in file transfers, and the Ryzen 5 2600X hammers those Cinebench scores nicely, too, with 1,378 points in multicore, and 173 in single-core.
One of AMD’s marketing pitches for the RX 590 was that over 64 percent of the PC gaming audience still plays games at 1080p. The RX 590, then, would be perfect for them, as it performs very strongly at this resolution. (And let’s confirm here: It is not a 1440p card, but a 1080p card.) The problem with that is that, yeah, 64 percent may play games at 1080p, but they likely already have a card that’s capable of driving games at 1080p. After all, it’s not a new resolution, by any means, and there have been cards available for a number of years that are more than capable of driving all of today’s titles at that resolution. So, why develop another rehash of a rehash to target a market that is already satisfied with the GPUs they have, and is not even mind-blowing from a price perspective?
The worst part is, it’s not as though cryptocurrency is going to pick up the slack now either. With that market seemingly dead, and it being rumored that even Nvidia is going to need two years to shift the remainder of its GTX 1060 stock, well, you get the picture.
All in all, this rig is a fantastic entry point into the mid-range 1080p gaming ecosystem. And don’t get us wrong—if you’re moving up to that resolution, or haven’t had the chance or the coin in the last few years to jump on to a modern GPU, the RX 590 is a good card to go for. But to design an entirely new product off 1080p just seems foolish.