P
C Specialist’s Prism Elite is an interesting
proposition for these interesting times: a
budget machine that hits the £899 mark
by relying on older components that are readily
available in our era of supply shortages. The
machine’s Turing-based GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
doesn’t have ray-tracing hardware, but it includes
1,536 stream processors and 6GB of memory. This
card is made by Zotac, and it runs at its stock base
and boost clocks of 1500MHz and 1770MHz.
The Prism’s AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU is another
older component, but it still has solid mid-range
specifications, including six SMT-enabled cores and
a 4.2GHz turbo clock. The lack
of the X and XT suffixes mean
the chip misses out on minor
speed boosts, but it’s still a decent
CPU for the price. It’s chilled by a PC
Specialist FrostFlow air cooler with
two 120mm fans.
The rest of the specification is
middling. There’s 16GB of dual-
channel 3200MHz memory, and
PC Specialist’s own-brand NVMe
SSD delivers read and write speeds
of 2,014MB/sec and 796MB/sec –
they’re not record-breaking results,
but they’re enough. There’s also a
1TB hard disk. It’s all protected by PC
Specialist’s warranty, which is a three
year labour deal with a year of parts
coverage – but only a month of collect
and return service.
There are areas where the PC
Specialist is underwhelming, though,
such as the Asus Prime B450-Plus
motherboard, which only has one M.2
connector and entry-level Realtek
ALC887 audio.
As it’s based on the older B450
chipset, it lacks the PCI-E 4 support
of B550 boards. At the rear it has two
USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, but the rest of its
full-sized and Type-C connections
are slower. There aren’t any fasterREVIEWS / PC SYSTEMS
SPEC
CPU
3.6GHz AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard
Asus Prime B450-Plus
Memory
16GB Corsair Vengeance
LPX 3200MHz DDR4
Graphics
Zotac GeForce RTX 1660 Ti 6GB
Storage
512GB PC Specialist M.2 PCI-E 3 NVMe
SSD, 1TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive
Networking
Gigabit Ethernet, single-
band 802.11n Wi-Fi
Case
PC Specialist Prism-X RGB
Cooling
CPU: PC Specialist FrostFlow 150
with 2 x 120mm fans; GPU: 2 x 80mm
fans; front: 3 x 120mm fans rear: 1 x
120mm fan; roof: 1 x 120mm fan
PSU
Corsair CV450 450W
Ports
Front: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 2 x USB 2, 2
x audio; rear: 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x
USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, 2 x USB 3.2
Gen 1, 2 x USB 2, 1 x PS/2, 3 x audio
Operating system
Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Warranty
One year parts and labour, plus two
years labour only. First month collect
and return, then return to baseELITE
+^ Great price
+^ Fine for^
1080p gaming
+^ Spacious case
DEFEAT
-^ Entry-level^
components
-^ Loud in CPU-
heavy workloads
-^ Few upgrade paths
AMD B450 GAMING PC
PC SPECIALIST PRISM
ELITE /£899 inc VAT
SUPPLIER pcspecialist.co.ukUSB headers on the board either, and the number of fan and
lighting connectors is limited.
The Corsair CV450 PSU is another entry-level
component – the 80 Plus Bronze certification is fine, but it’s
non-modular and its 450W power limit means you’ll have to
buy a new PSU if you want to install any serious graphics or
CPU upgrades. Likewise, the single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi card
is basic compared with the dual-band 802.11ax cards found
in many other machines.
PC Specialist has housed all the gear in its own-brand
Prism-X chassis. The front panel has a mix of black mesh
and gunmetal plastic, and its sturdy façade glows with the
red and yellow light from the intake fans. There’s a PSU
shroud, the build is neat and there’s room for 2.5in drives at
the rear. It’s large, measuring 490mm tall and 470mm deep,
so there’s plenty of room inside, but it’s not ideal if you only
have a small space for your system.
However, the roof and PSU shroud have middling build
quality, there’s no room for a second hard drive and the top
only has one USB 3.2 Gen 1 port and no Type-C connector.
Of course, at £899, any PC will have compromise, but
the PC Specialist does a decent job of balancing those
budget issues against the wider market. Looking at other big
companies reveals that the Prism’s specification is usually
only available at nearer to £1,000, and even then, systems
often come with the slightly slower GTX 1660 Super GPU. If