With the often-daunting price of PC gaming, many feel put off by the prospect of spending thousands. Can DinoPC deliver a cost-effective, capable solution?
Product on Review: Primal Comet Ryzen Gaming Package
Manufacturer: DinoPC
Street Price: £964.00
DinoPC have been around for over 10 years now, providing gamers, amongst others, pre-built computer systems based around the latest hardware. Several awards have been won during their time which goes to show their ability within a highly competitive market.
Today we take a look at the Dino PC Primal Comet Ryzen Gaming package; this is more than just a pre-built computer system. We see the inclusion of a Full-HD 24” AOC monitor and an ASUS Cerberus gaming mouse, keyboard, headset and mousemat. Grab a desk and some kind of seating and you’re ready to delve into the world of PC gaming.
DinoPC haven’t skimped on the system to include all of those extras; we see an AMD Ryzen 5 1400X CPU, featuring 4 cores and 8 threads along with 8GB of DDR4 memory, a 1TB Seagate HDD and an NVIDIA GTX 1060 graphics card all enclosed within the very capable Corsair Spec Alpha PC case.
Perhaps the most daunting aspect of adopting PC gaming is the cost, with some people spending thousands on their systems. This isn’t entirely necessary to enjoy a brilliant gaming experience, which DinoPC aim to demonstrate with this system. With an asking price of £964, including everything listed above, all you then require is a chair and a desk to set it all up.
DinoPC claim this machine is “for excellent 1440p gaming and entry-level 4K” which seems a little far fetched with the 3GB frame buffer on the GTX 1060. With the inclusion of a Full-HD (1080p) monitor, we’ll go ahead and run our gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p.
DinoPC on the Primal Comet Ryzen Gaming Package
Giving gamers everything they need for the festive season, the Primal Comet Ryzen features a Full HD display and Asus gaming peripherals, with an AMD Ryzen 5 processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 at the heart of the machine for excellent 1440p gaming and entry-level 4K.
Technical Specifications
• AMD Ryzen 5 1400X processor
• 8GB DDR4 2400 MHz RAM
• NVIDIA™ GeForce® GTX 1060 3GB graphics card
• 1TB Seagate Barracuda Storage
• Asus A320 motherboard
• Windows 10
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Corsair Spec Alpha PC Case
• Aerocool 500W 80+ Bronze PSU
• LED Kit
• AOC 24″ full-HD monitor
• Asus Cerberus peripherals bundle
• 5 Year Standard Warranty
• 8GB DDR4 2400 MHz RAM
• NVIDIA™ GeForce® GTX 1060 3GB graphics card
• 1TB Seagate Barracuda Storage
• Asus A320 motherboard
• Windows 10
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Corsair Spec Alpha PC Case
• Aerocool 500W 80+ Bronze PSU
• LED Kit
• AOC 24″ full-HD monitor
• Asus Cerberus peripherals bundle
• 5 Year Standard Warranty
Packaging & Bundle
Due to the extent of the bundle, when first offered the opportunity to review this package, our first thoughts were with the packaging and how well something of that order could be delivered through the UK postal network. The bundle system arrived in a substantial box with ample packaging inside.Included with the Gaming System is a full peripherals package. This comprises of an ASUS Cerberus gaming headset, cloth mousemat, LED backlit keyboard and a gaming mouse.
Alongside the peripherals is a Full-HD 24” AOC monitor with a 5ms response time, perfect for some 1080p gaming.
Closer Look
The Primal Comet system uses a Corsair Spec-01 Gaming chassis with an acrylic side panel to allow the user to see the running internals of their system. DinoPC have added some blue LED light strips to make the system shine at night.
The front of the case is a 50/50 between a mesh design as well as a solid plastic. This aids cooling while also looking pretty damn awesome!
The top of the case features a pair of 120mm fan mounts which would facilitate an upgrade to a 240mm radiator, or just to add extra intake/exhaust fans if required. (DinoPC allow customisation on their site to upgrade the CPU cooler to AIO options).
Swinging round to the rear, we can see the 120mm exhaust fan helping to keep the entire system cool. Alongside that are 6x USB 3.0 ports, separate PS/2 ports for a keyboard and mouse, your standard audio input/outputs and a single gigabit Ethernet port.
On the graphics card, we’re given a pair of HDMI, a pair of DisplayPorts and a single DVI connection.
That’s not all, we also get an internet WiFi card as standard, in case you’re not in a position to wire into your router.
Closer Look (Internals)
Removing the side panel, we reveal the internals. As you can see, the cable routing is reasonably well executed, but that 8-Pin CPU power cable annoyed us somewhat.
The AMD CPU Cooler blows air down across the fins underneath, and helps to cool the RAM, VRMs and any other components within close proximity to the CPU. The cooler also features a ring of light around the top, lighting up red when booted. Under the cooler sits the AMD Ryzen 1400X CPU, clocked at 3.2GHz across all 8 threads; this should provide more than enough horsepower for all of the latest games.
The motherboard used is the ASUS A320, a small uATX board presenting the option of M.2 storage (hidden behind the GPU), plenty of SATA drives and excellent energy efficiency.
Instead of choosing a pair of DDR4 sticks, DinoPC have decided to go for a single 8GB stick, allowing an easy upgrade route to 16GB once DRAM pricing has dropped. Our only gripe here is the ugly green colour – this wouldn’t have been an issue if the side panel didn’t feature an acrylic viewing window.
The NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB graphics card from ASUS features a twin slot design to help keep the graphics core cool – we’ll see how well this cooler performs in our temperature test.
Hiding underneath the GTX 1060 is the WiFi card with a couple of antennas on the outside. It’s best that you can’t see this, really, with the ugly green PCB.
The 500W Aerocool PSU, located at the bottom, features 80 PLUS Bronze efficiency to help save on energy bills. Mounted on the front of the case, to draw air through the mesh section is a 120mm Corsair fan. There’s room for 3x 3.5” drives, one of which is already occupied. There’s also arrangements made, to the right of the motherboard, to mount a pair of 2.5” drives (perfect for hiding away SSDs for a cleaner appearance.)
Benchmarks: Temperatures & Boot Time
For our first benchmark test we observe the max. CPU/GPU temperatures of the system while allowing Unigine Heaven 4.0 to run on a 30-minute loop. To report back on the temperatures we use RealTemp and GPU-Z which provide the peak figures.
In this test we observe how fast the boot into Windows 10 is by using a digital stopwatch.
Benchmarks: Cinebench R15 & Handbrake
CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor is.
Benchmarks: PC Mark 8 & 10
PCMark 10 combines performance benchmarking with battery life measurement and includes tests based on popular Adobe and Microsoft applications. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 10 will help you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. It’s the complete PC performance benchmark for home and business.
Benchmarks: 3DMark & Heaven 4.0
Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark test for gaming PCs running Windows 10. With its pure DirectX 12 engine, built from the ground up to support new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.
Benchmarks: Gaming (1080p)
The Primal Comet uses the NVIDIA GTX 1060 for graphics delivery, in this section we test the latest gaming titles to see how effective the 3D capabilities are at a 1080p resolution. We report on the average framerate using FRAPS.
Benchmarks: Gaming (1440p)
The Primal Comet uses the NVIDIA GTX 1060 for graphics delivery, in this section we test the latest gaming titles to see how effective the 3D capabilities are at a 1440p resolution. We report on the average framerate using FRAPS.
Conclusion
Focussing on the aesthetics of the computer case, as well as the bundle, the red and black colour scheme has been carried throughout. If you’re able to grab a dark desk and black computer chair, you’ll be instantly set up with a very attractive battle station.DinoPC claim that the PC is capable of excellent 1440p gaming and entry-level 4K. We found that 1440p was hit and miss, with some games achieving 60fps in our tests, while others depended heavily on the title and on-screen scenario, however, dropping the image quality would counter these effects. 4K gaming, on the other hand, should be avoided. We feel the lack of performance at the 3840×2160 resolution is largely dependent on the 3GB of VRAM on the GTX 1060. Having said all of that, gaming performance at 1080p was excellent, achieving 120+ FPS in two of our tests, and, more importantly, delivering 63 FPS in DEUS EX which was the lowest of all 6 tests.
The AMD Ryzen 1400X CPU delivers ample performance in multithreaded tasks while the 8GB of DDR4 RAM allows a reasonable degree of multi-tasking. The PCMark, Cinebench and Handbrake tests go some way to proving this.
Due to the HDD installed within the system, instead of using some kind of SSD as a boot drive, we noticed extended waits while loading up applications and booting into Windows. This is understandable at this price point, and can be configured at a later date to include a solid state drive.
The quiet, reliable and efficient PSU located at the bottom of the PC is more than capable of delivering a steady stream of power while also providing ample efficiency to keep the bills down, that’s a bonus to anyone, not to mention the excess power available for any extra drives you may want to add.
As an entry into PC Gaming, without destroying your wallet, this offering goes a very long way to being about as good as it gets.
Pros
+ Great price
+ Excellent introduction into PC gaming
+ Attractive Corsair Spec-01 chassis
+ Good colour coordination between entire bundle
+ Brilliant 1080p performance
+ Several upgrade options at a later date
+ Efficient and reliable PSU
Neutral
+- Questionable ability at 1440p
Cons
– Slow boot times due to HDD
– Lack of responsiveness due to HDD
+ Great price
+ Excellent introduction into PC gaming
+ Attractive Corsair Spec-01 chassis
+ Good colour coordination between entire bundle
+ Brilliant 1080p performance
+ Several upgrade options at a later date
+ Efficient and reliable PSU
Neutral
+- Questionable ability at 1440p
Cons
– Slow boot times due to HDD
– Lack of responsiveness due to HDD
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
