Systems

Stormforce Crystal GTX 1080Ti Review

vortez
November 26, 2018 9 Min Read
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Looking for a gaming machine with enough horsepower to plough through games at 4K resolutions? The Stormforce Crystal equipped with a GTX 1080Ti and Ryzen 7 2700X might be just the ticket.


Product on Review: Stormforce Crystal GTX 1080Ti
Manufacturer: Stormforce
Street Price: £1,999.99

We’ve covered several Stormforce systems this year; all of which have proven themselves to be good value for money with great cable management and support to boot. Today we look at something a little more up-market, rocking a £1,999.99 price tag.

The Stormforce Crystal GTX 1080Ti features a, you guessed it, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti, the fastest graphics card NVIDIA offered in the 10th generation of their GPUs. The 1080Ti sports 3584 CUDA cores and 11GB of GDDR5X memory to give some of the best performance available on the market today. Alongside that is an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X with 8 cores and 16 threads to power through all of the demanding tasks you can throw at it.

We also find four memory DIMMs from HyperX, totalling 32GB and rated at 2400MHz, a 240GB SSD and 2TB HDD; the hard disk drive is configured as a storage drive, giving ample room for movies, music and games, while the 240GB SSD presents speed and an overall snappy operating system.



Cooler Master provide the H500 chassis to encapsulate all of the components, helping to keep things cool and quiet with two 200mm RGB fans on the front and a tempered glass panel on the side to show off the internal RGB lighting.

Protecting the mentioned above is a 3-year collect and return warranty for added peace of mind, but the main question is: how does it perform? Due to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti, we’ll be sure to test this at 1080p, 1440p and 2160p.

Stormforce on the Crystal GTX 1080Ti:
Introducing the “Crystal Ryzen 7 2700X GTX 1080Ti” based on the very latest cutting edge AMD Zen architecture. Equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X running up to a lightning 4.30GHz, offering powerful octa core performance combined with the mighty AMD B450 chipset. A huge 32GB of DDR4 RAM runs at a swift 2400MHZ, delivering blindingly quick multitasking performance.

Technical Specifications

PROCESSOR
Ryzen 7 2700X 2nd generation CPU
3.7GHz, Boost to 4.3GHz
20MB Cache

MEMORY
32GB 2400Mhz DDR4 dual channel RAM
Supports up to 32GB
4x DIMM sockets (used)

HARD DRIVE
240GB 2.5” Western Digital SSD boot drive
2TB Western Digital HDD

OPTICAL DRIVE
None supplied

SOFTWARE
Windows 10 Home
30 day trial of Microsoft Office included

MOTHERBOARD
TUF B450-PLUS GAMING

DISPLAY
N/A

GRAPHICS
Nvidia GTX 1080Ti 11GB
1x HDMI 2.0
3x DisplayPort 1.4

AUDIO
HD 8-channel audio

INPUT DEVICES
Keyboard & mouse not supplied

NETWORKING
ASUS 300Mbps WiFi

POWER SUPPLY
750w PSU

DIMENSIONS
Height: 525mm
Width: 228mm
Depth: 502mm

MOTHERBOARD INTERFACES
1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
1 x DVI-D
1 x HDMI
1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A,
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A,
2 x USB 2.0
3 x Audio jack(s)

EXPANSION
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 (used)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode)
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1 (1 used)
1x M.2 2280
2x 2.5”/3.5” internal bays (1 used)
2x 2.5” internal bays (1 used)

LEDS
RGB LED fans

CASE
Stormforce Crystal ATX Gaming Case
2x USB 3.0
2x USB 2.0
2x audio jacks

WARRANTY/MISCELLANEOUS
3 Year Collect, Repair and Return Warranty

Packaging & Bundle

The Stormforce packaging isn’t exactly going to win any awards for its beauty but its practicality is spot on. The PC is held in place with thick polystyrene ensuring it doesn’t become damaged in transit.

Stormforce also pack the inside of the case with a foam bag that takes on the shape of the components inside, preventing things from moving around.



Included with the system is a small box containing the following:
UK power cord
Welcome information
Motherboard user guide
M.2 mounting screw
GPU User guide
USB RGB cable

Closer Look

The Cooler Master H500 chassis looks fantastic, the glossy plastic front panel with enormous fans and tempered glass panel give the case an awesome aesthetic, allowing the system to show off its RGB lighting within.



The front of the case is a single sheet of curved, tinted plastic, using the meshed sides and cut-out sections at the bottom to draw in cool air.



On the front section we find a pair of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, stereo out and microphone in, there’s also a reset and power button, though the reset button is incredibly difficult to press if you need it. No USB Type-C here unfortunately.



Switching our attention to the rear of the case, we can see a whole host of connections. Starting at the top, there’s a pair of USB 2.0 ports alongside a PS/2 keyboard/mouse slot. There’s then a DVI port, USB Type-C, HDMI, a cluster of 4 USB ports (2x 3.0 and 2x 3.1), Gigabit LAN and audio jacks.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti features a pair of DisplayPort connections as well as a pair of HDMIs.

Lastly, the bottom silver panel is the rear of the WiFi add-in card with twin antenna connections.

Closer Look (Internals)

Marrying the entire system together is an ASUS TUF Gaming B450 Plus Gaming motherboard, utilising AMD’s very capable B450 chipset. Memory is provided by HyperX in the form of four 8GB DIMM sticks, creating a total of 32GB of RAM at 2400MHz.

The motherboard also comes with an empty M.2 NVMe slot for future upgradeability, if prices of those drives drop to within your budget. At the time of writing, you can pick up a 1TB drive with speeds excessing 3000MB/s for under £250.

Under the AMD heatsink, which features RGB lighting, sits an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. This CPU has proven itself to be a true powerhouse in today’s CPU market, boasting 8 cores and 16 threads and a boost clock of 4.3GHz.



The bottom half of the motherboard is populated with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti from ASUS. This card houses 3584 CUDA processing cores and 11GB of GDDR5X graphics memory to power through any game you throw at it.

If you move your sight down a couple of slots, you’ll see the tiny WiFi add-in card offering internet connectivity if you can’t provide a wired connection to your desk.



Storage is dealt with by a 240GB Western Digital Green SATA SSD and a 2TB Western Digital Blue HDD.

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: PCMark 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 Stormforce Crystal uses the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti for graphics delivery, in this section we test the latest gaming titles to see how effective the 3D capabilities are. We report on the average framerate using FRAPS.


Benchmarks: Gaming (1440p)

The Stormforce Crystal uses the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti for graphics delivery, in this section we test the latest gaming titles to see how effective the 3D capabilities are. We report on the average framerate using FRAPS.


Benchmarks: Gaming (2160p)

The Stormforce Crystal uses the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti for graphics delivery, in this section we test the latest gaming titles to see how effective the 3D capabilities are. We report on the average framerate using FRAPS.


Conclusion

So, after having a good, in-depth look at the chassis used as well as the component layout inside, the Crystal will look fantastic on, or below, your desk. The RGB lighting is synced between the CPU cooler and the front fans but an RGB cooler on the GPU would’ve finished off the look.

Performance is certainly up there with the best, thanks to the immense grunt from the Ryzen 7 2700X CPU and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti, though we find the choice of using 2400MHz memory on such a system to be somewhat detrimental to its overall performance, with the well-documented advantages of using faster RAM with Ryzen CPUs; the price difference between 2400MHz and 3000MHz, for example, is insignificant compared to the £1,999.99 price tag.

We also find ourselves questioning the inclusion of the GTX 1080Ti, when the NVIDIA RTX 2080 performs roughly exactly the same, but uses less power and offers things like Real Time Ray Tracing and DLSS in upcoming games, all for roughly the same RRP.
We appreciate the inclusion of a 240GB SSD and a 2TB HDD for all of your files and games, but for close to £2000, we’d absolutely expect more than a 240GB SSD, especially with today’s prices of 500GB and 1TB drives, leaving room for a few games instead of just one, with games like Forza Horizon 4 and GTA V taking up around 100GB each. The M.2 slot could also be populated at this price point.



With today’s prices, it’s difficult to see why some of the choices have been made in this machine, largely the lack of RTX GPU and the 2400MHz memory, but that doesn’t detract from the sheer performance of the machine, easily capable of gaming at 2160p.

Pros
+ Great performance
+ Roomy chassis with gorgeous RGB lighting
+ Blasts through 4K games
+ Good temperatures and noise
+ 32GB of memory

Neutral
+- Only 2400MHz RAM

Cons
– Only 240GB SSD


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