Systems

Stormforce Onyx 1060 3GB System Review

Matthew Hodgson
July 24, 2018 9 Min Read
2 0

An introduction into mid-level PC gaming with the Stormforce Onyx 1060 featuring an Intel i3 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card.


Product on Review: Stormforce Onyx 1060
Manufacturer: Stormforce
Street Price: £799.99

First Person Shooter games are becoming increasingly popular, year on year, with the recent introduction of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS and Fortnite really pushing things on. Due to this massive surge in player counts, more and more people are seeing the appeal of a keyboard and mouse for such games, which is something you can’t do on a console. In steps Stormforce, with their budget orientated systems, far-outpacing even the Extreme editions of today’s consoles and offering a true keyboard and mouse gaming experience.

The Stormforce Onyx i3 that we’re looking at today features an 8th Generation Intel Core i3 processor, clocked at 4.0GHz, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB Western Digital Hard Drive. All of which is packaged inside the rather attractive Cooler Master MasterBox 3.1 Lite case.



The Stormforce Onyx i3 comes in at £799.99, around twice the price of the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X; straight away its an uphill battle, but can the appeal of the PC Master Race win through?

We’ll push some games through the system and test benchmarks on the Core i3 8350K CPU to see how it fares. Read on for more.

Stormforce on the Onyx i3
Equipped with a formidable CPU and paired with speedy memory, the “Stormforce Onyx Intel Core i3 8350K GTX 1060 3GB ” packs a solid punch capable of powering through the toughest games and demanding applications. Speed is key. A fast system gets the job done quicker, a fast system games harder.

Technical Specifications

PROCESSOR
Intel Core i3-8350K Quad Core 8th Generation CPU
4.0GHz
8MB SmartCache

MEMORY
8GB 2400Mhz DDR4 RAM
Supports up to 32GB
2 DIMM sockets (2 used)

HARD DRIVE
1TB Western Digital HDD

OPTICAL DRIVE
None supplied

SOFTWARE
Windows 10 Home
30 day trial of Microsoft Office included

MOTHERBOARD
ASUS H310M-A

DISPLAY
N/A

GRAPHICS
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
Display Port
HDMI
DVI

AUDIO
HD 8-channel audio

INPUT DEVICES
Keyboard & mouse not supplied

NETWORKING
300Mbps WiFi

POWER SUPPLY
500w PSU

DIMENSIONS
Height: 381mm
Width: 208mm
Depth: 456mm

MOTHERBOARD INTERFACES
1 x PS/2 keyboard (purple)
1 x PS/2 mouse (green)
1 x DVI-D
1 x D-Sub
1 x HDMI
1 x LAN (RJ45)
2 x USB 3.1
2 x USB 2.0
3 x Audio jacks

EXPANSION
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (used)
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 (1 used)
2x 3.5” internal bays (1 used)
1x 2.5” internal bay

LEDS
Red LED fans

CASE
Stormforce Onyx mATX Gaming Case
1x USB 3.0
1x USB 2.0
2x audio jacks

WARRANTY/MISCELLANEOUS
3 Year Collect, Repair and Return Warranty

Packaging & Bundle

Stormforce will deliver the Onyx i3 in a plain branded box, with excellent protection inside. The box has obviously taken a couple of small bangs in the post but despite this, the Onyx i3 arrived in perfect condition.



Along with your PC, you’re also going to receive a lot of manuals. A lot, of manuals. The WiFi antennas and kettle lead are included to get you up and running.

Closer Look

The Cooler Master MasterBox 3.1 Lite case forms the basis of our Onyx system on test today. The tempered glass side panel and glossy appearance looks fantastic while showing off the internals at the same time.



The glossy front panel has the Cooler Master and Stormforce logos attached, with a small amount of ventilation at the top and bottom. Unfortunately, when we removed the plastic film from the front, dust was attached to it within a matter of seconds, which was incredibly difficult to remove. If dust is something that will annoy you, beware.



The front IO houses a USB 3.0 and 2.0 port, power button, audio input and output and a small reset button.



On the rear there’s a reasonable selection of ports. Starting at the top:
• Separate keyboard and mouse PS/2 ports
• DVI
• VGA
• HDMI
• 2x USB 3.0
• 2x USB 2.0
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 3x 3.5mm Audio connections

The graphics card has three DP ports, an HDMI and a single DVI.

Under the graphics card is the wireless card with twin aerials.

Closer Look (Internals)

Pulling away the glass side panel with the 4 thumb screws, we can see that Stormforce have done a pretty decent job of cable management, with the majority of the “mess” being hidden away behind the motherboard tray. There’s also ample space inside for airflow and to maintain reasonable system temperatures.



Under the stock Intel heatsink, the Intel Core i3 8350K CPU resides, with all four cores clocked at 4.0GHz, providing more than enough grunt for gaming and basic tasks. The ASUS H310M-A motherboard may not be the most feature packed on the market, but there’s a single M.2 NVMe slot, capable of accepting 2280, 2260 and 2242 form factors. One negative of using such a motherboard is the lack of DDR4 DIMM slots, being limited to only two, both of which are populated by two 4GB DDR4 2400MHz memory sticks, this limits the user to only 8GB unless the existing memory sticks are removed.



For graphics horsepower, Stormforce have specified the EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, with 3GB of VRAM. Tucked away underneath the graphics card is a small WiFi card with twin antennas, perfect if you plan to set up somewhere distant from your router. For storage there’s a 1TB Western Digital Blue drive offering plenty of room to store your Steam library amongst other things.

FSP provide the 500w power supply, more than powerful enough for a system of this calibre with enough in reserve for future upgrades.

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 Onyx 1060 uses the EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 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 Onyx 1060 uses the EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 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

Pricing the Stormforce Onyx 1060 at £799.99 puts it in a very competitive market, especially for those who wish to use it primarily for gaming. A PlayStation 4 Pro or an Xbox One X can be had for around half the price, and they only require a TV to get you up and running, whereas you’ll be required to purchase a keyboard and mouse, a monitor and some kind of speakers/headset, which is something that must be considered.

Gaming performance must be commended. Stormforce have allocated the majority of the budget for this system towards achieving the best framerate possible for the money, however some areas have been neglected as a result.

Firstly, the boot time was upwards of 40s on a brand new, fresh install of Windows 10. Compared to the majority of systems that we test, which can be inside of Windows inside of 15 seconds, we feel an SSD, even a relatively small capacity of 128GB or 256GB would hugely change the Onyx 1060. Not only were boot times effected by the use of a HDD, we also found the operating system to be sluggish and unresponsive. We’re sure an SSD could be added without effecting the budget too much.

Intel’s 8th Gen. Core i3 CPUs are incredibly versatile; being relatively cheap they provide a decent clock speed and core count to enable gaming at high framerates while also being useful for simple computational tasks. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with 3GB of VRAM powered its way through our 1080p testing, showing no weakness at all; and even managed 1440p at around 60fps in most of our tests (with Deus Ex proving to be the problem again.)

8GB of DDR4 memory, clocked at 2400MHz, is ample RAM for gaming, but when multi-tasking you may run into issues in the future. That’s when a problem will be found – the ASUS H310M-A motherboard only houses two DIMM slots, which are both populated, making a simple RAM upgrade that bit more costly.

All things considered, the case with the red fans looks great, the performance is there for any game you want to chuck at it, and you’ve got more than enough storage on that 1TB HDD to keep hold of several games, it’s just a shame about the lack of an SSD.



£799 to get you started on the route to PC gaming greatness? Yes please. The Stormforce Onyx 1060 is an excellent gaming machine but an SSD is desperately needed.

Pros
+ Case looks great
+ Good performance from the Core i3 CPU and GTX1060 GPU
+ 8GB of DDR4 Memory
+ WiFi card included
+ Plenty of connectivity
+ Excellent 1080p and 1440p performance
+ Tidy cable management

Neutral
+- Still requires keyboard, mouse and monitor

Cons
– No SSD makes the system sluggish and slow
– Case gets dusty fast
– All DIMM slots occupied


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Matthew Hodgson