While games consoles such as Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox
offer a distinct advantage when it comes to ease of use and armchair
convenience, you still can’t beat a high-end gaming PC when you demand
the ultimate in graphics quality and frame rates.
Ideally, compact gaming PCs should run relatively cool and quiet,
too, even if the words ‘small’ and ‘passive cooling’ are rarely
bedfellows. We’re not looking for teenager bling, go-faster stripes or
multi?coloured light shows; just sensible gaming PCs for grown ups.
A high-end system will easily outperform a console in graphics
quality, not to mention being able to run a huge number of other
programs. But a traditional tower PC is too obtrusive in a living room.
Mini PCs such as the Intel NUC D54250WYK (tinyurl.com/kdblvnd) make
great multimedia systems, thanks to near-silent operation and tiny
physical size, but they can’t offer the level of performance required
for immersive gaming.
In between these two categories, sits the compact gaming PC. Based on
smaller Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX motherboards and cases, they take up much
less space than a full-sized desktop, yet provide enough room
internally to support the full-sized graphics cards and overclocked
processors gaming enthusiasts demand.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: Processor
The Intel Core i5-4670K is difficult to beat today for all-round
performance at a reasonable price. You can opt for the supreme power of
the more expensive Core i7-4770K, which can process double the number of
threads, but you’ll pay a considerable premium and see minimal
improvement in gaming speeds. However, we do see considerable speed
gains from the Core i7-4770K in more demanding tests such as the PCMark 8
Creative benchmark.
Any of these ‘K-series’ processors will allow a reasonable amount of
overclocking, but make sure your system uses a motherboard that supports
this function if you want to make the most of such a CPU. And bear in
mind that compact systems are usually already challenged in the cooling
stakes, so you won’t want to make things worse with a wound-up
processor.
We use PCMark 8 to quantify the general performance of each machine.
When most PC vendors are selling in essence the same box of bits,
differences can be attributed to the level of overclocking and the use
of fast memory and an SSD. Graphics cards still come into play for
non-gaming tasks such as converting video formats, which is also
reflected in PCMark 8 scores that make use of the GPU, such as the Home
and Creative tests.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: Graphics card
Graphics cards vendors fall in and out of favour as AMD and nVidia
leapfrog each other with the latest technologies. It’s wise to base your
GPU decision on the type of games you like to play, since many titles
are sponsored by one of these two graphics-card designers and are thus
likely to run better on its own cards. In this group test, we see five
examples sporting nVidia.
Never skimp on the graphics card in a gaming PC – it’s the single
most expensive component, but essential for the best Windows gaming.
Accordingly, many of the systems here are fitted with powerful cards
such as the nVidia GeForce GTX 770 or AMD Radeon R9 290X. In many games,
a faster CPU will have much less impact than a faster graphics card, so
spend your money appropriately. If there’s a specific game you wish to
play, it can be worth investigating the performance requirements to find
out where your money is best spent.
You can save money with a factory overclocked card that has a lower
base spec, such as a GeForce GTX 770 with boosted clock speeds. These
often cost significantly less, with a minimal reduction in performance.
There’s not enough space to install a second graphics card in any of
these PCs, though, so make sure you specify the best graphics card you
can afford at the time of purchase.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: Cooling
Cooling is essential if any CPU is not to overheat, but especially
one that’s been overclocked. The basic Intel CPU cooler UK vendors often
fit simply won’t do. Airflow is much harder to manage in a compact
computer case, so many vendors have opted for sealed liquid-cooling
systems such as the Corsair H60, which places a radiator close to the
case exterior, making it easier for cooling air to reach it.
There’s nothing to stop you choosing a traditional fan and heatsink
arrangement, but this must be accompanied by careful airflow management
and tidy internal cabling. Additional case fans are often advisable,
too. A non-overclocked system will have less rigorous cooling
requirements, so be careful if you’re planning to tweak the system
yourself and ensure that the supplied cooling system is adequate for
your plans.
Gamers like their systems to look the part, but the case needs to be
practical. Internal cable management aids airflow, while fan controllers
let you reduce noise or boost cooling as necessary.
As these compact PCs will often be used hooked up to the living room TV, none of them have been supplied with monitors.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: Peripherals
The type of controllers you require will vary depending on how you
have your PC set up and only Chillblast has included a keyboard and
mouse as standard this time around.
If you’re using your PC on a desk with a monitor, you’ll benefit from
the improved responsiveness of wired rather than wireless devices. Look
for high-resolution mice, and keyboards with programmable keys and
backlighting.
High-grade mechanical switches in keyboards have a better ‘feel’ and
provide longer life than cheap membrane switches. Some draw attention to
the W, A, S, D keys with a different colour or texture. A gaming sound
card can provide a more immersive experience by adding multiple sound
effects, with improved audio fidelity. Also consider a gaming headset
with a built-in mic.
However, if you’re planning on playing from the sofa, you’ll want
wireless controllers. For keyboard input, we would recommend a wireless
model that comes with an integrated pointing device, such as a trackball
or trackpad.
If you’re using the PC as a home entertainment hub, you may also want
to consider idle power consumption and noise. Also ask yourself whether
you need an optical drive such as a Blu-ray player built into your
computer or whether you will be using a traditional external player
already connected to your television.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: Warranty
Warranty terms are crucial when it comes to gaming PCs. The longer
the better, but also look for a collect-and-return rather
than return-to-base option.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: How we test
With this compact gaming PC group test, we’ve started testing with
Futuremark’s PCMark 8 v2.0 benchmarking suite. Unlike the previous
PCMark 7 benchmark, the new version doesn’t produce a single overall
figure. Instead, results are divided into Home, Creative, Work and
Storage tests.
The Home benchmark reflects command tasks for typical home use with
lower computing requirements such as web browsing, photo editing and
low-end gaming.
The Creative benchmark is aimed more at enthusiasts and professionals
working with multimedia and entertainment content. It is more demanding
on the processor and includes transcoding tests as well as further
gaming workloads.
The Work test is geared towards office work tasks like creating
documents, web browsing, spreadsheets and video conferencing. This test
does not stress the gaming and multimedia capabilities of the PCs in
this group test.
Gaming performance
We’ve used three games to evaluate graphics performance. We run our
tests at 1280x720- and 1920x1080 pixels at various detail settings.
Framerates are recorded using the following games and quality settings.
Final Fantasy XIV: 1280x720, Medium quality; 1920x1080, Maximum quality.
Alien vs Predator: 1280x720, all settings at Maximum quality; 1920x1080, all settings at Maximum quality.
Sniper Elite V2: 1280x720, all options set to Low quality, advanced
shadows off, Supersampling off; 1920x1080, All options set to Medium
quality, advanced shadows off, Supersampling off; 1920x080, all
options set to Ultra quality, Advanced shadows – high, 4x Supersampling.
Power consumption torture testing
We measure the power consumption of each PC base unit when idle, and
again while running at its performance limit. During the idle test, the
PCs hard drives are still spinning and the power-management features are
not enabled. For the full-load torture test, we run Prime 95 to force
all CPU processing threads to maximum utilisation and stress system
memory. At the same time we run the Geeks3D Furmark benchmark to stress
any installed graphics cards. We leave these tests running for 10
minutes, then record the power consumption and the CPU temperature
reached.
Overclocking
Because gamers demand the best performance from their hardware, we
allow vendors to overclock PCs in this category. We require that any
tweaked component is designed for overclocking, and that the PC vendor
offers a comprehensive warranty.
Subjective assessment
We pay close attention to the physical characteristics of each PC,
its noise output and its build quality, delving inside the case and
taking note of the quality of components used, cabling and airflow.
Support
Differences in warranty terms can impact our scoring. Long warranties
are sought after, but we also look at the terms and conditions –
specifically, whether faulty PCs must be returned to the vendor at your
cost and if both parts and labour are included.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK: Conclusion
All of these compact gaming PCs offer considerable space savings over
their full-sized counterparts. While they don’t offer the same scope
for upgrading with multiple drives and graphics cards or provide room
for advanced cooling solutions and soundproofing, they perform every bit
as well as a standard gaming PC.
Half of the PCs here are overclocked to deliver greater system
performance, while the others were not. Gaming performance is, however,
dictated by the choice of graphics card, which is reflected in the
price.
If you have £1,500 to spend, then Mesh’s Elite Mini Gaming OC
offers unrivalled performance across the board, thanks to an Intel Core
i7 processor and the fastest graphics card of the group. Usually the
law of diminishing returns would dictate that spending this much more on
your PC would provide only a modest improvement in performance, but in
this case you really do get what you pay for with bottom-line framerate
improvements in the region of 33 percent over the slowest systems. But
do you really need all that performance?
If you have a more modest budget, then Chillblast’s Fusion Xcalibur
will deliver a competent gaming experience for just £849. That’s more
than £600 less than the Mesh system and by far the least expensive PC of
the group, yet the fusion Xcalibur is able to keep up with PCs costing
£300 more. This PC is therefore worthy of a Recommended award for value
alone.
Our Best Buy award goes the Yoyotech Warbird RS4.0. While it may look
the same as systems from Dino and Quiet PC, it’s more than £200 cheaper
than the latter and keeps pace with the latter in gaming, while drawing
much less power. Its standard-clocked Intel Core i5-4670K processor and
nVidia GeForce GTX770 graphics card provide an excellent balance of
price and performance for a £1,000 gaming PC.
Best compact gaming PCs 2015 UK
The Wired2Fire Hadron looks like a standard gaming tower, only one
greatly shrunk in size. It has excellent build quality with an expensive
feel. The processor may be overclocked to 4.2 GHz and has 16 GB of
memory and a 250 GB flash drive, which all make for great desktop
performance. Unfortunately, we're mainly interested in its gaming
credentials, and its graphics card is slower than most of the
competition, resulting in poorer gaming performance.
This system is over-engineered to provide maximum efficiency and low
audible noise. To do this, some overclocking potential is sacrificed,
although its factory overclocked graphics card makes it one of the best
performers when it comes to gaming. Unfortunately, it's also rather
expensive, and far from quiet when gaming.
The Dino PC Microraptor, delivers excellent performance for the price
thanks to the combination of Intel Core i5-4670K overclocked to 4.3 GHz
and nVidia GeForce GTX770 graphics. It may look almost identical to
competition from Quiet PC and Yoyotech, but outperforms both.
This is a smart-looking PC, with superb performance in gaming, general
computing and creative applications. It offers excellent build quality
and features, but is also rather expensive. If you really care about
games and nothing else, you may be able to make some cost savings by
specifying a Core i5 processor rather than a Core i7.
The Chillblast Fusion Xcalibur is a relatively inexpensive Gaming PC,
this is reflected both in its overall performance and looks. However
it's still capable of matching the gaming frame rates of much more
expensive systems.
Externally almost identical to Dino PC's Microraptor and Quiet PC's
Serenity Nano, the Yoyotech Warbird is a very smart, compact gaming PC
with a built-in Blu-ray writer and good gaming performance. This PC
ships with a standard Intel processor, and can play faster than some
systems that have been overclocked.
