AWD-IT ASUS A21 BTF System Review
Conclusion
Conclusion
The AWD-IT ASUS A21 BTF system is very much approached in two ways. Firstly, if you want a gaming rig that doesn’t cost the earth but will still let you play anything currently available, you’re covered. There might be more taxing games on your system than Cyberpunk with some light ray-tracing turned on, but those games are usually taxing because of poor optimisation. We think that Night City is as rough a test as you can ask of a current gaming setup, and the ASUS A21 BTF handles it with aplomb. AWD-IT have chosen some nice hardware to compliment the main elements, and it’s all plenty fast enough.
Other Factors
Okay if you’re a heavy renderer you’ll be left sitting around a bit, but if that’s your main focus then you need to accept you have to spend more. Similarly 4K isn’t really this systems speciality. But gaming, at 1440 or 1080, right up its street. It’s perfect for it. Yes you can get higher frame rates by spending more, but 60 FPS or more, in any game at all, for £1200? You’d be a real Scrooge to bemoan that performance level for that outlay.
Secondly, despite the affordable price, the rest of the hardware is good. The case isn’t physically big, but we see it isn’t lacking for fan space either. The three big Cooler Master fans give you lighting, and also high airflow at low noise levels. Lastly, we loved how quiet the 120mm CPU Cooler was. We worried it might not be enough, but the Core i5 CPUs are so efficient that even Cinebench couldn’t make it break a sweat. Quiet too. Lovely.
ASUS BTF
We can’t leave it there though. We’d heard that the concept of rear mounted connectors might be the next ‘thing’ on the horizon, and it’s here in the form of the ASUS B760M-BTF. (Back To Front?). As you can see from our photos you need the right case. The ASUS A21 is that. But if you can get the combination right, as it is here, then the effect it has on the looks is spectacular. No more do you have to fight with your cables to hide them. No longer is it a chore to build your rig from scratch. Moving all the connectors around the back, where all our cable hiding happens, not only makes building it cleanly a simple task, but makes cable routing a joy too. It’s a fantastic idea. We can’t wait to see it adopted on the higher end products.
All of which means that if you want a great value gaming rig, the AWD-IT ASUS A21 BTF System is a superb choice. If you’d also like something guaranteed to spark conversation, it’s currently unique. Thus it wins our OC3D Innovation Award.
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