PC Specialist Obsidian Zen Review

Introduction

The word gaming used to come with such heavy connotations. For a long time if a manufacturer put the word gaming on something then you could pretty much guarantee the price would sky-rocket. We all understand that you need a certain level of outlay to achieve gaming performance in comparison to a ‘office’ PC, but the insane improvements in the capabilities of even cheap hardware has meant that decent gaming abilities have never been within the grasp of more people.

Of course if you ever spend your life on internet forums then you could be forgiven for thinking that anything less that dual GTX 1080 Ti’s on a custom watercooled X299 rig is utterly worthless. Pish. As high end hardware gets ever more powerful, so hardware a little further down the range does too, which means you get maximum bang for your buck.

We recently looked at a PC Specialist system that was based around the Ryzen 7 1800X and a GTX 1080 Ti. Pretty much the high end of things. Today we have the opposite end of the spectrum, a system designed around bringing you 1080P gaming goodness without the hefty price tag. 

Let’s see how it stacks up.

Technical Specifications

In keeping with our comments above about the eternal increase in performance having a trickle down effect, the Obsidian Zen is equipped with the most affordable of the Ryzen range, the Ryzen 3 1200, yet it is still a 3.4 GHz quad core CPU. Likewise we have an ASUS Strix motherboard in B350-F trim, a GTX 1060 for good 1080P gaming and a hybrid Seagate Firecuda SSHD for all your storage needs. It is precisely enough PC. Nowhere are there excessive elements that bump up the price without adding performance, but neither have any shortcuts been taken to squeeze it in under a price point.