PCSpecialist Cruiser Elite Review
Conclusion
Conclusion
Unquestionably the improvements in technology – both speed and price – are demonstrated time and again. We mentioned in our introduction that 8 years ago we reviewed a flagship PCSpecialist system. £3300 worth of water-cooled, GTX 980 Ti SLI goodness. It’s insane to think that today’s review system, the Cruiser Elite, annihilates it in every way, despite being basically two grand cheaper.
It is a testament to the hard work put in by R&D teams everywhere. Not just Intel and Nvidia, the two companies on display today, but AMD too. The Core i5 we have on show here is the Core i5-14500. A 20 thread, 5 GHz beast. Until incredibly recently 5 GHz was the stuff of silicon lottery winning overclocks, and most processors had 8 or 12 threads. Now it isn’t even the flagship Intel Core processor that has those numbers, but a humble, mid-range, Core i5.
Similarly the Nvidia range of graphics cards have come on leaps and bounds since they first moved from GTX to RTX architecture. With six cards above it – Ti, Super, Super Ti, 4080, 4080 Super and 4090 – you could be forgiven for expecting middling performance. As we saw, even in stern games with everything maxed at 4K, the RTX 4070 gets the job done. If you ran at 1440 the frame rates would be well north of 100, and the tiniest setting changes would get rock solid 60 FPS even at 4K.
When you add to those two quality price/performance items the 5.2 GHz Corsair 32GB DDR5 kit and a decently fast 1TB M.2 then the Cruiser Elite shows how little you need to spend and still be capable of all you could wish. Anything above this is performance headroom. If you’re on a tight budget but still want a jaw-dropping gaming machine this is exactly the sort of setup you need.
Our only minor issue is that the ASUS Prime motherboard supports USB Type-C – used by all our devices and a lot of peripherals – but the Corsair 3000D case doesn’t have a front panel USB Type-C. If you like plugging your phone in, or have a Type-C peripheral, it would behove you to take advantage of PCSpecialist’s amazing configurator and either upgrade the motherboard or case. Of course if you can live without that, then that’s fine too.
With a price point in review specification of £1399 the PCSpecialist Cruiser Elite is a very capable gaming system that runs cool and quiet, and wins our OC3D Gamers Choice Award. How far technology has come, and how cheap it has become.
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