PC Specialist Dominator A10 AMD System Review

[section_title title=Conclusion] Conclusion

So it’s that time again where I potentially scrutinise, praise, thumbs up, thumbs down and generally discuss my experience of the said product; in this case, the Dominator A10 system from PC Specialist. Is the Dominator A10 an aptly chosen name for this £399 system? Or do have PC Specialist have their wires crossed with this particular PC?

In a nutshell, the Dominator A10 isn’t a powerhouse nor should it be considered as one, but I would have expected more for a £399 system than I seen today. Ok you could question that if Windows 8.1 wasn’t included then there would be more room on the specification but nothing actually stood out to me other than the ability to run Bioshock Infinite at 80+fps at 1080p; the rest of the games on test fell short of 30fps at average except Tomb Raider. With that being said, I feel the name Dominator is a little rich and nothing more than a marketing namesake but given what the AMD APU/FM2+ platform was designed for, I feel this particular system has a lot going for it.

The AMD 7700k APU was never really designed for heavy CPU compute tasks such as rendering or other insanely demanding elements but what it is designed for is light gaming, anything general such as web browsing whilst giving great performance to watt performance; something Intel are still trying to play catch up on. In terms of the Dominator A10 system, it’s perfect for menial tasks such as browsing, word processing and would easily do photo editing without issues; 1080p/4k ultra HD video playback is also no problem to this svelte platform.

Touching more on the actual system itself, although the PC Specialist branded chassis doesn’t have a window or much room for cable management, what I found when I opened the system up was a little disappointing; didn’t feel like there was much effort taken on cable management. Maybe the last publication to review it decided to have a rustle with the cables and they came loose in transit, who knows! All I can do though is give my opinions and facts based on how a product arrives and it worked perfectly fine; can’t argue with that really!

Aside from the interior, the case is obviously a budget model and given the £399 price tag, I wouldn’t have expected more for the money really; I also like the inclusion of 2 x 120mm blue LED fans in the top as an exhaust. Overall design wise, the Dominator A10 could benefit for a more fitting naming structure but for the price, design is pretty good; Dominator is not something AMD APUs do so why name it? Someone might expect a system named “dominator” to actually do what it says on the tin and for £399, it might do so but still, I am sure you get where I am coming from.

Price wise, £399 is a reasonable price for 8GB of 2133MHz memory from the good guys over at Kingston Hyper X; not to mention the 7700K is an aptly designed APU with plenty of bang for buck about it. Windows 8.1 does raise the price tag up but it doesn’t really detriment the price at all and given the good quality Corsair 350watt power supply included, this system isn’t going to cost you big bucks in electricity; something the flagship AMD FX range has no scope on.

Overall the PC Specialist Dominator A10 with the right name, would be a fantastic system; it might seem silly to brutalise a name so much but DOMINATOR? Aside from that, this system is aces for £399 and for a system of this price, it will do everything it should do and then some! A good purchase? Yes I think so but I would expect marketing to be a little less “aggressive” in future!

A huge thanks to PC Specialist and AMD for sending us in the Dominator A10 system in for review.