Vibox Element X Blue Gaming PC Review

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Conclusion

Let’s be honest with ourselves here, anyone reading this expecting a 4K 60fps capable system either needs to get tested at the doctors, or they have a vivid grasp on reality. Those who came looking for a solid, but affordable gaming system however have come looking in the right place; the question looms though, how good is it and does it actually represent great value for money?

As you may or may not have noticed, the Vibox Element X is based on AMD technology throughout which includes the 990FX chipset, the FX-6300 6 core CPU and of course being topped off like a cupcake with the MSI R9 380 Gaming 2GB graphics card; whatever your feelings are towards AMD or Intel for that matter, no-one can deny that you get more for your money with AMD, that’s just the way it is. There are a few pitfalls to discuss regarding the specifications however such as 8GB of DDR3 memory which might seem ample, but with more and more games pushing the limits such as Call of Duty Black Ops 3, it wouldn’t hurt much to upgrade to 16GB for ample headroom; DDR3 pricing dropped to all time low levels so it shouldn’t have too much of an impact on the price. The other pitfall is memory related again, this time on the GPU as many games use more than 2GB of VRAM at the most used resolution to date, 1080p. Can much be done about this? Well for under £650, maybe not and this is why things are subjective etc.

Gaming performance wise, the Element X Blue does a good job and specs wise, this system does provide a better gaming experience than a games console; sorry Microsoft and Sony, but 60 frames at medium-high settings on a PC beats you every time. That being said, heavily CPU intensive games are going to struggle a lot on this system due to the poor IPC (instructions per cycle) performance on the FX-6300 CPU; aside from this, depending on your chosen and favourite PC games, this system represents good value for money in our opinion.

If it was possible to keep it sub £700, we would add 16GB of DDR3 memory and an uprated 4GB version of the R9 380 as we simply believe this will be the biggest bottleneck to the system while gaming; without taking the CPU into consideration of course. I do understand that the entire premise of a budget system is to keep it within “budget”, but hopefully those with “reasonable trains of thought” will appreciate that the Element X Blue is exactly what it says on the tin, an affordable gaming PC.

Overall if you are in the market for a gaming PC, don’t have more than £700 and demand a reasonable amount of power with SSD storage for impeccable boot times, then the Element X is right up your street! Although there are lots of competitors with similarly priced systems on the market, none are as unique as Vibox, which only goes in their favour here! I would like to award Vibox our Silver award as the system does what it says on the tin; it could however be slightly better, but Vibox have done a fantastic job today and with their lifetime evolution warranty, you’re sorted!

Big thanks to Vibox for sending the Element X Blue in for review.