Performance Analysis

With similar specifications to the Overclockers Gaming Germanium, it’s unsurprising to see the Nighthawk deliver very similar performance. Starting with games, the fact that the OCUK system uses the overclocked version of the card here lends it a helping hand in synthetic tests, but the difference in games is barely if at all noticeable, even from a benchmark perspective. Ultimately, this is a very potent system for high-resolution gaming, and you won’t get much better from a single-GPU setup.

With no auto-downclocking for AVX extensions applied, HandBrake sees the Nighthawk trump the OCUK system, which downclocks to 4.3GHz in this test. In the others, the two are unsurprisingly neck and neck, offering solid multi-threaded performance but still lagging behind the more expensive X299 eight-core system in the charts.

As mentioned, a silly error saw the M.2 drive capped to PCIe x2 speeds, although this does only affect peak sequential performance, which is limited to around 1,800MB/s rather than the 3,300MB/s seen on the OCUK system with the same drive. In the PCMark 8 storage traces, though, the two are again a match.

Power consumption of just over 500W at peak will have the Corsair 750W PSU operating at close to peak efficiency.

With six fans in total, the system is a little louder than we’d like, especially at idle. In fact, stressing the system doesn’t actually cause fan speeds or noise to increase that much, so there’s definitely room for tweaking the profiles to keep things quieter during low-usage moments. A thermal test did see the CPU hover at close to its Tj Max value, although throttling was not observed, so anything other than sustained 100 percent load will be fine. The GPU remained cool and quiet regardless of what was thrown at it, always staying below 70°C and not being audible above the other fans.

Conclusion

The more concerning errors with this system – the discovery of the unstable overclock and the silly drive arrangement that hampers the M.2 drive – are a real shame, because otherwise Cube has put together a solid PC here. RGB may not be for everyone, but we think if you’re going to do it you should do it properly, and the full synchronisation of the case, motherboard, and GPU puts this system in that category. The cabling and aesthetics are also very professional, the component choices are mostly without fault, the warranty terms are excellent, and the price is very fair given the hardware that’s used.

There are a few other niggles, such as the lack of a saved OC profile in the BIOS, a hot-running CPU, and higher than preferred noise at idle, but it’s the issues above that really hold this system back from recommendation. That said, having worked with Cube before, we’re confident it will address and rectify the issues immediately, and we look forward to what it can produce in the future.