PC Specialist Magma Zen Review

Performance Analysis

There's a familiar battle going on between the Magma Zen and Intel-based PCs due to the simple fact that a Ryzen 7 CPU offers more multi-tasking grunt than similarly-priced Intel CPUs, but the Ryzen 7 1700 in particular lacks grunt anywhere that doesn't lean on all those cores and threads. Its stock speed performance is reasonable in most cases, but the lack of an overclock does mean that, in many tests, an overclocked Intel system, such as the similarly-priced The PC Customiser Venom, VR is faster.

In fact, the two systems are remarkably similar except for a faster SSD in the Venom VR - they have the same GPU and fall in the same price category. The Venom VR sports a 4.8GHz overclocked Core i5-7600K - nearly 2GHz faster than the stock speed Ryzen 7 1700 in the Magma Zen. This saw the former enjoy a 7fps advantage in minimum frame rate in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at 1,920 x 1,080, but this dropped to just 2fps at higher resolutions, with similar differences in Fallout 4. It was tit for tat in the Futuremark 3D tests with the Magma Zen winning 3DMark Time Spy and 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme, while the Venom VR scored higher in 3DMark Fire Strike and VRMark - The Orange Room. It was a close fight.


The PCMark 8 video editing test isn't particularly multi-threaded and this didn't paint the Ryzen 7 1700 in a particularly good light, sitting at the bottom of the graph. When all the cores do come into play, though, even at stock speed the Ryzen 7 1700 tears through benchmarks, coming second in the PCMark 8 Photo Editing V2 test and knocking nearly 30 seconds off the rendering time of the overclocked Core i5-7600K in the Venom VR. Cinebench was one of the best results, with the Magma Zen topping the graph by nearly 70 points.

Power consumption was impressively low, with the PC drawing nearly 100W less than the Venom VR under full load at 241W compared to 336W and 30W less at idle, too. Storage performance was unsurprisingly average, though, and really at this price we'd expect to see something larger or more potent in the SSD department.

The GPU cooler was up to the task of dealing with the heat in games and rarely went above 75°C, although this is nearly 10°C warmer than the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming in the Venom VR. The CPU, meanwhile, never topped 50°C even under sustained load. The PC was pleasant to sit next to as well - the case fans were noticeable at full speed, but whisper-quiet at low speed.

Conclusion

As usual, with the current AMD vs. Intel argument, a lot will come down to your personal needs and this includes whether you'd feel confident in overclocking the Ryzen 7 1700 CPU or applying an overclocking profile from PC Specialist once they're available as this could have a huge impact on performance. Assuming you'll be sitting at stock speed, the CPU is still a beast when it comes to multi-threaded performance, and is a better bet than any Intel CPU short of a Core i7-6900K if you'll be doing a lot of streaming, rendering or content creation. The latter CPU will add a heck of a lot more to the price of a system too.

The question is do you need all that multi-threaded performance? If not, opting for a similarly-priced system such as The PC Customiser Venom VR, and putting the cash saved using a cheaper quad-core CPU towards a cooler, quieter graphics card, faster SSD and better audio - which is pretty much exactly the advantage offered by Venom VR, albeit for a little more cash. It's a shame that the Magma Zen isn't overclocked out of the box as this is where the Ryzen 7 1700 really shines, but even so, as a multi-threaded PC that's remarkably cool, quiet and power-frugal, it's a great machine that's also able to handle games at high resolutions south of 4K. It undoubtedly costs several hundred pounds less than an otherwise equivalent Intel X99 system to boot.