Utopia Pandora Gaming PC Review

Performance Analysis

We know Nvidia's GTX 980 is pretty potent when it comes to gaming and combined with Utopia's tweaking, this was enough to break the 30fps minimum frame rate in Battlefield 4 at 3,840 x 2,160 (4K) along with an average frame rate of 44fps. At 2,560 x 1,440, things were a silky smooth 50fps minimum. Crysis 3 remained out of reach for the most part at 4K, with a minimum frame rate of 21fps. Only the might GTX Titan X or dual GPU set-ups, such as the two GTX 980s OcUK recently opted for with its Infin8 Nebula PC, can get at or above our minimum playable 25fps here. Again, 2,560 x 1,440 was considerably easier to deal with and the Pandora managed a minimum frame rate of 44fps here - ideal for pairing with a G-Sync monitor.


The OcUK system's duo of GTX 980's helped it retain a lofty lead in Unigine Valley, with nearly double the Pandora's score of 3,197. Again, Utopia's tweaking saw it eat out a small lead over our graphics test system's GTX 980 result. It was tit for tat in the 2D benchmarks, with the OcUK and Utopia systems trading first and second place. The only thing you'll see that's noticeably faster is an LGA 2011-v3 CPU such as the Core i7-5930K, which we've added to the graphs - its additional cores and threads helped it considerably in the multi-threaded tests such as Terragen 3 and Cinebench R15.

The Pandora was fairly power-frugal at idle and load, with just 1.2V needed to get the CPU up to 4.6GHz in our system. This meant the CPU was fairly easy to tame, with the CPU temperature never rising above 80°C under load, with a resulting delta T of 60°C. The radiator being completely exposed no doubt helped this. The GPU meanwhile had a reported temperature of 76°C, equating to a delta T of 57°C - considerably warmer than the water-cooled GTX 980's of the Overclockers UK Infin8 Nebula, but then that PC costs over a grand more.

Conclusion

The core hardware specification is solid and ultimately lust-worthy too and the Pandora performed admirably in our benchmarks. Combined with an excellent warranty and the ability to customise your system on its website, the Pandora is definitely a PC worth considering if you're after a new powerful gaming system. However, the case is either niche or an acquired taste, depending on which side of the argument you come from.

It will be high maintenance with dust and spills being the main issues and if we're honest, we'd rather have seen one of Utopia's stunning custom-painted SilverStone FT03 Minis or even an In Win 901 instead of the In Win D-Frame Mini here. We won't quite go as far as saying it's a fly in the ointment because we can understand why some people might want to own one - it does have some advantages. However, if we're brutally honest, we can't see many people opting for it over a more traditional case, but then that's a limitation of the case itself and Utopia's decision to use it, rather than the rest of the system, which is very capable indeed.

In terms of price, the hardware included here cuts very close to the asking price so for less than £200, you're getting a custom painted graphics card and pre-overclocked PC combined with one of the best warranties around at the moment. For this reason, at least, the Pandora should definitely be added to your shortlist.