Redux Prebuilt Gaming PC - HONEST REVIEW

hey what's up everyone danny here this is a gaming pc from a new system builder by the name of redux they're not completely new though they're actually an offshoot company with ties to digital storm but their goal is to have a completely new business model and standalone brand hence the name redux which means brought back or revived they're here to shake up the pre-built gaming pc market with a claimed mission of bringing pc gaming to the masses with no price markups and a build fee of only 75 dollars which would be one of the lowest published build fees i've seen when redux approached me asking if i'd like to check out one of their builds for their launch campaign they were looking for an unboxing and general impressions now i imagine they already approached a lot of other creators as well like professional gamers and full-time streamers other people who may not necessarily focus as much on the details that a strictly pc hardware channel would so i told them i wasn't interested in doing any type of sponsored content like that and i wanted to instead do a more critical and unbiased review of their system where i'd be able to point out both good and bad things depending on what i find if their product is as good as they say it is then it would speak for itself and they should have no problems with this right so in this video we're gonna check this out and see if they're all that they claim to be right after this amazon product reviews are pretty much garbage i rarely look at them anymore because it's mostly bribe reviews or people who leave five stars just for the product showing up i recently started using a free browser extension called luster that helps me get information that i need before making a purchase decision i'm talking about trusted in-depth reviews from well-known sources that we all know in the tech community these are sources that i've already been using for years except now it's automatically gathered and organized for me it also recommends similar products and groups them up at different price points so i can make the comparison myself and choose what's best for me and my own budget i really like it and i think you will too you can learn more about luster by clicking on the link in the description and if it seems useful to you at all you can give it a try thanks for checking it out and now let's get back to the video all right so before we get started i want to make one thing very clear building your own pc will always be the cheapest option i don't care how low of build fees any company has that build fee plus the cost of shipping a full system that's already built plus the cost of a retail license of windows is usually going to make buying any pre-built system like this more expensive than if you built something equivalent yourself i still encourage building yourself first and foremost now that said a lot of people either don't care to ever build their own pc or they simply want to start off with a quality pre-built and then eventually do the upgrades themselves from there and that's completely fine there's also people like me who get a ton of requests asking for pc help all the time not only from family and friends but from viewers all over the place it's not realistic for me to provide one-on-one in-depth help for every single person so it's much more easy and efficient to be able to point to a company and say hey i know that they're reputable and they charge fair prices and that's a good way to start a lot of people off so let's see if redux can be one of those companies i can point people to by first checking out what their builds look like right out of the box all right so this is the build fedex did not treat this box well we have some pretty major indentation down here on the bottom and along this panel on this side what did fedex do to this they included the motherboard box and they have a quick start guide on the inside extra cables for what would be the modular or semi-modular power supply motherboard standoff screws a remote recovery usb drive so here is the build that is the uh instapack foam packaging the expanding foam so we'll see how good of a job that did keeping everything in place okay so that looks like it was seated pretty well just doing a quick inspection make sure nothing is obviously out of place from the first glance i'll give you like five seconds to nitpick something how many of you nitpicked this aio orientation oh the light's not shining on it too well but the tubes are going in the up direction and people who have watched gamers nexus videos are probably gonna comment on that but that aside on the front side i think everything looks good i think they did a really good job on the cable management nothing looks obviously wrong your nitpick the aio feel free but you could always switch that yourself relatively easily i'm likely going to just leave it in that configuration because that's how it came out of the box and now we look at the backside [Applause] so here's the fan controller and it looks like it was loose it just got knocked off it's not being held by anything but the adhesive that's not too big a deal in my opinion it's like this would have gotten damaged anyways it's not super heavy and uh it's not very delicate cable management back here looks very clean they did a great job using the different tie off points with the zip ties and everything is routed pretty much how i would probably route it now what we're going to do is try to power it on and see what happens let's get a nice view of those rgb fans so we do have the xmp enabled so it's running at 3200 megahertz uh the processor is the 10700k and it's running at 3.8 gigahertz which is the stock speed are they not running an overclock on this cpu core ratio auto they're not overclocking the cpu at all which seems a bit odd they have a z490 motherboard and an aio cooler on the cpu i guess for the purposes of testing i'm going to run it right out of the box because as i've said before i think people who buy these pre-built systems buy it ready to go i'm not sure if they would be comfortable going into the bios and trying to overclock so we're going to keep it like that so we do have the nvidia control panel and we do have geforce experience installed i actually don't have the internet hooked up to this right now so this probably won't work because he's gonna need to sign in yep okay but we're gonna take a look at what programs are all on here we have real tech audio and ethernet drivers nvidia geforce audio drivers physics x cortana yeah so from what it looks like there is no boat ware on here so it's pretty clean first impression summary of the build right out of the box uh i think they did a really good job putting this system together the camera management on the front side and the back side is super clean it did look like the box had a rough journey here the box the foam the instant back all did a good job at keeping this computer safe and getting it here in one piece the computer has only been sitting at idle though for everything that i've done checking out the bios and just kind of going through looking for bloatware and stuff it sounds fine for now none of the fans are doing anything crazy the pump's not like going out of control because of improper mounting of the cooling block we do need to test the system to make sure it's still good when it's under load but first we gotta check out the parts list so here's everything we have under the hood as mentioned we've got the intel core i7 10700k paired with the asus prime z490p motherboard this is more on the entry level side of z490 boards but it does help to keep the price down and it's perfectly fine for modest overclocks which is why i found it a bit odd that no overclock was supplied at all especially since the cpu is being cooled by the cooler master ml240l rgb aio with a custom redux logo the graphics card in this build is the pny xlr8 gaming revo epic x rtx 3080. there's 16 gigabytes of xpg gamix d10 ddr4 ram at 3200 megahertz cl 16. for storage we've got a 512 gigabyte xpg sx 8100 m.2 nvme ssd for the boot drive and an additional two terabyte 7200 rpm seagate barracuda compute three and a half inch drive the power supply is a 850 watt digital storm rebranded unit there are zero labels to clue me in as to what exact model or who the oem is but i'm told by redux that it's usually a rebranded cooler master or corsair unit but nonetheless this is fully modular 80 plus gold rated and has zero rpm fan control for cooling there's a total of four cooler master master pan halos three intakes at the front and one exhaust at the rear this is all housed in the cooler master td 500 mid tower that has a custom redux badge for the operating system we've got a retail license of 64-bit windows 10 home so let's take a quick look at how all these parts come together where it matters most in the performance i tested the build as it came configured out of the box because that's how i think most prebo buyers will likely run it so that means no overclock on the cpu or on the gpu though both of them are free to boost as allowed by their respective boost technologies i tested at three resolutions 1080p 1440p and 4k most of the games were tested at max graphic settings so do keep that in mind that even higher frame rates can be achieved if the settings are dialed back any the hardware usage temperatures and average one percent and 0.1 frame rates were all being monitored in real time during the test runs so let's check it out bye oh that's all right [Music] oh oh that's all right [Music] so as you saw this pc is pretty much a beast and that's no surprise considering the impressive specs temperatures were good the 10 700k never exceeded more than 60 degrees and the rtx 3080 was floating anywhere between like 70 to 80 degrees depending on the title and resolution there were no glaring issues from the benchmarks and i also ran an ida 64 complete system stress test for a few hours to ensure that the build didn't crash during extended periods of load and it passed that without any issues and this is as expected since we are dealing with stock clock speeds so to me the bill checks out and now we're gonna get into the juicy part of the video the pricing at launch redux is offering three different configurations at around the 900 1200 and 1700 price points all these can be customized and you do have the option to choose between intel and amd you can further customize some of the components like the graphics card processor ram and storage i went through every single configuration and custom part options checked every price and none of them were marked up versus building it yourself everything i saw was very fair doing a side by side comparison with pc part picker of this build except with the rtx 3070 instead since the 3080 is currently out of stock i grabbed all the same components or the closest equivalent using their lowest prices at the time and this resulted in the two prices coming in very close to one another there was less than a 20 difference note that for both redux and pc part picker what i showed does not have any sales involved this makes it an apples to apples comparison because they're both kind of comparing msrps but you should always consider what deals could be found for either now there's still costs that need to be accounted for there's the build fee shipping and taxes so let's see what the final prices would be with those putting the redux building into the cart and going all the way through the checkout process i was greeted with a pretty low 33 shipping fee through ups ground and i was charged no sales tax so the grand total came out to 1772 dollars now let's jump back to the build it yourself option shipping on all these parts will usually be free however there is tax and for me it's 10.4 percent when i usually buy from all these places so considering that the total will work out to be 1860. which is now actually more than redux now let's be realistic here if you do build your own pc you're likely going to be using a cheaper gray market windows key so let's assume 15 in there instead of the 109 now that works out to be 1591. which is seventeen hundred and fifty six dollars after tax redux is within twenty dollars of doing it yourself which to me is very compelling considering it's built and tested for you you get a two year parts and labor warranty and the windows license that they give you is actually a full retail version and not just a great market 15 key that's really good i don't know what else you would want do keep in mind that you should not just take my word for it you should do this exact exercise for yourself if you're seriously in the market for a new pc and see what you get since the shipping and tax situation may be different where you live so i'm really liking what i'm seeing from redux and what they have to offer but there are some things that i do want to point out that aren't necessarily like good or bad i just think there are things that potential customers should consider first is going with redux you don't have control over the exact brand and model for parts going into the build i think for most new pc owners this isn't an issue because redux will still pull from well-known brands and they're not going to cut corners using super skimpy parts they just aren't going to be using the highest end stuff either you know the stuff that usually carries a hefty premium so if you're super particular about your parts then this likely isn't for you but to be fair if you're in this camp you're likely going to be building your own pc anyways because you've already done enough research to know what exact brand and models you want the second thing is think carefully before purchasing the lower end configurations when you look at the 900 dish dollar option you're still paying the same 75 build fee 109 windows license and whatever the cost for shipping is that means nearly 25 of what you're paying goes towards those fees and 75 goes towards the actual hardware itself now if you look at the example from earlier for the bill that totaled seventeen hundred and seventy two dollars you got about twelve percent of your money going towards those fees and eighty-eight percent going towards the hardware itself this is a much better ratio i'm not trying to sway people into spending more money or anything like that you have however much you have i'm just saying that if you do have a lower budget definitely think twice about it because that's when building it yourself gets you the most bang for your buck so i think i've pretty much covered everything i wanted to and to wrap it up i can without hesitation put my stamp of approval on redux based on what i've seen i think it's awesome to see another system builder pop up in the industry and drive more competition within the space you hear it all the time whether it's like intel battling amd on the cpu front or amd battling nvidia on the gpu front competition between companies is good it can lead them to providing more in their products while at the same time drive down prices and at the end of the day we as the consumers win in this situation and with that said that's gonna wrap it up for my review of redux i'll have their website linked down below feel free to check it out if you're interested there's no affiliate link or like any special coupon codes linked to me i don't get a kickback from any of this and i'm not being paid by redux in case anyone out there was wondering and also let me know what your thoughts are on redux and pre-built systems as a whole down in the comments as well i want to thank you all as always for watching and for continuing to support the channel y'all have a good one and i'll see you down in the comments as well as in the next video [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Nerd on a Budget

Views: 136,729

Keywords: nerd, on, budget, noab, geeky, gamer, gaming, games, video, nerdy, computer, pc, build, console, technology, windows, killer, nvidia, amd, radeon, intel, extreme, value, super, cheap, parts, reddit, hardwareswap, deal, hunter's, showcase, hardware, deals, digital storm build redux prebuilt gaming pc

Id: BTMdT1pvJus

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020