This is the final upgrade to this PC, a GTX card. With its performance an ideal mention for my gaming needs and the price of £134.99. This was it, here you can see how it will really perform and boy it did really Good. The video was below:
The Unboxing
Technically, this has already been unboxed which you can see here. But the presentation is nice along with the features and so on and so forth. But the side by side of this combo is a way to go :).
The Steambox and the GTX
The top of the box
The back of the box
The gigabyte card on the top of the box
The Fitting.
This was actually quite a smooth move and not a struggle compared to the normal desktop. But it was longer than i thought, which doesn't matter since its not too long and the cables are fitting in nicely. It works with the LEDS on the board and on the case as well, a green strip might make it perfect but thats for another day.
A close up from behind
its fitted
The lights really work with the card here, except maybe a green strip.
Then it posted, the drivers installed and temperature was hovering at 29C. Which was pretty good, Geforce 375.70 was installed and them time to test.
The testing of games.
So, we have a few games to test, with the results making me realise the games i can play in 1080p on HIGH at almost 60FPS means this is the card I wanted. So Lets start, since Afterburner is installed and showing the results. The list is:
Rocket League
Goat Simulator
Rollercoaster Tycoon World
Arkham Origins
Sonic Lost World
Ridge Racer Unbounded
Rocket League:
This was a improvement by far, which the smoothness was very nice and it was really nice to finally play a game in 1080p with over 60fps. High Quality shaders was off to give a little boost. But now i can stream online if I need to.
The settings used for this.
Those framerates are pretty good :)
Rollercoaster Tycoon World
This was a suprise, due to the power of the gpu. There was a good framerate of 50fps with full high settings minus AA. The way the placing of the rides was fast and easy. The terrain looked beautiful and well, its finally amazing to see how it looks.
The settings used
That Sunrise or sunset though
The rides look good here
Ridge Racer Unbounded.
This was finally the game could play. RR was smooth, beautiful and no lag unlike the PS3 version which was 30FPS. Don't worry too much about the Antistropy, it doesn't make much difference i feel.
The rays from that sun
The niceness of the Road, also its been a while since I played RR
Sonic Lost World
This was not much of an improvement in beauty but in framerate, was a nice boost. That full 60fps at 1080p let alone 720p. But it really makes this a good game in its looks, with the Sonic physics.
The settings used
How the game looks, ok this was not the ideal part of the level.
Arkham Origins.
This was one of those titles I thought would struggle but was smooth at most parts on high settings at 1080p. But if i lowered some settings, there would be some good intense frame boosts.
The settings used
That view was a decent one
Goat Simulator.
This was actually a good sign too, with its smooth 60fps at 1080p. Loading screens did lower the rates but it was still smooth and pretty. I'm not expecting amazing graphics in a game based off a april fools prank.
The settings
More of the settings
Well the goat looks good
PAC-MAN CE 2.
This game was the main reason for the buying of the card. and it performs smooth af. With 60.3FPS constant at 1080p, it might finally make my score nice. I hope to be getting S Ranks on this card soon.
Conclusion
All in all the 1050 is a solid card and for the budget of £130 it can really stack up to be a contender, sure its not a card for the ULTRA 4K MSSAA Master Race but it still makes the competition fierce and the casual PC gamer happy as a larry. This will make some good streams and videos as well later on in its life. More PC gaming videos will follow i reckon.
More reviews to be coming soon, especially with the Christmas period now starting as well.
This is to help with a little project i've made on a budget PC and adding a GTX1050 to it. Now before we start this, the GTX 1050 is actually for the Steambox. But since i saw a deal for this N3050m-D3P for £27.54 + Delivery, I ordered that along with a Case which was £55 in total from Aria.
The GPU was £134.99 from Scan Including delivery. The video with tests except a benchmark is below:
The Build.
This was a nice project, with using spare parts along with the purchases, which means which ones were used, well it was:
N3050M-D3P N3050 Micro-ATX Motherboard
CiT F3 Micro ATX Case
500GB 2.5" HGST Drive
500W PSU Non 80 Plus
4GB Crucial Ballastix (borrowed from work) Normally its 2GB Kingston
It was not too bad but I didn't clean the build, but this is not a main pc do i'm not going to make the effort, But I did have a problem with the original 2 sticks of ram I had, one was dead so it was 2GB, but the Ballistix worked fine. It did take a while to boot up and install due to the hard drive, If i was going to have a use for this PC or sell someone a N3050 spec, it would have an SSD. End of.
Running this home with me
The case and motherboard
a look at the n3050m-d3p
A look inside the case
The build before the 1050
The 1050 Arrives.
In all its glory it arrived. The Red eye with the OC and features shown and Nvidia's Mark all over. The design of the box is pretty aggressive as a GTX should feel. Features and details aplenty too.
The Front
The bottom
The back
The card inside
The DVD which has XP drivers on it too
Then we look at the card, smaller than i was worried it was going to be, with beautiful blades, a nice grill and some nice designs to go with it, it deserved a photoshoot of its own.
Looking good
The connections
The back of the card
Looking at that typcial GPU view
The Fitting and setup in the build.
Well this was a bit more complex but that was due to cables in the way, the PSU ones anyway, but it was the length of the mATX board and no PCI-E 6pin needed which is a nice touch. Then it was getting it to post, which it did first time, the fans weren't spinning on the GPU but that was a design of its own, not a fault.
Inside the case
How the ports look
That fan though
The cables stretching over
Add caption
Then it was the Windows drivers to install, which took ages but worked fine. Also it was still using the iGPU which i had to turn off in the BIOS to get that GTX to fully be used. Then it was afterburner to setup. That CPU Usage was a heck of a lot too, same with the HDD.
Installing afterburner to show the usage
The Testing:
(05/03/2017) For a Change, I decided to do a Benchmark of the PC with a Different HDD and this was the results.
Then, I tested 3 games in the video, since 2 were too awful to even bother with, but the list is:
PAC-MAN Championship Edition 2 - Playable if scaled down
Rocket League - Playable
RollerCoaster Tycoon World - Laggy on high settings
Goat Simulator - Didn't load
Ridge Racer Unbounded - a Disaster
Below is the settings and quality shown in each game.
The menu has more FPS than the HD 530 can give out on its own in my steambox
You do see lag in tutorials
The settings for RCTW
It does look beautiful though
A favourite lightweight game, Rocket League
It can do 60fps if tweaked properly
Conclusion
This combo is not an ideal one but if your on a really tight budget then it can work for £220 if you use decent RAM, PSU and a SSD. The CPU is a huge bottleneck so streaming or recording this is a no go, as the delay in audio and video showed. Also 4GB of DDR3 might not of been enough/
Also this can handle streaming if you have a 2mbps upload and use the x264 preset of ultrafast as with this PS4 capture test
Soon i'll have the 1050 really put to the test, inside that steambox.