by You did it. You put some money aside for a new gaming PC, but then realized that you did not know where to start. You kind of have an idea of what you want, but the thought of looking for parts and building a PC stresses you out. This is where Redux hopes to go in by making you a PC based on what to play and not claiming a prize for parts and labor.
Redux delivered one of its ‘good’ models for review, priced at $ 1,415, and placed it at the higher end of their budget level with PCs, with an Intel Core i5 12400F and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 driving all the fun. If you’re looking for a solid 1080p slot machine, Redux’s Good tier PC is a good place to start.
The Redux website allows you to choose between different basic types: Good, Better and Best, with three different price points. That way, if you come in with a budget, you can choose your path right away. Then Redux lets you choose your top three games from a list of popular PC games and your ideal resolution to play those games. It generates a build list of components that fit under the criteria (which you can edit), and you’re off.
Other boutique sites do this too, but Reduxs feels easiest to use.
Redux ‘Good’ specifications
PROCESSOR: Intel Core i5 12400F
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 ARGB
Motherboard chipset: Asus Prime B660M-A AC D4
Memory: 16 GB (2x 8 GB) DDR4
Graphics: Asus Phoenix GeForce RTX 3060 10GB
Storage: Kingston NVMe M.2 SSD 500GB
Power: High power 700W 80+ Gold
Warranty: 1 year
Price: $ 1415 (opens in new tab)
The construction, setup and testing (basically work) only adds a $ 100 construction fee to the total price regardless of the configuration you use. You pay pretty much MSRP prices for all components except, inevitably, for the GPUs. You still pay an average of $ 200 above the listing on most of the RTX 30 Series video cards, which is pretty typical these days.
This is surprising considering that this area where most PC builders earn the most is the assembly of your PC, which can easily add hundreds of dollars to the cost of your custom rig.
What you do not seem to adapt are the case, the fans, the motherboard and the power supply. It seems that Redux uses the same cover, a custom Cooler Master TD500 RGB with a nice front panel that shows a trio of RGB fans (five in total inside). A strange downside is that there is no USB Type-C connection anywhere on the PC.
A casual user will probably not care if they can not choose the power supply, but for me I will have some options in case I want to upgrade the GPU along the way. I can choose a more powerful PSU now, but it’s just me.
Although Redux’s semi-auto configurator will adjust the level of power supply that comes with your rig if you choose a GPU with higher power. This RTX 3060-powered machine comes with a 700W PSU, while an RTX 3090 Ti system will rock the entire 1KW brick.
It leaves a comically large amount of negative space inside the case
Another thing that is missing is that the system does not have a wireless network card, so you need to connect or invest in a USB Wi-fi adapter.
Inside is an Asus Prime B660M-A AC D4, which as you can see from the pictures, is a fairly small, micro ATX motherboard. So much so that it leaves a comically large amount of negative space inside the case. While the system works just fine visually, it makes the desktop look almost as if something is missing since all the pieces are adjusted to the upper left corner when looking at the system from the side.
I would almost have preferred a panel without glass or a smaller box to make things look less difficult. That said, the cable management is immaculate and there were no issues setting up the PC. So thanks to the Redux shipping team.
Another small upgrade to consider is a larger SSD. While the Kingston NVMe M.2 SSD is a pretty good drive, it means that it is only 500 GB that anyone with a large library has to make any choices or use a little extra. Upgrading the building to a 1TB drive will only cost an additional $ 40.
On the benchmarking front, the Redux Good model’s closest competitor is the similarly specified Ryzen 5-powered NZXT Streaming PC, which is within $ 10 of the Redux system. The NZXT also has an RTX 3060 under the hood.
During my testing, the Redux PC edges a bit out of the NZXT’s slightly more expensive mid-range PC with a handful of frames in almost all the gaming standards we threw at it; except for F1 2021, where it interrupts NZXT’s rig at almost 30 frames per second.
However, both systems had almost identical points in more demanding games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus. In Cyberpunk 2077, Redux stays around an average of 29 fps, which is not good. But when you first turned on DLSS, I managed to tamper with Night City at 61 fps. I probably could have squeezed out more frames if I had decided to turn down the graphics settings from Ultra, but why should I do that?
Game performance
System performance
On the CPU front, the Intel i5 12400F inside the Redux easily beats the NZXT’s Ryzen 5 5600X in almost all benchmarking categories. We saw similar CPU performance in our review of the Cyberpower Infinity X125, which is still one of the better gaming PCs under $ 1000.
Redux’s ‘good’ gaming PC left me with one good impression. It is a well built system with a nice suitcase design and works great for around $ 1400. The fact that there is no USB Type-C port or wireless network is a concern, but if you’re looking for a great boot PC with some upgrade potential on the way, Redux has you covered. It is a good system for PC gamers who just want to play games and not worry too much about what they are actually putting into it.
