Our HP Omen 45L’s 285K CPU operated 1.4GHz below its actual spec and we analyze why it performed so poorly

The Highlights

• Our HP Omen 45L came equipped with a 285K, RTX 5090, and a case with an “Omen Cryo Chamber”
• The system not only has unbelievably bad thermals for its cryo chamber for the 50 seconds it actually runs at the Intel guidance, but it also kneecaps performance after 50 seconds to make the 285K be worse than the 265K in all-core workloads
• The HP Omen 45L is the worst pre-built gaming PC we have ever benchmarked and reviewed.
• Original MSRP: Approximately $4,890

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

The HP Omen 45L is the worst pre-built PC we’ve ever reviewed.

The CPU is operating 1.4 GHz below the actual spec, which makes the $530 Intel 285K perform worse than a $260 265K, while operating somehow both below the power budget and above the thermal limit at 105 degrees Celsius in some cases. HP says that fixing the power limit to be stock for the 285K VOIDS YOUR WARRANTY, all the while its operating system is filled with spying bloatware and telemetry to harvest your data even after paying nearly $5,000 for a gaming PC with the memory preconfigured to an abysmal DDR5-4800 somehow.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 4, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets
Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

This computer is incomprehensibly bad. HP might have just dethroned Dell as the official low bar for our pre-built reviews going forward. 

But there’s more.

There’s also this video that seems to be a mix of the Bill Nye intro edit re-cut by someone on some bad acid, featuring a miniaturized woman inside the computer, some text about respecting "mother," keeping heat off of mother with thermal pads, and then a reference to motherboards.

Overview and Marketing

Today we’re reviewing the HP OMEN 45L GT22-3000t pre-built PC. As you can see, the name really rolls off the tongue. 

It’s got a top-tier price of about $4,900, an Intel Ultra 9 285K CPU, 64GB of RAM, a 2TB Gen4 SSD, and what HP says is a “dazzling” NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU. That’s good, because we hate the 5090s that aren’t bedazzled.

The marketing copy will continue until the prebuilts improve. The OMEN 45L apparently has room for the kitchen sink, as long as that kitchen sink doesn’t use a PCIe slot.

“The OMEN 45L is a one stop, can't stop, shop for DIY performance mastery. Dream, adapt, overcome.” 

First of all, that’s not what DIY means. This is literally the opposite of DIY.

The Omen 45L has a patented “OMEN CRYO CHAMBER” that isn’t cryogenic but is technically a chamber.

We’re not sure why putting a radiator in a box gets a patent, especially since there is prior art, but welcome to intellectual property of things the USPTO doesn’t understand.

The chamber should prevent any pre-warmed exhaust air from the GPU from impacting CPU cooling. It also means the only way for that GPU exhaust to leave is through the single rear fan.

The Z890 motherboard itself is a strange mix of minimal rear I/O with a CMOS reset button, heatsinks that look pretty good for cooling the 14+2+1 VRM, all in an MATX package that doesn’t take advantage of the case’s ATX size that’s supposed to fit kitchen sinks. It’s a bizarre mix.

Parts and Value

HP OMEN 45L (GT22-3000t) Pre-built | Part and Price Breakdown | GamersNexus

Here’s a table breaking down the parts and price of the OMEN 45L versus a set of DIY parts. As usual, we matched identical parts where possible, and chose the most sensible replacements for the rest.

HP’s general part selection is “fine” for a very high-end build, but we have nitpicks. The first nit is more of a... whatever the opposite of a nit is, because the 285K is god-awful and HP makes it worse. It may be Intel’s best current consumer CPU, but AMD’s 9800X3D (read our review) outperforms it in games, and gaming is definitely the target audience. The 285K is also on a dead-end platform.

Using an MATX motherboard in an ATX case is technically fine, but restricts the user from adding any other PCIe card below the GPU, and we were told there’d be kitchen sinks.

The RAM choice is sub-optimal and made far worse by the fact that XMP wasn’t on, which is just really sad at this point. 64GB is what we want at this price, but not slow DDR5-5600, although that’d still be better than the DDR5-4800 it’s running at out of the box. That’s an insane combination that even a novice DIY PC builder wouldn’t make. Intel Arrow Lake has a strong memory controller – so we’d like to see 6000 minimum, or 6400 preferred, as 6400 is officially supported. It can even be cheaper RAM.

We paid $4,730 for the OMEN 45L a few months ago, but it’s risen to $4,890 at the time of writing. Normally, the prices come down. That puts the current-day price difference between it and a DIY build at $1,100, or 29% greater than buying these parts yourself. That’s unfortunately not unusual for a pre-built of this tier, but it has to be flawless for the value to hold up at all. The OMEN 45L is the worst prebuilt we’ve tested as you’ll soon see, plus it’s just bad value.

Tear-Down

The PC’s “Cryo Chamber” is located at the top of the case. This design has been done before. It’s actually a really old school approach to radiators. What HP is trying to do is to separate the radiator from the rest of the system so that warm air is pushed off of it and doesn’t end up in the rest of the computer. The downside is that the PC doesn’t have fans in the top to help with cooling elsewhere.

At the front of the case, there are 2 buttons along both sides of the front panel, which allows users to take it off. It’s very complicated with some release mechanisms. Pulling the front cover off, however, reveals the case’s front fans and highlighted to us how the fans here have less than an inch of airflow. This design hinders performance.   

Continuing our tear-down, we removed the case’s front dust filter, which is behind a sheet of glass. This is, again, bad for airflow.  

We then proceeded with the tear-down by removing screws on the front of the case. 

We then removed the computer’s glass side panel. 

Taking a look inside the case, we noticed that the 12VHPWR cable has some hot glue on it for some reason.  

We then unscrewed the Asetek cooler off of the CPU to see if we could get an understanding of why the processor was running so hot. Removing the cooler, we were able to confirm that thermal paste was used and that there was contact. We honestly thought we might have seen a “peel-before-installation” sticker still intact given its thermal performance.

Next, we moved onto pulling out the video card, which was contained within a plastic shroud that was incredibly sturdy. There was also a screwable steel bracket, which allows HP to ship the PC with the video card pre-installed without any protective internal packing that are commonly seen in other SI builds. 

With its shroud, the GPU ends up being a 3-slot card. 

Looking at the video card out of the case, the shroud doesn’t cover most of the fins on the side, but it does cover some fins, which prevents air from escaping. 

The good news is that there is a hole in the back so air can get out again, which should actually be aided by the fact that the shroud sealed off some of the fins on the card’s side. This might explain why the GPU performed okay. 

The card is ventilated on the back and the shroud is reasonably well put together. It’s probably the best thing HP has done in the computer.

Continuing our tear-down, we started pulling cables from the motherboard and removed the PC’s wireless card.

Doing our tear-down, we noticed how small the chipset heat sink is.

The heat sink on the VRM was really nice, on the other hand. They are really tall and our unit had good thermal pad contact on the bottom. The heat pipe connecting the 2 sides is also a nice touch.

Removing the SSD, we noticed that it was very slightly bowed, but it isn’t bad and doesn’t concern us.  

Removing the back side panel, we noticed a plate that said “required for VRM cooling,” which we proceeded to take off. This exposed some thermal pads for the VRM mosfets, which is a nice touch, but it’s hard to appreciate when the CPU runs up to 105 degrees Celsius. 

Taking a closer look at the backside, there’s 2x 2.5-inch SSD slots that are not pre-wired (some companies do that). In terms of cable management, it was done to what we would call the minimum degree. Really, it’s a mess, but it’s fully covered. This is where the smaller system integrators do a better job. 

Benchmarks

CPU Frequency vs. Original CPU Review - Bar Chart

We’ll start with the incomprehensibly bad part: The 285K’s all P-core frequency is 4GHz here. The last time we saw an Intel all-core frequency of 4.0 GHz, it was in some tests on the i7-4790K from 2014. HP has managed to send this CPU back to the dark ages, before the first Great Intel Extinction event.

That 4GHz result has the CPU a staggering 1385MHz slower compared to the 285K in our review testing. Even the E-cores suffered a 729MHz loss.

This is the worst divergence from stock performance we’ve ever seen, falling embarrassingly below expectations. 

This deserves a deeper look.

CPU Frequency vs. Original CPU Review - Over Time

This is an over time plot of the same test. The 285K in our original review attempted to hold its P-cores at 5400MHz, with frequent small dips. Its E-cores stayed almost flat at 4600MHz.

In the same test, the 285K in the HP OMEN 45L tried its best to keep up initially, but then got sent back to 2014 to hang out with Devil’s Canyon at around 4GHz by the time it hit the 50 second mark. In this case, 4GHz was just a coincidence for the 285K, as clock behavior was unstable.

Blender Rendering Performance

We ran the Omen build through our standardized Blender CPU rendering benchmark to see how much performance was lost. The 285K requires 7.1 minutes to complete the render in our normal testing, with the Omen version of the 285K requiring 8.8 minutes. This is such a huge reduction in performance that HP has managed to make it worse than a 265K (read our review) despite having 4 more threads. It’s hardly better than a 14700K (read our review). This is impressively bad and means that you’re paying at least the difference of a 265K to a 285K, yet getting 265K performance.

Thermals - CPU - Over Time

Next is CPU thermals. We’re excited to see how the “CRYO” chamber holds up since CRYO means frozen.

HP’s near-literal dumpster fire of a PC caused us to alter our chart template in order to convey the sheer thermal intensity. Our charts for temperature normally stop at 100 degrees, but we had to increase the chart scale to fit HP’s impressively bad result.

Within seconds of the CPU load starting, P- & E-cores spiked over 100 degrees Celsius. Immediately after, the temperatures crash downward to the mid 50s, climb to about 70, and continue on like a diminishing wave for a few cycles. Following that, temperatures stabilize to the mid 60s.

We haven’t seen thermals like this since pre-built manufacturers were screwing up Intel’s power limits.

Plotting the CPU Package value shows just how bad it got, reaching all the way to 105C twice, staying at or above 100C for 20 seconds. The max operating temperature for the 285K is 105C, so it was not only thermal throttling, but on the verge of tripping PROCHOT and shutting down. CPU Package temperature then predictably sat above the AVG for the duration of the test.

Finally, adding CPU Package Power explains the temperature drop. It starts very low at idle, jumps to roughly 225W when the load starts (which is near normal for the 285K), then abruptly falls off a cliff to bounce around the 125W mark from then on. That’s roughly half of what it should be in a heavily parallel workload.

This makes it obvious both why temperatures stabilized and why frequency dropped – something triggered power-limiting behavior, bringing the 285K down to its default 125W “Processor Base Power.” The strange part is that board vendors don’t normally configure Arrow Lake to have an explicit window of time (Tau) to move from a higher to lower power limit. Tau still exists per Intel documentation, but typically goes unused, with PL1 equalling PL2.

HP shouldn’t be kneecapping its CPU like this. Again, this is 2014 levels of performance. 

Thermals - GPU - Over Time

The equal-but-opposite reaction to the CPU’s throttling is that the GPU doesn’t have enough work because the CPU can’t provide it, which reflects in the GPU temperature. The 5090 (read our review) briefly cools when it doesn’t have enough work to do, despite being at about 80 degrees for core initially. Temperature drops from about 80 degrees to the mid 70s near the end while GPU fan speed drops, due in part to the case fans speeding up and in part to the low load provided to the GPU by the CPU.

In many cases we’d disqualify a GPU run for being under-loaded, but it’s part of the story this time, and load at steady-state still averaged to 98%.

Memory junction temperature rises above core temperature to roughly 84C, but doesn’t reach the 95-degree-plus extremes of NVIDIA’s Founders Edition design in standalone testing. The fan speed rises to 64%, before trending downward as the case fans engage.

HP’s GPU cooler design seems like the most competent aspect of the entire build, but it’s benefitted by the CPU underprovisioning work.

Acoustics - Over Time

Now we move to acoustic testing in our hemi-anechoic chamber that we built for heavily controlled acoustic analysis in an unchanging environment, that way day-to-day noise changes in the office and outside don’t affect our results. 

The HP OMEN 45L’s default fan (and therefore noise) profile is very conservative. Idle is phenomenally quiet at about 18.2 dBA in a noise floor of 14.7. That’s functionally inaudible. It’d be a low speed air purifier or something. When the heavy CPU load hits and temperatures soar to 90C or higher, noise output only rises to 26-27 dBA, then immediately ramps down when the CPU becomes power limited.

After that, it’s a slow and steady rise to 30 dBA, followed by a slight step up, then finally another step up to settle at 34.7 dBA average. The ramps are stairstepped in a way that makes sense, if only the rest of the computer did.

Power Consumption - Full System

Finally, we have full system power consumption at the wall. Full system idle starts in the 60-70W range, jumps around between 300W and 400W, briefly flattens to 212W once the power limit kicks in, then immediately slams to 800W when the GPU load starts on the 5090.

After that, we see the same repetitive dips that we saw on the GPU thermal chart. Again, it’s not what we want to see. 

This is what the last 5090-equipped prebuilt from Maingear looked like in the same test. Much flatter, which is how it should look.

BIOS

BIOS inspection is next.

The BIOS for the OMEN 45L is version F.06, released in December 2024. The support page doesn’t show any updates between then and July 2025, but the version number jumping to F.11 makes us think that there were intermediary revisions that have since been removed.

The BIOS itself is stripped-down compared to the full feature sets we’re used to on DIY boards, but enough settings are left exposed to make important tweaks if needed. Opening the Advanced page pops two full screen notifications – one strongly advertising the OMEN Gaming Hub software, and one with a warning about overclocking.

After clicking through, we see that the memory profile is set to default, and not the one that’s literally called “HP XMP Profile.” This is bad enough since that’s a redundant initialism, but it’s made worse by not being enabled. The profile would at least bring the kit up from DDR5-4800 to DDR5-5600. 

The rest of the advanced page has toggles for LLC modes, an overclocking lock, “Extreme Mode” support, and “Resizabled Bar.” While HP gave us an extra letter ‘D,’ it’s missing a few other things: Power limits aren’t present, so you can disable cores and adjust load-line calibration, but not change PL1 and PL2. You’d have to go to the app for that so HP can harvest your data or something.

Fan control options were decent. Three pre-set automatic modes (Quiet, Normal, Turbo), and a manual mode that allows for custom curves. We have no complaints here.

As far as we could tell, there was no way to save or load BIOS profiles – just an option to reset to defaults. 

OS Setup

On to the software.

Windows 11 setup was the usual, with the added twist of trying to get us to register and give our data away to HP. Again. It’s possible to just click through these without entering anything, but the UI doesn’t make that plain – it’s a dirty trick that we’re sure works on tons of people.

Hitting the desktop brings more disappointment. Behold the bloat: myHP, “Dropbox promotion”, Adobe Apps, and whatever Otter.ai is are pinned to the start menu. The entire apps list also includes Booking.com, which isn’t even remotely related to anything, DTS Sound Unbound, 8 different HP utilities, McAfee, and OMEN Gaming Hub. There are 16 total apps beyond what normally comes with Windows. The OMEN app and a couple of the HP ones are probably useful, but the rest are just trash that HP likely gets money or benefits for including.

Device Manager showed no missing drivers, so that’s finally something good. If HP’s going to shovel bloat on us, this is the least it can do. The NVIDIA graphics driver is version 572.16 from the 50 Series launch at the end of January. Our system shipped at the beginning of April, so it’s missing two months worth of updates. Right back to the disappointment. 

Maybe we need to start using “better than HP OMEN” when back-handing out praise.

The only other noteworthy find was a file named “Output” in the C:\ drive that had “Max Total API Overhead : 0” written twice. This kind of file would normally have some kind of test results, but this seems incomplete.

HP fails at providing a clean and up-to-date Windows installation.

OMEN Gaming Hub

The OMEN Gaming Hub software was, uh, “interesting.” The intro dialog box had some cringey text, like “How about we elevate your gaming experience with badass capabilities?” and closing with “Go ahead and explore - we won’t bite.” 

The next dialog box had even more attempts to harvest data. Opting out required clicking “manage options,” then individually toggling off App Analytics, Personalized Suggestions, and Advertising. That’s on a computer that’s about $5,000, by the way.

Then we got hit with a short guided tour of in-app popups showing us what we “can do in OGH.” Coincidentally, “OGH” is also an accurate onomatopoeia for the sound we made several times while writing this review.

After finally getting the app open, we immediately realized that it’s trying to do too much. “Game Booster,” game launcher, hardware monitoring, overclocking, keybinds, “network booster,” lighting, fan control, and yet another overlay that we don’t want are all packed into this software that we imagine is maintained by a revolving door of contract devs.

Digging into the overclocking tab is disappointing – all you get are sliders for core frequency multiplier and a core voltage offset, even after clicking “show more options.”

The Performance Control tab is where HP hid the CPU power limit controls, but only by way of 3 preset modes. “Balanced” is the default, setting PL1 to 125W and PL2 to 295W. “Performance” sets PL1 to 190W, and PL2 still at 295W.

“Extreme” has to be enabled in the BIOS and gives you a warning that you will void your warranty if you use it to run the CPU at its spec. Pressing “OK” and throwing caution to the wind sets both power limits to maximum. Voiding a warranty for running the CPU how it was marketed and reviewed is certainly a choice.

The end result is that stock/balanced avoids bloatware but cuts CPU power budget in half, “Performance” uses bloatware, enables spying by HP, and still limits performance, and “Extreme” enables bloatware, spying by HP, and voids your warranty. Great.

The secret 4th option is to use Intel XTU to set whatever power limits you want.

Packaging and Accessories

HP’s packaging for the OMEN 45L was good, and one of the only clear positives.

The outer box had plastic locking plugs at the bottom. There was plenty of foam and air space between the outer and inner box, which sat in a cardboard base.

The plastic plug lock company must be doing great, because the inner box also had them. Inside was even more foam.

This might seem like overkill to some people, but we actually have an older model HP Omen system that came with the glass front panel smashed. So maybe the extent of HP’s packing is a reaction to reports of shipping damage.

The system included an AC power cable, small quick start guide, customer support slip, and a sticker above the glass panel explaining that it’s locked for shipping. It’s pretty basic, but the basics are there.

Diagnosing the Omen

We next tried to diagnose the problems.

This chart shows new testing after a repaste and remount. This is at steady state, not at peak, so that means that the non-Extreme results were running at their reduced PL1 during this steady state log.

All data is comparable except the original result, which had HP’s installation. The chart also shows configuration changes for the system. The only proper result on this chart worth considering is the Extreme configuration. It’s still not at the right frequency, but it’s a lot closer; anything else is totally unacceptable for frequency. That Extreme result actually held a 77-degree average steady state CPU temperature and not shown here, but its peak temperature was lower than the peak temperature of the other tests. And that is because its pump speed is higher by default. So they are destroying the performance of the other. 77 is actually completely reasonable if only it didn’t require voiding the warranty and manually modifying the default behavior. It’s still a little slow, and it still fails the test, but it’s not nearly as ruinous. The point is that HP’s system is capable of handling the higher power load and can even cool it, they’re just choosing not to for some reason.

They might choose not to for noise reasons -- but if that’s the case, they either need to make it a lower spec CPU and cheaper price or improve the thermal performance. 

Their so-called “cryo chamber” is seriously hurting performance, anyway: By removing the radiator from its mummifying wrap and enclosed tomb of impedance, we reduced the temperature like-for-like by about 10 degrees Celsius. That is a huge improvement for something that’s supposed to be “Cryo.” If HP had mounted the radiator to the front of the case and put it behind a mesh panel, it’d probably split the difference here; instead, its patented gimmick is running the system hotter, which is contributing to their likely concern of noise levels if they were to run it properly. A better radiator location and chamber would reduce temperature, which would allow them to achieve the same thermals for similar noise, which would allow them to boost the CPU frequency.

The reason the PC’s chamber sucks is because of the huge amount of impeding metal surrounding the radiator. The limited area for flow immediately between the radiator and the rest of the case and potentially some problems with air struggling to get out, plus the fact that the radiator tanks themselves are wrapped in this shroud.

Profile vs. CPU Power

This chart shows the power consumption of the various profiles during the Blender workload. Here, the Extreme profile is maintaining its power budget for the duration of the test (rather than dropping precipitously after 50 seconds). This is the only one that should be considered for diagnosis, since anything else will be running so far below spec as a result of the power budget constraints that they’re meaningless for comparison. 

Frequency Diagnosis

Using HP’s various preset profiles and some of our own custom tests, we found that the CPU frequency gets closer to stock DIY expectations -- but still not quite there -- by enabling “Extreme” mode for the power budget and “Turbo” fans. That sets the higher power limit and we’ve now admitted to voiding our warranty, apparently, but that got us to 5158MHz up from the 4000MHz range. The various other tests included a 4010 MHz entry with Balanced and normal fans and a similarly poor result with Turbo fans and balanced. The result isn’t that different with the constrained power limit.

Fan/Pump Speeds

This simple fan/pump speed chart shows the speed of the pump, shown with the hyphenated line, juxtaposed with fan speed. The line colors match for the profile. The Extreme profile maintains the 2800 RPM reported pump speed for the duration of the test, which helps maintain the thermal results we just saw and the clocks closer to expectation. It still failed, but the clocks are closer.

Conclusion

We have to thank HP here because we haven't had the best products to cover over the last couple of months. And this one is also very bad, but it's so bad that it's funny and it has made our job really fun. Again, the PC is incomprehensibly bad. If you're paying $530 for a 285K and you're getting the performance of a $260 CPU, that's insane. It's also insane if you have to void your warranty to make the CPU, that is included with it, perform as it should. 

The PC also has a bunch of bloatware. We didn't bother testing the bloatware impact on performance because the CPU is so underperforming that it's not going to show up. We'd have to fix the CPU first to then test the bloatware impact. 

And all that is without mentioning that the plastic pump cap for the cooler was crooked. The cooler itself was not. So that wasn't part of the problem here, but the cap was. And that just looks bad for a $5,000 computer. Functionally though, there's no change. 

This is the most idiotically configured pre-built PC we have tested. But we’ve reviewed it and because of that, we’re going to be changing our “It’s-better-than-Dell” award to “It’s-better-than-HP.”

We benchmarked the RTX PRO 6000 in gaming scenarios using an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D, experimented with LLM benchmarks, and ran thermal and acoustic tests

The Highlights

• The RTX 6000 features 24,064 CUDA cores, which is nearly an 11% increase over the RTX 5090
• Unlike the 5090, which uses liquid metal, the RTX Pro 6000 uses thermal paste
• On the gaming side, the RTX Pro 6000 outperformed the 5090 by roughly 5 to 14% in our tests, but that alone isn’t a good reason to buy the card
• Original MSRP: $8,000 - $11,000
• Release Date: March 18, 2025

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

We paid $8,000 for an RTX PRO 6000 GPU with 96GB of VRAM when we bought it from Brent Rambo, the actual guy in this meme, who’s grown up now and had access to an RTX Pro 6000. These days, Rambo is busy with custom and bespoke PC builds these days on his own website, and that means he has access to interesting hardware.

It’s a shame that NVIDIA has left us feeling like it’s holding its engineers hostage for manipulating reviews, but it’s clear that we don’t mind buying our own hardware to review.

Editor's note: This was originally published on June 24, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing, Editing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan

Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera, Video Editing

Tim Phetdara

Testing, Writing, Camera

Tannen Williams

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

The RTX PRO 6000 is the best marketing for AMD’s Ryzen 9800X3D (read our review) that we use in our GPU test benches, mostly because we’re seeing 5% to 14% scaling in gaming benchmarks versus the RTX 5090 (read our review). We also tore it down and found the most insanely dense PCB we’ve ever seen with a reversion away from liquid metal.

But this doesn’t have 96GB of VRAM just because that’s where it all went when they lost it on the RTX 5080 (read our review), 5070 Ti (read our review), 5070 (read our review), 5060 Ti 8GB (read our review), and 5060 (read our review)-- it’s also there because it’s better for... AI.

Today, we’re benchmarking some of those in a round of experimental benchmarks. We haven’t done machine learning and LLM tests before and we don’t have a full methodology defined yet, but we’ve begun experimenting.

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Overview

This card is not for gaming. That much is obvious. We’re still testing it in games, and that’s mostly for our own purposes: We want to know how much room the 9800X3D has in it to scale for GPUs, and fortunately, it looks like there’s still plenty for another generation of reviews. The 9800X3D keeps up with the RTX PRO 6000 even when at 1080p in some situations. 

The biggest difference between the PRO 6000 and the 5090 after the 96GB vs. 32GB memory capacity is the GPU itself: The PRO 6000 has 24,064 CUDA cores to the 21,760 of the 5090, nearly an 11% increase. That’s a big difference.

There are multiple versions of the RTX 6000. The one we're looking at specifically is called the Blackwell Workstation Edition, but NVIDIA also has so-called “server editions” of the cards, and those are intended to go into servers and racks where they're getting force fed air from the front of the chassis rather than using an FE style cooler, which is the one we're looking at today. So, the one we're looking at is more similar to what we would see in sort of the consumer to prosumer workstation class.

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Specs, Architecture Basics, and Price

Getting into the specs:

The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU is built on the GB202 Blackwell die. The full GB202 die has support for up to 24,576 CUDA cores, 768 TMUs, 192 ROPs that might even be present, and is also used for the RTX 5090.

The PRO 6000 variation on this GPU has 24,064 CUDA cores, so it’s down by 512 and isn’t a perfect die, with 752 TMUs (down from 768) and still 192 ROPs, and they’d better all be there for the price. The card is also running 188 RT cores and supports PCIe 5.0 x16. Advertised clocks are 1590 MHz base and 2617 MHz boost. The real reason people buy this card is its memory, though, at 96GB of GDDR7.

The closest consumer class card to compare against is the RTX 5090. It’s built on the same die, but with 176 ROPs, 680 TMUs, 170 RT cores, 21,760 CUDA cores, 32GB of GDDR7 memory, a 512-bit bus width, and a far lower price at $2,000 to, realistically, $3,000 rather than $8,000 to $11,000.

For some notable differences: The 5090 only has a third of the memory capacity of the PRO card, and the RTX PRO 6000’s die is almost 98% present while the RTX 5090’s die is closer to 88.5% present, with the remainder either being fused off or defective fallout and fused off. 

You could also technically buy four 5090s for the price of one RTX PRO 6000, so the use case really does come down to having as much memory as possible attached to a single GPU and PCIe slot.

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Tear-Down

The RTX Pro 6000 we tested is a 2-slot card with 2 large fans on the front. The PCB is in the center of the card and you can see where the fins start to get taller. This indicates where the PCB plate ends. 

The card’s PCIe slot is connected via a customized pinout adapter. 

If you look at the backside of the card where the fans are, you’ll notice a slight depression down towards the middle of the fins. This is supposed to help with pressure drop. The design is full flow-through, which pushes air straight through the card rather than into a PCB. 

The other side of the card looks very similar to a 5090. 

The top of the RTX Pro 6000 retains the angle on the card’s vented slats. This projects the air out at an angle that’s up and away from the card. 

Like the 5090, the card uses a 12VHPWR cable.

Starting disassembly, we removed the card’s back plate. Then we removed a single screw, which allowed us to pull off the card’s exterior frame.  

From here, we removed some screws around the center of the card to remove the center covers. Doing this reminded us of how masterful the mechanics of the FE design is. It’s assembled really well, it’s easy to take apart, and there’s no mechanisms to try and prevent disassembly.   

Next, we unscrewed the clamp that holds the PCIe slot to the card.

Here’s a close look at the removed PCIe adapter. 

From here, we pried a plate off of the card, exposing the PCB. 

This gave us our first look at where the memory is connected. We counted 16 memory modules on the back with the clay type of thermal pads. 

The PCB is crazy dense, which is an engineering challenge. 

We then proceeded to remove ribbon cables and screws to the leaf spring to access the GPU. 

Pulling off the PCB, we were expecting to see liquid metal, but we saw thermal paste instead. We really weren’t expecting that. We also saw a massive GPU substrate.

Upon removing the PCB, we noticed that 1 pad went over the edge a bit. 

Analyzing the paste application pattern, it looked like the heaviest imprint was right in the center with lighter pressure on the outer edges, which is fine.  

Looking at the thermal pads, they were making clear contact, though we did see some pads that were smashed over the sides a bit. This is fine, however. We counted 32 total memory locations, which means that they are 3GB memory modules as that totals 96GB, the capacity of the card. 

Taking a closer look, we noticed some areas of poor contact along one edge of the inductors, where we noticed that half of the inductors are actually covered by a thermal pad. One of them only had about a third of the inductor covered. That’s not good as they really need to get the pad placement correct on GPUs that cost 8-11 thousand dollars.

The board also has lots of little tiny components, leading to a very dense PCB.  

Finally, we cleaned off the thermal paste off of the GPU, exposing the GB 202-870-A1 SKU. This is a 5090 die, just a fuller version of it.  

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Thermal Benchmarks

Thermal testing is up now. The RTX 5090 uses liquid metal with a 2-slot FE cooler that, genuinely, is one of the most impressive GPU coolers we’ve ever worked on. The prototype 4090 cooler we disassembled was more impressive in mechanical and cooling capabilities, but it was huge and impractical to manufacture. The 2-slot FE has done well in most cases, with the exception being memory cooling. We found that memory ran hot on our 5090 FE. That’s more of a concern with the PRO 6000 as well since it has so much memory.

Here’s a thermal test during a fixed render workload. The 5090 ran at around 72 degrees Celsius for the GPU core temperature in this test, which is overall excellent considering its 2-slot design. 

The VRAM for the 5090 ran at around 90 degrees Celsius, which was hotter than we’re comfortable with. Once accounting for installation into a case and potential long-term implications of pad dryout and dust, that’s high. The PRO 6000 ran its GPU core at a significantly hotter 82 degrees Celsius in this test, so about 10 degrees warmer than the 5090. The GPU memory was about the same, measuring 88 degrees via software.

Fan Response

None of that means anything without fan speeds.

Using only the auto settings, so following whatever VBIOS has programmed for the target GPU temperature, the RTX 5090 ran at 1550-1600 RPM for the average fan speed. The PRO 6000 ran at 1700. That’s a little faster with a much warmer core, but similar memory thermals.

Acoustics

Acoustics are next. For this testing, we’re using our hemi-anechoic chamber that we heavily invested in for improving our test quality. Our next major improvement will be upgrading the microphone, which is currently our bottleneck. We could hit a 6-8 dBA noise floor with a better mic, but we’re currently at 13.6 to 15.0 dBA for the floor. That’s still great though.

The RTX 5090 ran at about 32.5 dBA, with the PRO 6000 at the same noise level; however, the noise floor was slightly different between these two, so adjusting for that, the PRO 6000 would be about 1 dBA louder under the same conditions. This is hardly noticeable as a difference, if noticeable at all for most people.

Overall, the cooler design remains good when taking its size into consideration. The 5090 had higher noise levels in the higher frequency range, particularly 8000 to 10000 Hz. It also had a peak around 175 Hz, with the PRO peaking at 194 Hz and following a similar pattern, just adjusted right.

Generally speaking, this mostly follows the same trend. Our frequency cutoff is 150 Hz, so the higher result on the left can be ignored.

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming benchmarks are next. 

Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 4K

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is first. 

Tested at 4K, the RTX PRO 6000 landed at 140 FPS AVG, which has it ahead of the RTX 5090 by 5.8% for average framerate. Lows are not notably different. In other words, that’s about an extra $1,000 per 1% improvement, or about $780 per 1 FPS increase over the 5090 when calculating by the difference in cost for these two.

The lead in the RTX PRO 6000 is about 42% over the 4090 (watch our review), with the 5090 already ahead of the 4090 by about 34% here.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1440p

At 1440p, the lead over the 5090 is expanded to 6.3%, ensuring we get our full gaming value out of the card. Low performance is not different outside of the usual scaling along with the improvement in average frametimes.

The RTX PRO 6000 hits 201 FPS AVG here, leading the 189 FPS of the 5090 and the 155 of the 4090. NVIDIA currently holds the entire top cluster of this chart, with AMD mostly focusing on the modern mid-range and Intel focused on the modern low-end.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1080p

We next tested 1080p, which is what we all know buyers of this card really want to use it for. So-called AI use cases are obviously secondary compared to playing video games at 1080p.

The RTX PRO 6000 leads this extremely important and pivotal chart with a 226 FPS AVG, dropping to just a 5.3% lead. Honestly, there is something valuable that comes out of this chart: It’s marketing for AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is somehow keeping up with these GPUs enough that it can still produce distinguished results between the $2,000-$3,000 5090 and the $8,000 to $11,000 PRO 6000. That’s impressive. This is more amusing to us as it proves the longevity of our bench hardware more than anything else.

FFXIV 4K

Final Fantasy 14 is up now, tested first at 4K.

The RTX Pro 6000 ran at 208 FPS AVG, leading the 5090’s 184 FPS AVG result by about 13%. That’s a larger gain than we’ve seen in some of the other games, though obviously this is still a card intended for VRAM-intensive use cases and not gaming. That there’s still some power left beyond the 5090 is what’s more interesting, alongside the fact that the 9800X3D is so capable. Lows scale with the average and are not meaningfully better with the PRO 6000.

FFXIV 1440p

Tested at 1440p, we see a 10% improvement in framerate against the 5090, up at 348 FPS AVG for the 6000. Again, we’re mostly excited to see the 9800X3D continuing to scale and illustrating that there’s room left for another generation of testing on these benches. Lows remain in-step with the average.

FFXIV 1080p

At 1080p, the PRO 6000 again outperforms the 5090. This time, it’s reduced to about 4.3%. Let’s move on.

Starfield - 4K

Up next, we’re testing a card no one buys for gaming with a game no one plays. In Starfield at 4K, the PRO 6000 ran at 115 FPS AVG, leading the 5090 by about 7%. Lows are mostly within error. The value here is somewhere in the range of $700 to $1,000 per 1% improvement, depending on the price of the 5090.

Starfield - 1440p

At 1440p, the RTX PRO 6000 ran at 154 FPS AVG, leading the 147-148 FPS result of the 5090 marginally. The improvement over the 4090 is 17%, with the 5090 having previously led the 4090 by 12% in this test, as we’re becoming bound elsewhere.

The 1% lows for the 6000 are noteworthy here: At 89 FPS for the averaged 1% low, the PRO 6000 outperforms the average framerate of the 5070 and nearly matches the 4070 Ti with just the PRO’s 1% numbers alone. 

Resident Evil 4 - 4K

Resident Evil at 4K is up next. In this one, the RTX PRO 6000 ran at 219 FPS AVG, leading the 207 FPS AVG result of the 5090 by 6%. That’s consistent with most of the other tests so far. The lows, again, are not meaningfully different. The 4090’s 151 FPS AVG allows the 6000 a lead of 45%, or the 5090 a lead of 36.7%.

Resident Evil 4 - 1440p

At 1440p, the Blackwell workstation card ran at 371 FPS AVG, pushing the framerate measurably higher than the roughly 350 FPS AVG of the 5090 previously. We’re looking at about a 6.5% improvement, aligning with prior results again, and yet again showing just how good the 9800X3D is. 

Black Myth: Wukong - 4K

Black Myth: Wukong is up now, tested first at 4K and representing one of our heaviest non-RT workloads. The RTX PRO 6000 didn’t break the 100 FPS barrier, but it was the first card to exceed 90 -- not that this particularly matters to anyone when the 5090 was already in the mid 80s. The 6000 outperforms our 5090 FE result by 7.4%, above what we’ve seen on average thus far by about 1 percentage point. 92 FPS AVG is a good showing in this benchmark when at 4K. The next card in the stack is the 4090 at 67 FPS AVG, then the 5080 at 58 FPS AVG.

Black Myth: Wukong - 1440p

At 1440p, the PRO 6000 ran at 138 FPS AVG and led the 5090 marginally, but it was technically still a measurable improvement. Total uplift is 6.1%, aligning with Resident Evil 4 previously. Once again, the next card is the 4090. After this is the 5080, which isn’t that different from the 4080 Super (read our review), which isn’t that different from the 4080 (watch our review), which isn’t that different from the 5070 Ti. 

Black Myth: Wukong - 1080p

Black Myth: Wukong at 1080p is next. Selfishly, 1080p is interesting once again for probing at if there’s room in the CPU for more GPU. Turns out, there is: With the 9800X3D, the RTX PRO 6000 ran at 168 FPS AVG, improving on the 5090 by about 5%. That’s less than we saw at 1440p, which was less than we saw at 4K, so the card is gaining ground as resolution increases.

Dying Light 2 - 4K

Dying Light 2 is up next. At 4K, the PRO 6000 ran at 144 FPS AVG, which is a noteworthy improvement on the 126 FPS AVG of the 5090 FE. That’s a surprising 13.8%, which so far matches only one other game we’ve tested -- and that was Final Fantasy. Most of the other games are closer to 5-7%.

The 4090 is next at 91 FPS AVG, meaning the PRO 6000 is 59% ahead of the 4090.

Dying Light 2 - 1440p

At 1440p, there’s still scaling: The PRO 6000 is now at 246 FPS AVG, leading the 5090 by almost 13%. That’s a drop from what we saw at 4K, but still more than most other games.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 4K

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is one of our next most intensive games after Black Myth: Wukong. At 4K, the RTX PRO 6000 breaks through 100 FPS and hits 108, leading the 5090 by 13.5%. This is actually a pretty big lead and is another one of the games that has a larger average improvement. That’s still not worth $8,000 or $11,000 or whatever it is they’re selling these for, but it’s interesting to see any difference at all given the focus on so-called AI workloads.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 1440p

At 1440p, the PRO 6000 ran at nearly 200 FPS AVG, about 9.4% ahead of the 5090. This remains one of the larger gaps for 1440p, although again, it’s obviously not something anyone should remotely consider primarily for gaming. The 4090 is down at 135 FPS AVG, meaning the PRO 6000 leads it by 48%. 

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 1080p

We’re leaving 1080p in because it’s the only place we see a bottleneck. Finally, we run into what seems like a CPU limit. The PRO 6000 and 5090 are at about the same level of performance, as is the 4090. Everything here is limited. That means our 1440p results were at least somewhat limited as well, with minimally the upper bound bouncing off of limits.

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ray Tracing Benchmarks

Ray tracing benchmarks are next.

Ray Tracing - Black Myth: Wukong 4K

We’ll start with the heaviest one, which is Black Myth: Wukong at 4K with upscaling.

In this test, the RTX PRO 6000 ran at 92 FPS AVG, which was barely any different from the 88 FPS observed on the 5090. We’re under 5% of uplift here. It’ll be interesting to see if RT workloads don’t produce as much change as rasterization.

Ray Tracing - Black Myth: Wukong 1440p

At 1440p upscaled, the RTX PRO 6000 ran at 131 FPS AVG, leading the 5090 by just 3%. There’s just not much change in this test in general.

We’ll skip 1080p given the lack of improvement.

Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 2077 (4K, RT Medium)

Cyberpunk at 4K with RT Medium is next. In this test, the RTX PRO 6000 ran at 65 FPS AVG, leading the 5090 by 11%. That’s roughly in-line with what we saw in Cyberpunk rasterized. This is without any upscaling, which may be helping the PRO card’s relative gain.

And finally, unlike what we saw in the 5060 and 5070 class cards with significant VRAM limitations harming low performance, the PRO doesn’t have any VRAM issues. This is clearly the solution. The solution is to buy $8K-$11K video cards.

As before, note that some cards with low VRAM, like the 5070 and 4070 Ti, have averages that look better than the reality (even though the averages are also not great).

Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 2077 (4K, RT Ultra)

4K with RT Ultra is next. We almost never publish this test since it’s so intensive that it becomes somewhat useless, but it’s interesting here.

The RTX PRO 6000 ran at 56.6 FPS AVG, leading the 5090 by 6.4%. That’s a significant drop from what we saw at RT Medium, indicating that the increase in intensity for the RT workload is minimizing the benefit of other aspects of the PRO 6000’s improvements. It is getting overrun by the RT workload intensity. The lead over the 4090 is about 44% here for the 6000, with the 5090 leading the 4090 by 35%.

Note that the lower portion of this chart is unreliable for average framerate since the cards are all unplayable and stuttering. This can sometimes be due to exceeding VRAM limitations, such as on the RTX 5070. The average looks far better than the reality, even though the average is also unplayable.

Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, RT Medium)

At 1080p with RT Medium, the PRO 6000 ran at 182 FPS AVG with lows paced proportionally. That has it ahead of the 5090 by about 12 FPS AVG, or about 7%.

Ray Tracing - Dragon’s Dogma 2 4K

Dragon’s Dogma 2 with ray tracing and without upscaling is next. Tested at 4K native, the RTX PRO 6000 at 121 FPS AVG leads the 5090 FE by about 7% in average framerate. This is starting to match a pattern, so we’ll let this be our last game test. Let’s move on to something else.

RTX 6000 AI Benchmark Charts:

Now, we'll get into some of our first ever LLM and machine learning benchmarks. As a disclaimer, we know enough to get some charts together to run some benchmarks where we feel like the controls of the test environment are good, but we do not yet know enough to have a full picture of capabilities outside of the test suite that we're using currently. 

We've tested with LM Studio, 3DMark testing, and ML Perf. We kind of settled on one set just to experiment for now. And this is our disclosure that we are experimenting with new testing, which means that the charts get the experimental chart label on top of them. And that's just so everyone's aware that these are not up to our full confidence standards of our normal benchmarks that we do all the time because we're still learning here.

LM Studio Testing

For our LM Studio testing, we recorded the response speeds from 8 different models that incrementally increase in size. 

We’ll get to larger models in a second.

Our first chart illustrates the AVG tokens/second results from the three smaller models – ranging from 8.5GB to around 19GB in size. We think these first three are more representative of like-for-like tests compared to some other models we’ll be going over today – because any of the GPUs on our chart can load these models without being limited by VRAM capacity.

In DeepSeek Llama 8B Distil, the RTX PRO 6000 is functionally tied for first place with the RTX 5090 FE – both with response speeds of roughly 81 tokens/second, improving on the 4090’s 62 tokens/second AVG by about 30%.

In 8-bit Phi-4, the PRO 6000 puts some distance between its own tokens/second AVG of 62 and the 5090's 51 tokens/second AVG, showing a 22% improvement. Compared to the 4090, the RTX PRO improves by about 43%.

In Qwen 2.5, the PRO 6000's 44 tokens/second AVG sees improvements of 25% over the 5090 and 37% over the 4090.

Text Generation

Moving to our next chart, we’ll really start to see performance gaps begin to widen as VRAM limitations take effect.

The RTX 6000 tops the chart in all five models.

In InternLM, the RTX PRO 6000's 50 tokens/second AVG improves upon the 5090's 40 by 25% and upon the standard 24GB 4090 by 319%.

In Mistral Small 26GB, the 4090 and 5090 see much sharper performance decreases than the PRO 6000. The workstation GPU achieves 42.4 tokens/second AVG, or 147% improved from the 5090’s 17 and 560% greater than the 4090’s AVG of 6.4.

Once we reach Gemma 3 27B, the workstation card really starts to separate itself from the lowly $2,000 gaming cards. In this model, the RTX PRO 6000 achieves a 29 tokens/second AVG, with the 5090 only reaching 5 and the 4090 only seeing 4 tokens/second, give or take some change. The comparisons remain largely the same in QwQ 32B.

In the final Llama 3.3 70b Q4_K_S model we tested, the RTX PRO 6000 achieved its greatest lead yet. The workstation card sees improvements of 928% over the 5090 and 1141% over the standard 4090. 

A more simplistic way to interpret this data is: At a certain point, the other cards run out of VRAM, while the workstation GPU doesn’t even use half of its VRAM in the largest Llama model we tested. You could expand beyond this as well, of course, but that’s the extent of our experimentation for now.

NVIDIA RTX 6000 Conclusion

That's it for the RTX Pro 6000 test. It's a review in a way but at the same time, we'd want to do a lot more tests in the ML category to really have a fully-fledged review. This piece has been an exciting experiment for us. 

The biggest discovery for us was seeing no liquid metal while we were doing the tear-down. That was probably known, but it’s not something that we had looked into. So that was interesting. We could see why NVIDIA did that for reliability reasons. We could also see it for liability reasons if the company is worried about liquid metal leaking out onto expensive servers. We kind of doubt this was done to save on costs, though maybe it was done for liability costs, but it just doesn't seem like NVIDIA is going to try and save a buck on this kind of card. 

We spoke to Wendell from Level1Techs and he noted that there's some apparent buggy behavior with Blackwell right now and so that's still getting updated and perhaps there's performance optimizations that could be done. On the side that we're familiar with, which is the gaming aspect, seeing 5 to 14% improvement is mostly useful not because you should ever in any way consider this card for gaming, because that would be an insane waste of money if that's all you would do with it, but more because it shows us that there's room left in the 9800X3D for scaling, which is pretty cool.

We analyze the Fractal Epoch PC case against some of the best computer cases on the market.

The Highlights

• Fractal's Epoch computer case builds upon the Fractal North chassis, but swaps the front panel to accommodate larger GPUs while driving the price down
• At its price range, we’d buy something else
• The Epoch aims to be more price competitive than Fractal's other modern offerings, helping breathe life into the price category that the Pop Air has occupied
• Original MSRP: $110 MSRP ($130 for RGB)
• Release Date: September 2025

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

The Fractal Epoch is the Fractal North (watch our review) with a new front panel and a lower price. That makes this simple, except for one massive problem: The name. According to Google, this is pronounced the Epic. According to the Cambridge dictionary, it’s either the E-poch, eh-pock, or epic.

Editor's note: This was originally published on September 2, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

Fractal's newest case reuses a ton of tooling from the popular North in order to keep costs low, resulting in a $110 MSRP ($130 for RGB). The Epoch's front panel increases GPU clearance without making the case any larger than the compact North it's based on. The new design also comes with 3 stock fans versus the North's 2, so we'll cover the differences in thermal performance in detail, as well as noise testing.

The North itself originally launched at $130, then went to $140, and is now $154. This is almost definitely due to tariffs. With the Meshify 3 (read our review) going for $155 minimum as well, the Epoch fills a budget slot in Fractal's lineup that hasn't really been updated since the Pop Air (watch our review) and Focus 2 came out in 2022.

Today then, we’re reviewing and benchmarking the Fractal Epoch for thermals and acoustics.

Specs copied from manufacturer materials, please read review for our own measurements and opinions

The Build

The build experience in the Epoch is largely the same as it is in the North, but we'll recap some details here. We like the North overall, but at launch, we stated that the North felt like it should be $20-$40 cheaper if it weren't for the wood in the front panel. We also said the wood elevated the case and (arguably) made it worth the price. 

The Epoch lacks wood and it's $20-40 cheaper than the North is currently, so that lines up with the earlier statements. The only challenge is that it’s $30-$40 cheaper than the North’s new price, which is higher.

The Epoch (like the North) is fairly basic. Removing the two-part side panel and the sliding mesh top panel gives good access to the case interior, but there's a clear divide between the Epoch and something like the more expensive Meshify 3, which has fully removable top and front mounts that completely open up the case.

The North's shallow form factor means that GPU clearance is limited to 355mm, which would mash the end of the GPU directly against the front fan mounts. The front of the Epoch has been reworked to push the front fans further into the front panel, hence the listed 372mm GPU clearance. Updating this for the Epoch was worthwhile, although it seems more likely that people are going to try to fit big, expensive GPUs into the North or North XL rather than the plainer Epoch. 

The redesign also means that the new case has more clearance for fans and radiators between the PSU shroud and the fan bracket, up from 36mm to 58mm by our measurements, and there's less material overhanging the front drive bracket. The only downside we noticed with the front panel redesign is that fan cables need to be managed more carefully to avoid getting in the way.

The new design is simpler, with the metal mesh at the front of the Epoch acting as a filter rather than the removable filter in the North. We’ve found that this is better thermally (and in the past, we’ve found in testing that noise-normalized, it’s also superior). You’ll just wipe the front panel down instead.

Our main complaints with the North boiled down to cable management, which was lacking compared to competitors even at the time. That’s because the deeper channel at the front of the case is 3cm deep at most, which can lead to the side panel bulging with poor cable management and a lot of cables, especially since the side panel doesn't hook into the case along that edge. 

It's not an insurmountable problem, which is good, because the Fractal Epoch is exactly the same in that regard. 

The cutout for CPU power connectors is also a little on the small side, and the interior of the PSU shroud can get crowded if both drive trays are used. These space issues are a little more forgivable in the North because the North XL exists as an alternative, but we aren't aware of plans for an Epoch XL.

A couple of features from the North have been removed, presumably to cut costs. There's currently no mesh side panel option for the Epoch, which also means that there's no side fan bracket (and no mounting holes to install one). There's also no built-in fan hub, but Fractal has handled this by daisy-chaining fans in both case variants.

As we saw in the Meshify 3, Fractal uses Type-C shaped connectors (NOT actual USB) for its RGB Momentum fans, but the RGB Epoch uses an adapter that splits out into standard fan and RGB connections.

Otherwise, the differences are neutral cosmetic details. 

The front I/O has been rearranged, the illuminated strip from the North is gone, and the two audio jacks have been combined into one. The USB ports are of the same type and quantity, but the Type-C port is now connected with a flat ribbon cable. The case feet have been redesigned without metal accents (the Epoch's might still be more expensive since each is a unique shape), and the faux-leather pull tab at the back of the case has been replaced with fabric. The captive screw on the half-panel at the front of the case still gets wedged, just like the North, but at this point, we've had to make peace with that.

Fractal Design Epoch Thermals

For thermal testing, we ran one set of tests with the stock non-RGB case, then moved the RGB fans into that same case and ran another set of tests to ensure every other variable remained exactly the same.

Of the cases we've tested lately, the direct comparisons for the Epoch are the Corsair Frame 4000D RS, Phanteks XT Pro Ultra, the Lian Li Lancool 207 (or arguably the 217), and of course Fractal's own North. These are all fairly compact ATX towers in the $90-$110 range, with the Epoch landing at the upper end of that and the North being the highest of all of them. 

The non-RGB Epoch will be our main point of comparison since the RGB version costs $130 and could have slightly worse thermal performance. According to the spec sheet, just like with the Meshify 3, the non-RGB fans can generate more noise and move more air at peak speed. Now we have an opportunity to actually test for differences, although they should be minor, and the rated RPM is 2200 for both models.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

We'll start with our noise-normalized test, where we adjust the speed of the stock case fans to hit an overall SPL of 27 dBA as measured in our hemi-anechoic chamber. We built this chamber to allow more accurate testing and normalization by eliminating external noises that may affect day-to-day noise floor.

With a full-system torture workload, CPU temperature in the Epoch was 43 degrees Celsius above ambient for the all-core average and 47 degrees on the P-cores, and the temperatures with RGB fans were within one degree for both measurements for the 2 cases. Fractal's claim is that the non-RGB fans are a little louder and higher CFM, which could mean that our noise normalization reverses or equalizes for performance differences.

The Epoch outperformed the original North, which came with two 140mm fans and averaged 46 degrees above ambient all-core and 50 degrees P-core. The glass-sided North is more similar to the Epoch, but the mesh option is an advantage for the case, lowering the all-core average to 44 degrees above ambient and 48 degrees over ambient P-core. 

The Phanteks XT Pro Ultra was even warmer than the glass North, which means the Epoch is also better than the XT Pro Ultra. The Corsair Frame 4000D RS was within error of the Epoch and functionally the same, which makes sense given the similar layout and fan arrangement. The most serious competition comes from Lian Li's dirt-cheap Lancool 207 (read our review) with its 41 degree average, as well as the more expensive 217 (read our review), also at 41. These cases are at about 45 degrees for the P cores.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Moving to GPU thermals in the same test, the Epoch RGB averaged 45 degrees above ambient and the regular Epoch averaged 46. Memory temperatures showed a slightly wider delta, with the Epoch RGB at 49 and Epoch at 51. The regular Epoch was louder at max speed, so it required a greater fan speed reduction to hit our noise-normalized threshold, which explains the temperature difference in combination with a +/-1 degree range.

The regular Epoch outperformed the glass North's 48-degree average and tied the mesh North at 46. The Phanteks XT Pro Ultra came closer to the Epoch here than it did for CPU thermals, although the memory temperature was a weak point for the Phanteks case at 54 degrees over ambient. 

The Frame 4000D did well with a 45 degree GPU average, while the Lian Li cases again are ahead, with the 207 and 217 "GPU Mode" showing similar performance at 42 degrees above ambient on the GPU. Credit to Fractal for still having the best GPU thermal performer with the Torrent (read our review) though, tying the Flux Pro (read our review). These are much more expensive cases. 

GPU Full Load Thermals - Full Speed

We’re switching to full speed tests now, which means we allow noise to become a variable. The noise level is next to the case name.

At full speed, the non-RGB and RGB cases didn't show much of a difference in thermal performance, but they did in noise. The stock Epoch with non-RGB fans measured 42.2 dBA, while the RGB case measured 39.3 dBA. That lines up with Fractal's claims, which have a regular Momentum 12 at 31.3 dBA and a Momentum 12 RGB at 28.03 dBA in their testing. These hard numbers are different because they are tested in different environments and methods -- we’re measuring total system noise, not just the fans.

The average GPU temperature with the RGB fans in the Epoch was technically lower at 43.6 degrees average, but not enough to be outside the margin for error, and the average GPU memory temperatures were nearly identical between RGB and non-RGB.

The North with its stock fans almost kept up, with the mesh-sided result only one degree warmer and the glass-sided result at 46 degrees above ambient, although noise levels were higher than the Epoch. Each of the other competitor cases we mentioned performed better, though, starting with the XT Pro Ultra at 43 degrees, then the Frame 4000D at 42, the Lancool 217 at 39-40 in an ideal configuration, and finally the Lancool 207 at 38 degrees above ambient and roughly the same noise level as the Epoch.

Noise levels have the Epoch about the same as the Antec Flux Pro when at max fan speed, with the Flux Pro running far cooler with its superior fans. The Flux Pro is also $165 to $180, depending on promos, so it’s not the same price class.

GPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

Using our standardized set of two 140mm intake fans and one 120mm exhaust allows us to make a true head-to-head comparison between the North and Epoch front panels, without stock fans as a variable. 

In terms of GPU thermals, the Epoch, the mesh-sided North, and the glass-sided North all averaged the same: 46 degrees above ambient. The Epoch's front panel may be cheaper, but it's not worse for thermals.

CPU Full Load Thermals - Standardized Fans

CPU thermals between the two North variants in the standardized fan test were also very similar, but the Epoch was about one degree cooler, averaging 38 degrees above ambient all-core and 42 on the P-Cores alone. The new front panel seems to be slightly more open, but any further performance advantages for the Epoch are down to its stock fans.

VRM & RAM Full Load Thermals - Noise-Normalized

Back to the noise normalized test, the Epoch RGB's VRM temperature averaged 29 degrees above ambient and the regular Epoch averaged 30. That's better than either North variant, but 217 remains top of the chart at 26 degrees.

Fractal Design Epoch Conclusion

The Epoch is entering a market where every dollar counts. This is a harder market to compete in than the $150-$180 range.

We think $110 is at the upper limit of what Fractal can realistically ask for this model. It's a North without the wood, and while the trendsetting wood accents will keep the North selling even at $140+, a North without the wood is a reliable but unexciting compact mid-tower, even if the performance is a little better and there's a little more GPU clearance.

Fractal has steep competition from Corsair, Phanteks, and Lian Li, among others.

Corsair's Frame 4000D RS (the one with three stock fans) is basically the same thing as the Epoch, and as of this writing, it's on sale for $95. We weren't terribly impressed with the Phanteks XT Pro Ultra's thermal performance, but it's currently even cheaper at $80 after a rebate on Newegg. The most ruthless competition is from Lian Li, as usual, with its cutthroat prices. It's selling its wood-trimmed Lancool 217 for as little as $120, but a more direct comparison for the Epoch is the $82 compact Lancool 207, and even the 207 Digital with an integrated LCD is on sale for $105. 
It’s good that Fractal is updating its budget offerings because it hasn’t had a refresh here in a couple years, but there's not a particularly strong reason other than brand loyalty to choose the Epoch over its cheaper competition. The North is a good case, but it’s primarily good because of the front panel and the optional mesh side panel. The Epoch is the North without either of those, leaving it as simply “fine.” It’s OK. But competing in the lower price classes, we’d buy something else.

The 5500X3D likely takes fallout from the manufacturing process and then re-spins it as a new model, allowing AMD to salvage silicon

The Highlights

• The AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D CPU is for the Latin America market and builds upon the AM4 X3D CPU lineage and is a 6-core, 12-thread part
• The 5500X3D isn’t a particularly good performer in things like production applications, compression, and decompression
• AMD is still launching AM4 CPUs, which is awesome since the socket is now nearly 10 years old
• Original MSRP: $240-$250 (approximately)
• Release Date: June 2025

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

AM4 is the GOAT of motherboard sockets at this point. The socket launched in 2016 and was used for AMD’s first Ryzen CPUs in 2017, and AMD is still launching CPUs for it in 2025. The newest one is the Ryzen 5 5500X3D CPU, a 6-core, 12-thread part that follows other unexpected launches.
AMD launched the R7 5700X3D (read our review) in 2024 and the R5 5600X3D (exclusive to Micro Center) in 2023. The R5 5500X3D has a lower frequency than the 5600X3D and is exclusive to Latin America. Our viewer Leo in Brazil helped us buy one to review, and it’s currently priced at about $204 converted to USD and launched at around $240-$250 USD a couple months ago.

Editor's note: This was originally published on August 29, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan

Testing, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

Today, we’re benchmarking the R5 5500X3D. We’re going to keep this set of benchmarks relatively simple and straight-forward: We’ll look primarily at gaming, frequency validation, and we’ll add some production benchmarks. We’re currently revamping and overhauling our efficiency testing as part of our regular bench suite update interval, so we won’t be running those numbers today.

Overview

We’ll start with a quick price comparison.

CPU Market Pricing Update

So again, the 5500X3D was about $240-$250 for our viewer, as seen in the screenshot above from the retailer who sold it. 

About a month or two later, it went down to $204. That’s still pretty expensive by US market standards, but we’re admittedly not very familiar with the Brazilian or South American markets where this is sold. 

Starting with some pricing updates from the market we do know in the US, here’s what it looks like:

Currently, the Intel 265KF without IGP is $283 (apparently marked down from $300), the 9600X is $205, the 14600K (watch our review) is $190, the R7 7700 (watch our review) is $285, and the Ultra 5 225 from Intel is $212 (we haven’t tested this one). The 5800X3D (watch our review) is mostly gone from retailers in any reasonably priced capacity and the 5700X3D is also only available at higher prices and from third-party sellers now. To set the price for the high-end, a 9800X3D (read our review) is about $480.

These are US prices though. Checking the same website our viewer used, we found the 5600X for about the same price as the current 5500X3D price, the Intel 245K for almost exactly twice the current price of the 5500X3D, and the AMD R5 9600X for $270. Given these prices, the 5500X3D at its current $204 is one of the better prices on this particular website. But again, don’t take us as experts for this space. We only learned of this site a month ago. 

Specs & Price

The AMD R5 5500 non-X3D (watch our review) had a major downside from the R5 5600, which was the cache: The 5500 had just 16 MB of L3 Cache, down from 32 MB on the R5 5600. This was a huge change. Despite having the same core and thread count, same 65W TDP, and frequencies which are overall close enough to be comparable, this loss of cache materialized heavily in gaming performance right away in most cases.

The 5500X3D has 96MB of L3 Cache, as we’ve come to expect from its class of CPU. It also has a 105W TDP, which increases its power budget; however, the 5500X3D’s clock speed is significantly lower than that of the 5600 (watch our review) and even 5500, at 3 GHz base and 4.0 GHz boost. This will be its biggest potential downside, but we’ve often seen that cache can make up for lower frequencies in gaming. If the CPU is a downbin or cobbled together from low-performing silicon, then these frequencies make sense as it might be comprised of chips that couldn’t hit higher targets. Likewise, it's possible if it's lower quality silicon that it could require more power to drive the frequencies it is maintaining.

The rest of the specs are familiar: The 5500X3D uses a 7nm FinFET process from TSMC, like the 5500/5600, uses the AM4 socket that’s been GOATed at this point, and is a 6-core, 12-thread part.

Frequency Validation - All-Core

We’ll start with frequency validation in Blender rendering to ensure the CPU is working as advertised.

AMD’s spec sheet defines a 4GHz max boost and 3GHz base clock.

This all-core workload in Blender has the 5500X3D at 3950MHz, falling below the max advertised boost. This is expected for an all-core workload, as long as the CPU can hit the maximum advertised boost in a single-core workload.

The non-X3D R5 5500 CPU ran at 4250MHz, so it has a frequency advantage. The 5600X3D held a frequency of 4350MHz, making it the fastest of these 3 CPUs by frequency. All 3 of these are 6-core, 12-thread CPUs.

Frequency Validation - Single-Core

This next chart shows the maximum single core frequency per interval across a Cinebench 1T benchmark. The 5500X3D had a maximum frequency of 3950MHz, which means it falls short of AMD’s target of 4000 MHz maximum advertised boost. Technically, the spec sheet says “up to,” but that’s bullshit. AMD has done well since the 3000 series to ensure that its CPUs hit this advertised frequency in one of these two workloads for every other CPU we’ve tested for years, making this the first to fail in a long time. 50 MHz short of the target is disappointing. There are a few blips later in the test as tiles change, but the bulk of the test does not meet this target.

The 5500 non-X3D hit 4250 MHz again, with the 5600X3D at 4350 MHz.

5500X3D Gaming Benchmarks

Stellaris Simulation Time Benchmark

Stellaris simulation time is up first. This benchmark is CPU-intensive and also a gaming benchmark, but it’s useful for its real-world representation of something beyond framerate. This lets us look at the actual time required to simulate change in the game, meaning the impacts are felt in real time.

X3D stacks up like this: The 5800X3D is at 50 seconds required, the 5700X3D is at 55 seconds, the 5600X3D required 55.6 seconds, and the 5500X3D required about 61 seconds. The best performer is the 9800X3D at 37.1 seconds, illustrating significant scaling headroom.

Compared to the 5500X3D, the 5800X3D required 17% less time to complete the work. The 5700X3D required about 10% less time to complete the work, with the 5600X3D at about 8% required time reduced.

Intel’s 12600K (watch our review) has about the same performance as the 5500X3D. The 12700KF is a bit better, with the 245K (read our review) improved somewhat notably to 52 seconds, though we still don’t recommend the 200 series of CPUs.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Benchmarks

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is up next. This is a relatively CPU-intensive benchmark.

The 5500X3D ran at 95 FPS AVG here, with lows well-paced and frametimes in step with the average frametime. This has it around the same level as the 12600K, matching our Stellaris lineup. The 9800X3D shows clear room for scaling at 132 FPS AVG, or a 40% improvement over the 5500X3D, but would also require a new platform with a higher cost. The 5800X3D shows the best gaming capabilities of the AM4 socket with its 108 FPS AVG result, a 14% uplift over the new X3D part. The 5700X3D is closer to the 5500X3D, with the 5600X3D outperforming it. This isn’t abnormal and we’ve explained this over the years: The 5600X3D has a higher 4.4GHz turbo clock, with the 5700X3D at 4.1GHz due to the same 105W power budget being spread across more cores.

The 5500X3D is comparable to the 5700X3D, 245K, and 12600K in terms of performance. The 5700X3D still retains the benefit of more cores in situations where that’s useful.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Benchmarks

Baldur’s Gate 3 is up now. This one is lightweight on GPUs, but can be surprisingly good for showing CPU scaling. The 9950X3D (read our review), 9800X3D, and everything below them prove that. We’re still scaling all the way up to the best two CPUs on the market.

The 5500X3D held a framerate of 102 FPS AVG; however, these are slightly worse than the lows from the neighboring two Intel CPUs. The 265K and 12700KF both are better in frametime consistency, despite the 5500X3D not being bad.

The 5800X3D leads the 5500X3D by 19%. The 5600X3D and 5700X3D are similarly ahead of the 5500X3D, both at about 9% ahead of the new CPU. The 4GHz clock and 6 cores of the 5500X3D are limiting it here, despite overall fine performance.

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail 1080p

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is up next, tested at 1080p first. The 5500X3D ran at 297 FPS AVG, so nothing to be upset about. Frametime pacing is overall good. The 5700X3D is technically better, but not by much; its 302 FPS AVG is an uplift of 1.7%, with the 5600X3D benefitting from the higher frequency. We’ve seen this behavior in Final Fantasy for years now, where the higher frequency helps more than an extra 2 cores.

The 9800X3D helps establish a ceiling around 370 FPS AVG, with the 9950X3D pushing close to 400 FPS. There’s room to scale here.

The 5500X3D manages to outperform the 14900K (read our review) and Intel 285K (read our review). We’ve talked about this before, but Final Fantasy’s chart flipped from an update a couple years ago now: It used to be that Intel held the entire top half of the chart, and now it’s AMD. That remains true with the X3D AM4 parts while the non-X3D AM4 variants fall below some of the Intel CPUs.

FFXIV 1440p

1440p is more or less the same, but we’re including it just to show scaling. Everything is a little bit truncated by the imposition of more GPU load, but particularly the 9800X3D and 9950X3D. These two CPUs are now about tied, with everything down to the 7600 (watch our review) at least occasionally glancing off of the GPU limit, even if rarely.

F1 24 1080p Benchmarks

F1 24 is next. 

In this one, the 5500X3D ran at 329 FPS AVG and slightly outperformed the AMD R5 7600 while roughly tying the Intel Ultra 5 245K. Intel manages better 1% lows than the 5500X3D.

The 9800X3D holds a 500 FPS AVG result, a 53% improvement on the 5500X3D. Clearly there’s room to be better, but the last-gen 5700X3D and 5600X3D would be closer comparisons here. The 5600X3D outperformed the 5700X3D marginally from its frequency advantage, whereas the 5700X3D will be benefitted in more thread-intensive tasks. Both of them outdid the 5500X3D, with the 5600X3D improved by 11%.

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty Benchmarks

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is up next.

The 5500X3D ran at 164 FPS AVG, leaving the normal 5500 in the dust at 123 FPS AVG. The 5500X3D’s frametime pacing is also overall consistent and tied with the Intel 245K. The 265K is basically the same performance as the 5500X3D.

AMD’s 5600X3D outperforms the 5500X3D by around 9%, the 5700X3D is almost 10% higher framerate, and the 5800X3D outdoes the 5500X3D by 17% for average framerate. The 9800X3D is 37% ahead, bouncing off of a GPU limit alongside the 9950X3D.

The 5500X3D still outperforms the 14th generation and the non-X3D CPUs of multiple AMD generations, including the 9700X. X3D does well here and holds the entire top quarter of results.

Starfield Benchmarks

The 5500X3D does fine in Starfield as an objective measure, but isn’t competitive. The CPU runs at about 119 FPS AVG with unimpressive lows, although that’s mostly from the game.

The CPU is at least significantly better than the R5 5500’s 88 FPS AVG and the 5600X’s 99 FPS AVG, despite allowing the 5600X3D a 10-11% lead. The 5700X3D pushes past the 5600X3D in this one, illustrating a benefit from the extra 2 cores even with the lower clock speed. The ceiling in this test is around 200 FPS AVG, with the 5800X3D being AM4’s closest CPU to that result at 148 FPS AVG, leading the 5500X3D by 24%.

5500X3D Production Benchmarks

Blender

We’ll look at some production tests now. This won’t be as extensive as our Threadripper review, but will at least give us an idea as to the performance in non-gaming tasks. X3D doesn’t tend to help here, and in the AM4 generation, the configurations are often worse than non-X3D variants due to lower clocks.

In Blender rendering of a 3D GN logo, the 5500X3D required about 30 minutes to complete the render of one frame from our intro animation. That has it slightly behind the 5500 non-X3D, although they’re about the same. The 5600X (watch our review) sees a reduction in time required of 9% thanks to its higher frequency. The 3700X outperforms all of these as a result of the 8-core configuration, which offers more in this workload than just frequency at lower core counts can. Overall, the 5500X3D performs like a low power 6-core CPU, which is what it is when the extra cache can’t be leveraged. The 12600K that it ranked alongside in several gaming tests is significantly and noticeably better here, up at 18 minutes for the same test. That’s a reduction in time required of 39%.

7-Zip Compression

In 7-Zip compression testing, the 5500X3D ran at about the same performance level as the 5600X3D. Results are in millions of instructions per second, with the 5500X3D completing 65K MIPS, the 5600X3D at about 70K MIPS, the regular 5500 at 64K MIPS, and the venerable 5800X3D completing 90K MIPS. The 5800X3D and 5700X3D both benefit from a higher core count, with the 5800X3D in particular at 38% ahead of the 5500X3D CPU. The 12600K is similar to the 5800X3D in this test.

The 5500X3D isn’t impressive here in any capacity. There are better options for this kind of task, but if you had to do stuff like this in addition to budget gaming, it’d be workable.

7-Zip Decompression

Decompression is next. This test has the 5500X3D at 80K MIPS, landing just below the R5 5500, which benefits from the higher frequency that we showed earlier.

The 12600K leads the 5500X3D by 18%, so where they were similar in a few games, the 12600K definitely has an advantage in these more core-intensive tasks.

The 5500X3D is not a good CPU for this kind of work. It can get it done, but it’s not competitive. This is primarily a budget, cut-down gaming CPU.

Chromium

Chromium code compile is next. This test is extremely core-intensive and beats up the 5500X3D. It required 337 minutes to complete the code compile. That’s faster than the 355 minutes of the 5500 non-X3D, but still far down the chart. The 5600X and 5600X3D show similar rankings, with the 5700X3D also benefitted over the 5700X non-3D. There’s at least a clear trend in these AM4 CPUs of the extra cache helping versus their non-X3D counterparts.

Adobe Photoshop

In Adobe Photoshop with the Puget suite, the 5500X3D lands again at the bottom of the chart. It’s ahead of the 5500 non-3D but behind almost everything else, including the gaming neighbor 12600K.

Adobe Premiere

Adobe Premiere video editing and rendering tasks via the Puget suite have the 5500X3D at 6760 points extended, which plants it between the 5500 and 5600X again. The 3700X isn’t far off from the 5500X3D’s performance, mostly thanks to its extra 2 cores.

The 12600K is significantly better than the 5500X3D here, as are basically any options from the AMD 7000 series and beyond. The generational uplift was particularly large in this test.

DaVinci Resolve

In DaVinci Resolve, which is experimental for us right now, the ranking is similar: The Puget suite keeps it down toward the bottom of the chart, just behind the 3700X, 5600X, and ahead of the 5500 non-X3D.

Conclusion

The CPU market is still relatively sane compared to the utter chaos that is the GPU market right now. CPUs are, for the most part, pretty stable—pricing is predictable, availability is decent, and while you might not agree with the price of a specific model, at least you know what you’re getting into. 

One of the most impressive things here is AM4. It’s still kicking, even with AM5 taking over. We’ve talked to motherboard vendors, and they’ve told us that older boards from past generations often get rerouted to markets outside the U.S., like South America and parts of Asia, where there is still demand. This helps keep prices a little lower and ensures that those boards don’t just end up in a landfill. And for folks looking to buy in, it means that entry costs for things like the 5500X3D are more reasonable. 

Speaking of the 5500X3D, it’s a noticeable improvement over the non-X3D 5500. The biggest problem with that old chip was its tiny cache. 

Performance-wise, the 5500X3D is fine overall and didn’t really fail in any of the games we tested. It isn’t a particularly good performer in things like production applications, compression, and decompression. It can do them, but it's not good if you’re doing those tasks heavily. In that case, you’d be better off going for a higher-core-count CPU.

Pricing is key here, and it really depends on where you are. In the U.S., the 5500X3D’s launch price of $240 to $250 felt a little too steep, especially with better alternatives on the market at similar prices. But if you catch it around $200, it’s a much better deal and competes with stuff like the 9600X, so it’s definitely a more appealing option.

What’s really impressive, though, is how AM4 is still relevant and kicking, despite being several years old. This thing has been around for ages, and AMD is still giving it support. AM4’s long life means less waste, fewer upgrades, and a platform that’s not forcing you to buy a whole new setup every couple of years.

We compare the 9980X vs previous Threadripper CPUs (like the 7980X) and against desktop-class CPUs (like the Intel 285K and AMD Ryzen 9950X)

The Highlights

• AMD’s new 9980X Threadripper moves to the Zen5 architecture
• On the gaming side, there are sometimes issues with consistency
• The 9980X is anywhere from 2% to 58% improved upon the 7980X in our benchmarks
• Original MSRP: $5,000
• Release Date: July 31, 2025

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

We’re reviewing the $5,000 AMD Threadripper 9980X 64-core CPU and have a ton of new production tests to benchmark it. A lot of this is just an excuse to do some cool new testing. Like with medical simulations where we saw an 18% generational uplift, similar to the 18% we saw in financial options and black-scholes modeling, or the 58% improvement over the 7980X that we saw in convolution benchmarking. In most places, the gain is much smaller, like in compression with a couple percentage points of change. However, from the Zen 5 change to how AVX instructions are handled, it sometimes gains disproportionately. We saw the same with the 9900X vs. 7900X (or X3D variants) when in AVX-heavy scenarios.

Editor's note: This was originally published on July 30, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Patrick Lathan
Mike Gaglione

Video Editing

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

The quick version up front is that the improvement on the 7980X is anywhere from around 2% to that 58% number, but the vast majority of tests are closer to the range of 5% to 18%. It really heavily depends on the workload with these CPUs, particularly AVX occupancy.

These are workstation CPUs intended for research, production work, or generally tasks that either make money or advance science or something similar. We’re still benchmarking gaming, but the focus will be mostly on production workloads today with gaming only there to ensure there are no major broken results.

These CPUs are expensive. That limits the audience. For that reason, we added all the new tests as an opportunity to also re-run everything else, so all of this data is brand new. Even if you’re not in the market for Threadripper, this will have interesting data from more “normal” CPUs out there.

Overview

Here’s the quick recap of the CPU lineup.

AMD is launching two versions of the Threadripper 9000 CPUs. These include the non-Pro and Pro CPUs. The Pro CPUs had an earlier embargo; today, we’re covering the HEDT (or “high-end desktop”) non-Pro Threadripper CPUs.

The 9980X is a 64-core, 128-thread part that boosts up to 5.4 GHz and has 256MB of L3 Cache. The CPU sockets into STR5 platforms and, like the other two modern Threadripper parts launching with it, has a 350W TDP. It’s $5,000 for the 9980X.

The 9970X is a 32-core, 64-thread part. They all share the same boost of 5.4GHz, but the base clock is higher on the lower core-count CPUs as a result of higher power availability per core based on power budget. Cache is down to 128MB L3 on the 9970X and 9960X, the latter of which is a 24-core, 48-thread part. Pricing is $2,500 for the 9970X and $1,500 for the 9960X.

Compared to last time, prices are familiar: The 7980X was $5,000, the 7970X was $2,500, and the 7960X was $1,500. Threadripper 9000 prices are elevated from several generations back to the 3000 series, but the same as the 7000 series.

The architectural improvements are the same as in Zen 5 with the 9000 series launch. The biggest one you’ll see today is from the AVX changes. When we were digging into the largest improvement in our testing, AMD sent this explanation as a refresher on Zen 5:

“At first glance [the test] does appear to benefit from AVX-512 since the code has multiple references to ZMM. The main difference in 7K and 9K is the double vs single pump (256-bit native vs 512 native).”

“High level, it took two cycles to do a 512 bit operation on Zen4, but one cycle on Zen5 because we doubled the FP datapath width, and increased the bandwidth from the L2 to the core to be able to match that speedup. You can't always take advantage of it, but theoretically there is a 2X improvement.”

That “theoretically” is important, because it doesn’t show up in most of our tests; however, in some, there is a very large uplift. This isn’t special to Threadripper and is instead specific to Zen 5 vs. Zen 4. We’ll spend some time on that in our review.

As for the test bench: Our chart subtitles apply to the desktop platforms, but the Threadripper CPUs are tested with different memory and motherboards. It deviates from some of the other benches.

Let’s get into the benchmarks. We’ll start with production testing.

9980X Production Benchmarks

7-Zip Compression

7-Zip compression is up now.

This test is measured in MIPS, or millions of instructions per second. Higher is better throughput. The 9980X is the new chart-topper here, at 520K MIPS versus the 7980X’s 508K MIPS. The improvement is just 2.3% here. This is one of the lower improvements. 

There’s clear benefit to higher core counts in this test. The 7980X over the 7970X previously held a lead of 34%, or 67% over the 7960X.

Against the highest-end desktop part, the 9950X3D, the 9980X sees an improvement of 151%. Notably, extra cache seems to help here: Both the 7950X3D and 9950X3D are benefitted over the 9950X. 

Threadripper is in an entirely different class from desktop components, although the uplift over the last generation’s 7980X is limited and relatively boring here.

7-Zip Decompression

In decompression, the 9980X scaled up to 926K MIPS, gaining 8% on the 7980X’s 857K MIPS. This is a better showing than what we saw in compression and posts better scaling. The rest of the lineup is familiar to the prior examples. Extra cache doesn’t help as much in this test as compared to the compression test, as the 7950X3D is now below the 9950X. This would align with the speed benefit providing more of an uplift on Threadripper as well.

SpecWS: OptionsPricing

SpecWorkstation 4.0 is next. This runs a number of simulations and mathematical models that we aren’t experts in, but we can at least run the benchmarks. We’ll rely on the Spec website to explain what the tests are.

The first is Options Pricing. The website says that this runs Monte Carlo probabilistic simulations for financial uncertainty, Black-Scholes pricing models for theoretical value, and binomial options pricing. We are not experts in how these are used, but those of you in our audience who are experts have repeatedly expressed an appreciation for this test.

The results have the 9980X at the top, with a 7.8 score. That has it improved on the 7980X by an impressive 18%, aligning with the findings of the 9000 series desktop parts against the 7000 series in this same test. You can see that in the 9800X3D against the 7800X3D or the 9900X3D vs. 7900X3D. This is an architectural benefit. It’s one of the rare break-outs for Zen 5 that we talked about after the initial round of reviews when we had validated it as a legitimate deviation.

The 9980X improves on the highest-end desktop 9950X3D by 200%, basically being the difference between being runnable and not. Threadripper really makes an impact here, and the generational gain is real but rare in this one test.

SpecWS: OpenFOAM

OpenFOAM is next. Per the Spec website, OpenFOAM is a CFD test that “performs 2D Reynolds averaged simulation for fluid dynamics analysis.” It also runs a solver test.

The 9980X scores 23.3 here, leading the 7980X prior generation by about 9%. Not as impressive as Options Pricing, but better than some other tests we have today.

The lead over desktop parts like the 9950X and X3D is enough that it’s really not in the same class, with multiples of uplift.

SpecWS: Convolution

Convolution testing is next. Spec says that this test applies “a convolution filter to an image, a critical operation in signal processing and image analysis” for edge detection and feature extraction. This is heavily multi-threaded.

In this test, the 9980X scored 9.3 to the 7980X’s 5.9, a huge uplift of 58%. This is completely out of alignment with any other tests. We contacted Wendell of Level1 Techs and AMD’s engineers to get both a first-party and a neutral third-party check of these numbers. Wendell noted that this is expected behavior and had seen similar results in other tests, believing it to be related to AVX improvements in addition to being a test that runs long enough to benefit from them. AMD noted that it has also seen results around 60% for certain similar tests.

Although we have our 9970X review coming up separately, we’ll note that it also saw a 56% improvement here over the 7970X predecessor. The results align. Looking at last gen, the 9950X improved on the 7950X by 50%, which is consistent generationally. The results appear to be consistent and are present across numerous CPUs cross-generation, which means the only thing left to consider is whether this benchmark represents real-world scenarios. We’re not sure: This particular test exits our expertise, as we don’t do signal processing or image analysis work. We’d love to hear from those in our audience as to whether the Spec Convolution test aligns with real-world applications that you use in your work life.

Regardless, the result is repeatable -- it’s only a question of whether it’s effectively a microbenchmark or is something that scales to real-world use.

SpecWS: LAMMPS

LAMMPS testing is next. According to Spec, this test is for large-scale atomic and molecular massively parallel simulation, which Spec says “utilizes MPI to scale to multiple cores to perform complex simulations.” This includes life science subtests, such as for polymer chain calculations and protein calculations for, what we assume are, medical uses.

LAMMPS has the 9980X at a 5.5 score in Spec, leading the 7980X by 17%. This is close to the Options Pricing results. Although Spec has several tests where there’s no real impact, like Handbrake, it also has a higher saturation of tests with larger generational improvements.

SpecWS: Data Science

The Spec Data Science test is next. Spec says that this test “involves running a series of synthetic benchmarks that simulate real-world AI and ML workflows using the Python-based data science libraries Pandas, Scikit-learn, and XGBoost.”

Generationally, the 9980X improves on the 7980X by 10%, going from 2.0 to 2.2 in the scoring. For reference, the 9950X improved on the 7950X by 13% at 1.7 from 1.5.

SpecWS: NAMD

NAMD is next, another test our audience liked before. This is a molecular dynamics simulator for modeling “behavior of biomolecular systems,” with Spec saying that it is “used for research in biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular biology.”

The 9980X scored 6.0, with the 7980X at 5.1. This is an improvement of almost 18%, which aligns again with LAMMPS and options pricing benchmarks.

SpecWS: RodiniaCFD

We have a lot more Spec results, but we’ll close on one that’s less interesting to bring it back down to earth and balance the higher results. This is for RodiniaCFD, which the site explains has a pre-euler subtest that “executes an unstructured grid finite volume CFD solver for 3D euler equations for compressible flow.”

The 9980X scored 3.7 here, with the 7980X at 3.5. This is one where the improvement is less exciting, back down to about a 5-6% improvement generationally.

Chromium

Up next is Chromium code compile. There are a lot of types of code compile, just like there are a lot of types of video encoding or photo editing or 3D rendering workloads, so we’re just representing one here as we do with any other production test.

The 9980X completes the compile the fastest, at 48 minutes total. The compile time is 7.5% reduced from the 7980X. Elsewhere, with the newer version of this test, we’re seeing reduced impact compared to prior test iterations. The 7980X and 7970X are relatively close to each other, with the 9950X3D and 9950X also near each other. Some of these CPUs are running with reduced memory speed as they required higher memory capacity and had more trouble holding our usual settings, so those are noted where true.

The 14900K is Intel’s best performer, requiring 100 minutes to complete the compile. The 9950X outperforms this.

Blender

Blender tile-based rendering is up next.

For this process, the 9980X is the new chart-topper at 2.1 minutes to complete a render of a single frame from the GN intro animation logo. The next fastest is the 7980X at 2.5 minutes, which makes sense: This test is heavily thread-dependent, so threads will outrank frequency where large differences emerge.

Intel’s newer generation does OK in this test, with the 285K between the 9950X and 7950X. It’s also one of the tests where Intel doesn’t see regressive performance, though we still wouldn’t recommend the 285K. That entire platform is dead, anyway.

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is next, tested with the Puget Suite. This uses an aggregate score of filters, resizes, and other functions within Photoshop.

The best performer here is the 9950X, followed by other desktop CPUs. The Threadripper parts fall further down the chart, with the 9980X in particular underperforming. We’ve seen this in the past, such as with the 7980X: They just have too many threads for their own good and Photoshop isn’t able to utilize them. The 7980X is outperformed by the 7970X and 7960X, so the 9980X landing in the middle isn’t a surprise. Its main improvement comes from the frequency.

It does OK here if this is just one of many applications you use, but if Photoshop is the only thing you do, there are better and cheaper CPUs for the job.

Premiere

Adobe Premiere is next, our best frenemy that we see every day.

In this one, the 9980X improves upon the performance from the 7980X and 7970X, but only barely. It’s definitely not worth a single generational upgrade, though we generally don’t recommend that anyway.

The improvement is almost 5% from the 7980X to the 9980X in the extended score for Premiere. Intel’s 285K trails most Threadripper CPUs in the chart and roughly ties the 7960X. It also technically outperforms the 9950X. Intel’s biggest advantage remains in its QuickSync solution with the IGP, which would show up disproportionately in more targeted tests rather than the full sweep done here.

Threadripper does well overall here and is at least better than its Photoshop showing, but without other applications leaning on threads, a desktop CPU would get most of the same performance. The best use for Threadripper here would be assigning its excess threads to other tasks, like separate audio compositing, while running Premiere tasks.

DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve is next. We haven’t tested this in years, so this is an experimental chart.

In this test, the 9980X’s frequency boost allows it to gain on prior Threadripper CPUs. The previous lineup had the 7960X and 7980X tied, with the 7970X marginally ahead. We saw this with the 7000-series Threadripper reviews where 64-core parts sometimes caused slight losses compared to 32-core counterparts.

The 285K falls behind the 9950X in this one, though not by a lot, with the 14900K roughly within re-run distance of the 285K.

Threadripper is at least the best performer here as well, despite not providing clear value over desktop parts. It’s just not built for these kinds of workloads, but still being the best is important.

Gaming Benchmarks

We’ll keep gaming short. The only purpose of gaming tests on Threadripper, generally, is to make sure there isn’t some major problem, but cheaper desktop parts are going to be better for pure gaming builds. Threadripper is actually detrimental if all you do is gaming.

You're going to notice that the Threadripper chips don't always follow a strictly logical order, especially when they're within a few frames per second of each other. That's because of the increased run-to-run variance causing less meaningful averaged results.

Stellaris Simulation Time

Stellaris simulation time is first. The 9800X3D is the current leader at 37.1 seconds on average for simulation time. The 9700X follows this at 43.2 seconds, benefitting from Zen 5 architectural improvements over the prior generation. The 285K isn’t what we’d call “good” here, but at least matches its predecessor.

Threadripper is way at the bottom, with the 9980X at least improving on the 7980X notably, but it’s still far worse than any other modern gaming CPU. The 5700X is nearly at the level of the 9980X. It’s just detrimental to have this CPU configuration for this game, which isn’t really news to anyone. It can at least play games, but the difference in simulation time between the 9800X3D and the 9980X would be noticeable in real game play.

FFXIV: Dawntrail - 1080p

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is next. The 9980X and 7980X high core-count CPUs had some major inconsistency issues in this game, so there’s an asterisk next to their entries.

We’re still showing the averages of 4 runs, it’s just that the runs are more variable than typically. The 9980X, for instance, had a range from 274 to 248 FPS AVG, which is a huge swing. Our typical standard deviation in this game is a couple frames per second for the average. The game was playable, but all over the place for the average framerate. Lows were worse overall as well, but again, technically playable.

This is why we still test games with Threadripper, though.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 - 1080p

In Dragon’s Dogma 2 at 1080p, the Threadripper CPUs end up in the lower half of the chart. The 9980X is worse than the 7950X here and about the same as the 7970X. The 7980X was below the 7960X and 7970X, indicating that these extremely high core counts are detrimental to gaming performance. The higher frequency matters more than the extra cores, so the trade-offs are harmful to gaming performance here. This has been true forever with Threadripper, so none of this is news.

What matters more is that they’re still playable. Threadripper does suffer from worse lows, particularly 0.1%, but not so bad that they render the game stuttery. You could still play games on a Threadripper system, but again, gaming-only users should buy something else.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 1080p

Cyberpunk is next. In this one, the 9980X outperforms the 7980X on a technicality, but both are closer to the R7 2700 than they are to the 9800X3D. The run-to-run consistency was fine, with the 9980X only exhibiting a 1.9 AVG FPS standard deviation, so it’s not like what we saw in Final Fantasy -- it’s just not particularly good. This is still a passable framerate, so in the context of a computer built for specific work tasks that can still play games when needed, it passes that need.

Baldur’s Gate 3 - 1080p

In Baldur’s Gate 3, the 9980X ends up around the level of the 265K -- which is really just more embarrassing for Intel than anything else. We already know Threadripper isn’t particularly good at gaming, despite being OK at it, but the 265K should be doing better here. This is also a game where the 285K was hugely regressive, though, at 109 FPS AVG against the 14700K’s 117 FPS AVG and 14900K’s 123 FPS AVG.

We did test other games, but they’re just not relevant beyond proving the point we already have: Threadripper is passable if gaming is not your primary need. It’s just not the best choice for it.

Power Consumption

9980X Power Consumption - Blender

This next chart shows the power consumption as measured at the EPS12V cables with a power interposer between the motherboard and power supply. Tested with an all-core workload in Blender, we observed stable and consistent power draw across both the 7980X and 9980X CPUs, with the 9980X measuring at 371W from 354W on the last-gen Threadripper flagship. That’s a lot of power to cool.

This does not show transients.

9980X Thermals

Thermals - Blender

This chart shows the thermal behavior of the 9980X. We’re using a SilverStone 360mm liquid cooler with a Threadripper-sized coldplate for this, so the results are not comparable to our 7980X review thermal results from its launch. Also, as usual, thermal testing would be best done with a lot of coolers compared and noise-normalized, but this is kept simple for the review and to help get an idea (as that’d be a cooler review).

The 9980X under an all-core workload ran at around 58 degrees Celsius when running the relatively loud 100% fan speeds on the 360mm liquid cooler. 

Thermals - Equilibrium

This chart shows thermals at steady state across the various CCDs. The CCD-to-CCD delta here is 6.7 degrees Celsius, at 49.7 to 56.1 degrees in an ambient of 21 degrees Celsius, +/- 1C. Generally speaking, this can be cooled at lower noise levels with 360mm coolers without major issues if assuming a well-ventilated case. The surface area is so huge on this CPU that the power is distributed across a large area, making it easier to cool than a 200W heat load might be on a normal desktop-sized Ryzen CPU with 2 CCDs.

9980X Frequency

Frequency - Blender All-Core

With all cores working, the CPU typically ran at around 3950 MHz, with occasional spikes to 4200 MHz while some threads were bringing in data for new tiles to render. The base clock is 3.2 GHz, so it’s not dropping that low during this particular workload, but it’s also far away from 5.4 GHz. This is typical behavior for all-core workloads.

Frequency - Blender vs 7980X

This chart shows the 7980X for the same test. The frequency bottoms-out at around 3.7 GHz, but is all over the place during this workload. The 9980X has improved upon the frequency in all-core scenarios overall.

Frequency - CB Single-Thread

In a single-threaded test with Cinebench, the 9980X ran at 5425 MHz, exceeding the spec listing of 5.4 GHz for boost. This is also expected behavior, with the more limited load boosting higher. The 7980X in the same test ran at about 5340 MHz, so the single-thread frequency has improved generationally -- but not much, and that’s why some benchmarks only show a couple percentage points of change.

9980X Conclusion

On the gaming side, there are sometimes issues with consistency. This means, run-to-run, you don’t get the same experience. There’s far more deviation here in average frame rate and the frametime consistency is worse than traditional desktop parts. This is especially true with 64-core Threadripper CPUs. This is not really unexpected. These high core count CPUs sometimes just have so many cores that it starts causing scheduling problems. Sometimes you’ll also end up in situations where, because the clocks aren’t boosting as high (because of the higher core count), you’re losing that frequency advantage. Again, this is not unexpected. The good news is that the games we tested on the 9980X weren’t broken. They were able to run and weren’t awful experiences, which wasn’t the case with the earliest Threadripper CPUs.  

Compared to the 32-core Threadripper, the 64-core part technically runs cooler. That’s because you’re taking the same power and distributing it across more silicon. This means you’re going to get lower temperatures per die per hot spot. That remains true here where the 64-core CPU can be cooler than the 32-core processor. 

With its prices, these Threadripper CPUs aren’t something you’re buying for “value.” The target demographic for these processors is probably making money with their computers. 

Threadripper also has the benefit of PCIe lane availability for machines with multiple accelerators or a lot of I/O, which are more limited with traditional desktop CPUs. 

64 cores don’t always scale well. Sometimes a 32-core CPU can be a better fit. Make sure to do research online for your needs. For example, we found out that a 32-core CPU would work better for us while using Adobe Premiere for video production. So it’s best to research these CPUs with your needs.

We compare Yeston’s “Waifu” RX 9070 XT vs PowerColor’s Red Devil equivalent in a series of tests that include acoustics, frequency, temps, gaming performance, and more

The Highlights

• Both RX 9070 XT cards cost $900
• The Red Devil 9070 XT needs to better tune its fan curves
• Both cards aren’t bad, but are overpriced at $900

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

This is the most important review of all year. This is what makes or breaks this industry -- and even history: On one side, we have anime waifus from Atlantis bathed in the pleasant scent of the ocean vying for neckbeard attention, and on the other side, we have the Hellstone powering the Devil’s edgelord doomsayer RX 9070 XT. Only one will emerge victorious.

Editor's note: This was originally published on July 9, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing

Mike Gaglione

Camera

Vitalii Makhnovets
Tim Phetdara

Animation, Editing

Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

The Yeston RX 9070 XT Sakura Sugar Atlantis OC Edition weighs in at $900 and has its own YouTube channel devoted to Sakura, the angel of the ocean, including power move footage of soaking a video card in the very ocean sands whence it came. 

And when Yeston finally releases its much anticipated Husbando video card, named after the cool and aloof character “GAME ACE,” it’s GAME OVER for PowerColor’s Red Devil.

But Yeston isn’t alone in this battle of gamer marketing: PowerColor’s Hellhound says it has a “New Dawn” and “Power in Every Shade,” And... we don’t know what that means.

But it sounds scary -- almost as scary as the RED DEVIL, the natural counter to the WAIFU. The Red Devil says its Hellstone is “born from darkness, radiating power,” “forged in the fires of the underworld and inspired by the cradle of the rarest gems.” PowerColor “emerges as the unparalleled force in gaming, pushing performance to its absolute peak,” and “at its core lies the Hellstone, a breathtaking design element where vibrant RGB pulses with an otherworldly glow, embodying fiery power and precision.” 

Such a stone sounds too powerful to be in the hands of mere, filthy casuals. The breathtaking design element Hellstone is made of hundred-million-year-old materials dug from the depths of the earth. We’re told that it’s made of a rare, nearly unattainable polymeric matrix composite from hydrocarbon polymers, known only to mortal humans as... “plastic.”

This is the battle you all have been waiting for. It is the ultimate GPU sh*tpost -- second only to the one that NVIDIA just made by launching the so-called RTX 5050 (watch our coverage).

And if you’re wondering if this is just one gigantic meme with actual testing that required dozens of hours of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment all for this one meme, then yes. Yes it is. But it does have an important conclusion. And we are going to get to the bottom of who is better between the RED DEVIL VS. the WAIFU. Let’s battle. 

Testing

Despite the jokes, we do actually have testing in our review. We’re testing thermals, some power, acoustics, frequency, and a couple of games.  

The main reason we’re looking at games is because the 9070 XT Red Devil is running at a pretty high clock compared to other 9070 XTs so we wanted to look at that to see how much it actually mattered. 

The biggest issue with both cards is that they are currently $900, which is completely insane because MSRP is allegedly $600 for the 9070 XT, though that’s not really the case. Regardless, $900 is still pretty high. 

Both the cards we’re reviewing here have dual vBIOS and share a lot of common features. This means we’re going to focus most on aspects that are likely to be different. This includes thermals and acoustics. 

Thermals

The first test of prowess for these embattled icons is one of thermals: The Hellstone has a clear disadvantage here, mostly because it’s, uh, from hell, and the Waifu has an advantage with its affinity for oceans and Atlantis.

For this testing, our methodology involved testing the auto out-of-box settings in addition to testing with noise-normalized manual overrides to ensure an even battlefield. Waifus and Devils make different noises at different volumes, after all, and so it’s only fair to normalize them. 

The normalization required use of our hemi-anechoic chamber that we had custom-built exactly for purchases like this. You might think that spending $250,000 on a chamber to test the audio quality of meme video cards is insane, and you’d be right. That’s why we also test non-memes in it and use it every single benchmarking and technical reviews that we do for coolers and cases. To support our ability to buy test equipment like this and provide accurate data, head over to store.gamersnexus.net and grab one of our unique 3D Coaster Packs, like from our Debug pack. These have carefully placed and tested components to stabilize drinkware while providing a soft, rubberized material with PC theming. The debug code and power and reset switches on the red-and-black motherboard is one of our favorites, although the original coaster pack (also on the store) has the fan coaster that works surprisingly well and is also the most popular. Each pack comes with 4 coasters. Despite price increases over the years, we have maintained our original price. Head over to store.gamersnexus.net to grab these and support our in-depth testing and reviews -- even for memes.

Let’s get into the tests.

Thermals - 3DM 4K Auto VBIOS

The Waifu starts out with a strong showing when set to follow the default VBIOS profile and temperature targets with auto fan controls. The Atlantis-dweller ran at 57 degrees Celsius at steady state in a controlled ambient setting for GPU core on both the main and alternate VBIOS; in fact, as we showed in our Yeston Waifu review, the VBIOSes appear to do the same thing. It’s like they didn’t reprogram one of the fan curves or something, which may be a mistake.

But these temperatures are completely acceptable. They are maintained at 23.6 dBA and about 304W via GPU-Z board power monitoring.

The PowerColor Red Devil runs hotter: Its default OC VBIOS held a 60.7-degree result, with the silent VBIOS also seemingly the same. This has happened for multiple generations now with both Yeston and PowerColor. Maybe because the load hits steady state, they end up settling in the same place once under sustained load. We are restarting between each VBIOS change and even inspect the VBIOS profile name when switching to confirm that it does toggle. This process works to show differences in other devices, but at least here, we’re seeing the same across the profiles. That at least keeps it simple.

The Red Devil is running about 3-4 degrees warmer on the GPU and about 1-2 degrees warmer on the hotspot, with memory at a substantial climb of 8 degrees warmer. There’s a deficiency in memory cooling on the Red Devil by comparison, but an advantage in the hotspot-to-core delta, where Yeston’s delta is greater.

But there’s one other important factor: Out of the box, the PowerColor card is pulling 30W more via GPU-Z logging. This puts them at more equal thermal footing when considering the increased power consumption. The fan speed is another huge factor. So that was out of the box thermal performance, but we can start controlling these variables.

Thermals - 3DM 25 dBA

This test normalizes the GPUs for noise levels. We ran both at 25 dBA at 1-meter for this test.

The steady state 3DMark workload has the Waifu now 6 degrees warmer than the Red Devil in a searing blow to the Waifu, whose ocean and its scent-imbued plastic is evaporating before our very eyes. Boosting the Red Devil’s fan speeds to match the noise levels of the Waifu’s brings it down significantly, showing that it is the better card in like-for-like acoustic testing. Even with its smoldering Hellstone, the Red Devil has a 76-degree hotspot and delta of 26 degrees, improved from the Waifu’s 84-degree hotspot delta of 27.8-degree delta. This means the waifu is hotter here. Memory thermals are functionally tied between them, showing that PowerColor’s main area to improve is VRAM thermals. All of these numbers are acceptable, though, with the GPU numbers just straight-up good for both companies.

Notably, PowerColor is achieving these results with higher power draw. It lost when auto due to poor fan configuration, but pulls ahead when manually normalized.

Thermals - FurMark 25 dBA

In FurMark at 25 dBA, which loads the GPUs more heavily on the VRM, the GPU temperatures ended up comparable between these with the memory temperatures favoring the Waifu by about 2 degrees reduced from the Red Devil.

Acoustics

But this doesn’t mean much without acoustics. 

The most natural and first test of a Devil against a Waifu is the noise that they make in battle. For this reason, we threw these two GPUs into our battle arena: The hemi-anechoic chamber.

The Yeston RX 9070 XT Waifu edition ran at 1,130 RPM when under default VBIOS control at 304W in the workload that we ran. The card ran at 23.6 dBA at 1 meter when tested under the conditions we used for thermal testing. The frequency spectrum analysis has the highest spike around 164 Hz, with a swell around 500 Hz and a later bump and dip in the range of 1,000 Hz to 1,400 Hz.

The PowerColor Red Devil ran at 16.8 dBA, which is really quiet for what we would imagine of hell. It’s too close to our floor to be all that useful. The Devil is substantially quieter out of box, mostly because it just isn’t utilizing its fans as well as we think it should be -- that’s why it ran warmer in the auto testing. We did some in-depth investigating and realized it’s because the Hellstone converts the Red Devil’s angry howlings into the power needed to sustain its own power consumption, destroying the sound waves in the process. Fans ran at 910 RPM rather than 1,130 RPM, which means it’s quiet, but we think also not properly utilized. PowerColor could find more of a balance here, although maybe they’re trying to remain true to the fiery marketing.

The frequency spectrum has the Devil’s peak at around 320 Hz, with an elevated area around 420 Hz. Overall, it’s a lot quieter than the Waifu, with the high-end of the frequency scale similar.

Acoustics - Noise-Normalized

When normalized to roughly the same noise levels, leaving the Yeston card on the chart, the Red Devil’s new frequency spectrum has the Devil’s peak at about 200 Hz. There’s a slight wave up around 400-500 Hz and another around the same place as the Yeston card, at 900 Hz, then a dip, then up again at around 1,200 Hz.

Frequency

GPU frequency is the next test in this battle of the memes. The Yeston GPU ran at about 2,890-2,910 MHz in this workload when running a fixed frame render. The Red Devil ran notably higher, up at 2,970-3,000 MHz instead. That’s around a 60-100 MHz bump in most instances, so the extra power is going somewhere, and it’s sustaining that frequency.

Plotting the Sapphire Pulse as a frame of reference, it holds about 2,900-2,925 MHz at steady state, putting it slightly faster than the Yeston card. The Waifu’s desired frequency just happens to be lower than that of the Pulse and Red Devil.

Gaming Performance

We’ll do a quick look at gaming performance to see how much that extra frequency does or doesn’t matter. This will be a very slimmed-down version of our tests since we only need a few head-to-head results. These were tested on the same drivers, so for purposes of comparing the 9070 XTs to each other, that’s all we need.

FFXIV - 4K

Final Fantasy is first. We chose this to start because the ratio of Waifu-to-non-Waifus in Final Fantasy is extremely disproportionate, and so Yeston should have a natural advantage.

The Red Devil ran at 69.6 FPS AVG in Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail at 4K, leading the Yeston Atlantis Waifu card by just over 1 FPS AVG. You’d never notice this, but on a technicality, the Red Devil is about 1.9% higher average framerate. The Pulse is about the same as the Atlantis card.

Resident Evil 4 - 1440p

Naturally, because we biased the Final Fantasy test toward the Waifu by nature of the... waifus all over the game, we had to bias the next one toward the Red Devil. Resident Evil 4 is up now, giving PowerColor a distinct and hellish advantage. 

The RX 9070 XT Red Devil draws upon the very evils which it is rendering with its Hellstone to run at 198 FPS AVG, about a 3 FPS lead over the Waifu. That’s about 1.7% ahead. The Waifu outruns the Pulse, though, and you don’t need to be the fastest when you’re running from zombies -- you just need to not be the slowest.

Resident Evil 4 - 4K

The only thing worse than zombies at 1440p is zombies at 4K, so that’s what we’re rendering now. In Resident Evil 4 at 4K, the Red Devil held a 106 FPS AVG, leading the Waifu by about 2 FPS AVG. That’s around 2%.

All of these numbers are expected. We did technically run 4 other games, but they all show the same thing: Typically, we’re in the range of 1-3% improved on the PowerColor card out of the box.

Conclusion

The price for both cards is the same, and they’re both crazy. The good news is that because both are $900, they’re easy to compare.

We have to give both cards credit. Neither are bad. We’ve already reviewed the Yeston RX 9070 XT Sakura Sugar Atlantis OC Edition, in which we also tore down the card. We were fairly positive on it. There were things it could have done better. For example, it doesn’t have as good of a thermal solution as we’ve seen on some of their past cards with this design approach, but it was still fine in pretty much every metric. 

For the Red Devil, the biggest place that card is lacking is in underutilizing the ability to tune its fan curves more. This is something PowerColor seems to consistently have problems with in the cards we test from them. The company could utilize it more to better balance the thermals and acoustics more reasonably.

Overall, though, both cards are pretty close to each other. The Red Devil, in noise-normalized situations, tends to be the better cooler, but the Waifu card, out of the box, tends to be the better cooler. It depends on how you’re going to run them. The Red Devil also has a higher clock out of the box and it actually runs faster. Now, in gaming performance, this difference doesn’t really manifest itself in a big way. 

We did play around with overclocking on both cards. We got a little higher clocks out of the Red Devil. That card also has a higher power budget.

Both cards are too expensive, however. At least both cards do something to try and justify their price.

The revised version of TRYX’s LUCA L70 still has issues of varying kinds, but the case has at least improved and the company has made several changes that have resolved some nagging issues.

The Highlights

• TRYX has remade parts of its LUCA L70 case in response to one of our most critical case reviews in a few years
• We appreciate TRYX's response and some of its changes; however, unfortunately, the case again arrived with out-of-the-box issues that are primarily a result of design and not shipping
• Ultimately, this case is still not competitive against other cases that are cheaper than its (now) $250 price, up from $240, but in the very least, some of the issues have been resolved
• Original MSRP: $250

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

Tryx canceled the release of its $240 LUCA L70 case after our original review in order to rework the case to try and prevent things like the side panel coming off if you tilt the case on its side.

We tried it again with the company’s revised case and it didn’t come loose and fall out this time. That’s a good start for TRYX.
About a year ago, we published our critical review of the TRYX LUCA L70 with a lot of concerns about build quality and quality control.

Editor's note: This was originally published on July 2, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Patrick Lathan

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

In response to our review, the company sent us a gigantic PDF detailing everything they’d changed in response to the review. This is a great approach to handling it and we want to make sure they are acknowledged for taking the time to pause the launch and then try to address things. They still, of course, have to deliver on those changes and actually fix it, but the fact that TRYX was willing to entertain this at all is better than most other companies in the space. So, credit to them for that.  

Unfortunately though, the unit they shipped for re-evaluation came with screws that had been knocked loose, a bent hinge, and other problems -- but we’ll walk through each of these documented changes today.

Tryx’s L70 was an unusual new case from a company that was (at the time) brand-new and it used to be mostly known for its Panorama cooler (check out our coverage of it). 

Well, it still is mostly known for its Panorama cooler, but it used to be, too. 

Tryx’s cooler has recently been copied by companies like ASUS and Thermalright at Computex 2025, with ASUS being particularly personal since some of Tryx’s team came from ASUS. 

More recently, Tryx showed off its Flova case with the possibility of adding a crossflow fan to ATX, which was interesting on its own. But the point is that TRYX is interesting enough to its competitors that some of them are starting to copy it. 

But, again, the L70 was a really bad start.

To the company's credit, TRYX responded to our criticism by halting production while it implemented fixes, which is rare. Fractal pulled a similar move with the Meshify 3 (read our review) ahead of launch, where reviewer complaints about PCIe slot tightness triggered a pause. 

In fact, Fractal even recalled a prior case right when right at launch to rectify a fire hazard from a poor PCB design.

Today, we’re evaluating the L70’s changes. The thermals don’t change and the review basics don’t change from last time, so we won’t re-do all of that. We’ll focus on just the modifications that Tryx made, making this a much simpler revisit.

We’ll start with the fasteners and panel adjustment issues.

Last time, we started by showing shipping damage that led to a cascade of failures with the top panel sagging, fasteners misaligning, the side panel coming loose, and then finally the side panel falling off and tearing out chunks of the case. These issues stem from design problems. 

We want to be clear about one thing, though: Tryx has repeatedly reframed our complaints as shipping damage in communications with them at events like Computex, but the majority of our complaints were about design, quality of life features, and quality control at the factory, not shipping. Shipping was just one part of what was otherwise a mess of a case.

And even when it comes to shipping, the damage itself wasn't the main problem: the fact that the case was vulnerable to damage was one item on a laundry list of other quality-of-life complaints, none of which were acceptable in a $240 case. Due to everything that's happened since September 2024, that MSRP has (understandably) increased to $250.

TRYX stayed in contact over the months and provided us with a list of proposed changes, then a final overview of the actual production changes. Things like the side panel attachment, drive brackets, cable lengths, grommets, and even the typo on the handle are part of a long list of changes. 

But some things have remained the same, like a bent hinge in the new sample. 

We're going to go into minute detail here regarding things that are different from the original sample: if you want more general information about the case and thermal performance, watch our original review. This is going to be a highly specific follow-up.

Accepted Changes

Starting with the accepted changes:

Tryx says that items like the massive gouges in the aluminum feet, bent support for the SSD mounting bracket, deformed fan rails, damaged front I/O and power button area, and bent motherboard tray have been addressed with "increased EPE material density to improve protection during shipping." We think that's probably true, but we don't have the original foam on hand to compare, and the before-and-after pictures in TRYX's document are the same photograph but mirrored. We’re not sure why they did that. TRYX originally indicated that it intended to add extra warnings about fragility to the external packaging, but this wasn't included in the final change list.

Our new review sample arrived mostly unscathed, with one exception:

There was a severely bent lower hingepin on the front panel; however, we again believe this is a factory defect, not shipping damage. 

When the panel is opened, the pin pops out. This is a sample that TRYX sent directly to us, not an undercover purchase, so our confidence in their quality control is non-existent. That’s twice now. 

We also found that one of the motherboard standoffs came loose during shipping and was stuck to a magnet elsewhere in the case, although every other standoff remained tight.

First of all, it’s the company’s responsibility to get a product to an end user without damage. This is twice now that this case has arrived with issues, indicating to us a combination of QC issues and shipping issues. Secondly, it is easy to hide behind “shipping damage” and throw carriers under the bus as a universally hated boogie man, but this is twice now that this has happened, and again, evidence points toward factory QC issues. Even on the shipping side, if a product is fragile, it is up to the manufacturer to figure out how to pack it. 

Tryx reworked the side panel to try and deal with some of this. There are some positives in this panel rework.

TRYX has limited control over shipping damage; the bigger problem in our original review was that an impact on the corner of the case was able to seriously damage its function. Specifically, the glass side panel was knocked out of alignment with the snaps on the case on the original, allowing it to flop out on the table and tear off chunks of metal in the process. 

The major change here is "positioning rivets on the glass panels for transportation, preventing chassis deformation." 

These rivets support the top panel when the side panels are installed and should keep the snaps correctly aligned, which is a solid improvement from TRYX that we’re happy to see. 

The top panel itself doesn't appear to have been reinforced, unfortunately, but the rivets should be adequate as long as the glass panels are installed.

In addition, TRYX says it "removed the hovering function on glass side panel," meaning that the panel doesn't hang open on studs (the parts that tore off). This seems like a wise tradeoff to us; the hovering function isn't important enough to risk permanent damage.

A screw has also been added to the glass side panel to secure it during shipping, as well as a sticker warning about the presence of the screw. The screw is useful for carrying the case around or shipping it. This is a good improvement. We’ve maintained that glass panels should be securable with screws if only for transit, so we’re happy to see this. Even still, with the addition of the rivets, we're comfortable removing the screw for daily use now.

But like the damaged hinge, not every change actually addressed the problems.

In the original L70, the motherboard tray and PSU cage were fastened in with thumbscrews AND little flush-head screws that required a driver, defeating the purpose of using the marketed toolless thumbscrews since tools were required. 

TRYX made a partial change here: it explained that "flush screws are included for transport reinforcement and can be removed once the build is complete," 

Which is fine, but doesn’t change the fact that it’s not tool-less, but OK, and its fix was to use larger still-not-tool-less screws despite being marketed as tool-less removal "to avoid being inconspicuous, preventing users from overlooking them during use." 

We don't consider all of these screws optional, and we don't think they were inconspicuous, so this isn't a real change from our perspective.

One of our other original complaints had to do with I/O cables that weren’t long enough to be easily routed around the SSD bracket.

The updated L70 has a 750mm USB Type-C cable, which translates to about 10cm of additional usable length. Lengths for the other cables remain unchanged, but with our specific test bench hardware, all the cables are now able to reach. The 10cm extension fixes the issue.

The metal strip that extended the motherboard tray in the original L70 would block cable cutouts at either the top or the bottom of the motherboard depending on the case configuration. This was another major design oversight that had nothing to do with shipping.

In the updated model, the strip has been cut away so that audio, front panel, and fan connectors can fit around it at the bottom of the case. EPS12V cables have more room at the top of the case as well, although it's still a tight fit. But, these were good changes to something that was just a design problem.

Another issue we found on the original was that SATA cables could catch on the edge of drive brackets. 

It was as if no one had installed a 2.5” drive to test functionality in the original. Now, the mounting holes on the main drive bracket have been moved. This change fully fixes that issue.

The power button was another problem in the original, mostly because it had a sort of gross, squishy compression that felt like a design issue.

TRYX, at first, defended the power button design as an "anti-false touch function" to "avoid accidental presses due to its edge location," which was a response to our complaint about just how awful the button felt. But they decided to change it anyway, and it's now been updated to work the way it looks like it's supposed to. The PCB is still marked as revision 1.0, so the only material change appears to be the removal of a small shim behind the button. We prefer the new version and think it’s improved.

Cable grommets were also problematic on the original, mostly because they were easily ripped out during cable management.

The cable grommets have been molded from a stiffer material, likely a different durometer, and have been reshaped so that they're less likely to get dragged out by cables. This is a really subtle change, but it seems to have fixed that issue. We’re satisfied with the fix.

We have mixed feelings about the changes made to the captive screws throughout the case. 

Most (but not all) of the screws have been replaced with a new design with more thread, which TRYX says is "for more intuitive alignment, reducing misalignment and ensuring a smoother, faster installation." At the same time, a metal tab was added to the PSU enclosure "for enhanced PSU chamber stability and an easier PSU shroud installation," but none of these are things we mentioned or had difficulty with. They don’t fix the problems with the captive screw situation.

The misused captive screw that has to be un-captiv-ated to move the PSU shroud is still present, and the motherboard tray is unchanged despite TRYX's original intention to remove the embossing that can lead to the screws threading into both mating surfaces at the same time. They showed intent to fix it, then didn’t, and so we still end up with misused and mismatched captive and non-captive screws and screws that sometimes thread into multiple mating surfaces that just demonstrate issues with basics. 

Finally, the easiest thing to fix: The typo.

We talked last time about how companies really struggle with the word “unknown,” including Intel with Gunnir -- twice -- with its “Into the Unkonw” video card. 

Tryx also did, as it had the "discovered an unknow" typo on the handle. This has been fixed by redacting an additional letter. That was extremely low on our list of complaints, but since TRYX had to rebuild every case anyway, it made sense to take care of it.

Additional Changes

There were a couple of changes made by TRYX that weren't directly related to our review, which is a good sign. The ones reported by TRYX were that small transparent protectors were added to the bottom corners of the glass side panel.

These are a nice touch that we appreciate. They also added eight HDD screws to the accessory kit (none were included previously) and they drilled four additional holes in the main drive bracket to improve HDD mounting compatibility.

Rejected Changes

Finally, there were some changes that TRYX opted not to make. It defended its choices.

First off, the lack of fan screws: "Since no fan is pre-installed, we assume users will use screws that come with their own fans." 

Next, the crowded bottom of the case layering a fan bracket, the steel mesh of the chassis itself with its own built-in fan mounts, a filter, and then the aluminum base that obstruct flow: "This is a modular design case, and we considered scenarios where users might swap the PSU positions to try different configurations. In such cases, the additional fan tray becomes useful. Users don’t need to unscrew fans or radiators—they can simply unscrew the captive screws and relocate the tray onto the top plate. In addition, this fan bracket allows easy installation of fans or radiators outside the chassis and can be offset to avoid interference with motherboard connectors [...] The detachable bracket allows users to remove it for enhanced airflow when necessary."

Sure, and we don't disagree with any of that -- but we'd still prefer a less cluttered design with better airflow. You can certainly choose to obstruct airflow however you want, and plenty of cases do that.

Regarding the aluminum side panel and base: "This is part of the LUCA L70’s ID design. Thermal performance is important for this case, but we also want to ensure its aesthetics appeal to its target audience. While there may be some trade-offs in terms of thermal performance, we believe the impact is within the tolerance range. The aluminum base reinforces chassis strength and serves an aesthetic purpose. It was modified with additional cutouts after Computex 2024 for increased air intake. Internal testing showed that removing the base results in a 1°C difference in temperature, so the impact to performance may be negligible to most users."

We also saw approximately the same 1°C difference, but our interpretation was that the bottom vent is restricted even without the aluminum base. Otherwise, this statement basically aligns with what we said in our review. This version of the L70 is sold based on how it looks more than how it performs, and we'll hold the mesh-fronted version of the case to a higher thermal standard. 

TRYX also stated that “The center base piece is detachable, allowing users to remove it when additional cooling is needed.” This is technically true but not worth considering.

The cable cover/SSD mount towards the front of the case doesn't fit drives well in any configuration. This was something else we had complained about. TRYX made no changes here, but stated that "in most scenarios, we recommend using the bracket behind the motherboard tray to mount SSDs, while the bracket to the left primarily serves as a cable cover."

With our original sample, the bracket that fastened the PSU to the case was an extremely tight fit, the PSU itself was a tight fit, and 190mm PSUs (the max compatibility claimed) wouldn't have enough room to comfortably fit cables and would block the cable cutout on the top of the shroud. No changes were made here. 

TRYX noted that the enclosure size was chosen to increase fan and radiator compatibility.

Conclusion

We appreciate that TRYX directly addressed nearly every criticism that we made and attempted to fix several of them. 

The simple addition of the studs to the glass panels adds significant structural stability, and smaller quality of life changes like the power button, the rearrangement of SSD mounting holes, reshaping the motherboard tray extension, and lengthening the USB Type-C cable are all upgrades. 

That said, these are patches to an existing design and they don't fundamentally alter the case, which still doesn't compete strongly at its price in terms of ease-of-use or thermals. $250 is more expensive than the HAVN HS420 (which we like), and it's on par with the similarly-styled ASUS ROG Strix Helios (which we hated, but is built to a higher standard and comes with fans) and the extremely expensive Fractal Meshify 3 Pro Ambience RGB. 

We think there are a lot of way better cases at or under $250, but if you really like how the LUCA L70 looks, then this is a big improvement over what we saw last year. The company is at least listening.

We’ve compiled a comprehensive timeline of the GPU bans, GPU smuggling, and export controls that impact NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel

The Highlights

• The US blocks exports of advanced GPUs to China to protect national security
• NVIDIA GPUs are highly sought after in China for AI processing
• Our timeline chronicles the US export controls, NVIDIA's responses, and reports of GPU smuggling

This is a comprehensive timeline of the GPU bans, smuggling, and export controls on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and other high-tech semiconductor products. We are publishing this as part of our stretch goals for Black Market AI GPU — a viewer-funded film made possible through support on our store, including our new “Blind Eye” T-shirt.
The below timeline accompanies our Black Market AI GPU investigation, our biggest project yet. We spent three weeks in Asia to uncover this story, including two weeks in China and one in Taiwan. We found smugglers, middlemen, and users of so-called “AI” GPUs that the United States government has banned for sale into China.

Credits

Host, Writing, Lead Editing

Steve Burke

Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets
Tim Phetdara

Editing, Graphics

Andrew Coleman

Camera

Tannen Williams

Research and Writing

Ben Benson

We are providing this timeline for free and without third-party ads for our viewers and readers. As this situation has changed frequently and now spans multiple US administrations, we may have missed a few events. However, we believe we have compiled all the major changes – especially since the start of 2025 – that are directly relevant to the story. 

We have attempted to present it as neutrally as feasible and from a place of reporting. We’ve included links to a variety of media and government sources that we believe are appropriate for establishing the timeline of events. We have included statements from NVIDIA in many cases. 

This was a huge team effort at GN and required a massive investment in travel, writing, research, and editing to complete. If you find this information valuable, we ask that you please support us directly by backing our NVIDIA AI GPU Black Market project, buying something from our GN store, or signing up for our Patreon. Thank you.

Timeline

Note on sources: Our intent is to cite primary sources, including government documents, and a variety of secondary sources. In some cases, we link only to secondary news stories. This can occur when we include articles from credible media reports but do not have primary documents to cite. 

2018 GPU Export Controls

August 2018

August 13: The US government created the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) as part of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019. The NSCAI had 15 commissioners who were nominated by Congress and the Executive Branch. The NSCAI was tasked with investigating how the United States should compete in AI in the modern age and recommending actions for Congress and the executive branch.

In the words of the original document, the commissioners “shall consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies by the United States to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”

• Source:
  • National Defense Bill (NSCAI section starts on page 1963)

2019 GPU Export Controls

May 2019

May 15: Citing national security risks, the US government added Huawei to its Entity List and restricted sales of Huawei’s equipment into the United States. 

• Sources:
  • Federal Register
  • Executive Order
  • Politico: Trump signs order setting stage to ban Huawei from U.S.
  • Reuters: Trump administration hits China's Huawei with one-two punch
  • Reuters: China's Huawei, 70 affiliates placed on U.S. trade blacklist

2020 GPU Export Controls

May 2020

May 19: The United States restricted semiconductor designs, chipsets, and technologies to Huawei and its foreign affiliates. 

• Sources: 
  • Department of Commerce Press Release
  • Federal Register
  • NPR: The Latest U.S. Blow To China's Huawei Could Knock Out Its Global 5G Plans

2021 GPU Export Controls

March 2021

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) released its final report. The report provided recommendations to “advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”

As part of the report (page 216), the NSCAI recommended the US government and its allies “utilize targeted export controls on high-end semiconductor manufacturing equipment… to protect existing technical advantages and slow the advancement of China’s semiconductor industry.” 

Further on (page 228), the report said, “Looking across the AI stack, the hardware component of the AI stack contains the most viable targets for traditional export controls.” The report (page 231) focused on semiconductor manufacturing equipment for export control rules: “The primary U.S. export control target to constrain competitors’ AI capabilities should be sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) necessary to manufacture high-end chips.” 

The report mentioned export controls for GPUs (page 500) as a way “to prevent the use of

high-end U.S. AI chips in human rights violations.”

• Source: 
  • NSCAI Final Report – The PDF can be downloaded from here.

April 2021

NSCAI Commissioner Christopher Darby spoke at NVIDIA GTC about the NSCAI’s report to Congress.

• Source: 
  • GTC

October 2021

October 1: The NSCAI officially ended on October 1, 2021. 

• Source: 
  • Executive Government News

2022 GPU Export Controls

August 2022

August 31: NVIDIA filed a Form 8-K with the SEC to inform investors that the US government had immediately blocked exports of its A100 and H100 chips to China, including Hong Kong. The export controls included DGX or other systems that incorporate an A100, H100, or A100X. In the financial documents, NVIDIA said the US government informed it of the export restrictions on August 26, 2022. NVIDIA stated that its third-quarter results included up to $400 million in expected sales to China that were now uncertain due to the export restrictions.

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K
  • NVIDIA Form 10-Q
  • SEC Filing

September 2022

September 1: NVIDIA filed a new Form 8-K to let customers know that the US government had offered some exemptions for certain chip exports: 

“The U.S. government has authorized exports, reexports, and in-country transfers needed to continue NVIDIA Corporation’s, or the Company’s, development of H100 integrated circuits after the Company filed its Current Report on Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on August 31, 2022. The authorization also allows the Company to perform exports needed to provide support for U.S. customers of A100 through March 1, 2023. Additionally, the U.S. government authorized A100 and H100 order fulfillment and logistics through the Company’s Hong Kong facility through September 1, 2023.”

• Source: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K

Following NVIDIA’s SEC filing, media outlets reported the US government ordered NVIDIA to stop selling advanced AI chips to China. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “We are working with our customers in China to satisfy their planned or future purchases with alternative products and may seek licenses where replacements aren’t sufficient. The only current products that the new licensing requirement applies to are A100, H100 and systems such as DGX that include them.”– NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • CNBC: NVIDIA stock falls after U.S. government restricts chip sales to China
  • The New York Times: U.S. Restricts Sales of Sophisticated Chips to China and Russia
  • Reuters: U.S. officials order NVIDIA to halt sales of top AI chips to China
  • CNN: US orders NVIDIA and AMD to stop selling AI chips to China 
  • Associated Press: China demands US drop tech export curbs after NVIDIA warning

October 2022

October 7: The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) implemented a series of export controls to “protect US national security and foreign policy interests.” The new export controls would hinder China’s ability to build high-end semiconductors and purchase advanced chips from the US, including for development of and maintaining supercomputers. 

• Sources: 
  • Department of Commerce Release
  • Federal Register (amended on October 13)

In a briefing with reporters, the US government said the new regulations formalized the guidance previously sent to NVIDIA. The Guardian reported: 

“The new regulations will also severely restrict export of US equipment to Chinese memory chip makers and formalize letters sent to NVIDIA Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) restricting shipments to China of chips used in supercomputing systems that nations around the world rely on to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies.”

• Sources: 
  • The Guardian: Biden administration imposes sweeping tech restrictions on China
  • The New York Times: Biden Administration Clamps Down on China’s Access to Chip Technology

November 2022 

November 7: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had created a new AI chip called the A800 GPU for the China market. The A800 would be compliant with US export controls.

• NVIDIA statement:

• “The NVIDIA A800 GPU, which went into production in Q3, is another alternative product to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China. The A800 meets the US government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it.” - NVIDIA to Reuters

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA offers new advanced chip for China that meets U.S. export controls
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA Creates New Supercomputer Chip For Chinese Market
  • The Verge: NVIDIA’s selling a nerfed GPU in China to get around export restrictions
  • TechCrunch: NVIDIA touts a slower chip for China to avoid US ban

2023 GPU Export Controls

March 2023

March 21: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had modified the H100 to be compliant with export rules to China.

• NVIDIA’s statements to Reuters:

• “On Tuesday, the company said it has similarly developed a China-export version of its H100 chip. The new chip, called the H800, is being used by the cloud computing units of Chinese technology firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, a company spokesperson said.” [...]

“The NVIDIA spokesperson declined to say how the China-focused H800 differs from the H100, except that ‘our 800 series products are fully compliant with export control regulations.’” 

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: NVIDIA tweaks flagship H100 chip for export to China as H800
  • Data Center Dynamics: NVIDIA creates pared back H100 GPU for export to China, called H800

June 2023

June 27: The Wall Street Journal reported that the US government is considering expanding export controls for GPUs and AI chips to China. The US Department of Commerce did not comment to the Wall Street Journal. 

• Sources:
  • The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Considers New Curbs on AI Chip Exports to China
  • MarketWatch: White House says it’s focused on being at front end of supply chain for chips, won’t comment on report of possible new ban on exporting AI chips to China
  • Reuters: US mulls new export restriction on computing power in AI chips
  • TechCrunch: China’s AI firms might further lose chip access in new US ban

October 2023

October 17: The US Department of Commerce updated its export compliance for advanced semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The government said: 

“Today’s rules reinforce the October 7, 2022, controls to restrict the PRC’s ability to both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips critical for military advantage. These updates are necessary to maintain the effectiveness of these controls, close loopholes, and ensure they remain durable.” 

The U.S. government has removed interconnect speed as a criterion for identifying restricted chips. Instead, it will now focus on processor performance and performance density. In a statement, the government said:

“A performance density parameter prevents the workaround of simply purchasing a larger number of smaller datacenter AI chips which, if combined, would be equally powerful as restricted chips.”

• Sources: 
  • Department of Commerce Release
  • Federal Register
  • Bureau of Industry and Security Document on Performance Density (page  21-22)
  • The Register: Biden has brought the ban hammer down on US export of AI chips to China
  • Center for Strategic & Internal Studies (posted on Oct. 18)

As part of the announcement, the administration told reporters the new restrictions affect NVIDIA’s A800 and H800 chips. A few days prior, Reuters reported that the administration would soon announce new export rules. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: US tackles loopholes in curbs on AI chip exports to China
  • CNBC: U.S. curbs export of more AI chips, including NVIDIA H800, to China
  • Reuters: NVIDIA details advanced AI chips blocked by new export controls
  • Tom’s Hardware: US Prohibits Exports of NVIDIA’s A800 and H800 to China, Blacklists Chinese GPU Developers
  • The Verge: NVIDIA’s H800 AI chip for China is blocked by new export rules

October 23: NVIDIA filed a Form 8-K with the SEC that said the new export rules impact its A100, A800, H100, H800 and L40S chips. NVIDIA said it “does not anticipate that the accelerated timing of the licensing requirements will have a near-term meaningful

impact on its financial results.” 

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K
  • BBC: US orders immediate halt to some AI chip exports to China, NVIDIA says
  • Tom’s Hardware: US Govt Speeds Up Export Restrictions for NVIDIA’s GPUs

December 2023

December 6: In a meeting with reporters in Singapore, NVIDIA said that it was working on new chips that comply with the government’s rules. 

• NVIDIA statement:

• “NVIDIA has been working very closely with the U.S. government to create products that comply with its regulations. Our plan now is to continue to work with the government to come up with a new set of products that comply with the new regulations that have certain limits.” – NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, as reported in Reuters

• Sources:
• Reuters: NVIDIA working closely with US to ensure new chips for China are compliant with curbs
  • Reposted in CNBC

December 28: NVIDIA released a new version of RTX 4090 for the China market. The new chip, called the GeForce RTX 4090D, would be compliant with US export control restrictions. 

• NVIDIA statements: 

• “The GeForce RTX 4090 D has been designed to fully comply with U.S. government export controls. While developing this product, we extensively engaged with the U.S. government.” - NVIDIA to Reuters

• “In 4K gaming with ray tracing and deep-learning super sampling (DLSS), the GeForce RTX 4090D is about five percent slower than the GeForce RTX 4090 and it operates like every other GeForce GPU, which can be overclocked by end users.” – NVIDIA to The Register

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: NVIDIA launches new gaming chip for China to comply with US export controls
  • The Register: NVIDIA slowed RTX 4090 GPU by 11 percent, to make it 100 percent legal for export to China
  • The Verge: NVIDIA is releasing a slower RTX 4090 in China to comply with US restrictions

2024 GPU Export Controls

February 2024

February 1: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had prepared new GPUs for China, including the H20. Several sources told Reuters that the new offerings are less powerful than similar chips from Huawei. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA’s new China-focused AI chip set to be sold at similar price to Huawei product
  • Tom’s Hardware: New NVIDIA AI GPUs designed to get around U.S. export bans come to China — H20, L20, and L2 to fill void left by restricted models

July 2024

July 22: Reuters reported that NVIDIA is creating a new GPU for the China market based on its Blackwell chips. Sources told Reuters that the chip would be a version of the Blackwell B200. NVIDIA did not publicly disclose the specifications. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA preparing version of new flagship AI chip for Chinese market
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA preparing a China-focused variant of its B200 Blackwell AI GPU to comply with US export regulations
  • HPCWire: NVIDIA Prepares New AI Chip for China Amid Ongoing US Export Controls

December 2024

December 2: The US government expanded rules that limit the export of high memory bandwidth (HBM) and advanced semiconductor equipment. 

The Center for Strategic & International Studies explained the new rules on HBM: 

“The December 2024 controls change that by adopting for the first time country-wide restrictions on the export of advanced HBM to China as well as an end-use and end-user controls on the sale of even less advanced versions of HBM. The goal of these controls is, unsurprisingly, to degrade China’s AI industry.” [...]

“Modern AI chips not only require a lot of memory capacity but also an extraordinary amount of memory bandwidth. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data a computer’s memory can transfer to the processor (or other components) in a given amount of time. With low-bandwidth memory, the processing power of the AI chip often sits around doing nothing while it waits for the necessary data to be retrieved from (or stored in) memory and brought to the processor’s computing resources.”

• Sources:
  • Department of Commerce Document
  • Federal Register 
  • Government Presentation
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies: Understanding the Biden Administration’s Updated Export Controls

2025 GPU Export Controls

January 2025

January 13: The US government tightened its export controls by introducing national chip caps for many countries, except for 18 allies. The new restrictions would be called the AI Diffusion Rule. The rule would go into effect in May 2025.  

• NVIDIA statement:

• “It makes no sense for the Biden White House to control everyday datacenter computers and technology that is already in gaming PCs worldwide, disguised as an anti-China move. The extreme ‘country cap’ policy will affect mainstream computers in countries around the world, doing nothing to promote national security but rather pushing the world to alternative technologies. AI is mainstream computing – ubiquitous and essential as electricity. This last-minute Biden Administration policy would be a legacy that will be criticized by U.S. industry and the global community. We would encourage President Biden to not preempt incoming President Trump by enacting a policy that will only harm the U.S. economy, set America back, and play into the hands of U.S. adversaries.” – Ned Finkle, Vice President of Government Affairs, NVIDIA, to Bloomberg (Twitter link)

• Sources: 
  • US Government Fact Sheet
  • Federal Register
  • Federal Register
  • Bloomberg: Biden to Further Limit NVIDIA AI Chip Exports in Final Push
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA and SIA fire back at US gov's new export restrictions on AI GPUs to China

February 2025

February 26: NVIDIA filed its 10-K annual report with the SEC. In the 10-K, NVIDIA revealed that Singapore was the second-largest geographical source of revenue in 2024, behind the United States. Taiwan was third, and China was fourth.

Within the report, NVIDIA said: 

“Singapore represented 18% of fiscal year 2025 total revenue based upon customer billing location. Customers use Singapore to centralize invoicing while our products are almost always shipped elsewhere. Shipments to Singapore were less than 2% of fiscal year 2025 total revenue.”

• Source:
  • NVIDIA 10-K

February 27: Speculation began about AI GPUs being smuggled from Singapore to China. In late February, authorities in Singapore arrested three people for fraud involving servers that may contain AI GPUs. Singapore’s government granted the three people bail a few weeks later.

NVIDIA declined to comment to CNBC. 

• Sources:
  • ChannelNewsAsia: 3 men charged with fraud, cases linked to alleged movement of Nvidia chips
  • CNBC: NVIDIA’s unofficial exports to China face scrutiny after arrest of silicon smugglers in Singapore
  • Tom’s Hardware: Singapore police bust major ring smuggling NVIDIA GPUs to China-based DeepSeek: Report
  • TechCrunch: Singapore grants bail for NVIDIA chip smugglers in alleged $390M fraud

April 2025

April 9: NPR reported that the US government would not add export controls for the H20 chip after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang attended a dinner at Mar-A-Lago. The dinner reportedly cost $1 million per head. The outlet said it was unclear whether Jensen Huang met with US President Trump directly. 

NVIDIA declined to comment to NPR.

• Sources:
  • NPR: Trump administration backs off NVIDIA H20 chip crackdown after Mar-a-Lago dinner

April 15: In a SEC filing, NVIDIA said the US government sent the company new export rules on April 9. According to NVIDIA, the H20 and all chips with the H20’s memory bandwidth or interconnect bandwidth will now need licenses to export to China. NVIDIA said the new rules would cost the company $5.5 billion in charges due to current H20 chip inventory and prior sales. NVIDIA declined to comment further to the BBC. 

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K
  • BBC: NVIDIA shares plunge amid $5.5bn hit over export rules to China
  • NPR: NVIDIA discloses that U.S. will limit sales of advanced chips to China after all
  • Reuters: US issues export licensing requirements for NVIDIA, AMD chips to China

April 16: The US government released an investigative report on DeepSeek and requested information from NVIDIA about its AI GPUs. Through a letter sent to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, the US government asked NVIDIA for a list of its customers in China and many countries in Asia, including Singapore. The government requested all communication between NVIDIA and DeepSeek. 

• Sources:
  • US government press release
  • DeepSeek report
  • Government letter to Jensen Huang

The US Department of Commerce confirmed that it has issued new export control rules for AI chips. The Commerce Department provided a statement to The Wall Street Journal: 

“The Commerce Department is issuing new export licensing requirements on the NVIDIA H20, AMD MI308, and their equivalents.”

• Sources:
  • The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Confirms New Export Curbs on NVIDIA and AMD Chips

April 28: The Wall Street Journal reported that Huawei is expected to release its new AI chip, the Ascend 910D, soon. According to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, Huawei expects the Ascend 910D to be about as powerful as an NVIDIA H100. 

• Sources:
  • The Wall Street Journal: China’s Huawei Develops New AI Chip, Seeking to Match NVIDIA 
  • NetworkWorld: Huawei steps up AI chip race with Ascend 910D, targeting NVIDIA’s high ground

April 30: Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon, called on the US government to increase export control restrictions to China. As part of a blog post, Anthropic said the government needs to improve its export enforcement to reduce smuggling. The company cited examples of chips being smuggled with “prosthetic baby bumps” and “live lobsters.”

In a response, NVIDIA said: 

“American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in ‘baby bumps’ or ‘alongside live lobsters.’” – NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • Anthropic blog post
  • CNBC: NVIDIA says Anthropic is telling ‘tall tales’ in its defense of U.S. AI chip restrictions on China
  • Tom’s Hardware: Despite NVIDIA claims, Chinese smugglers have used live lobsters and fake baby bumps to traffic chips
  • Hong Kong Customs release
  • China Customs release 

May 2025

May 1: Jensen Huang spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss domestic manufacturing and the importance of AI. NVIDIA posted the remarks online.

• Sources:
  • NVIDIA Newsroom Twitter Post
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA warns U.S. AI hardware export rules could backfire, empowering Huawei to define global standards

May 7: Following a report in Bloomberg, the US Department of Commerce confirmed that it will not implement the AI Diffusion Rule that was created during the prior administration. The rule would have gone into effect on May 15, 2025. 

The Department of Commerce released a statement to CNBC: 

“The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation. We will be replacing it with a much simpler rule that unleashes American innovation and ensures American AI dominance.” 

NVIDIA released a statement: 

“We welcome the Administration’s leadership and new direction on AI policy. With the AI Diffusion Rule revoked, America will have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead the next industrial revolution and create high-paying U.S. jobs, build new U.S.-supplied infrastructure, and alleviate the trade deficit.”

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: Trump to Rescind Global Chip Curbs, Prep New AI Restrictions
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA celebrates dumping of Biden-era AI chip export rules — simpler new policy promised
  • CNBC: Trump administration set to end Biden’s U.S. chip export restrictions
  • NVIDIA Twitter Account

May 9: Reuters reported that NVIDIA is preparing a cut down version of the H20 for the Chinese market. Reuters sources said the chip would be ready in July. NVIDIA declined to comment. 

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA modifies H20 chip for China to overcome US export controls, sources say
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA readies cut-down HGX H20 GPU for China to comply with export control rules

May 13: The US government formally rescinded the previous administration’s AI Diffusion Rule, which was announced in January 2025. The government also announced actions to strengthen export controls for AI chips, including restrictions on using several Huawei Ascend chips

NVIDIA declined to comment to CNBC on the new export restrictions. 

• Sources:
  • US government press release 
  • BIS policy statement 
  • US government guidance on using Huawei Ascend chips
  • The Register: Trump ends Biden-era dream to cap US AI chip exports
  • Bloomberg: US Warns That Using Huawei AI Chip ‘Anywhere’ Breaks Its Rules
  • Tom’s Hardware: U.S. issues worldwide crackdown on using Huawei Ascend chips, says it violates export controls
  • CNBC: Trump administration’s next wave of China AI chip export rules are yet another obstacle for NVIDIA 

May 15: A bipartisan group of legislators introduced the Chip Security Act that is intended to stop smuggling of high-end AI chips. 

The Hill summarized the proposed legislation: “The legislation, titled the Chips Security Act, would require companies to ensure the location-verification abilities of their high-end AI chips and to report when a product has been diverted or changed location. It follows recent reports of increased smuggling of chips, including those made by NVIDIA, into China despite tight export controls.”

NVIDIA declined to comment to The Register.

• Sources: 
  • Chip Security Act text
  • The Hill: Bipartisan House lawmakers propose bill to ‘stop smuggling’ of AI chips
  • Reuters: U.S. lawmakers introduce bill to address AI chip smuggling
  • The Register: Plan to keep advanced chips from China with tracking tech gains support in Congress

May 16: The Financial Times reported that NVIDIA intends to create a research and design center in Shanghai. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “We are not sending any GPU designs to China to be modified to comply with export controls.” - NVIDIA to CNBC 

• Sources: 
  • Financial Times: NVIDIA plans Shanghai research centre in new commitment to China
  • CNBC: NVIDIA says it is not sending GPU designs to China after reports of new Shanghai operation

May 19: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in a TV interview that he didn’t see any “evidence” of any AI chip diversion. Tom’s Hardware summarized Jensen Huang’s quote: 

“Governments understand that diversion is not allowed, and there’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion — recognize our data center GPUs are massive; these are massive systems. The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons, and so you’re not going to be shipping — you’re not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon. And so, these systems are fairly easy to keep track of... but the important thing is that the countries and the companies that we sell to recognize that diversion is not allowed, and everybody would like to continue to buy NVIDIA technology, and so they very well monitor themselves very carefully and they’re quite careful about that.”

• Sources:
  • Bloomberg: NVIDIA CEO Says ‘No Evidence of Any AI Chip Diversion’
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says ‘There’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion’

May 21: At Computex 2025, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called the US export controls a “failure.” He said that NVIDIA’s market share in China has dropped from 95% to 50% due to the restrictions. The Guardian quoted Jensen Huang as saying: 

“The local companies are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development.” [...]

“I think, all in all, the export control was a failure.” [...]

“China has a vibrant technology ecosystem, and it’s very important to realise that China has 50% of the world’s AI researchers, and China is incredibly good at software.”

• Sources: 
  • CNBC: Jensen Huang says U.S. chip restrictions have cut NVIDIA’s China market share nearly in half
  • The Guardian: US chip export controls are a ‘failure’ because they spur Chinese development, NVIDIA boss says
  • The New York Times: NVIDIA’s Chief Says U.S. Chip Controls on China Have Backfired

May 27: Reuters reported that NVIDIA plans to launch a new, cheaper Blackwell-based GPU for the China market to comply with US export rules. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• "Until we settle on a new product design and receive approval from the U.S. government, we are effectively foreclosed from China's $50 billion data center market." - NVIDIA to Reuters

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA to launch cheaper Blackwell AI chip for China after US export curbs, sources say
  • SiliconANGLE: Report: NVIDIA racing to develop new, scaled-down Blackwell GPUs for China

May 28: During NVIDIA’s quarterly earnings, CEO Jensen Huang said the company was writing off unsold H20 inventory due to export controls. VentureBeat posted Jensen Huang’s quote from earnings: 

“Let me share my perspective on some topics we’re frequently asked on export control. China is one of the world’s largest AI markets and a springboard to global success with half of the world’s AI researchers based there. The platform that wins China is positioned to lead globally today. However, the $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry. The H20 export ban ended our Hopper data center business in China. We cannot produce Hopper further to comply. As a result, we are taking a multibillion-dollar write-off on inventory that cannot be sold or repurposed. We are exploring limited ways to compete, but hopper is no longer an option.”

• Sources:
  • VentureBeat: NVIDIA CEO takes a shot at U.S. policy cutting off AI chip sales to China
  • PC Gamer: NVIDIA’s Hopper GPUs are now dead to the Chinese market after export controls that made the company take a 'multibillion-dollar write-off'

June 2025

June 12: NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang told CNN the company will no longer include sales and revenue from China in its forecasts. In a response to a question from CNN about whether the US government would lift its export controls, Jensen Huang said: 

“I’m not counting on it but, if it happens, then it will be a great bonus. I’ve told all of our investors and shareholders that, going forward, our forecasts will not include the China market.” 

• Sources:
  • CNN: NVIDIA will stop including China in its forecasts amid US chip export controls, CEO says

June 18: Several media reported on rumors about NVIDIA preparing to launch a “RTX 5090 DD” for the China market. The new card would allegedly reduce the memory specifications compared to the RTX 5090D. 

• Sources: 
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA planning new RTX 5090 'DD' variant for China — 24GB card with tweaked GPU latest attempt to comply with strict export restrictions
  • WCCFTech: NVIDIA Preps GeForce RTX 5090 DD For China As Export-Compliant Model, Reportedly Features Blackwell GB202-240 GPU

June 23: Reuters reported that DeepSeek is supporting China’s military and intelligence operations, based on an interview with a senior US State Department official. The official said DeepSeek was using “shell companies” in Southeast Asia to circumvent export restrictions. 

Reuters included comments from NVIDIA: 

“‘We do not support parties that have violated U.S. export controls or are on the U.S. entity lists,’ an NVIDIA spokesman said in a prepared statement, adding that ‘with the current export controls, we are effectively out of the China data center market, which is now served only by competitors such as Huawei.’” [...]

“‘Our review indicates that DeepSeek used lawfully acquired H800 products, not H100,’ an NVIDIA spokesman said, responding to a Reuters query about DeepSeek's alleged usage of H100 chips.” 

DeepSeek did not respond to an inquiry from Reuters. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: DeepSeek aids China's military and evaded export controls, US official says
  • Asia Times: DeepSeek gets NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs via Singapore: US official

June 26: The Information reported that DeepSeek’s next AI model has been delayed due to a shortage of NVIDIA AI GPUs in China. 

• Sources:
  • The Information: DeepSeek’s Progress Stalled by U.S. Export Controls
  • Tom’s Hardware: AI disruptor DeepSeek's next-gen model delayed by NVIDIA GPU export restrictions to China — short supply of AI GPUs hinders development

July 2025

July 4: Bloomberg reported the US Department of Commerce is preparing a new export controls rule that would restrict the export of AI chips to Malaysia and Thailand. The rule’s goal would be to reduce AI chip smuggling to China. Based on its sources, Bloomberg said the export controls rule had not yet been finalized.  

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: US Plans AI Chip Curbs on Malaysia, Thailand Over China Concerns

July 10: Bloomberg reported that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang met with US President Donald Trump at the White House before traveling overseas to China. NVIDIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. 

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Meets with Trump Ahead of CEO’s China Trip
  • Reuters: NVIDIA CEO Huang to meet Trump before China trip, source says
  • CNBC: Trump hosts Jensen Huang at White House as NVIDIA tops $4 trillion market cap

July 11: In a public letter, a bipartisan group of US senators requested NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to avoid meeting with Chinese companies in an upcoming China trip that violate US laws or develop military applications that could undermine national security. 

Reuters included a response from NVIDIA about the senators’ letter: 

“An NVIDIA spokesperson said, ‘American wins’ when its technology sets ‘the global standard,’ and that China has one of the largest bodies of software developers in the world. AI software ‘should run best on the U.S. technology stack, encouraging nations worldwide to choose America,’ the spokesperson said.” 

• Sources: 
  • United States Senate letter to Jensen Huang
  • The Hill: Bipartisan senators press NVIDIA CEO over China trip
  • Reuters: US senators warn NVIDIA CEO about upcoming China trip
  • International Business Times: NVIDIA CEO Huang to Face Chinese Officials Over AI Export Curbs Just as Company Touches $4 Trillion Milestone

July 14: NVIDIA said it would soon resume sales of the H20 for customers in China. NVIDIA provided the following update in a blog post: 

“[Jensen] Huang also provided an update to customers, noting that NVIDIA is filing applications to sell the NVIDIA H20 GPU again. The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from CNN.

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Blog: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Promotes AI in Washington, DC and China
  • CNN: NVIDIA says it will restart sales of a key AI chip to China, in a reversal of US restrictions
  • Reuters: Chinese firms rush to buy NVIDIA AI chips as sales set to resume
  • Associated Press: NVIDIA to resume sales of highly desired AI computer chips to China

The Malaysian government began requiring trade permits for all high-performance AI chips acquired from the United States. In a statement, the Malaysian government said: 

“The Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) would like to announce that, effective immediately, all exports, tranships and transits of high-performance AI chips of US origin are subject to a Strategic Trade Permit. These powers are provided for under Section 12 of the Strategic Trade Act 2010 (STA 2010), a Catch-All Control provision which requires individuals or companies to notify the relevant authority at least 30 days before exporting, transhipping, or bringing in transit any item not expressly listed in the Strategic Items List (SIL), if the individual or company knows or have reasonable grounds to suspect the item will be misused, or used for a restricted activity.

This initiative serves to close regulatory gaps while Malaysia undertakes further review on the inclusion of high-performance AI chips of US origin into the SIL of the STA 2010. Malaysia stands firm against any attempt to circumvent export controls or engage in illicit trade activities by any individual or company, who will face strict legal action if found violating the STA 2010 or related laws.”

• Sources: 
  • Malaysia Government Release
  • Reuters: Malaysia says trade permit required for AI chips of U.S. origin
  • Bloomberg: Malaysia Controls AI Chip Exports As US Targets China Smuggling

July 15: DigiTimes reported that NVIDIA is preparing a new AI GPU for the China market, the RTX 6000D. DigiTimes claimed the card would become available in the third quarter of 2025, according to its sources in the supply chain. 

• Sources: 
  • DigiTimes: Exclusive: Jensen Huang's third visit to China in 2025; RTX 6000D aims for two million shipments
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA reportedly preparing RTX 6000D for Chinese market to comply with U.S. export controls — fabricated on TSMC N4, featuring GDDR7 memory capable of delivering 1,100 GB/s of bidirectional bandwidth

July 24: The Financial Times reported that more than $1B worth of NVIDIA’s AI chips had been smuggled to China. In response, NVIDIA said that building datacenters with “smuggled products” was a “losing proposition.” 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “Trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically. Datacenters require service and support, which we provide only to authorized NVIDIA products.” - NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • Financial Times: NVIDIA AI chips worth $1bn smuggled to China after Trump export controls
  • CNBC: NVIDIA addresses AI chip smuggling, says bootleg data centers are a ‘losing proposition’

July 28: The Financial Times reported that the US Commerce Department was not going to make “tough moves” to tighten export controls to China. According to the report, the US government would try to secure a better trade deal with China ahead of negotiations in Stockholm.

The Washington Post reported that several congressional members had warned the US administration against loosening its export controls for AI GPUs. NVIDIA and the US Commerce Department did reply to requests for comment to The Washington Post.

Several national security experts voiced their concern by sending a letter to the US Commerce Department. 

• Sources: 
  • Financial Times: Donald Trump freezes export controls to secure trade deal with China
  • The Washington Post: Trump’s retreat on China chip ban triggers policy spat
  • Tom’s Hardware: Trump freeze on export restrictions to China reportedly in aid of trade talks — White House seeking face-to-face with Xi Jinping as dissenters warn H20 reversal is a dangerous mis-step

July 29: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had ordered 300,000 more H20 chips from TSMC due to strong demand from its customers in China. Several weeks prior, NVIDIA said it would resume sales of the H20 chip to China.

NVIDIA declined to comment to Reuters.

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA orders 300,000 H20 chips from TSMC due to robust China demand, sources say
    • Repost in MSN
• Hot Hardware: TSMC Secures 300,000 H20 AI Chip Order As NVIDIA Boosts Supply To China

July 31: The New York Times reported that Chinese government officials asked NVIDIA for information about security risks associated with its H20 chip. NVIDIA denied having “backdoors” in its chips. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “Cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have ‘backdoors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them.” - NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources: 

• The New York Times: China Summons NVIDIA Over ‘Backdoor Security’ Risks of A.I. Chips
• CNBC: NVIDIA denies its China-bound H20 AI chips have ‘backdoors’ after Beijing’s security concerns
• Reuters: NVIDIA says its chips have no 'backdoors' after China flags H20 security concerns
• Associated Press: China summons NVIDIA over ‘backdoor safety risks’ in H20 chips

August 2025

August 4: A government official told Bloomberg the United States is exploring adding location trackers for AI chips. Bloomberg quoted the official as saying, “There is discussion about potentially the types of software or physical changes you could make to the chips themselves to do better location-tracking.”

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: US Explores Location Trackers for AI Chips, Official Says
  • The Register: Uncle Sam floats tracking tech to keep AI chips out of China

August 5: In a blog post, NVIDIA said that its GPU products do not have backdoors or kill switches. 

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Blog: No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware.
  • CNBC: NVIDIA says its AI chips don’t have a ‘kill switch’ after Chinese accusation

The US Department of Justice announced it had arrested two people in California for smuggling high-end GPUs to China that purportedly amount to “tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive microchips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications.” The BBC reported that court documents say the shipments included the NVIDIA H100 and RTX 4090. 

• NVIDIA statement:

• “This case demonstrates that smuggling is a nonstarter. We primarily sell our products to well-known partners, including OEMs, who help us ensure that all sales comply with U.S. export control rules. Even relatively small exporters and shipments are subject to thorough review and scrutiny, and any diverted products would have no service, support, or updates.” - NVIDIA to TechCrunch

• Sources: 
  • Department of Justice release
  • Bloomberg: US Charges Chinese Nationals With NVIDIA Chips Export Breach
  • Reuters: Two Chinese nationals in California accused of illegally shipping NVIDIA AI chips to China
  • New York Post: Chinese nationals living in US charged with smuggling millions worth of NVIDIA’s powerful AI chips to Beijing
  • TechCrunch: Two arrested for smuggling AI chips to China; NVIDIA says no to kill switches
  • BBC: Chinese nationals charged with exporting NVIDIA AI chips to China

August 10: The Financial Times reported that NVIDIA would give the US government 15% of its revenue from H20 chip sales from customers in China. The deal is reportedly part of an agreement that would allow NVIDIA to acquire export licenses from the Commerce Department in order to sell the H20 chip in China. AMD would be subject to the same rules for the MI308. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide. America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.” - NVIDIA to the Associated Press

• Sources:
  • Financial Times: NVIDIA and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US government
  • The Associated Press: NVIDIA and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenue to US government in an unusual agreement
  • The New York Times: U.S. Government to Take Cut of NVIDIA and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China
  • BBC: NVIDIA and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sales to US

August 11: According to a report in Bloomberg, US President Trump said he was open to allowing NVIDIA to sell a modified Blackwell chip for the China market. The US President also said that he has negotiated with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang about the deal to allow H20 sales in China. 

• Sources:
  • Bloomberg: Trump Open to NVIDIA Selling Scaled-Back Blackwell Chip to China
  • The Register: Trump seeing green as he weighs deal to allow NVIDIA Blackwell GPU sales to China
  • NPR: Trump says NVIDIA will hand the U.S. 15% of its H20 chip sales to China
  • Reuters: Trump opens door to sales of version of NVIDIA’s next-gen AI chips in China
    • Repost in MSN

August 12: Bloomberg reported that Chinese officials had “urged local companies” to avoid purchasing and using NVIDIA’s H20 chip, especially for national security and government work. According to Bloomberg, China questioned companies whether they had found security problems with NVIDIA’s chips.  

Bloomberg included commentary from NVIDIA: 

“AMD declined to comment, while NVIDIA said in a statement that ‘the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure.’ China has ample supplies of domestic chips, NVIDIA said, and ‘won’t and never has relied on American chips for government operations.’

• Sources:
  • Bloomberg: China Urges Firms Not to Use NVIDIA H20 Chips In New Guidance
  • Reuters: China cautions tech firms over NVIDIA H20 AI chip purchases, sources say

CNBC reported that the Trump Administration was still working on the details for how to implement the 15% export tax on NVIDIA and AMD for selling certain chips to China. 

• NVIDIA statement:

• “We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.” - NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • CNBC: White House says it’s working out legality of NVIDIA and AMD China chip deals
  • Tom’s Hardware: White House confirms it's still figuring out the legality of the revenue-sharing NVIDIA and AMD deal for China GPU sales — 'The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out'

August 13: Reuters reported that US officials have covertly placed “location-tracking devices” in targeted shipments with advanced chips in an effort to catch chip smuggling to China. Unnamed sources told Reuters that the tracking devices had been placed in shipments of OEM servers, including from Dell and Supermicro. 

NVIDIA declined to comment to Reuters. 

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: US embeds trackers in AI chip shipments to catch diversions to China, sources say
  • Tom’s Hardware: U.S. authorities allegedly placed secret tracking devices in AI chip shipments to China — report claims targeted shipments from Dell and Super Micro containing NVIDIA and AMD chips had trackers in packaging and servers themselves

TweakTown: US authorities secretly place location tracking devices in targeted AI chip shipments to China

Maingear’s Shroud gaming PC is trying something different in the pre-built space, but they need to execute it better

The Highlights

• Our Maingear Shroud PC comes with an AMD 9800X3D CPU and RTX 5090 GPU
• The PC tries to set itself apart with liquid metal and a pre-applied overclock on the memory, the latter of which is unstable and the former of which isn't the best application
• The PC is a far better value than the Origin PC and Alienware Area-51 PCs we recently reviewed, but is still for more expensive by percent cost than other pre-built systems
• Original MSRP: $6,000

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

Today we’re reviewing a $6,000 pre-built gaming PC from Maingear. It’s cross-branded with a streamer named shroud and even includes its own unstable memory overclock, which is a feature you normally have to invest hours of your own time into giving up on, but now you can outsource the memory overclocking failures to a third-party. It also claims to have a CPU OC and claims to have liquid metal for the TIM, which is more in-line with true enthusiast building than we typically see in pre-builts. Maingear gets credit for taking more risks.

They do some things amazingly, like one of the best Windows installs we’ve seen on a prebuilt, and some things poorly. It’s ups and downs, but overall, we saw a lot that we liked.

Editor's note: This was originally published on June 30, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara
Tannen Williams

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

The price increase over DIY parts cost was not one of them: It’s 21-40% higher than DIY parts at retail, depending on which GPU you use in comparison. That’s significantly better than Alienware’s 50% increase, but still high. But there’s good reason it’s this high: Shroud’s name is on the case. This guy, apparently called “shroud” with a lower case S, we’re told, used to be good at CS:GO and is currently a streamer, and that means this computer costs more because it makes you good at Counter-Strike…

What’s more interesting to us is that Maingear is the first system integrator we’ve seen to use the new HAVN HS420 case (read our review), which was an excellent first showing from Maingear in our benchmarks. They also shoved a screen into the side. We found that Maingear had the cleanest operating system install that we’ve seen in recent pre-built history and they actually did some BIOS tuning, which are great positives. The choice of a 9800X3D (read our review) is also a welcomed change of pace from Intel’s weird dominance in the pre-built space, but again, it is expensive and they do need to deliver on all of those things.

Let’s get into the review.

We bought this computer for a few reasons. One of them is that it has the HAVN HS420, which is one of the first pre-builts we’ve seen with the case. That alone made it interesting because it’s really particular with how it’s configured. We’d thought it would be a good test to see if Maingear was paying attention to how it should be configured. We also bought it because it was one of their first builds with a 50-series card in it. It also happens to be cross-branded with shroud.

We can see that Maingear likes Shroud so much that it made an entire line of pre-built gaming PCs named after him. There’s the “Custom shroud Edition,” the $7,300 “shroud Signature Edition (Mk. II)” that launched more recently, and the absent middle child that we have for review today. 

This is the original shroud Signature Edition from the 5090 (read our review) launch. We’re calling it the Mk. I.

It can only be found via Archive.org’s WaybackMachine despite only being only a few months old and costing $6,000. 

The system has a 9800X3D, RTX 5090, and 48GB of custom-tuned DDR5-8000 that apparently increases your chance at hitting headshots. 

We wonder if that’s worth the chance of system crashes. 

Price Comparison vs. DIY

Maingear shroud Signature Pre-built | Part and Price Breakdown | GamersNexus

Here’s the breakdown of parts and price comparison versus DIY. The good news is that almost all of the parts are available at retail. The exception is Maingear’s self-branded 420mm so-called “Epic” liquid cooler, but we can sub-in another liquid cooler.

Overall, the parts list mostly has parts that make sense together, with the potential exception of the ASRock motherboard due to ASRock’s issues with killing some X3D CPUs. We interviewed ASRock at Computex this year, in case you want to learn more about that -- they think it’s fixed, but Reddit shows it may be ongoing.

We calculated two different DIY totals for this, since the $2,000 RTX 5090 FE is basically unobtainable. With the FE, DIY is just under $4,300. With the cheapest partner 5090 we could find at the time of writing (the ~$2,650 Gigabyte Windforce), the total comes to about $4,950.

We paid $6,000 for the system, so that puts the difference at $1,700 with the FE, which is in absolute crazy territory for the delta -- but that’s if you can get a 5090 at that price. The Gigabyte Windforce puts it at $1,050 on top of DIY parts cost – still high, but not quite as insane when viewed as a 21% increase. The Alienware Area-51 we just reviewed was at 50%, and the Origin Genesis was at 34% depending on if you compared against the original price or the later $8,400 price. 

Overview and Marketing

To try and understand why Maingear thinks it’s worth demanding that kind of price, we turned to the lifeblood of any industry: Marketing.

The Signature Edition is “co-developed” by shroud and Maingear and is pitched as the exact hardware and settings used in his main PC.

It’s got custom decals in various places around the HAVN HS 420 VGPU case and a riveted badge that’s “Inspired by shroud’s personal pinball machine collection.” 

Weirdly, Maingear neglects to mention HAVN anywhere on the page, listing the case as “MAINGEAR shroud Signature Edition.” That’s unfortunate for HAVN, especially seeing as its HS420 really deserves the recognition.

The system is advertised as overclocked right out of the box, both on the 9800X3D CPU and the aforementioned headshot-boosting DDR5-8000 RAM.

Factory OC is rare for a pre-built and essentially unheard of on RAM, so we’ll validate those claims later. It’s a cool idea. Maingear directly advertises reliability and the OC in the same sentence, which is bold, and also incorrect. 

Also interesting is the claimed use of liquid metal TIM on the CPU. 

That’s interesting, and we’ll take a look at that, but using liquid metal on a lidded CPU has significantly less impact than using it with a delidded CPU, where it would really excel. It also introduces risk if not done carefully by Maingear.

There’s a 1920x720 display inside, covering the drive bay area in the HS 420. It’s connected to the 9800X3D’s integrated graphics via a USB-C cable that routes out to the rear I/O. 

Maingear suggests that it’s perfect for chat, but the curve in the glass sits directly between the screen and the user in the normal desk position. 

That’s fine though, everyone knows these screens are actually for waifus.

As part of the “MAINGEAR Difference,” it boasts “100% Zero Bloatware. It’s a confusing concept grammatically, but easy to check in practice. We value a clean OS, so having 100% of zero would be an ideal percent share of zero bloatware to have.

Tear-Down

Let’s get into the tear-down.

One of the reasons why we like the HAVN HS 420 case is how the panel mechanically slots in.

Pulling the backside off reveals the cable management. The PC uses cable extensions, which introduces another point of failure. The 12VHPWR cable is actually a replacement one, which was smart of Maingear. This means it goes from the GPU to the power supply and doesn’t use an extension like the 24-pin. This is good.   

The PC uses a vertical GPU mount. The glass pane acts kind of like a flow guide. The idea is that it shoots the air from the bottom up towards the glass and back at the GPU, but in our testing, it hindered performance, though not in a big way. Actually laying the 3 bottom fans down flat performed better. This means the PC uses a sub-optimal configuration, though it’s still okay. The system’s bigger problem is that they aren’t utilizing the fans speeds the way they should be. 

The gap between the GPU and the glass plate should be much closer. The closer the GPU is to the top edge of the glass, the better it will perform. Otherwise, it introduces some potential recirculation issues.  

For the case, HAVN recommends using the lower back fan as intake and the upper back fan as exhaust. Unfortunately, Maingear set up both fans as intake. This means the system integrator isn’t following the case manufacturer’s recommendation. When we tested the case, HAVN’s recommended way did work better. 

Continuing with the tear-down, we unplugged the power cable from the video card. We noticed that Maingear used a GPU bracket that looked 3D printed. To remove the GPU, we had to unscrew its vertical kit off and unscrew the GPU from its bracket. We unscrewed the radiator at the top to give us better access to remove the vertical kit. The shroud’s glass made it difficult to press down on the video card’s locking clip with our hand, so we used a screwdriver. 

With the GPU removed, we can move forward with the rest of the disassembly. We tugged on all of the cables and saw that they were all secure and properly connected, which is good. Cable management was also tidy with good attention to detail, which is what you want to see from a pre-built. 

Removing the pump for the liquid cooler exposes the extremely lackluster liquid metal application on top of the CPU, which is really disappointing. It wasn’t applied all around the IHS. We also saw a droplet of liquid metal off of the IHS. We noticed that the pads on the CPU were covered, which protects the components. The reason they should do this is because liquid metal is conductive, and might cause a short otherwise. Maingear’s liquid metal application was not the best and we think if they're going to do it, they should do it right.  

Looking at the underside of the cooler’s copper coldplate, it’s not clear if Maingear applied liquid metal here, which it’s supposed to do. Regardless, there’s not enough liquid metal here. Liquid metal needs to contact liquid metal from both sides to properly mate, otherwise there’s potential for gaps, and poor performance as a result. 

The problem with trying to clean up liquid metal is that it tends to get everywhere. And we had to wipe down parts of our system after we took off the cooler to get rid of traces of it in the case. If you don’t do this, it can potentially cause a short. 

Next, we checked to see if all of the screws in the motherboard were properly screwed in. We discovered that one of them was torqued too tight and basically bound a screw to its standoff. We had to use the help of pliers to unscrew it.

With that removed, we were able to pull the ASRock motherboard out of the case. 

We then took the NVME SSD out of the motherboard and saw that Maingear had removed the tape off the thermal pad, which we’ve seen Starforge fail at in the past and unlike Alienware’s Area-51 PC we recently reviewed, the drive wasn’t bent either. 

With the tear-down done, let’s get into the rest of the system.

Thermals

Thermals - Steady-State

We’ll start with thermal benchmarks. A full system load at steady state has the GPU at 80 degrees Celsius and GPU memory at 96.5 degrees Celsius, which we think is unacceptably high for the memory. The core is OK here. Despite NVIDIA’s FE design being so good overall, its memory can sometimes run too hot in some configurations. This is one of them. As this system ages, the pads age, and dust enters the system, we worry about the memory temperature long-term. The CPU temperature was 84 degrees Celsius with a 420mm liquid cooler, with the chipset at 74 at the hottest as a result of getting dumped on by the GPU. We’ll need to look at noise levels and the power consumption from the overclock to better understand if these numbers make sense.

Other assorted temperatures were fine.

Thermals - CPU Over Time

Now we’ll briefly plot CPU and chipset temperatures against the fan speeds to see how Maingear’s custom fan curve plays out.

CPU temperature rapidly rises at the start of the test and eventually hits the 80s. The AIO pump stays constant for RPM, while the main CPU fans stairstep before settling in just under 1,600 RPM. Overall, this kind of curve mostly makes sense. The biggest downside is that the chassis fans aren’t doing much at under 700 RPM, rendering them to basically be RGB ornaments and limit their usefulness for something like GPU memory thermals.

Adding the “Chipset 2” sensor to the chart again illustrates the general heat dump from the GPU with the flow-through design.

Thermals - GPU Over Time

Moving on to GPU thermals over time shows an interesting start as core and memory temperatures steadily increase during the initial idle period of the test, then a steep decline as the fans kick on. After that, they climb to unacceptably hot on the memory and about 80C for the GPU temperature. 80 is fine for the GPU core.

The same goes for the fans – the initial rise to 30% and subsequent quick ramp to 50% are expected.

CPU Frequency

This is a bar chart comparing the average all-core frequency performance for the 9800X3D at steady-state in a separate all-core Blender workload. Maingear’s overclocking claims fall short as the pre-built configuration ran at 5157MHz average, 68MHz slower than in our original review of the CPU when it was tested stock and out-of-the-box without any overclocking. Maingear’s overclock is not actually overclocking the CPU. It’s actually performing lower than the expectation.

Maingear’s website states: “Amplified by liquid metal TIM and AMD 3D V-cache technology, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D utilizes 104MB of on chip memory to deliver massive gaming performance boosts to the overclocked 8-core processor, maximizing frame rate output on the most popular and demanding games.” So for all that liquid metal, 420mm liquid cooler, and use of aggressive PBO settings, Maingear falls short of actually delivering its promise. Part of this is because of how Maingear used PBO without fine-tuning, but the marketing sets clear expectations. They need to have good acoustics to be worth this trade-off.

Acoustics - dBA Over Time

Acoustic testing is performed in our hemi-anechoic chamber, which we built a couple years ago for around $250,000 and have used regularly since then. The chamber has allowed us new insights into cases and coolers in reviews and also gets a lot of use for prebuilt reviews. 

For noise over time, the system started out at a very low 16.9dBA during the idle period, before rising to roughly 25-26dBA during the first few minutes of load when measured at 1 meter, then running at roughly 27.1dBA at steady-state.

We have no complaints about the noise in the shroud Signature Edition – Meangear did well here, but the trade-off is clear in our earlier thermal results. Maingear has some room acoustically to get a little more aggressive on noise to combat these thermal concerns with the VRAM, particularly in some of the under-utilized chassis fans.

Total System Power Consumption

Full system power consumption during the full-torture load started out at an average of 153W when idle. That’s higher than the Origin Genesis’ roughly 125W idle, and that had a full-size water cooling pump. This is due to the internal screen taking power in addition to all the LEDs.

After the load was established, the system shot up to about 840W and stayed there, very slowly rising to 860W at steady-state.

BIOS

We need to understand what Maingear did for this overclock.

Jumping into the BIOS for the first time was extremely laggy and slow, and maddeningly, not all of the inputs went through. A reboot fixed it at least.

We checked out the ASRock X870E Nova WiFi’s BIOS version 3.17 that came on the system. This revision isn’t available publicly at the time of writing, but research pointed to it being launched in January 2025. The PC was built near the very end of February, meaning that version 3.20 (released 2/24) should have been installed. The possible exception is if Maingear has an actual thorough process to make sure the OC settings work on newer BIOS versions, potentially requiring validation. Version 3.25 did not exist yet so that’s fine that it’s not on here.

It came with two profiles already saved. The default profile (named “MG SHROUD OC”) sets AMD’s PBO to its most aggressive settings and has numerous tweaks to the system memory that indicate a genuinely custom OC, which is pretty cool. Voltages, miscellaneous settings like “DDR5 Nitro Mode,” and even tightened timings of 34-48-48-86 with a 1T command rate show manual tuning.

The extreme memory profile for this kit uses primary timings of 38-48-48-84, so Maingear did actually manually modify the settings, which is pretty cool.

We can respect that and credit to them for being more like actual enthusiasts.

But also like actual enthusiasts, this isn’t fully stable. And yes, we did just roast the entire audience, kind of like how the VRAM roasts on the FE GPU.

We didn’t experience any crashes during our earlier thermal testing, but workloads are highly varied and don’t always trigger problems. Explicitly testing the memory revealed instability and caused a crash when we set it to run over a weekend. We also saw multiple errors within minutes under MemTest64, and a full system crash within hours of launching OCCT’s RAM test.

So at best, this OC might be called “game stable” by people who want to cope, but it’s not actually stable, and that means it’s only a matter of time before you run into some kind of game where it is also not stable. You also wouldn’t want to do any meaningful, actual work on a system with unstable memory because it could result in a loss of data. This is a huge fumble that indicates Maingear’s testing isn’t rigorous enough.

The other profile, “MG STOCK OC,” switches the CPU to auto PBO instead of the more aggressive settings on the shroud profile. It also drops some of the memory related voltages and loosens the RAM timings back to the XMP numbers. This is not the default profile, though.

The BIOS showed other signs of care, like the auto driver installer being disabled, which we really appreciate, and custom fan curves all around. SIs normally leave fans set to the motherboard defaults, so this is cool to see. Maingear is doing cool stuff in BIOS, but they need to perform more exhaustive stability testing.

Software and OS Setup

Windows is next.

Maingear wins points for setting up the Windows 11 installer to automatically include the “I don’t have internet” button on the first go. Maingear must have customized the install to allow this, and that’s great because it’s the only way to make a local account, and Microsoft keeps taking steps to make the workaround more difficult. There were no additional agreements or data harvesting attempts tacked on at the end, either. This is one of the best things Maingear did for the system.

The desktop itself was clean, with no bloatware on the desktop or in the start menu, or tray. We guess this really is what “100% zero” looks like: Scientists have said humans can’t conceptualize nothingness for centuries, and yet here we are, seeing it on the Windows desktop. And that’s a good thing. There were no missing drivers and the NVIDIA driver version was 572.60, which was released February 27th, so that’s as up to date as it could be when it was built.

Overall, we’d put Maingear’s OS setup into the “great” category.

Unfortunately, the internal screen gave us trouble. It didn’t even detect on the first boot, which is a big problem and it was a toss-up if it would come on with subsequent boots. Unplugging and re-connecting the rear USB-C cable gets it going again, but even then we had to manually change the screen orientation in Windows. This is annoying and disappointing for a main feature. The upside is that there’s no custom software. The downside is that relying on Windows to guess the right setup isn’t going to work. We think the issues stem, at least partly, from using the IGP.

Packaging and Accessories

Packaging was simple, with soft foam inside to protect the PC. Ours came with a hole in the box, but there wasn’t any damage to the system. We would have liked to see more protection for a $6,000 computer. It doesn’t need to be an Origin wooden crate, but sturdier cardboard boxes would be good for safety.

Aside from the PC, there was a QA checklist, some stickers, and the standard case, motherboard, and PSU extras. We like when the companies include the component accessories that they wouldn’t otherwise have a use for.

The quick start guide was a mixed bag. On one hand, it had good basics like a warning to remove any foam inside the build (though there wasn’t any in our case), and instructions to make sure the PSU was switched on.

On the other hand, it says “connect secondary monitor to USB-C here,” referring to the motherboard I/O. This is a very strange instruction. We’re pretty sure it means the internal screen, but it’s not immediately clear based on the vague language. 

It’s not until we went to the link on the QR code that it became clear. Maingear should update this section of the guide.

Trade-In Program

Finally, Maingear has a trade-in program specifically for this PC. The company says that when it upgrades a component in shroud’s personal PC, it’ll notify all Signature Edition customers via an email that details the upgrade and its alleged performance boost.

Cynically, we think the point of this is to use FOMO marketing on parasocial whales. There’s only a 14-day decision window, so clearly time pressure is part of the plan. We haven’t received an offer like this as far as we can tell, unless it went to spam or something (which is possible with a promo email), but the currently advertised signature Edition has a higher-end CPU versus our original model. We feel like that should have qualified as an upgrade opportunity, although it doesn’t seem worth taking.

CPU, motherboard, and PSU upgrades require sending the PC to Maingear, while RAM and storage will be handled by mail. Labor is free for the shroud-specific upgrades, but customers have to buy shipping labels and parts from Maingear. They want you to keep the original box and foam to ship in, too. Maingear does not provide shipping boxes.

Conclusion

The Maingear shroud Signature Edition pre-built PC is an interesting mix of highs and lows. From a value standpoint, the $1,000-$1,700 markup over DIY is hard to swallow, but is far from the worst we’ve seen for this caliber of build. Again, Alienware and Origin set the bar at awful levels for that.

There are some serious negatives to this system, but also serious positives. We haven’t run into a prebuilt like this in a while:

The operating system setup is excellent, with extra steps taken to enable local accounts without the users needing to know how to modify the OOBE parameters is nice because most users won’t know that. 

Tuning in BIOS is well appreciated, but the stability issues are problematic and unacceptable. Thermals are mostly OK, with the exception of the FE’s VRAM temperature. This could be partially combatted by Maingear with better configuration of the case and fan speeds, as we showed in our HS420 review, and with better utilization of the chassis fans that basically serve as decorations at their current speeds.

From an aesthetic standpoint, we also think the customizations to the HAVN HS 420 are overall fine if you’re a fan of shroud without going overboard.

On the bad side, the prominently-featured internal screen has to be babied into working consistently.

Worse is the unstable RAM OC. It’s a unique selling point, so we’d like to see the company nail this next time. Price is also pretty high, but less offensively than Alienware’s.

We review Alienware’s 2025 Area-51 and test its thermal performance, noise levels, power consumption, and more

The Highlights

• Our Alienware Area-51 PC was outfitted with an RTX 5080 and an Intel 285K CPU
• The system is a poor value and came with a bent SSD
• Despite its flaws, the company’s 2025 Area-51 PC represents a huge improvement for the company
• Original MSRP: $4,650

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

Alienware got tired of us finding all the flaws in its Aurora line of desktop pre-builts, so it brought back the big guns: The Area-51. That’s a name we haven’t heard in a long time. Well, except for that one incident we had in Nevada…but we’ve been told not to talk about that.

As for Alienware’s Area 51, we bought one for independent review.

Speaking purely about the PC itself, this is the most significant positive effort we’ve seen from Alienware to date – including an overhaul to thermals and a new focus on industry standard parts.

Editor's note: This was originally published on June 18, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Test Lead, Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Testing, Writing

Jeremy Clayton

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Camera

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

They have QR codes everywhere to detail how users can service parts, which has been our number one Alienware complaint for about a decade now. They’ve switched to using fewer proprietary components, meaning more user serviceability. That’s a huge improvement.

But Alienware still had negatives, like the inability to manually control the fans. The biggest negative is the price: We paid $4,650 for this, which at the time of purchase, was $1,500 more expensive than DIY at the time we put the pricing table together. And that’s with “$400 off” the “estimated value,” a number that Alienware claims is based on competitive data but is clearly, instead, based on something we call, uh, “bullsh*t.”

The good news is that, somehow, this is still more price competitive than Origin’s high-end pre-built PCs. Under normal circumstances, on value alone, we’d say this prebuilt is eliminated from consideration; however, Origin puts Alienware into a new perspective where, somehow, even a $1,500 higher price than DIY parts looks doable.

The thermals and construction are the most interesting for this one. Let’s get into it.

Alienware Area-51 Price Comparison vs. DIY

Alienware Area-51 AAT2250 Pre-built | Part and Price Breakdown | GamersNexus

We’ll start with a price comparison. Prices for DIY parts were taken at the end of May and were as close a match as we could find to Alienware’s selection. We did not try to fine-tune.

The new Area-51 comes in 13 different configurations, up from just 3 when we ordered, all with Intel Core Ultra CPUs and NVIDIA RTX 50 Series GPUs. 

Our configuration has a 285K, an RTX 5080 (read our review), 64GB of DDR5-6400, and a 4TB SSD.

Along with that is a 360mm liquid cooler and a 1500W 80 Plus Platinum rated ATX12VO PSU.

Value discussion is a total non-starter. The DIY total comes to $3,091 at the time of writing, making it $1,559 less expensive than the Alienware’s ridiculous $4,650 price tag. Expressed another way, the Area-51 is 50% more expensive than DIY parts cost; there are cheaper pre-builts out there. If you’re opposed to DIY (and we don’t have a problem with people buying pre-builts). We think the Area-51’s case is probably more expensive to produce than the manufacturing cost of our Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB substitution, but that’s obviously not enough to really sway the math. It’s also not relevant to an end user.

Overview and Marketing

The biggest updates to the Area-51 are the construction, thermal solutions, and part choices. Alienware actually had emailed us to ask if we wanted to look at one, as the company felt confident in its changes. We rejected the offer and bought one independently, as always for pre-built reviews, as we wanted the full customer experience.

Alienware went with a traditionally laid out large tower case with far more ventilation than its past designs. As a reminder of how bad it’s been before, we made an entire video “fixing” the dumpster fire known as the Alienware R13.

On the new system, the top, front, and most of the bottom are all air intake areas, leaving the meshed-out rear as a totally passive exhaust. Particularly interesting are the two 180mm fans in the front panel, reminiscent of the Fractal Torrent. There’s roughly 35mm of clearance in the front cutout, which should be sufficient to avoid too much restriction despite looking covered. It helps that the hub loses the most access to air, and yet is the only part of a fan that air can’t go through. The dust filter inside the panel is magnetically retained for easier cleaning as well, which is a nice feature.

The CPU is cooled by a 360mm liquid cooler with access to fresh air through the top, with a dust filter that slides out to the rear, retained by a screw. The bottom has one as well.

Alienware Area-51 Tear-Down

The last couple of Alienware systems we’ve tested have been really difficult to take apart. This one is easier to work with. 

To get inside, you remove a screw, turn the lock knob, then press these spring-loaded buttons to release the side panels. Fortunately, they rest in a partially opened position without falling – then you just lift up. Access inside is pretty good, and the cable management is overall good.

The next biggest thing following after thermals is the Area-51’s shift to standard ATX parts – well, mostly. The motherboard is a custom Alienware model with standard ATX mounting points, but it’s actually ATX12VO electrically. That also means that the 1500W PSU is ATX12VO to match. You can see how instead of a 24-pin connector, the board has a 10-pin and a supplemental 6-pin along the right edge.

If you don’t know what ATX12VO is, we have a video from a couple years ago that covers it, so go check that out after this.

Cable management is really well done. This is an area where pre-builts tend to do really well.  

Looking at the other side and inside the system, the video card is relatively large but there’s plenty of room to upgrade.

The bottom of the system has a really huge power supply shroud, which has fans inside them.

The top of the case has a bar that covers the side of the radiator, which has been in past Alienware systems.  

We generally like how the heat sink for the VRM are finned. 

The system uses a fan header cage that creates a make-shift 12-pin connector. 

The PC doesn’t use any proprietary connectors and all the connections into the motherboard were secure.

The RTX 5080 inside is held in place by the most substantial GPU bracket we’ve ever seen. It’s a chunk of solid metal attached to both the end of the GPU and the internal wall of the case and it slides into place. It’s pretty nice, but totally unnecessary and adds to the expense. It does somewhat make sense in a pre-built to prevent breaking during shipping, however. 

Looking at the video card, it uses a very large flow-through area, which is excellent. The last time we tested Dell’s video card, which was a 4090, the company’s design did surprisingly well for what it was.  

Inside the PC, we noticed a fully custom USB 3.0 connector, which goes into the motherboard at a 90-degree angle. 

Their HD-audio connector also has an extra protrusion on it to latch it in. 

We like how Alienware labeled almost every single cable.

Removing the pump block, we can see a thermal pad was applied underneath. The paste pattern is a bit lacking in spots. 

On the CPU side, we noticed a slight gap in coverage on one of the corners, but that’s an okay spot. Overall, it looks good. 

We also like how water block’s cables were kept short and run straight into the board, which is an advantage that Dell has.  

Removing the screws from the motherboard, we discovered one that wasn’t all the way in. 

Lifitng the motherboard out of the case, we noticed that it was sticky on the back, which indicates that it wasn’t thoroughly cleaned. It shouldn’t hurt anything, but it’s kind of ugly.  

Removing the heat sink off of the SSD and taking a look at its thermal pad looked good as there was no tape on it.

Taking a look at the SSD itself, that didn’t look great as it was bent. Alienware is lucky it didn’t snap the SSD. This is disappointing because the company was doing relatively well up until this point. Taking the drive out, it maintains its very slight arc as a result. 

Taking another look at some of the components, there was a lot of factory dust inside the system. 

Opening up the PSU shroud enclosure, and removing the back-most fan, we can see it doing functionally nothing as it’s right up against the power supply. The case’s 2 grills also add impedance as well. Looking at the bottom of the system, there isn’t a lot of room for air to come up through. 

We also noticed a lot more factory dust. 

We took the top radiator fans out and measured them at 38mm, which are pretty thick.  

Alienware Area-51 Upgradeability

Back to the rest of the review:

Alienware intends for this generation of Area-51 to be expandable and upgradable into the future. That’s apparent in immediate ways like the empty drive trays under the right side panel with pre-routed cables, which is something we like. 

Unfortunately, rumors point to LGA1851 being a dead-end platform. If that’s true, there won’t be any CPU upgrades.

The GPU would be as easy to swap as in any normal PC, and space is plentiful. Alienware also claims up to a 420mm radiator can fit in the top of the case.

It gets weird when considering a motherboard swap. Since this is an ATX12VO system, that means it would either need to be another ATX12VO motherboard or you’d have to also swap the PSU, which would be a shame. This is a chicken or the egg problem. There aren’t many ATX12VO motherboards in the DIY market, but Alienware also isn’t using something proprietary. It is a real standard. It’s just not one that’s heavily adopted by DIY motherboards. 

The really weird thing is the so-called “AlienFX board” behind the right side panel. It’s a combo platter of fan and light control, along with providing front panel connectivity. However, it doesn’t actually have any fans connected to it – they’re all directly connected to the motherboard as normal. Alienware’s idea here, we think, is that if you ever do swap the motherboard, you can buy a conversion kit. That kit hooks the AlienFX board to the new motherboard, and would then provide both light and fan control via the Alienware software.

Frankly it seems back-asswards to how we’d think this would go. It would make more sense to us if the stock configuration had all the fans connected to the AlienFX board, then a future motherboard swap would just use the regular headers.

So overall, the Area-51 is technically upgradeable, it’s just in a niche tech-tree with a dubious future.

The case is also covered in at least 7 QR codes that link to various sections of the manual. It’s detailed, including this cool exploded diagram of the system and a dedicated screw list. Alienware is actually making progress here. Using ATX12VO and LGA1851 is a limiter, but the parts are standard, and that’s a big improvement over the proprietary crap they’ve used in the past.

Intro to Charts

Let’s get into the benchmarks.

CPU Thermals - Steady State - Alienware Control

We’re starting with CPU thermals at steady state. The Performance fan preset resulted in a huge temperature reduction versus the other options of 7.3 degrees Celsius on the P-cores versus the stock Balanced preset at 74.5C. The Quiet preset didn’t change much and was roughly 1 degree warmer than Balanced.

E-cores average and follow the same pattern.

GPU Thermals - Steady State - Alienware Control

GPU thermals under automatic fan control are pretty much a wash and illustrate NVIDIA’s maintenance of a target temperature from VBIOS.

GPU Thermals vs. Fan Speed - Over Time - Alienware Control

Here’s a quick look at GPU temperature and its fan speed over time. The results are unremarkable except as a model for what this should look like. GPU temperature quickly climbed to the high 60s and the fans locked in at 50% after a few minutes. That’s definitely a lot better than what we saw with Origin, where it took 8 minutes for the fans to do anything. 

I/O Thermals - Steady State - Alienware Control

Other temperatures were mostly unremarkable, with the exception of the PCH temperature getting significantly more cooling with Performance mode. Any of these results are acceptable for the chipset temperature, though, so this mostly tells us where the air goes.

Intro to Manual Fan Control Thermals

Next, we’re manually controlling the fan speeds to do some A/B testing to evaluate Alienware’s design choices. We connected all the fans to a Corsair fan controller preloaded with PWM values that roughly correspond to the values at steady-state under Alienware’s control. The GPU fans were fixed at 50%.

We did testing stock, with the front panel removed, and with the top fans flipped to exhaust.

Steady State - Manual Control

Broadly speaking: Removing the front panel had no meaningful impact on results and was within error. Top exhaust significantly improved drive temperature, GPU memory temperature, and GPU temperature for the core, with reductions of about 3 degrees in each. The GPU temperature in particular improves because of the better ability to utilize flow-through cooling, evicting warmed air out the top of the case in a straight path for the GPU. This naturally heats up the CPU radiator more, which means CPU temperature slightly increases. The CPU can take it though, and the GPU will actually boost slightly higher as a result of this. Likewise, the CPU temperature increase is less than the GPU temperature decrease.

Frequency - CPU

CPU frequency has frequently been a key area of failure for several of the pre-builts that we’ve reviewed – usually due to poor thermals or power management.

To Alienware’s credit, that’s not the case here. The Intel 285K with the 360mm liquid cooler and the fans at the Performance preset only loses an average of 29MHz across the P-cores versus our original review of the 285K. The stock Balanced preset gives up 115MHz on average, and Quiet falls behind by 145MHz versus stock. A 145MHz loss is large across all cores averaged and would be noticeable where performance is time-based, but because it’s an optional fan preset, we’re OK with it as long as users know about it. It’s trading clocks for lower noise.

Acoustics - dBA Over Time

Next up is testing in our hemi-anechoic chamber, which we’ll use to evaluate noise levels of the different preset fan profiles (now that we know the trade-off for performance and thermals).

The stock Balanced profile idles around 21-22dBA before spiking in response to the initial CPU load. There’s a faint extended stair-step pattern throughout the test duration before settling in at 29.7dBA average at steady-state.

The Quiet profile follows much the same pattern – actually measuring slightly louder than Balanced during parts of the test. This reflects the extremely similar thermal behavior we saw between Balanced and Quiet.

Performance idle was around 24-25dBA, ramping beyond 30dBA quickly, then settling in at 35.9dBA at steady-state. It’s not objectively that loud, but is by comparison to the reserved nature of the default curve. 

Power at the Wall

Measuring power at the wall during the full system torture load shows only marginal differences between the three profiles, all sitting around 650W average at load. The most significant difference is elevated power consumption at idle when using the Performance profile. This is due to the raised fan and pump speeds.

Setup and Software

Software and setup is next.

The Windows installation process was modified to include a registration form and agreements to Alienware’s terms. We can never just get a clean Windows install from Dell. The good news is that you don’t have to fill them out or agree to them, you can just press next. The bad news is that it doesn’t tell you that’s even an option.

After hitting the desktop, we saw that all drivers were present, but the NVIDIA driver version was 572.16 from the 50 series launch on January 30th, despite newer versions being available at the time of build. Also, one of the Intel drivers was even older, dating back to October 2024, even though much newer versions are available.

Bloatware includes the Alienware Command Center (which is actually needed for fan and light control), Alienware Digital Delivery, Dolby Access, Killer Intelligence Center networking, Microsoft Office, including “Outlook (new),” and SupportAssist.

This is a lot of crap for a clean install. It’s not the worst we’ve seen: There weren’t any anti-virus solutions installed from McAfee or Norton, which is a major positive, but it’s still a little bit bloated.

Upon opening the Alienware Command Center, you get hit with text reading “Welcome, Gamer!” The main page shows a few basic metrics like CPU, GPU, and RAM utilization, and also basic thermals. From here you can choose performance profiles, which control the fan curves.

Weirdly, the performance page claims that Performance mode does this: “GPU power consumption is increased above the rated power levels. Your system’s graphics performance may be amplified while consuming more energy.”

That makes Performance sound aggressive, like it’s overclocked or something, and implies pushing beyond normal limits, which is just a lie. It runs at the rated power levels, not above them, unless Alienware means above its own rated power levels rather than NVIDIA’s, in which case that’s misleading. The app claims it controls overclocking settings, but the Custom profile gives neither clock nor power control.

One huge miss here is the inability to set truly custom fan curves. All you can do is add a positive percentage offset to the existing base fan curve. It technically works, but it’s awkward and deprives the user of granular control.

Detailed temperature readouts are split into 8 “zones.” It would have been interesting if these were thermocouples actually placed around the system, but they’re not. CPU, Front, and Top are the CPU temperature, and Bottom is the GPU temperature.

Packaging and Accessories

The Area-51 came in a huge and heavy box. The outer box pulls off after popping the retaining plugs, revealing the foam-encased PC. There’s even a chunk of foam shoved into the front panel opening, which is welcomed attention to detail to prevent front panel damage.

The case itself was absolutely mummified in a ridiculous amount of plastic – every panel, edge, and piece of trim was covered. This is annoying to remove and also creates unnecessary waste.

Inside the case was a block of foam for additional GPU support. This is great and allows Alienware to ship with the GPU installed, rather than requiring user installation.

The only included accessories are a basic keyboard and mouse, like the kind you’d get with any Dell system off the shelf.

BIOS

The BIOS is Dell standard with simple sections and a straightforward layout. Mildly interesting is the dust filter maintenance reminder setting, but it’s Disabled by default. This could be pretty cool if utilized properly.

Thankfully, XMP and resizable BAR were turned on, so a few points for that.

Otherwise, there were no oddities in the BIOS settings.

Alienware Area-51 Conclusion

Alienware’s Area-51 is massively improved over Alienware’s predecessor systems. The build quality is better. The company also moved over to standardized components. 

The biggest mark against the system that takes it down from an overall positive review to one with more criticisms is really that SSD. If we saw that much of a bend on an SSD, we would personally opt to replace it, even if it was working at that moment, to avoid any potential data loss. 

The dust and the dirt were also pretty gross throughout the system and it’s an issue we’ve seen in past Alienware systems. The company has not improved here. What we found is that as you use the PC, the dust loosens up and gets into the system itself. There’s no reason this system should be this dirty out of the box. We don’t normally see that from other vendors. 

Those are 2 marks against the system despite being overall positive on it otherwise. The price is also 50% over DIY price. As a reference, the Thermaltake View series system that we previously reviewed was roughly 7% over DIY part costs. We’ve looked at some other systems in the past, like some of Maingear’s stuff, which charge around 30% over DIY parts. So the 50% is really high and that kind of kills it on value alone for us despite all of the other improvements. 

In a market where it’s a roll of the dice whether competition is even competent, some amount of people will pay extra just to know that it works. The build quality is good and the bloatware is not that bad. 

Alienware clearly took some of the criticisms about the former Aurora desktops seriously. The case is heavy and somewhat elaborate, but it’s actually kind of thoughtful in some places. The part selection is niche and may not have a clear upgrade path, but it’s not proprietary, so that puts fault on Intel more than Alienware this time, though we’d like to see something like a 9800X3D (read our review) option. ATX12VO is rare, but it’s an actual standard that has efficiency improvements over regular ATX12V. If Alienware sticks with this but lands on a more upgradeable platform in the future, they may have the basis of a good formula.

The price is the worst part. We were able to find some alternative pre-builts with similar components for about a $700 - $900 increase over DIY cost, which would make those cheaper, but we’re working to get those in to make sure they’re any good. 

Anyways, it’s actually a good computer, and unironically, Alienware can get the “It’s-better-than-Dell” award. It is technically a Dell, but now we just need to see if Dell can improve its actual Dell name product lineup for gaming. We may change the name of the award to “It’s-better-than-Origin.”