PC Specialist Magnus Pro: An Affordable Rig for Even the Most Demanding Gamer - Den of Geek

The rest of the PC Specialist’s specification is solid: the Magnus Pro (£2,499) has a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD with rapid read and write speeds of 7,090MB/sec and 5,177MB/sec, and a Corsair RM850x PSU with modular design and 80 Plus Gold certification. The inclusion of 32GB of 3600MHz RAM is good for content creation too. It’s DDR4 memory rather than DDR5, which isn’t ideal for futureproofing, but our tests show very little advantage of using DDR5 over DDR4 with 12th-gen Intel systems.

As the Gigabyte Z690 UD motherboard is a DDR4 model, you don’t get an upgrade path for faster memory either. The board has plenty of mod cons, though. Its primary 16x PCI-E slot supports PCI-E 5, it has three M.2 connectors that support 4x PCI-E 4, and it has 2.5Gbps Ethernet. There’s an extra CPU power connector, and loads of on-board headers for cooling and lighting as well.

Meanwhile, the rear I/O panel sports a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port that handles 20Gbps transfers, alongside nine other USB ports of varying speeds. PC Specialist has also added a dual-band 802.11ax Wi-Fi card. The board’s biggest issue is audio – its entry-level Realtek codec is partnered with three rear outputs and no optical S/PDIF. That’s fine for everyday use, but it’s a bit lowly in a machine at this price.

The board isn’t littered with lights either, but that doesn’t matter thanks to the Cooler Master MasterBox 450 chassis. The case’s chunky fascia highlights a dramatic strip of RGB LED lighting that can be customised with software or a control box behind the machine’s rear panel. The bold plastic strip combines with the lights on the graphics card, memory and powerful PC Specialist FrostFlow 360 AIO liquid cooler to create a dramatic interior.

The build impresses in practical departments too. The case is robust, the CPU cooler doesn’t impede on the motherboard and there’s plenty of room to work. The top of the case has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, and around the back, you’ll find neat cabling and room for pairs of 2.5in and 3.5in drives.

While there are some compromises here, it’s an astounding spec for the £2,499 price. The last PC we saw in this price range was AlphaSync’s iCUE Gaming PC, which now costs £2,679, and that included an RTX 3080 alongside an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. If you look back further, the last rig we saw with an RTX 3080 Ti came from Scan in Issue 221. And while the firm’s 3XS Vengeance Ti included DDR5 memory and a Core i9-12900K processor, that PC now costs £3,679.

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