Customer Ratings & Reviews

If you’re going to read one review. I highly recommend this one. Its long but worth it. TLDR: It is ready to go off the bat and performs admirably. But falls short in several areas. And if you plan on upgrading down the line this is not the PC to get as you’ll essentially have to replace everything other than the GPU/CPU. CONCERNS WITH PRE-BUILT: I usually build my own PC’s and still think that is the best option as you get higher quality components with better upgradability for similar if not better pricing. But I had the opportunity to check out this pre-built and despite my concerns and the bad things I’ve heard I have no significant complaints and this pre-built is fully acceptable and ready to go as is. But they could improve on some things. As you are getting budget/low end components here outside of the CPU and GPU. The CPU will do anything you want and the GPU is solid for high/ultra 1080p gaming. But can get away with adjusted settings depending on game at 1440p. If they were to give you a normal mid-range gaming motherboard and a better case this PC would be stellar. As it would get you in the door while providing you the room to easily upgrade if/when needed for a lot less out of your pocket book and likely not impact theirs all that much. Packaging is good. It comes with high quality foam. The Graphics card is mounted to the chassis giving me zero concerns of it breaking during transit. But it doesn’t have extra protection around the PCIe port itself like most gaming motherboards do which is unfortunate if you choose to upgrade your GPU down the line. As cards are huge these days and sag and without reinforcement provides extra risk to your motherboard and GPU. But not a concern with this GPU/mount. The case itself was what I was most hesitant about. I still think this is the worst part of this PC as there is limited upgradability and some very odd choices. Getting a good cheap case these days is not difficult and Asus should step up their game. This is a simple basic metal chassis with attached plastic parts to give the Asus branding at the cost of upgradability and better airflow. Cable management was good, and everything was correctly connected. The side panels require a screwdriver to remove. I would have preferred thumb screws. The only RGB you get is from an LED strip on the front of the case, top of the case, and front panels. As the GPU and fans have NO RGB. I didn’t see any additional RGB headers on the motherboard for expansion. On the top of the case you have two USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB-A and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 USB-C ports 5 gbps (current standard is USB-A and USB-C is 3.2 gen 2 10 gbps and ideally Thunderbolt 4 for USB-C which is not supported). I was unable to get my Thunderbolt 3 external NVMe drive to work on the USB-C Ports. Last, it has separated microphone and audio 3.5 mm aux ports. Which is more user friendly and the correct choice. Airflow is adequate. It has vents on the front, top, and back. But has three fans, one 80 mm on the back a pithy 60 mm for the CPU and a single 120 mm on the top. They are budget fans which perform their duty just well enough. But under load are usually around 55 - 60 dB up close and about 45 dB at 3 feet (Turbo Mode which is recommended). Which is loud. Quality fans are usually 32 – 40 dB. Upgradability is almost non-existent. As the back fan is limited to 80 mm (which is silly), the front only has room for a single 120 mm (which is also silly as there is enough room for at least a 240mm AIO but no mounts), and you can fit a 240 mm AIO on the top as there are mounts, but I didn’t see a dedicated AIO header on the motherboard. But was able to get mine working via the CPU fan and USB on the bottom. If you add more fans the only open fan header on the motherboard is for the optional CPU fan. Trying to install my own third party fan cooler was difficult as the motherboard standoffs are non-standard so make sure the cooler you get has the correct ones. Plus the case is thinner than usual making it so I couldn’t close the case. All of which is frustrating, ridiculous, and makes it so you’ll have to buy a new case and/or motherboard for an upgrade. Which will likely add around $300 if going budget but a lot higher if not. However, the thermal paste on the CPU was good and covered correctly. Temps under load and stress tests average 72 - 74c for the GPU and 58 - 62c for CPU. Which are solid temps and give me no concerns. It comes with a Great Wall Gold Plus E500 Power supply (which is a perfectly adequate brand) which provides a max of 550 watts. But the Intel 13700F and 3060 both recommend a minimum of 650 watts. I can’t imagine them providing a 650 watts power supply would be that much more expensive so is disappointing to see. But from my testing I never had any stability issues. The max draw I saw combo with CPU/GPU was 250 watts (approximately 150 watts being GPU and 100 watts being CPU.) But there isn’t really anything connected to the system which keeps power draw low. But I’d be worried that if you add a bunch of drives, fans, AIO, different GPU you may run into some issues. The 13700F can pull a max of 240 watts. But I think the motherboard doesn’t support the full TDP and keeps it around the 105 watt range, again making this a non-issue. It is semi-modular, but an absolute pain to get to and remove due to the case. It comes with two sticks of 8GB DDR4 RAM at 3200 Mhz without any heatsinks. Model MTA4ATF1G64AZ-3G2F1. Which gives you better performance over a single stick. It automatically is set to 3200 MHz so you don’t have to activate in BIOS. If you upgrade you can access XMP, timings, and voltage. Which is good. I do recommend upgrading to 32 GB of RAM ASAP. As 16 GB is the minimum a gaming machine should have. As games such as The Last of Us Part 1 and Star Wars Jedi Survivor are easily pushing past the 16 GB mark which gives you worse performance and makes things feel less smooth and more jittery. Plus gives you better multitasking ability when gaming. There are two gen4x4 NVMe SSD slots and I was getting full speeds out of them with my WD SN850x, which was nice to see. It comes with a Gen4x4 512 GB drive (MTFDKBA512QFM) which has a heatsink attached and appears glued on but instead it is just the heatspreader they have installed, making it extremely hard to remove without feeling like you’re going to break the drive. Speeds are fine but moderate end for Gen 4. Thankfully, there are 6 ports for SATA drives but no storage bays so you’ll have to get creative. It does come with a SATA Power Connector but no SATA Hard Drive Cables. This will be another upgrade point you’ll want sooner rather than later. As 512 GB fills up fast with modern games usually taking 50 – 100 GB a pop. Especially, when Windows and Personal Effects are installed. It comes with an Asus 3060 that utilizes a single fan for cooling. Model number ASUS PN 90PF02Y0-P00060 VG. Thankfully, it is the 12 GB VRAM variant which is what you want over the 8 GB VRAM model. With my testing temps were good at 72c. Also, never ran into VRAM issues since 12 is the ideal sweet spot. With 8 GB I constantly run into VRAM limits which harms overall performance. Can play any game you want at 1080p high/ultra. Can get away with 1440p depending on game and settings. It can also do video editing and other creative flow work just fine. But the RAM and SSD will limit that a bit depending on how hardcore you get. The motherboard is an Asus PN 90PF03W0-P00070 MB1. It is a budget board that has everything you need but not everything you’d want. Such as limited shielding, ports, headers. Thankfully, you can get into bios and change a lot of settings. I can’t tell what is limiting the 13700F (which is an excellent processor but would have preferred the 13700KF). But added an 850 watt power supply, 280 mm AIO (in a different case), temps were peachy, and didn’t see an improvement making me think it is the motherboard limiting max sustained TDP. During benchmarking I would see it boost past ~4.5 all cores (207 watts) and then drop to 3.62 GHz (100 watts) after about 3 seconds and depending on stress test as low as 3.26 GHz. On the normal fan mode I was seeing ~2.5 Ghz. My Cinebench scores were low at Single Thread 1940, Multithread 17539 at stock fan settings and 1910 and 21552 with Turbo. Where online I'm seeing about 1900 - 2100 and 24,500 - 29,000 with the same CPU. Regardless, the CPU is not the bottleneck in this system the GPU is. Making this a non-issue for gaming but leaves some performance on the table for other CPU intensive tasks or if you plan to upgrade your GPU down the line. PERFORMANCE: GPU: Will give you ultra settings at 60 FPS at 1080p on pretty much any game. With most of them being between the 60 – 100 FPS mark with slight changes such as High instead of Ultra and some tweaking. 1440p is viable with setting changes. 4k is a no go. The 12 GB of VRAM is much appreciated. As 8 GB these days is just not enough for newer games. I never ran into problems at 12 GB. But on my 8 GB 2070 testing the same games I constantly run into VRAM issues. Cooling was good as well. Never saw it go past 74c and usually was around 68 – 72c. CPU: The 13700F is a monster. Able to take on whatever task you want. As the rest of the system will be limiting you. As mentioned, I did see some reduced performance. I’m thinking from the base level motherboard as I tried a different power supply and better cooling without improvement. Could be bad bin lottery as well. As some benchmarks I’ve seen show this pulling 260 watts by itself where mine never went past 105 watts (207 watts for quick burst). 16 GB of 3200 MHz RAM is solid. It performed well and will be fine. Didn’t have to change it in the BIOS as it is automatically applied. I did try 32 GB 3200 MHz (cmw32gx4m2e3200c16) and it worked. But for my 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz (CMK64GX4M2D3600C18) it only showed one stick an wasn’t at full speeds.

I had the asus prebuilt years ago that this model replaces. And I can say that asus has definitely listened to the feedback about air flow. This model has been upgraded with more customizable flexibility and the case looks great. If you love RGB, this has you covered with RGB on the front and on the inside and is easy to control through asus’s app. Case also has nice Handle to carry around if need be. A nice add In imo since I tend to move my gaming room around every 6 months. Case also has a headphone holder on the side. Plenty of usbs and type c(2) on top. Internal wise. There is a decent amount of space if you would like to upgrade the gpu and fans. I’m not sure if you can add fans on the inside front area but you can add another 120mm fan on top(one included) or you can add a 240mm radiator for the power hungry 13700f. I plan on upgrading eventually. The tower cooler that comes with this is adequate I’d say. Not the best but better than the stock Intel coolers by far. The cooler itself looks cool and shiny too. If that matters lol. The 3060 is a smaller single fan design that performs very well even at 1440p at less demanding games or demanding games with dlss running and ray tracing turned off. This prebuilt might have a new CPU and a last gen GPU but considering the 40 series cards perform close to the 30 series, I this asus prebuilt is good for those who want a brand they can trust in and a pc that won’t break on you. Asus leads the industry, personally I try to get asus when I’m upgrading. The Intel 13700f is a beast and runs smoothly plus you will be good for a few years with cpu. You can always upgrade the gpu. But for me I’m very happy with this set up for long gaming sessions on lesser demanding games my son uses for his pc as well and he loves it so much. The price is on par for what it’s worth. Even better when on sale which usually is frequent. Only things I don’t love is the Ram, at least it’s 16gb in dual channel. They didn’t include a heat sink to cover the bland green colored bare PCB. Also the motherboard is good but doesn’t have a lot of extra ports you might need such as fan and argb ports. And the power supply is only 500 watts (I think). Not huge gripes but would be nice to get a little more for the price. But at least asus included extra wires in the box. Also the keyboard and mouse are bare bones generic. Which is fine because you want a mechanical keyboard anyhow. So the price would be higher. That’s fine imo. I would definitely recommend to anyone who asked for my advice as this is my second asus prebuilt in the last 5 years.

To start I should mention that I upgraded to this from a ROG Zephyrus G14, which I had previously been running my setup on for about two years. ASUS' ROG G16CH houses an extremely powerful RTX 3060 12GB VRAM and Intel i7-1300F inside a sleek, minimal, beautiful case. Having never owned a desktop PC before, I underestimated the size, with this tower standing at about 20 inches tall, and 16 inches deep. I was unable to keep it on my desk but opted to move it to a mobile PC stand that sits at the side of my desk. I would recommend doing this if you plan to have it on the floor as this particular model uses air cooling and has an intake fan on the underside of the case. Aesthetically the case is beautiful. The RGB lights aren't overwhelming. They can be controlled using ASUS Armory Crate. And while I haven't tried this myself (so do more research beforehand), I would be interested in seeing if you could swap out the fans for some RGB fans or add RAM with RGB for some extra glow. Performance-wise, this thing is POWERFUL. While my previous laptop had an RTX 2060 and AMD Ryzen 9, I very often had to play games on low-medium settings, especially if I were streaming. As other reviews have mentioned, this PC has absolutely no problem running modern AAA games at high-ultra settings at 1440p. I generally stick to 60fps as I stream and have no reason to go higher, but the framerate *can* go higher at that resolution. Of course it's entirely dependent on what settings you have turned on. I'd be hard-pressed to believe that this could run something like Cyberpunk or Control at max settings. The *only* problem that I've run into might be a power issue that might be my fault. Supposedly this model uses a 500 watt power supply, while the next configuration up with the RTX 3070 and liquid cooling uses a 750 watt PSU. I occasionally have had my peripherals cut out for about a second. I have them connected to a powered USB hub, which is connected to the back of this PC's case. It could just be that I have too much connected which would make sense. Just something to be aware of. It's also worth mentioning that this configuration comes with 16GB of memory and a 512GB internal SSD, which just isn't enough for my workflow. I plan to upgrade both of those at some point. Essentially I'll be doubling up--32GB RAM, 1TB SSD--which I feel will be more than enough. I'm very confident that this PC will be future-proof for at least the next couple years. If you're too scared to build your own PC and don't want to break the bank for a gaming laptop, get this. Just be prepared to make a few upgrades in the way of storage and memory.