AlphaSync Luna Mech Ryzen 3 3300X 5600XT System Review

I love a full-throttle kick-ass liquid-cooled extreme gaming PC, but just like anyone else I can look in my wallet and suddenly think, oh actually, I better dial things back a bit. At just £749.99 the AlphaSync system I'm testing today is certainly appealing to my wallet more than my heart. The AlphaSync LUNA Mech isn't setting out to be the fastest PC we've tested. It's certainly not going to be the slowest either of course. But as for what matters, it features the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X with 4-core and 8-threads, and AMD Radeon 5600 XT graphics card. AlphaSync This system is a bit of an oxymoron, in that it's both premium and budget. It's cheap for a gaming PC, but they've done it with expensive components and I'm certain you could do similar for less. However, I'm certainly not complaining that they've stuck with premium Corsair, ASUS and MSI components. It'll certainly look like a more expensive system with these options! There's plenty of storage, 4-cores and 8-threads from the CPU, a decent graphics card, and it seems a pretty well-rounded system overall. Specifications Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 3300XMemory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz (1x16GB)Hard Drive: 240GB Maxtor Z1 2.5" SSD & 2TB Seagate BarraCudaGPU: MSI Radeon RX 5600XT Mech OCPower Supply: Corsair 550W CV550Motherboard: ASUS PRIME A320M-KCooling: AMD Wraith SpireWiFi: 300NOperating System: Win 10 Home x64Case: Corsair Carbide SPEC-04 TG Configure this AlphaSync system here. Performance eBuyer and AlphaSync do things a little bit differently. They build their systems and then tell you the performance. I mean, you would think this would be a common practice, but it’s not. They promise the system will deliver good performance at the settings they listed. They recommend this PC for "High-quality settings in all games" and "1080p" monitors. What AlphaSync Had to Say “AlphaSync prebuilt gaming PCs are all hand-built to order by a dedicated team of builders using the best-branded components. Prebuilt PCs are better value, come with full warranties, arrive fully tuned and ready to go right out of the box. Why go through the frustration of sourcing your own components, building a PC and worrying whether the thing will actually work when you can buy a high spec prebuilt gaming PC for less money and have it delivered tomorrow?” – AlphaSync Packaging The Luna Mech comes in a pretty large and durable box, which is, of course, a good thing. Open it up, and you'll find a soft but durable foam padding around the PC its self. Plus, there's some spacing cardboard and a box of components. There's a protective bag over the case its self too. In the component box, there's the power cable, and all the drivers and instruction books from the included hardware. The glass comes with a protective film on it, and a little warning for the truly stupid. They've used a foam mould to keep everything in place. It worked great, the system arrived in perfect condition. The Exterior A budget system this may be, but at first glance it looks pretty damn fantastic. You've got that stunning Corsair case giving us a contrast of rich reds on the front and matte blacks throughout. The choice of components is brilliant too, as they're all strictly monochrome and that kind of aesthetic matching typically doesn't happen in this price range, so that's something I REALLY love about this build. They've stuck with the stock AMD cooler, but on a 3300X, honestly that's all you need. At least at this price range, the option to upgrade isn't too difficult. In the front of the case, you'll find some 120mm fan mounts. However, there's no fan there. I think this is an alarming oversight by Alpha Sync given the low cost of a fan. Even a Corsair fan would be around £5-10 RRP. Fortunately, there's lots of passive airflow from the bottom, front and top of the case, and nothing in here is known to be particularly hot running hardware. The PSU isn't too crazy at just 550W, but the hardware they've used is really efficient. PC's in general are a LOT more efficient in recent years, so even 550W is way more than this system will draw from the socket. It's 80 Plus Bronze rated. The MSI card looks stunning, it's got a twin fan design and some big heat pipes, so it really should get everything it can out of the more affordable chipset within. Look closer and you'll see that PCIe WiFi card under it too. There's a single red LED fan in the back of this case. Honestly, I'd remove it and put it in the front. The CPU will exhaust passively just fine, there's ventilation at the top and the GPU fans will shift its own heat too. OR just buy another fan, ha! Cable routing is decent, neat and tidy, and all the cables are black so that's a win. Plenty of room to expand your storage in the future. With the glass back in place, it does look pretty great. There's a good I/O panel on this case too. A couple of USB ports and audio jacks, but it's on the side, which I think keeps things looking neat and tidy. The red LED fan adds a splash of colour to the interior too. There's a set of white LEDs lit up on the front panel too. Testing & Methodology To test each system or notebook, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this particular system. We use a wide variety of applications to gain a broad spectrum of results for comparing diverse aspects of system performance. Games Used All games are tested at both 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160 (4K) (where supported). *Please note that for systems which do not support a particular resolution, such as 1080p laptops, or affordable systems, we will not test the higher resolutions on those devices. In an attempt to bring our games more into line with modern releases and specifically those that offer Nvidia RTX/DLSS features, we have decided to update some of our games accordingly. Please note that not all games listed below may be used in our tests. Games and Settings Used Shadow of the Tomb Raider DX12 Medium Preset - Includes Separate RTX/DLSS Tests - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p*Deus Ex: Mankind Divided DX12 Medium Preset - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p*Rise of the Tomb Raider Medium Preset- Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p*Metro Exodus DX12 Medium Preset - Includes Separate RTX/DLSS Tests - Epic Games Link1080p1440p*2160p*Far Cry New Dawn Medium Preset - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p* World of Tanks enCore Medium Preset - Official website1080p1440p2160pF1 2018 Medium Preset - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p* Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download)FireStrike (1080p) BenchmarkUnigine Superposition (download)1080p Extreme BenchmarkPCMark 10 Professional (download)Express BenchmarkWPrime (download)32M and 1024MCineBench R15 (download)CPU MultiCPU SingleHandbrake (download)Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below)AIDA64 Engineer (download)CPU-Z (download)HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the “normal” profile. Obviously, this isn't the most expensive or powerful system we've ever reviewed, yet despite it being one of the most affordable, it's still using really impressive hardware. Budget isn't the handicap it used to be, and it still put a sold score of 17418 in 3DMark, and 4038 in Unigine. The 4-cores and 8-threads of the Ryzen 3300X are pretty fantastic too, it's a cheaper CPU, but it's still got some real guts to it. It gave us 4534 points in PCMark 10 Express and an impressive WPrime 1024 time of just 161.322. That's good, as that's extremely close to what we saw in our review of that CPU, so it's hitting the mark in this system. 3DMark Firestrike Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme PCMark 10 WPrime 32m and 1024m Cinebench R15 Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Storage The storage speeds are right on the money too. It's not the latest SSD tech here, but it's plenty fast for a 1080p gaming rig. You get the fastest storage from the M.2 SSD, but they've stuck with a traditional HDD for the bulk storage. Gaming Performance Again the Alphasync system really shines here. The 1080p results are really fantastic and the 3300X and the 5600XT are a well-matched pair. We got 90 FPS in Far Cry New Dawn at 1080p, even the mighty Metro Exodus was hitting 56.9 at 1440p. Keep in mind we use Normal or Medium settings, if you're gaming at high or maximum, then it's better suited to 1080p. However, it's clear that this system will play anything you throw at it and while I wasn't expecting it to be bad, I am still pleasantly surprised at how good the performance is. World of Tanks enCore Far Cry New Dawn Metro Exodus Shadow of the Tomb Raider Final Fantasy XV Acoustics & Temperatures Now this interesting, as I do think the system could do with a fan in the front. No excuses, it could do with one. That being said, the performance is great, and the temperatures are about right. However, they could be better, and the CPU fan and GPU fan were noticeably working a little harder in this warmer weather. A front fan would feed them air, rather than have them fight for it. CPU Temperatures GPU Temperatures How Much Does it Cost? Amazingly, this system would cost you 783.17 to build yourself and that's WITHOUT the OS. It's another 69 quid from there. Albeit, there are cheaper sources of Windows keys these days, but it'll still be more expensive. You don't have the rather lovely build service, no full system warranty or anything for doing it yourself either, yikes. Of course, I still think they should charge another £10 and include another Corsair fan in the front. Fix it for your customers AlphaSync and I'll gladly change my award from a Bang for Buck to Editors Choice. Self-build price - Approx £852.17 Alpha Sync Price - £749.99 Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 3300X - £119.99Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz - £74.39Hard Drive: 240GB Maxtor Z1 2.5" SSD & 2TB Seagate BarraCuda £29.99 / £58.88GPU: MSI Radeon RX 5600XT Mech OC - £278.99Power Supply: Corsair 550W CV550 - £74.99Motherboard: ASUS PRIME A320M-K - £53.99Cooling: AMD Wraith Spire (included with CPU)WiFi: 300N - £31.96Operating System: Win 10 Home x64 - £69Case: Corsair Carbide SPEC-04 TG - £59.99 Overview I think AlphaSync has knocked it out of the park with this one. I actually thought it was a bit over priced to begin with, but it's also the first time I've had a pairing of 3300X and 5600 XT. They're both affordable parts when it comes to CPU and GPU, but I'll admit they can still keep up with the demands of the modern PC gamer. Gaming Performance 1080p gaming performance is easily achived here, no issues at all. You'll be hitting big FPS at high settings easily enough and that's great news. Even at 1440p, I was getting pretty great performance at medium and high settings. For competitive gaming, or flashy AAA titles, it's got all the power you need. Plus, that 3300X is so tuned into what gamers need from a CPU without costing the Earth. Day to Day 4-cores and 8-threads may sound a little last week these days, what with many-core CPUs fighting for leadership. However, as we saw in the testing, it's more than enough. For larking about on reddit all morning, doing a little work in the afternoon and playing Elder Scrolls Online all night, it's really a solid CPU. The SSD isn't the fastest, but it doesn't feel slow. There's only 16GB of RAM, but this isn't exactly a rendering rig either, so it didn't slow me down. Overall, it feels very well rounded. Should I Buy One? Let's not beat around the bush here, you likely want something that costs more money. They have a lovely 5700 XT and Ryzen 5 version for £849.99 that I like the look of. However, if £750 is your budget, you're getting £850 of hardware and software, a very nicely build and clean looking PC, and 3 year warranty included here. With a deal like that, you would be mad to build it yourself.