Freshtech DS230 GTX 1050 Ti Gaming PC Review

Introduction Since the GTX 1080's release, we've been inundated with systems utilising this astounding piece of graphics hardware. Even though the performance is staggering, the asking price in the UK remains extremely high, especially for custom models with a substantial factory overclock. Unfortunately. the GTX 1080 can cost more than an entire budget gaming system and recent price hikes have cemented the card's position as a niche product. The overwhelming majority of people cannot justify spending so money on the GTX 1080 and opt for a less powerful solution. In the past, cheap graphics cards have struggled to provide an enjoyable gaming experience due to the consistent stutter, and jarring frame dips. Thankfully, the situation has improved and GPUs like the RX 460 and the GTX 1050Ti can cope with modern games at modest settings. After spending quite a lot of time reviewing elite-grade systems, it's refreshing to critique something which can be purchased by a wider audience. The highly-respected system integrator Freshtech Solutions agreed with this approach and decided to send an entry-level gaming rig. More specifically, the Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 utilises an Intel Core i5-6500, 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz DDR4 RAM and the Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4GB Mini. Additionally, the system is powered by a 600-watt Corsair CX600 PSU and comes with a 240GB Hynix Sl300 boot SSD. Please note, an operating system isn't provided with the default package and the lack of a secondary drive may prove problematic. Nevertheless, the configuration is going to have some concessions to maintain an affordable price point. Whether or not the right areas have been prioritised remains to be seen. Specifications Name: Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 Case: Aerocool DS230 Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 LGA1151 Processor: Intel Core i5-6500 up to 3.6GHz Processor Cooler: Intel Stock Cooler System Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz single-channel Main Boot Drive: 240GB Hynix SL300 Additional Storage Drive(s): N/A Graphics card: Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Mini Power Supply: Corsair CX600 600-Watt 80+ Bronze Certified Non-Modular Peripherals: N/A Monitor: N/A Optical Drive: N/A Wireless: N/A OS: N/A Warranty: 1-Year Collect and Return Warranty Price: £740.99 Packaging and Accessories The system is contained in a rather large box which offers excellent protection against damage during transit. The cardboard is remarkably thick which helps to deal with the product's substantial weight and the precautionary labels ensure the courier adopts a gentle approach. On another note, the side handles make the package easy to carry which reduces the likelihood of the system being dropped or mishandled. Once opened, we can see the main chassis box is covered by a good supply of foam inserts alongside the motherboard box. As you might expect, the motherboard box houses all the accessories in a neat and tidy manner. Even though some additional padding could have been used, it's not really necessary and the foam inserts are more than adequate given the system's lack of delicate parts like water cooling hardware. Before powering on the system, Freshtech Solutions clearly instructs the buyer to remove any internal packaging. This message is presented around the chassis and it's impossible to miss. Clearly, it's very important to follow these instructions because the foam supports could damage the GPU's fan if left in position. Some users might think this is stating the obvious, but there are customers who want a pre-configured system and scared to remove the side panel. Thankfully, this makes sure they are on the right track. The graphics card is supported by a large number of foam pieces which reduces the pressure on the PCI-E slot. When you take into account the GPU's small size and light construction, it's essential to add some kind of structural support while the system is being moved. In terms of accessories, the system comes with a case sticker, various documentation, AC power cable, SATA cables, SSD box, door hanger, World of Warships promotion leaflet and a driver/software disk. CPU-Z GPU-Z A Closer Look Rather impressively, the Aerocool DS230 chassis has two high-quality side panels with noise isolation foam. The soft foam exudes a more premium feel and illustrates the product's commitment to minimising the noise output. Of course, choosing a solid front piece instead of a windowed side panel may be an issue for certain people who prefer to look at their PC's internal layout. Saying that, the windowed panel doesn't really coincide with the system's component selection. The system's chassis opts for a power supply cover which hides excess cabling and allows for a neater finish. Unfortunately, this cover plate isn't removable which complicates the initial build process slightly. On another note, the case has a generous amount of cable management holes, drive caddy mounts and incorporates RGB lighting via a stealth control panel. In terms of build quality, the Aerocool DS230 is pretty good and the steel construction feels very durable. However, the plastic floor section almost seems disconnected from the main unit and could be stronger. On the other hand, I didn't encounter any problems with the chassis' design and think the stylish aesthetic will appeal to PC gamers. I'm a little perplexed by the decision to install the stock Intel heatsink with the label upside down. Of course, this isn't the most pressing of issues but it's a source of annoyance if you like things to be in their correct orientation. Thankfully, the solid side panel perfectly obscures the heatsink which makes this a non-issue. The only viable explanation which comes to mind is Freshtech Solutions wanted to route the cabling a particular way and felt this could be done more effectively with the label placed downwards. Even though the Intel stock heatsink has a pretty poor reputation among hardware enthusiasts, it's perfectly capable of cooling modern processors running at their stock frequency. This makes its inclusion a fairly sensible strategy and a good way of cutting costs. On another note, the system has a single 8GB DIMM operating at a hefty speed of 3000MHz. This arrangement allows you to exponentially increase the memory capacity at a later date. The only downside is, the memory will run in a slower, single channel configuration than two 4GB modules. The Zotac GTX 1050 Ti Mini 4GB sports a neutral design and exposed PCB. Furthermore, the card is extremely efficient and doesn't require any additional power beyond the PCI-E slot. Freshtech Solutions have proficiently attached the front panel cables through the chassis' cable management cut-outs. As you can see, the minimum amount of cable length is visible in the front section which creates a very professional appearance. Here we can see the chassis' unusual styling and integrated LED strips. The product's lighting adds a more exuberant touch and allows you to modify the appearance. This is achieved without inhibiting the system's understated theme. Also, the Freshtech Solutions logo isn't too overbearing and compliments the build's colour scheme rather nicely. The system's cable management has been completed to a high standard and end result deserves praise given the power supply's non-modular design. As a result, a large concentration of cables had to be concealed within the power supply chamber and carefully arranged. Thankfully, the excess cables and tied away in an effective manner and I didn't encounter any protruding cables which pressed against the side panel. Around the power supply, the 8-pin EPS, 24-pin ATX and SATA power cables are coupled together using zip-ties. Once again, everything is professionally kept in its rightful place and the logical cable runs showcase Freshtech Solutions' thoughtful approach. The chassis incorporates a PWM fan hub which has been taken advantage of to limit the cabling in the front section. As you can see, the front panel cabling is grouped together and attached to the chassis' cable management holes. Additionally, there's enough to room to easily install an SSD or 3.5-inch mechanical hard drive without changing the default cabling. Finally, the SSD is placed in a dedicated drive mount and the central positioning makes it easy to connect the SATA data cable. 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. Unless specifically stated, all games are running at maximum settings but any vendor-exclusive features such as TressFX or PhsyX have been disabled to make the results fair. There are some titles where the maximum preset can be altered further in regards to AA, AF, Tessellation, and Draw Distance. To allow our readers to make the most informed decision, any additional options will be clearly labelled in this section. Please note each benchmark is run three times to maintain the highest level of accuracy. Hardware Acoustic dBA meter AC "Killawatt" power meter Software 3DMark AIDA64 Engineer Cinebench R15 CrystalDiskMark CPU-Z GPU-Z HW-Monitor MSI Afterburner Passmark PerformanceTest 8.0 PCMark 8 Prime95 WPrime Unigine Heaven 4.0 Grand Theft Auto 5 Rise of the Tomb Raider Hitman Far Cry Primal PC Mark 8 The PCMark 8 Home benchmark includes workloads that reflect common tasks for a typical home user. These workloads have low computational requirements making PCMark 8 Home suitable for testing the performance of low-cost tablets, notebooks, and desktops. Home includes workloads for web browsing, writing, gaming, photo editing, and video chat. The results are combined to give a PCMark 8 Home score for your system. Download here. 3D Mark The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. Download here. Grand Theft Auto V Our GTA5 Benchmark is run on the standard benchmark with MSAA=Off, FXAA=On, Advanced Graphics Disabled and everything else set to their maximum values: Rise of the Tomb Raider Even though Rise of the Tomb Raider recommends graphics cards above 4GB for the Very High preset, we believe it's the best option to stress graphics cards and distinguish between systems opting for different hardware. Of course, lower-end hardware can struggle with the benchmark and output some unusual results. FXAA is also enabled. Hitman To properly test DirectX 12 performance, the integrated Hitman benchmark is used and everything is set to maximum with FXAA set to on. Far Cry Primal In this game, the Ultra preset is selected with the HD texture pack and FXAA. Once the settings have been dialled in, the game's built-in benchmark is run three times with an average taken to display the performance. Cinebench R15 Cinebench is a widely respected benchmark for testing the performance of x86 CPUs. The program allows you to test single and multi-threaded performance as well as GPU performance by rendering with Open GL. Download here. Super Pi Super PI is a single threaded benchmark that calculates pi to a specific number of digits. Super PI is a single threaded benchmark ideal for testing pure, single threaded x87 floating point performance and while most of the computing market has shifted towards multithreaded applications and more modern instruction sets, Super PI still remains quite indicative of CPU capability in specific applications such as computer gaming. Download here. AIDA64 Engineer Edition AIDA64 Engineer is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for engineers. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Memory and cache benchmarks are available to analyze system RAM bandwidth and latency. Download here. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a portable storage drive benchmark utility that enables you to measure sequential and random read/write speeds on different block size data. CrystalDiskMark will work with any storage drives including hard drives, SSDs and USB flash drives. Download here. Passmark The PassMark Advanced Network Test (which is part of PerformanceTest) is designed to test the data transfer rate between two computers both of which must be running PerformanceTest. One of the computers must act as the server and will sit waiting for a connection. The other computer acts as a client. It connects to the server machine and sends data to it for the duration of the test. You can download a trial version of PerformanceTest from here. Acoustic Performance The amount of noise produced by any computer is a vital consideration for most buyers, even gamers don't really want a noisy PC because less noise is always better. We use an acoustic dBA meter held 2 feet behind our test system at idle and under load to get the idle and load noise levels for the system. For idle we allow the system to sit at the Windows desktop, for load we let Unigine Heaven 4.0 and Prime95 to loop together - we take the acoustic measurements 5 minutes into both of these scenarios. Power Consumption To test power consumption we measure the total system power draw during idle and load scenarios. For idle we allow the system to sit at the Windows desktop, for load we let Unigine Heaven 4.0 and Prime95 to loop together – we take the power measurements from the “Killawatt” AC power meter 5 minutes into both of these scenarios at the same point. Temperatures To test thermal performance we measure average CPU and GPU core temperatures during idle and load scenarios. For idle we allow the system to sit at the Windows desktop, for load we let Unigine Heaven 4.0 and AIDA64 to loop together - we take the temperature measurements from within CPUID HWMonitor 5 minutes into both of these scenarios at the same point. For load we take the average of the maximum temperatures, for idle we take the average of the minimum temperatures. Synthetic Benchmarks PC Mark 8 In PC Mark 8, the system managed to achieve a very respectable score which demonstrates its abilities in a wide range of commonly used desktop tasks including photo editing, teleconferencing and light gaming. 3DMark The Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230's graphics card outputs pretty impressive scores for the price point and appears to just fall behind the GTX 970M. As you can see, the gap is really slim and I'd expect the GTX 1050 Ti to pull ahead over time with more refined drivers. Gaming Performance Grand Theft Auto V Grand Theft Auto V's gorgeous visuals, advanced lighting effects and detailed environments look absolutely fantastic on the PC. During 1080p testing, the system's graphics solution performed brilliantly and maintained a smooth, fluid frame-rate above 60 with very few dips. Once the resolution was increased to 2560x1440, the performance remained solid and surprisingly playable. As expected, 4K isn't an option for the GTX 1050 Ti and it's only really included as a comparison with other results. After scaling back the settings, the system managed to break the 100 frames-per-second mark alongside a 1080p monitor and I didn't notice any drops below 60. This creates a splendid user experience and the drop in visual fidelity isn't too substantial. On another note, the system can exceed 60 frames-per-second with a 1440p monitor and this is a really impressive feat. It's even possible to go beyond 30 frames-per-second while running the game on a 4K panel. Although, there are definitely some massive frame drops which you'll struggle to accept. Rise of the Tomb Raider In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the Very High preset seemed overly taxing and prevented the system from achieving a 60 frames-per-second average even on a 1080p display. Despite this, the 46.7 average is worthy of praise and a good boost compared to the console's locked 30 frames-per-second figure at lower visual details. Interestingly, the system can uphold a decent 30 frames-per-second average with a 1440p display, but this doesn't tell the whole story. Sadly, certain areas with lots of action going on at the same time cause the frame-rate to plummet. Here we can see there is a major performance improvement when switching to the High preset. This time, the graphics card just falls short of the ideal 60 frames-per-second target. The gap isn't enough to pose a problem and you'll be able to enjoy the game without worrying about hitching or intermittent stutter. Selecting a 2560x1440 monitor with the High preset yields decent results and helps the sub-60 frame-rate to seem more consistent. Hitman Hitman is an extremely demanding game on the Ultra preset and requires top-tier graphics hardware. As a result, the Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230's graphics card struggles and isn't really capable of taming this title's maximum settings. Saying that, the 1080p average is 38.9 frames-per-second and that may be suitable for some users. Unlike the previous games, the frame dips are a lot more frequent, leading to a jarring user experience. Enabling the High preset has a positive effect and ensures the 1080p frame-rate is much more playable. Even though the system isn't able to reach the 60 frames-per-second mark, the performance is good for the money. During 1440p testing, the frame-rate improves slightly but it's not enough to eliminate the stutter and sporadic frame dips. Far Cry Primal In Far Cry Primal, the GTX 1050 Ti achieved a 40 frames-per-second average on a 1080p monitor. This is an excellent result when you consider the Ultra preset is quite challenging to contend with, especially for budget GPUs. Unfortunately, the graphics card begins to struggle during 1440p testing and doesn't have the horsepower to maintain a solid 30 frames-per-second figure. Opting for the High preset greatly enhances the performance and allowed the system to almost obtain a 60 frames-per-second average throughout 1080p benchmarking. As you can see, the 1440p frame-rate didn't improve too much, but going beyond 30 might be enough to make it playable for certain users. CPU & Memory Performance Cinebench R15 The system's Intel Core i5 6500 isn't able to contend with more expensive processors due to the lack of hyperthreading and lower frequency. Despite this, the multi-threaded score is still pretty good and ample for most usage scenarios. WPrime Here we can see the system begins to struggle when tackling the WPrime calculation and takes a considerable amount of to finish. Clearly, this is to be expected and not a major concern for the mainstream user who rarely works with CPU intensive workloads. AIDA64 Engineer During the AIDA64 memory bandwidth test, the Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 reported good read, write and copy rates considering the single-channel configuration. Deploying using two or more DIMMs in dual channel would have dramatically improved the performance but whether or not this translates to a higher frame-rate in games remains to be seen. Storage and USB Performance CrystalDiskMark - Sequential Read The system's boot SSD outputs a tremendous read rate which is the highest on record from any SATA3 device. Rather surprisingly, the drive is capable of defeating other highly-regarded storage devices like the Samsung 850 EVO. On a similar note, the USB 3.0 read rate was excellent and topped the charts in a spectacular way. CrystalDiskMark - Sequential Write When it comes to sequential write performance, the SSD fares pretty well and isn't too adrift of breaking the 500MB/s barrier. Even though there are faster options using the SATA interface, it's not by a huge margin. The USB 3.0 write speeds were exceptional and just about managed to defeat all the previous results. Networking Performance Passmark PerformanceTest 8.0 Ethernet (LAN) The Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230's networking interface is splendid and maintains very high speeds within a tight range. Acoustic, Power & Thermal Performance Acoustic Performance Sadly, the Intel stock cooler is quite loud when browsing the web, writing documents and completing other low-end tasks. The noise output is significantly higher than I would expect and becomes quite irritating if you're accustomed to a silent desktop experience. Honestly, the volume levels don't make a lot of sense given the processor's locked multiplier and modest voltage. Once stressed, the noise output only increases by a tiny amount and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference by ear. Thankfully, the load noise is acceptable and much quieter than lots of competing systems. Power Consumption The lower-end graphics card which doesn't require any extra power from the PSU is paramount to the system's exceptionally efficient power draw. Once stressed, the wattage is very stable and doesn't fluctuate beyond the 130-133 range. Thermal Performance Despite the Intel stock cooler being a relatively basic solution, it's perfectly capable of contending with the i5 6600's thermal output. During the AIDA64 stress test, the CPU's average was 54C and the hottest core peaked at 57C. This is well within the chip's thermal limits and you shouldn't encounter any problems even if the environmental temperature skyrockets. Also, the system's GPU doesn't heat up in a rapid fashion and remains under 50C throughout a wide range of demanding games. Final Thoughts Pricing Currently, the Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 is available from the company's website for £740.99 including shipping. To determine a system’s value proposition, we endeavour to compile an identical self-build and compare the price. This allows us to analyse the fee (if any) that a system integrator is choosing to charge customers for its services. Please note all prices include shipping and we don’t permit Windows 10 keys from disreputable sites. Of course, you might want to acquire a digital code much cheaper, but it’s not something we’re happy to recommend as many keys can be MSDN-based with limited activations. When looking into the price of water loop builds, it's more involved due to the increased selection of parts. Case: Aerocool DS230 = £73.98 Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3 LGA1151 = £106.48 Processor: Intel Core i5-6500 up to 3.6GHz = £191.99 Processor Cooler: Intel Stock Cooler = £0.00 System Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz single-channel = £52.04 Main Boot Drive: 240GB Hynix SL300 = *£72.24 Graphics card: Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4GB Mini = £152.92 Power Supply: Corsair CX600 600-Watt 80+ Bronze Certified Non-Modular = £52.99 *Please note, the 240GB Hynix SL300 wasn't in stock and has been superseded by the SL301. As a result, I've taken the SL301's price point and believe the difference will be minimal. Once totalled up, an identical self-build comes to £702.64 which is a saving of £38.35. Evidently, this is a small amount to pay for an expert to do the hard work and finish the system to a high standard. This makes it a great option for those without technical experience or anyone who doesn't feel comfortable building their own PC for the first time. Overview The Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 aims for a very enticing price point which could quite easily encourage console players to make the switch. Of course, it's not a simple process to create a well-rounded system and the component selection requires a great deal of thought. If you make too many concessions, the buyer will become frustrated and disillusioned with PC gaming. On the other hand, if too many high-end parts are included, it limits the system's audience. Throughout the build, Freshtech Solutions did a pretty decent job but there are some minor issues which need to be addressed. Firstly, it doesn't seem sensible to pair a Z170 mid-range motherboard with a locked multiplier processor. Unless the buyer decides to remove the stock cooler and upgrade the CPU at a later date, the extra functionality is wasted. Surely, a much cheaper H170 motherboard would have sufficed. The only explanation which comes to mind is the memory frequency limit on Intel's budget chipsets. As previously mentioned, the system has a single DDR4 DIMM running at 3000MHz. One could argue the Z170 motherboard was the right move to take advantage of the memory's XMP profile. Opting for an H170 alternative would force the memory to operate at 2133MHz. Personally, I'd scratch the idea of one 3000MHz DIMM and prioritise a lower frequency, dual channel kit designed for H170 builds. Don't get me wrong, this decision is open to interpretation and the Z170 platform provides a great upgrade path if the end-user falls in love with PC gaming and decides to purchase something like an Intel Core i7-6700K. Given the system's gaming focus, the base configuration's storage is quite limiting and there's not enough space to install a decent number of modern titles. In recent times, games can easily take up 50GB and beyond which means an SSD on its own isn't ideal. As a result, it's better to have a dependable SSD boot drive and mechanical secondary drive for mass storage purposes. I'm really pleased with FreshTech Solutions for not cutting back on the SSD and realising how much of a difference it makes in both boot times and Windows behaviour. While the 240GB capacity is larger than many budget-friendly SSDs, it's simply not enough. I'd argue that a 120GB SSD and 1TB 7200RPM drive would have been a better combination. One important thing to remember is, any system can be customised using Freshtech Solutions' website which makes certain omissions more forgivable. The SSD's performance was absolutely stellar and I couldn't believe the read rate which defeated every other SATA-based device. Not only that, the write speeds were excellent and comprehensively beat a good range of entry-level SSDs. From a visual standpoint, the Freshtech Solutions Aero DS230 is superb thanks to the chassis' wonderful lighting system. Creating an attractive aesthetic wasn't easy given the ugly Intel stock cooler. As a result, Freshtech Solutions made the right call to use two solid side panels which hide the internal components. The product's beauty stems from the chassis and this is what your attention focuses on. In my view, this shows a great deal of thought has been given to the system's design to form a premium experience with budget components. On another note, the system's cable management is good when you consider the power supply's non-modular nature. As a result, a large concentration of excess cables had to be tied down in the PSU chamber which complicates the process somewhat. Thankfully, Freshtech Solutions were up to the task and proficiently tucked away all the extra cables while positioning the 24-pin, 8-pin EPS, front chassis cabling and USB 3.0 in the most effective way. It's important to note that they could have adopted a lazier approach due to the solid side panel obscuring the cabling. This didn't happen and Freshtech Solutions should be praised for this. Another aspect to discuss is the power supply's wattage which seems overkill for this particular configuration. A 350-watt power supply would have been perfectly fine due to the system's low power draw. On the other hand, this would restrict the upgrade path so the 600-watt option does have certain advantages. During idle conditions, the Intel stock cooler is fairly loud and I'm not entirely sure why this is the case. The fan doesn't need to run so fast because of the chip's modest thermal output. Perhaps, the cooler thinks it needs to target a really low thermal result and cannot sacrifice the cooling to offer a quieter desktop experience. Once stressed, the noise levels hardly change which showcase the cooler's bizarre handling of different load scenarios. On a more positive note, the noise levels when playing games is superb and the RPM values remain consistent. The lack of fan noise fluctuation means you can adjust to the operational volume rather quickly and focus on the gameplay. Also, the Intel stock cooler is more than able to cool the CPU and records excellent temperature figures. The system's GTX 1050 Ti is a stupendous graphics card which reinforces the idea that you don't need to spend a fortune to play modern titles at high settings. Throughout the testing period, the graphics card excelled and even managed to exceed 60 frames-per-second on a 1080p monitor while using the Very High preset in Grand Theft Auto V. Evidently, the graphics card isn't really tuned towards 1440p gaming and this is reflected in the results. Saying that, you can run games at this resolution with low to medium settings. If you settle on high settings alongside a 1080p monitor, you shouldn't encounter too many frame drops or annoying stutter. Honestly, the performance is really good for the price point and should be a source of great enjoyment. The GPU is able to provide a better experience than consoles and has enough horsepower to drive many games at 60 frames-per-second. Pros Commendable SSD read/write rates Competitive price Decent temperatures Exemplary packaging Extremely low power draw Gorgeous chassis lighting Proficient cable management Superb networking speeds Wonderful entry into PC gaming Cons Budget 3.5-inch HDD is needed due to the file sizes of modern games High idle noise output Neutral Z170 motherboard paired with non-K CPU but 3000MHz RAM could be the reason why "The Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 is capable of delivering an enjoyable 1080p gaming experience at a respectable price. Not only that, the chassis' distinctive RGB lighting looks fantastic and provides a great deal of customisation to mould the system to your own personal style." Freshtech Solutions Aerocool DS230 GTX 1050Ti Gaming PC Review Thank you Freshtech Solutions for providing us with this sample.