The PC Customiser Master Ghost R5 System Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

• Cooler Master Master Box 5 White ATX case – £49.98
• AMD RYZEN 5 1600X RYZEN processor – £218.99
• Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240 liquid cooler – £77.82
• ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 Dual 8GB GDDR5 graphics card – £399.97
• Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR4 3000MHz White RAM – £134.11
• 1TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD – £74.79
• 128GB Samsung PM961 M.2 SSD – £120.95
• ASUS PRIME X370-PRO motherboard – £138.98
• Cooler Master GM650M 80+ Bronze modular power supply – £64.99
• Cooler Master White 263 LED Strip – £18.99
• Microsoft Windows 10 Home – £75.00

The Master Ghost R5 is available from The PC Customiser for just £1431. We’ve calculated that you could build it yourself for just £1374.57 (correct at time of writing), meaning the service from The PC Customiser is just £56.43!

Overview

Straight away, I want to talk about the price. Many people in our comments section say “build it yourself, it’s cheaper” and that’s usually true. However, as someone who works full-time, and has two kids, I haven’t always got the time to source ever component, build them to a professional standard, install the OS, and I have to chase up every warranty independently if something goes wrong.

£56.43 Goes a Long Way

The price difference between self-build and pre-built is fantastic. For that extra money, you’re getting a professional build, that we saw looked fantastic. The cable management was as good as can be, and it’s the little details like this that will appeal to those who want a great finished product. Of course, you get all your OS and drivers installed, saving plenty of time. The main perk, however, is that you also get their Platinum 3 Year Collect and Return Warranty.

Ryzen and Nvidia

The Ryzen 1600X and the Nvidia GTX 1070 seem like a great pairing. If you’re wanting to game on a high refresh rate monitor, or at 1440, or even 21:9, it’s the perfect system for the job. It’s got enough grunt to play at 4K too, although you’ll be stepping down to medium/high settings to reach 60fps.

Productivity is Key

Gaming is awesome, but when you’ve got to get some work done, the Ghost R5 is no slouch. Multitasking is easy with the new Ryzen CPU, and it’ll blast through a few rendering tasks and heavier workloads without too much trouble. It’s also well suited for those who like to stream their games, or just run a lot of applications in general.

Design

This is a great looking system, no doubt about that. A lot of love has gone into picking the components here. The use of black and white finished products, like the MasterBox 5, and the Masterliquid 240, all help complete the picture. The ridiculously good cable routing helps a lot too. However, it’s the white LED lighting that gives it some added class. Rather than opting for full RGB, the white feels a little bit more professional in terms of aesthetics.

Pros

• Well packaged and protected
• Nicely balanced component choices
• Excellent 1440p gaming performance
• Cool and quiet
• Impressive cable management
• Excellent HDD speeds
• Excellent value for money compared to self-build
• 3-Year collect and return warranty

Cons

• None

Neutral

• Main M.2 drive capacity is quite low, but SSHD helps deal with the file storage
• Those who are gaming above 1440p may want to upgrade the GPU
• Faster memory could improve performance further, but wouldn’t be a cheap upgrade