Stormforce Onyx (i3-9100F, GTX 1650) Budget Gaming PC Review

3D Mark testing: 

For this test, I ran the Stormforce Onyx through Time Spy Extreme, Time Spy, Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra.

The 3D Mark scores for the Onyx are overall pretty decent considering it's price point and you can see in the Timespy benchmarks how well the CPU and GPU match when it comes to performance. This is also the same for the 1080p Firestrike test. The Onyx PC won't really be capable of 4K gameplay but the 4GB of Vram means it makes it through the 4K benchmarks without falling completely flat.

Gaming Performance: 

To see how well this PC performs I used the Onyx to play different popular games with various levels of difficulty to see just how powerful this PC is when it comes to gaming. I tested most of the games at 1080p resolution with different image quality settings.

F1 2019: This is the most recent release in my line up of tester games and gives the Onyx a chance to show what it can do on a newer title.

I was very impressed on how well the Onyx handled this new title. It's fair to say it isn't the most demanding game but Ultra high settings were still very playable at around 50fps. If you have a higher refresh rate monitor, dropping down to Medium/High settings will give some very smooth game play.

Counterstrike global offensive: Better known as CS:GO this is an older game but extremely popular and easy to run which makes it a great choice for testing a budget Gaming PC.

Counterstrike is well known for running on pretty much anything but I though it was a great game to test out 1440p, high refresh rate gaming on this PC. This seems to be the sweet spot that most gamers aim for.

On High settings CS:GO is still buttery smooth even at 1440p so if you're going to be playing less demanding games then it would be well worth investing in an above average monitor to team with the Onyx.

Grand theft Auto Online: Released on PC back in 2015 GTA V online is still a popular game with a large dedicated player base. The large open landscape is also pretty demanding so It's a good game to test out this PC's performance.

Grand Theft Auto V is an older game which was notoriously demanding. However fortunately you no longer need to splash some serious cash on hardware to run this game on very high settings as the Onyx seems to handle it perfectly. If you are playing at 1080p resolution then you can also have the pretty textures to go along with it without sacrificing high fps.

Fortnite: Epic Games released Fortnite back in 2017 and it took the world by storm. The battle royale style game play and the fact it's free to play still makes it a very popular game that I thought was worth while testing.

Fortnite actually turned out to be one of the most demanding games I tested and I certainly underestimated this games ability to drop the frames right down. However if you're gaming at 1080p you can still enjoy Epic graphics at a decent average of around 60fps.

Gaming performance Conclusion: 

Despite the Stormforce Onyx being a more budget PC it easily managed to play all of my tester games at medium/High/Ultra graphics settings. If you want a PC for higher resolution gaming at 1440p, 4K then the Onyx won't be suitable for most games but at 1080p its a great little PC that would even take advantage of a high refresh rate monitor in less demanding titles.

It's not the most future proof PC around but the specifications should meet the minimum requirements of modern games (Such as RDR2) for a while to come.

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