Here at KitGuru we review many prebuilt gaming desktops, and in 99% of cases, the systems arrive well-assembled with great attention to detail. Unfortunately, today’s system falls into the remaining 1%. The Prism 1089 desktop from Stormforce is ‘Powered by MSI' – meaning it contains MSI components wherever possible. The main specs feature an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, alongside an MSI RTX 5080 Shadow GPU and 64GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB memory. This high end trio push the retail price up to an eye watering £3199.99. Sadly, this machine arrived with us in quite a sorry state…

Timestamps:

00:00 Start
00:33 What’s the story ? The Spec
01:57 The price – and pricing it up
03:00 Problem No. 1
04:00 Problem No. 2
04:37 Problem No. 3
04:53 Yes it’s a mess
05:33 Obviously we can’t review this
05:59 ‘Fixing’ the system
08:09 We (obviously) can’t recommend this system

Pricing and URL

£3199.99

Specification

Case – Vortex King 95 Pro
PSU – MSI MAG A850GL
CPU – Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
Motherboard – MSI Pro Z890-S WiFi
Memory – 64GB Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 6000
GPU – MSI RTX 5080 Shadow
SSD – 4TB Kingston NV3
CPU Cooler – MSI D360 Cooler
Operating System – Windows 11 Home

First things first, the machine arrived for our review with the graphics card installed in a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot – which not only led to terrible gaming performance but also to physical damaged being caused to the motherboard. The bulky and heavy design of the latest generation of graphics cards has led to almost all motherboards featuring reinforced main PCIe slots, allowing them to bear the load of a large GPU. Unfortunately the non-reinforced, plastic slot which the RTX 5080 was installed in to didn't fare so well.

Click to enlarge

The plastic PCIe slot partially came away from the board itself, highlighting the importance of the metal reinforcement which can be seen in the image above. (For a more detailed look, watch our video regarding this machine on our YouTube channel).

The graphics card moving in this non-reinforced PCIe slot also caused damage to the front USB-C connection cable for the Vortex King 95 Pro case.

Also, and although not a physical issue, the build did not have XMP enabled when it arrived, meaning the memory was running at 4800MT/s as opposed to the advertised 6000MT/s.

This graphics card oversight in the build process snowballed in to two much bigger issues which would undoubtedly leave a sour taste in the mouth of anyone forking over the lofty £3199.99 asking price.

You can see the impact on performance in the below screenshots from F1 24, running at 1440P maximum settings. The increased GPU utilisation when the graphics card is correctly slotted leads to massively increased performance.

Original state, left, compared to the GPU in the correct slot, right

We resolved the issues with the build configuration to highlight the importance of receiving a prebuilt system that has been built with care and attention to detail. In this particular instance, it would have prevented physical damage to key components and led to a much better gaming experience for anyone choosing to pickup what is inarguably a very expensive prebuilt gaming computer.

Part of the appeal of buying a prebuilt system over building your own is that not everyone has or wants to have the technical knowledge to build a system like this, or someone may be opting for convenience and simplicity. The state of this computer would lead to frustration for both the customer and the retailer, so we believed it was something that needed highlighting. Stormforce need to take a look at their quality control process to ensure this does not happen to any paying customers.

The system is available for purchase over HERE, although we would advise you perhaps think twice about this considering the issues we experienced.

KitGuru says: The Prism 1089 desktop highlights that it is not always plain sailing when picking up a prebuilt machine, with (in this instance) a premium price tag. 

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