Eclipse SuperNova i5r285oc desktop gaming PC review

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Our Verdict

The Eclipse SuperNova i5r285oc is huge and imposing. It also blows away the competition in terms of application performance and is available as a base-unit only for a very competitive price. It’s possible to get faster gaming frame rates at this price, but not without making significant sacrifices elsewhere.

The Eclipse SuperNova i5r285oc isn’t the fastest gaming PC, but in general performance it blows away the competition. Read our Eclipse SuperNova i5r285oc PC review. Also see:  Best gaming PCs 2015.

Eclipse’s rather imposing SuperNova i5r285oc is for gamers who want a PC which looks as impressive as it plays. Housed in the huge XFX Type 1 Bravo case, this PC dwarfed every other in our testing lab and drew a few surprised looks.

There are some pretty impressive components inside too. A quad-core Intel Core i5-4690K is in full-effect, being overclocked from 3.5GHz to 4.4GHz and chilled by a Zalman CNPS11X Extreme cooler. It’s a beast of a cooler, with twin heat sinks in a v-formation and fitted with an illuminated fan. There’s co-ordinated red and black styling throughout the system, including the Eclipse logo, the large XFX badge on the side of the case, and the red heat spreaders on the generous 16GB of HyperX Savage 2133MHz memory.

Graphics are provided by an AMD-powered Radeon R9 285 DD Edition graphics card with 2GB of memory. Storage consists of a 250GB Crucial BX100 SSD and a 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, giving you both speed and huge capacity.

Eclipse has selected a premium Z97 Express-based motherboard in the form of the Asus Z97-K, which supports Intel RAID, up to six USB 3.0 ports and dual graphics cards (although one will operate at only PCI-Express x4 speed). Also see:  Best gaming laptops 2015.

This configuration delivers excellent performance, achieving a PCMark 8 2.0 Home score of 5446 points – only 2 points behind the Dino PC Dark Spark GTX 960 which has a faster overclocked processor. In the remaining PC Mark 8.0 2.0 tests the SuperNova i5r285oc performs even better, pulling ahead of the competition by a significant margin. For example, it’s PC Mark 8 2.0 Creative score of 7,498 points is over 1,200 points faster than its nearest rival in our group test.

Cyberpower’s Infinity Achilles Pro GT delivers a much faster gaming experience than the Eclipse SuperNova i5r285oc, but not without major cutbacks in other areas. If gaming speeds are your ultimate goal above all else, then you may be better served by the Cyberpower, but as a well-rounded high-performance system this example from Eclipse is very hard to beat. See all  PC reviews.

Included with the system is a 26in HKC 1080p monitor with a TN panel and a 5ms response time ideal for blur-free gaming. It also comes with a Cooler Master Storm Devastator Gaming keyboard and mouse set. These both have angular gamer-friendly looks and the keyboard and LED backlighting for late night gaming sessions.

If the £999.95 price exceeds your budget, you can buy the PC for £849.95 as a base-unit only. If you’re after a very high performance system at a great price – and you have the physical space for it, the SuperNova i5r285oc is a formidable gaming system. The PC comes with a 3-year warranty, but it’s only a return to base service, which is a shame for a PC of this size.

See all  gaming PC reviews.