Scan 3XS Gamer desktop gaming PC review

It may not be overclocked, but the Scan 3XS Gamer keeps up with its rivals when it comes to gaming. Read our Scan 3XS Gamer PC review. Also see:  Best gaming PCs 2015.

The 3XS Gamer from Scan, is one of the less expensive gaming PCs we’ve reviewed based on Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 960 graphics card. Housed in an NZXT Source 340 system case, it looks, externally, almost identical to several other gaming PCs we’ve reviewed this month.

Inside it also features what has turned out to be a very popular and successful combination of components, in the form of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics card teamed up with an Intel Core i5-4690 CPU. The crucial difference here is the inclusion of the standard version of this CPU rather than the overclockable “K” version. Also see:  Best gaming laptops 2015.

This has resulted in rather less impressive overall system speeds than similar PCs with overclocked chips, but it should also give you confidence that this PC will work reliably for years. However, the graphics card ensures that in a large proportion of games, the Scan 3XS Gamer will be able to keep up the pace, but if you play games which benefit from a lot of CPU power, this probably isn’t the system for you.

In our tests, the 3XS Gamer proved capable of gaming at 1080p with mid to high level quality settings, which is great for a PC at this price.

The 3XS Gamer keeps costs down by using a motherboard Intel H81 Express chipset, but the Asus H81-Gamer has been designed specifically with gaming in mind and features Asus’s SupremeFX audio components which have been electromagnetically shielded to help ensure better sound quality and well as beefed-up audio capacitors and a powerful headphone amplifier. It features a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, so it’ll only support a single graphics card. See all  PC reviews.

The system comes with 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 memory and storage is provided by a speedy, and capacious, 240GB Kingston SSDNow V300 SSD. Unfortunately, that’s all the storage you get, and we feel that 240GB simply isn’t enough for a Windows gaming PC. We would definitely urge you to add a hard drive to the specification before purchasing this PC.

Scan offers a three-year warranty on this system, the first year of which is covered on site. The remainder of the term reverts to a standard return to base service.

See all  gaming PC reviews.