Performance Analysis

It may look bad in amongst GTX 1080 Ti systems, but performance from the GTX 1060 6GB is where we'd expect, and the Core i5-8400 shows no sign of holding it back. Some titles at 1080p may still pose a challenge, but in the majority of cases you'll be playing without issue using ultra settings. The card will also handle itself in VR and in some cases at 1440p or ultrawide 2,560 x 1,080 depending on the game and settings. The RX 580 8GB is the direct competitor and has the benefit of a larger frame buffer and FreeSync support, but prices have hiked for this and stock is often fleeting as cryptominers tend to gobble it up rather fast, so the GTX 1060 6GB remains a stalwart choice.

The six-core, six-thread CPU puts in respectable figures in our CPU-limited workloads. For context, its score matches its price competitor, the Ryzen 5 1600, at stock speeds, but AMD's CPU can be overclocked. Terragen 4 heavily favours Intel CPUs, so here it's worth noting that even a Core i3-8350K at 5.1GHz remains slower on account of its lower core count. The Ryzen CPU comfortably wins in Cinebench, meanwhile. Ryzen CPUs can be a little slower in games, but we can't say for certain without comparing an equivalent system side-by-side. Either way, the Core i5-8400 seems like the best Intel choice given the budget constraint in play here.

The WD Black SSD posts some decent storage speeds, although oddly it's a little slow in the write-intensive Photoshop Heavy trace. Overall, though, we still think it's a good choice given that the cost over a SATA SSD is pretty small.

Power consumption idle and under load is always low, so this isn't a system that should give you much concern with regards to energy bills. The extra wattage in the PSU leaves you plenty of room for a GPU upgrade in the future, though SLI is not supported by the motherboard.

When idles, the noise from the system is audible but low – it's possible to discern some pump hum. Under load, things do pick up on all fronts, but it never sounds like any component or fan is straining. The GPU runs along in the low 80s, which is the norm for a cooler like it has, while the CPU is kept tamed by the all-in-one to under 70°C under full load.

Conclusion

There's something very compelling about keeping the price of a full build under £1,000. System integrators like PC Specialist know this all too well, and there's a lot of competition at this price point. With the Enigma Elite, value is clearly the name of the game, and that's clear in most of the hardware choices. For example, the next step up on the CPU (Core i5-8600K) or GPU (GTX 1070) front would cost you over £100 more in either case – a sum that would be hard to shave off elsewhere. Not every choice is ideal – we would prefer to see a motherboard with USB 3.1 Gen 2, and the case is the hardest for us to overlook given our own experience with it, but we imagine it's a chassis Corsair is pushing hard to SIs for a very low price given that it's now sub-£45 at retail. On the other hands, some choices are surprising in a good way, such as the fact you still get NVMe storage. You could argue that the money saved by going for a SATA SSD would net you a better GPU cooler, but retail and trade price differentials are not directly comparable.

The cost of this system at retail comes to over £100 with a new Windows 10 license included, and even if you don't need that you're looking more than what PC Specialist is charging, so the value offered is not in doubt. The system is well built, and while the warranty terms could certainly be better, we won't begrudge PC Specialist too much considering the price. £1,000 doesn't get you what it used to in PC hardware, but the Enigma Elite is a powerful system for 1080p or higher and VR gaming with ample credentials elsewhere that will also see you through a GPU upgrade or two quite comfortably. If you can live with the case, it's a nifty PC with great bang for buck.