Cube Raptor Gaming PC Review

A Closer Look

Cube’s Raptor gaming PC has a very nice look about it thanks to the large side panel window on the In Win GT1 case. Inside we can see a very tidy system and I must say I am impressed with the cable management job that’s been done.

The top of the case features a fair amount of ventilation to keep things running cool, you can also see there’s a little slot where you can put things like USB hard drives, USB flash drives, your keys and so on.

The front has a very aggressive “gamer” look as well as an optical drive should you need it.

Moving down to the ports and we find a good mix of USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and audio. There’s also a 2 speed fan switch, power button, reset button and then indicator lights. The power LED is on the square power switch and the HDD activity light is on those two blue stripes either side of the USB ports.

Around the back we can see a rear 120mm fan and all the I/O ports on the graphics card, WiFi card and motherboard.

Here’s a closer look at those ports in case you’re interested in what’s on offer.

On top we find a convenient storage area that also doubles as a hot-swap bay.

The bottom has two filtered fan intakes: one for the power supply and one for an optional case fan that does not come included.

Taking the side panel off and we can see the full system which is neat and tidy with a nice blue/black colour scheme.

We notice that there’s only a stock Intel heatsink fan which isn’t amazing but it is still quiet and you can’t overclock this CPU so it is certainly no big deal. The inclusion of a single 8GB module instead of two 4GB modules surprised me a little because now you cannot access the improved performance of dual-channel memory as you’re limited to single channel. This shouldn’t impact performance much unless an application is memory-bandwidth intensive.

The graphics card continues the blue/black theme and it’s MSI’s R7 265 2GB GDDR5 OC model. This will give absolutely loads of gaming power for 1080p gamers, if you’re pushing the resolution any higher than 1080p then this might start to struggle but as a 1080p graphics card this R7 265 is at the sweet spot.

Down the bottom we find a silver Cooler Master 500W power supply. Box.co.uk, who sent us this Cube system, tell us the system normally ships with a black Cooler Master 500W power supply. That means if you were to buy one you’d not get the same one as us. I was very relieved to here that because I think the Silver stands out like a sore thumb in this build. Sadly the black version still has a non-modular design and unsleeved cables but for the price point this is understandable.

Cube have done a good job with keeping the cables behind the motherboard tray and only routing through as much cable as is needed. Despite the fact all the cables are unsleeved it still looks fairly tidy.

By the drive tray area we find just that single 1TB SSHD so if you are to upgrade your storage in future there’s plenty of scope for you to do so.

Finally around the back of the motherboard tray we get a glimpse at the cable management job. While it isn’t perfect Cube have done a good job of hiding the bulk of the cables away and have made the best of the components used. The fact the In Win GT1 case has a outer bulge on the side panel helps because it gives extra room for cables behind the motherboard.