I am very impressed with this iBuyPower gaming PC. It showed up at my house from the other side of the world, and I was just one slave GPU install away from a well-functioning gaming PC. This is exactly the kind of simplicity and ease I expect from a ready-made machine, especially one that is so competitively priced.
Importing a gaming PC from the US to the UK always comes with some concerns. It’s a long way, and gaming PCs don’t make good travelers. There’s a risk that a gaming PC packed on one side of the pond will be an exorbitant bag of bits clanging around in a metal box when opened on the other side – as our Dave recently found out with his HP gaming PC. Fortunately, iBuyPower arrived in one piece – or rather, two.
It showed up on my doorstep in a rather huge cardboard box which contained a case box including the PC and a separate box for the graphics card. This is an critical step for any gaming PC in transit: even the lightest state-of-the-art graphics cards are quite bulky by historical standards, and PCIe slots will happily crush a circuit board left there.
This means that it’s up to the customer to install the GPU themselves, which may seem a bit complex if you’ve purchased a ready-made gaming PC. to avoid build it yourself – but honestly, it’s a pretty plain process. This is made even easier thanks to the inevitable manual located inside the computer’s tempered glass side panel.
iBuyPower RDY Y40 Valorant VCTA R003 Specifications
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
Graphics Processor: PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Super 12 GB Verto
ARIES: XPG Lancer Blade 32 GB DDR5-5600 (dual-channel)
Motherboard: Wi-Fi MSI Pro B650-VC
SSD: WD Blue SN580 1TB
Charger: High Power 750W 80 Plus Gold (HP1-J750GD-F12S)
Chassis: Hyte Y40 with vertical GPU mounting bracket and vertical cable
Cooling: 3x iBuyPower 120 mm, iBuyPower 240 mm Addressable RGB liquid cooler
Rear Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, 4x USB Type-A (5 Gbps), 3x USB Type-A (10 Gbps), 1x USB Type-C (20 Gbps), 2.5G LAN, audio, HDMI/DisplayPort
Front communications (chassis): 2x USB Type A (5 Gb/s), 1x USB Type C (10 Gb/s)
Price: $1,649
This is a slightly unconventional installation of the graphics card in the Hyte case used in this PC – it is equipped with a vertical graphics card mounting. This means that there is a riser cable and an unusual bracket in front of the motherboard. However, the card installation procedure remains the same.
Remove the PCIe slot screws, plug the card into the PCIe slot, tighten the screws, plug in the power cable, and you’re done. The only thing that bothered me about this process was that someone unfamiliar with the 12VHPWR connector melting problem might not properly attach the GPU cable to the socket.
After installing the GPU, I pressed the power button and the computer came to life for the first time. I went straight to the BIOS and found it configured the way I liked it. The XPG Lancer Blade 32GB DDR5 Large Kit is rated at 5600 MT/s, which is only possible with EXPO settings enabled.
For me, this has already been taken care of in the BIOS. As does Re-Size Bar support, which allows for more capable communication between CPU and GPU memory.
Once everything was ready, I started running Windows. The initial boot process became quite a challenge for someone who tests a lot of PCs – I swear they add another thing to say no to every year – and I found myself rejecting a lot of Microsoft’s wasted offers and attempts to exploit up my data as quickly as possible. Then it’s time for testing.
So let’s talk about performance. I have a few gaming PCs on hand, including a mini PC of my own with an RTX 4070 Super, which makes for an captivating comparison.
It is clear from gaming tests that we are getting the level of performance we expect from this iBuyPower machine. The desktop PC often struggles with a comparable mini PC in gaming and beats the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i, which we previously tested with an RTX 4060. Everything is where you’d expect it to be.
System benchmarks that boost CPU and SSD performance are also about what we would expect. They show the 7700X being below the 9700X, which makes total sense, but not by much. The newer 9900X is a moderate improvement over the chip it replaces – AMD saved the biggest performance gains for its 3D V-Cache processors, namely the 7800X3D and 9800X3D. But these chips come at a price, and I think the 7700X is still a astute choice in terms of value for money.
iBuyPower has a little more trouble when it comes to cooling. I’m mainly referring to the PNY-produced RTX 4070 Super. It’s a pretty basic budget model, with two fans and a skinny heatsink, which might explain why it ran slightly warmer than the Founders Edition on a mini PC of my own design – you really were lucky to get one of these FE models for MSRP. While the Hyte case on iBuyPower doesn’t provide the most direct airflow to the graphics card – in fact, it almost intentionally omits it – which may also explain why it’s slightly warmer.
Still, the maximum GPU temperature of 78°C while gaming is quite good. CPU temperatures are good too. Although the machine is raucous to keep the temperature under control. Normally I would try to reduce the fan speed a bit in the BIOS to keep noise to a minimum, but I don’t want to enhance idle temperatures even further here. They are already among the highest we have tested, as well as a mini PC.
The liquid cooler that comes with the CPU is a fairly basic model, although it does come with RGB lighting around the pump. Combined with the RAM and the lighting of the three fans, I must admit that it is a good-looking machine. All RGB components are connected via a single controller on the back of the motherboard tray.
The Hyte case is a high point. We often see economical gaming computers abandoning well-known brands in favor of cases made of cheaper materials. While it’s not the pastel pink Y70 and is much less refined, this case looks the part of a mid-range gaming PC. Importantly, it is simple to unfold – the panels simply pop out with a slight pull.
Cable management is quite good here. Anyway, it’s a lot nicer than I would have left it in my own version. Each cable run is zippered, which means you will need to re-organize the cables if you make any adjustments later. The power supply isn’t modular, but spare cables are neatly hidden under a huge cover, and several spare SATA power connectors are easily accessible if you want to replace an older SATA drive from an senior computer.
The power supply comes from High Power, a Taiwanese company with production in Vietnam. This is where this power supply, HP1-J750GD-F12S, was created. As an OEM, it mainly produces power supplies under other brands and is therefore not as well known in its own right.
However, I managed to find some tests from a trusted source, Cybenetics, for another one HP1 power supplywhich all looks good and does not raise any alarm signals. Similarly, High Power makes power supplies for Fractal Design and other well-known brands – that doesn’t mean every unit they release is flawless, but I’m not as concerned as I would be with a completely unknown brand.
Buy if…
✅ You don’t want to cut corners: With a rugged Hyte chassis and a vertical GPU mount, this iBuyPower machine offers more than you’d expect from cheaper off-the-shelf PCs.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You want peace and peaceful: This machine isn’t exceptionally thunderous for a gaming PC, but it’s definitely on the louder end of the PC gaming spectrum. A few extra premium fans couldn’t be missed as a future improvement.
In fact, you may want to consider upgrading your SSD quite dramatically. The 1TB WD Blue SN580 is a fairly brisk PCIe 4.0 SSD at 4,150MB/s, although you can get almost twice that speed with a top-end PCIe 4.0 drive.
I’m not that worried about speed – obviously that’s not an issue in our SSD benchmarks when it comes to gaming – but 1TB will be gobbled up quickly. The MSI Pro B650-VC WiFi motherboard offers a spare PCIe 4.0 NVMe slot should you need it for further expansion. However, there is no PCIe 5.0 connectivity on this motherboard.
Overall, the RDY Y40 Valorant VCTA R003 is a very versatile gaming PC. It is priced at $1,649which includes all the above-mentioned parts plus a 3-year warranty (3 years on labor, 2 years on parts) and a gaming keyboard and mouse. Neither “Chimera” peripheral wins any awards from me, but it’s a useful money saver if you’re starting from scratch and want to spend every penny you save on the computer itself.
You can probably save a few hundred dollars on a similar gaming PC on sale if you’re astute. Although here I will fight for the iBuyPower machine. It uses good parts, has a good chassis and has been carefully assembled. If I had ordered this myself, I would have been content with what I got for the money. And if you can find it on sale, even better.