A gamer's delight - The ASUS G11CB gaming PC review

Desktop PC sales have been constantly decreasing in the last few years, with worldwide shipments falling by more than 10% in 2015. While the market share of mobile PCs is rapidly increasing, there is still one field where desktop PCs continue to thrive, and that's gaming. Due to cooling, size and weight limitations, laptops cannot compete with the raw performance of desktop PCs, at least not without making a sizeable hole in your wallets. Many gaming PC enthusiasts will prefer custom-built PCs, but going for a brand desktop PC has its advantages: no compatibility issues, good build quality and reliable components. Today we are going to take a look at a gaming PC from ASUS, namely the G11CB. Announced at the Computex exhibition in 20115, the desktop unit sports 6th generation Intel Core i5/i7 processors, DDR4 memory and NVIDIA GeForce 9 graphics on an attractive chassis with variable lighting. Let's see how it performs, in this review:

Unboxing the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC

As opposed to laptops, a heavy PC package is actually a good sign: it most likely means the case and the power source are well built and with good components. The simple, brown box of the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC weighs more than 24 lbs (11 kg) and looks rather underwhelming, considering the quality of the contents. Inside you will find the unit, a backlit keyboard and an optical mouse (not pictured, since the reviewed unit came without the mouse). There is also a power cable and the usual manuals and apps DVD. The unit is heavy and very solid, weighing a hefty 21.5 pounds (9.78 kg). The dimensions of the unit are 6.92 x 17.32 x 16.61 inches or 176 x 440 x 422 mm (WxDxH). For users who need a more compact unit, ASUS has a line of compact gaming PCs under their famous Republic of Gamers brand, called ROG G20. Be advised though, the price of the G20 is a bit higher. On the front of the unit you will find no less than four USB ports, a 6-in-1 Card Reader (for MMC, XD, SD, SDHC, MS/PRO cards) and the backlit power button. The Blu-ray/DVD Writer Combo is neatly hidden beneath the front cover and can be accessed by pressing the corner of the top tray cover. On top of the unit you will find two jacks - one for a microphone and one for headphones. Looking on the back of the unit, we find two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 ports, one HDMI-Out, one VGA(D-Sub)-Out, a RJ45 LAN port as well as a 7.1 Channel Audio panel. The video card has one DVI port, one HDMI port, and three DisplayPorts. This means you can have triple-monitor-surround gaming with only one video card. The backlit chiclet keyboard is of good quality and has a very useful volume knob. The blue backlight can be switched on and off but can't be dimmed. ASUS made sure that users have everything they need to run the system with no additional tweaking. The unit is big, just like any other standard desktop tower PC; it's also heavy and solid. The design of the case is nice and the addition of a keyboard and mouse gives that extra bit of perceived value.

Hardware specifications of the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC

The unit we are testing is powered by a sixth generation Intel Core i7-6700 processor (with a frequency of up to 3400 MHz). It lacks the K letter at the end of the name, which means it can't be overclocked, but we doubt that in this configuration, the CPU will be a limiting factor. For gaming purposes, an Intel Core i5 would be sufficient, but if you also need the PC for design and rendering, the i7 is the better choice. The PC has 8GB of DDR4 memory (latest technology, faster and with lower consumption than the DDR3 standard) made by Hynix. 8GB is the absolute minimum for a gaming PC and we recommend getting an additional 8 GB for the more RAM intensive games out there. The custom motherboard is built around an Intel H170 chipset and has one PCI Express x1, one PCI Express x16 and one mini-PCI Express expansion slot. The system uses an NVIDIA GeForce GTX960 graphics card with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. While there are more powerful variants available (up to a GTX980 with 4GB of memory), the GTX960 is significantly cheaper and handles most titles in the 1920x1080 resolution quite well. Here we see what we think is a questionable choice of hardware: for the same price, a dedicated gamer would go for a more powerful graphics card and a slower CPU, since the bottleneck for modern games is most often the graphics card. With an Intel Core i7 and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX960, the computer will handle multitasking quite well, but the gaming will suffer on Ultra Quality settings and high resolutions. As far as storage goes, the unit we are testing has the perfect combination: one Samsung M.2 SSD drive with 256 GB of storage for quick boot times and fast application startup, one Toshiba SATA3 hard-drive with 1000 GB of storage for all those movies, pictures and games and a DVD-writer/Blu-ray reader combo drive, if you want to watch a Blu-Ray movie or if you need to write some of your data to a DVD. No discrete sound card is present, but with the decent performance of the ALC887 codec, a discrete sound card would just increase the price of the unit with little gains. The LAN network adapter is a RealTek RTL8168/8111 and interestingly, the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC also has a RTL8821AE Wireless LAN 802.11ac adapter, which means you won't need to use a long network cable if your PC is far from the router. In addition, the adapter contains a Bluetooth module which could be useful for connecting wirelessly to mice, headphones or speakers. The less cable clutter, the better. A 6-in-1 card reader is integrated in the front of the unit and provides another connectivity option for the user. Another noteworthy feature is the presence of two USB 3.1 ports in the back of the PC. The new USB 3.1 standard raises the theoretical maximum transfer rate for USB devices to 10 Gbps. To give you an idea of what that means, the contents a fully-loaded 50 gigabyte Blu-Ray disc could be transferred over USB 3.1 in under a minute! There are other variants available for the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC, from Intel Core i5 processors, up to 32 GB of memory, to a whole range of video cards and storage options. Check out the full list of options on the official ASUS G11CB Gaming PC page. We definitely look forward to testing the Samsung SSD in combination with the Intel Core i7 processor, they should make the computer feel very snappy and responsive. You can see the results of our testing on the next page of this review.

The software bundled with the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC

Before we move on to the benchmarks, let's have a quick look at the bundled apps. The PC comes with a few apps which are, unlike most of the bundled apps we're used to see in other products, quite useful. First we have the Aegis II application, basically a desktop overlay which monitors system performance and controls the variable color lights. The application looks really alien at first, so you might want to take a look at its instruction manual. The "Lighting" interface allows you to change the color of the two "zones" and also apply a cool looking "breathing" effect. The program has two other features, ASUS GameAlive, which allows the user to record and share gameplay footage and ASUS Boost Launcher, which frees up system resources when you start previously selected applications. The second application, or rather suite of apps, is ASUS Command. As the name suggests, it's more of a command center for an entire list of apps, grouped in six categories: Each section contains two to four applications/features. The Power section handles quick USB charging, power saving features, and usage restrictions for kids. The Update section allows the user to check for and install application, driver and BIOS updates. The Security section contains a file cleanup utility and an integration with the anti-virus software (in this case, McAfee Internet Security Trial). The Backup & Recovery section handles the recovery settings also present in the Windows environment, while the Tool section contains, among other settings, the Audio Wizard , which changes the audio settings to suit the current use of the PC. Finally, the Support section provides easy access to the system information, manuals and support options. A more detailed overview of the ASUS Command application can be found on this ASUS Support page. The ASUS G11CB Gaming PC is a product without bloatware and with useful custom applications. While the heavily customized interface is sometimes hard to work with (in the case of Aegis II), the tools have a clear added value for the user.

Benchmark and real life performance of the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC

As usual, we looked first at the "clean" system, without any other installed apps. The Windows installation occupies roughly 32 GB of the 237GB available on the SSD, so you will have plenty of space for installing apps and games. We start by testing the start-up times with BootRacer. The PC comes with Windows 10 Home, which takes on average 25,6 seconds to load. It's a pretty good result when compared to the Maguay X99 system we reviewed a while ago, which was also equipped with an SSD. Keep in mind that the Maguay system had the Windows 8.1 operating system which has slightly shorter load times compared to Windows 10. Next on our list is the general system performance, which we tested using PCMark 8 with two presets, Home Accelerated and Creative Accelerated. The results are very good, 4792 on the Home Accelerated preset and 6325 on the Creative Accelerated preset. Next we tested the graphics using 3DMark Vantage. We tested the system using the Performance and Extreme presets, and the results were in line with the NVIDIA GeForce 960 GTX performance levels. Moving on to the storage, we ran Crystal Mark 5 to measure the performance of the SSD and HDD. The HDD was no surprise, with the performance you would expect from a 7200 rpm desktop hard drive. The SSD results were solid and although we have seen better results, the performance level is above average. Sequential reads of 2175 MB/s will certainly benefit the loading times of any game installed on the SSD. Speaking of which, let's play some games! We started off with League of Legends and, unsurprisingly, the frame rate on the 1920x1080 resolution was in excess of 200 frames per second, on the highest setting. Then we tried War Thunder , a game which is more taxing on the hardware on the highest settings. Again, frame rates in excess of 100 FPS, smooth gameplay and no problems whatsoever. Finally, we played XCOM 2, the sequel to the popular XCOM turn-based strategy series from Firaxis Games. On the highest settings (Ultra), the game would stutter, with frame rates dropping below 20 FPS. We suspect this is because of poor optimization, since the game has been recently released and has other issues as well. Until a patch solving the graphical issues is available, we recommend dropping the settings to High, which will result in a frame rate of 40-60 FPS. While the performance of the ASUS G11CB Gaming PC in the tested configuration was satisfactory in our gaming tests, we cannot help but wonder how a configuration with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 and an Intel Core i5 would perform in the same tests. Our guess is that there would be a much better match between the performance of the CPU and the graphics card. Loading times were noticeably faster when the games were run from the SSD, especially when playing XCOM2, which has notoriously poor loading times on regular drives. All applications felt snappy and start-up and shutdown times were very short. An interesting fact is that the fans keep spinning for a few seconds after the system shuts down, probably to prevent overheat from heat buildup within the case. Which brings us to our next topic, temperatures. While gaming, we kept Core Temp in the background to check the temperature of the CPU cores. The temperature never exceeded 158 degrees Fahrenheit or 70 degrees Celsius, which is well within specs for the Intel Core i7 CPU. Similarly, the temperature of the graphics card was well within the comfort zone, reaching 176 degrees Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius) during our benchmark sessions. The only real problem was the temperature of the SSD, which exceeded by far the recommended temperature range. During our tests, we recorded a scorching 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius), a temperature which can damage the drive with time. We suspect this was either a defective SSD or a faulty sensor, and although we had absolutely no operating issues with the drive, even the integrated SMART monitoring system raised the alarm about the temperature on occasion. Since the PC case was sealed on the unit we tested, we could not verify the actual temperature. The noise level of the fans is low and only in gaming sessions will you hear the fans increasing their speed. Even at that point, the noise level of the unit is acceptable and won't disturb the user. We also enjoyed fiddling with the color and brightness of the case lights and we must say, the PC looks really nice in a dark room. The wireless connection worked just fine and although the network latency of a wireless connection is still higher than that of a traditional, wired one (a critical aspect when playing first-person shooters), we never experienced any issue with the WiFi connection. The ASUS G11CB Gaming PC performed well in our tests and felt very quick in applications and games. We feel that the CPU is a bit of an overkill compared to the graphics card. The CPU can easily handle a much more powerful card and we think that unless you want to use the PC for 3D rendering and design, an Intel Core i5 paired with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 would make a more balanced configuration.

Verdict

The ASUS G11CB Gaming PC is a good choice for PC enthusiasts and gamers who don't want to build their desktop computer themselves. It has good configuration options, good connectivity thanks to the integrated wireless adapter, it looks good and it is quiet. The system in its tested configuration is very good for gamers who want to record and stream gameplay content and for users who want 1080p gaming with little compromise, without breaking the bank. More demanding gamers or users who want 4K (Ultra HD) gaming would need to look at the top specs for the unit, with the NVIDIA GeForce 980 GTX graphics card and 32GB of RAM memory.