YouTube Ads Told Us to Buy This - Redux Gaming PC Review

The Case of the Overpriced Pre-Built Computer: A Review of Redux's Td500

When it comes to pre-built computers, there are many options available on the market. However, not all of them offer good value for money. In this review, we'll take a closer look at Redux's Td500, a computer that's priced at $1,420 but falls short in terms of performance and value.

One of the first things to note about the Td500 is its case. While it's a well-built case that can handle multiple fans, it's not worth the extra cost. The case alone costs over $100, which could be allocated elsewhere or used to purchase a cheaper computer. Additionally, the cooling system is overkill for this build, and a stock cooler would be more than sufficient.

The power supply is another component that raises some questions. According to Redux's own pricing table, the digital storm power supply can be replaced with a lower-powered option without affecting performance. This could potentially save around $75, which could be used to improve other aspects of the computer. However, it's unclear whether Digital Storm intends to step down the power supply itself or simply use a different model.

The real issue with the Td500 is its component selection. While Redux claims that it has assembled a competent build, the components don't match up well in terms of value and performance. The video card, for example, is not worth the price tag, and buying it separately on eBay would be cheaper and potentially less expensive.

In terms of performance, the Td500 doesn't hold up well against other pre-built computers on the market. It's clear that Redux has prioritized aesthetics over raw performance, which may appeal to some but won't justify the extra cost for others. When compared to Dell, the Td500 actually performs poorly, despite being priced similarly.

Despite these issues, the build process itself was competent. The computer was assembled properly, and the components were installed without any major issues. However, this doesn't necessarily justify the price tag. Redux's business model appears to be centered around selling a single case, the td500, which is why it has become overpriced.

The only real advantage of the Td500 is its serviceability. The computer is easily upgradeable, and standard components are used. This makes it a good option for those who want to customize their computer without having to rip it apart. However, this alone doesn't make up for the lack of value in other areas.

In conclusion, while the Td500 is not garbage, it's certainly not worth the price tag. The case is overpriced, and the cooling system could be simplified. The component selection is mismatched, and performance is lacking compared to other pre-built computers on the market. If you're in the market for a new computer, there are far better options available that offer better value for money.

Ultimately, Redux's Td500 serves as a cautionary tale about what can happen when a company prioritizes aesthetics over raw performance. While it may appeal to some consumers, it's not worth the extra cost for most people. If you're looking for a pre-built computer, be sure to shop around and compare prices before making a decision.

Recommendations:

* Consider buying a separate case instead of the Td500

* Use a stock cooler or opt for a lower-powered power supply option

* Buy the video card separately on eBay for cheaper

* Research other pre-built computers that offer better value for money

* Be cautious when shopping from companies that prioritize aesthetics over raw performance

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enspeaking of the GTX 1650 that's included in here is woefully inadequate compared to one the CPU and two the price of the computer is this just taped in place that kind of sucks yeah that's not great oh that's really loose take a look at that adding to our growing massive playlist of pre-built gaming PC reviews is now reducted this PC has been advertised very heavily on YouTube and media online and so we wanted to buy it especially after requests from our audience in the YouTube Community page when we last asked hey what should we review next in the pre-built line so this is a Redux good PC they have a couple different tiers good is one of them it's one of the cheapest ones and this was just under $1300 when we ordered it the uh components are not particularly impressive for the price 10400f and a gtx650 so that that's going to be a little rough but we're also looking for if they built the machine competently and that might be where Redux has an edge over some of its competition in the pre-built Market if you've seen some of the other things we've reviewed let's get started before that this video is brought to you by us and store. Gamers nexus.net after months of production our next round of GN tear down toolkits now has an arrival date and is on back order on the store these toolkits have been an extremely high demand since we started making them a few years ago so if you want to guarantee that you get one from the next run while also helping us soak the cost on evaluating even more previous build gaming PCs back order one of them from the store today the tool kits include 10 highquality tools with matched rod and handle lengths at 100 mm each excellent for good balance and use and for providing good torque while remaining portable the tools include custom ground down hex heads that are flattened for small GPU screws and they're also ground down externally to give more clearance against small components we also include common Allen Torx and Phillips drivers and a convenient roll bag for transport visit store. Gamers nexus.net to back order your set of longlasting tools today so first we'll put the specs list on the screen this was a 10400 F and 1650 build the 1650 at the time was listed by Redux as $39 the MSRP as a reminder is $49 however the retail at the time when we checked this is about a month ago was $365 it's closer to when we ordered it so given that it does appear like Redux is sticking closer to the truth than not when it advertises that it doesn't charge extra for components it just charges a build fee which it claims is $75 uh it is still massively overpriced but if it's at least not a lie then it's more of market conditions as opposed to just BS marketing which it's more market conditions more tenable between the two so on the specs table what we've done has gone through and collect the retail price for as close comparison components as we could find and it does come out pretty favorable for Redux where it's not you're not spending that much more now yes you can pick things that make more sense one of the things in that list you'll see or in the computer you'll see is a liquid cooler and it's something like is it six fans I think it's like six fans in here we'll go over that but that's just it's the wrong place to spend money obviously for a system that has a 1650 in it so we disagree with the part selection but uh it doesn't look like you're spending much more if you were to build this exact system which we're not to be clear we're not recommending that if you built this exact system it'd be pretty close in price so again our biggest reason for looking at this was the feedback from the YouTube Community page you've all certainly seen it in ads at this point the reason Redux has popped up out of nowhere um and has been able to throw the massive amounts of money it has been able to at advertising is because it's not just a startup noname brand it is in fact a spin-off of some kind of digital storm which has been around a very long time at this point wellestablished system integrator and uh pre built PC Builder and so it's not Redux didn't just spawn out of nothing and start spending I don't even know maybe potentially Millions but at least hundreds of thousands on Advertising uh it does in fact have a larger company behind it so a couple things as we get into this the support and the turnaround time those are very important factors uh most of the PCS we've reviewed thus far in the pre-built List have been pretty quick to get in they haven't taken a long time except for the Alienware system and the HP system was a bit problematic this one did however take a long time to ship uh when we ordered it and just before we ordered it there was a statement that said your pre-built PC will ship within 10 to 14 days of us getting it built so it looks like it'll get there or ship sooner than it actually does technically they're not inaccurate it's just it's worded in a way where you might think it arrives sooner we ordered this August 16th it is currently October 18th when we're filming this uh and we received it last week so it took couple months to get here it was very expensive we had basically no feedback from Redux up until the point we emailed them and said where is it at which point they actually were extremely prompt and were very helpful uh provided links helped us out with figuring out when it would arrive so actually redox did a great job once we reached out and asked for an update and for that they do get good marks because support's important and if you ever have an order even if it's for our store for example you should always email first to ask for help cuz the companies that are actually trying to get you the product will respond Redux did that so that was a good start okay we're going to get started on the tear down and the benchmarking uh to be very clear Redux has never run an ad against our Channel normally we don't have to say a a negative we don't have to say this company hasn't run an ad on our Channel but just because Redux has been so spend heavy on Advertising we did want to point that out we haven't taken any money from them uh we have however given them money and that's for this computer okay time to take apart the Redux PC it's about $1,300 a good timing because our toolkits have just arrived back on back order so if you want to get one they've been out of stock for a while the case is a td500 we'll talk about this a lot during the review I won't spend too much time talking about it now but this is a case we've reviewed and we reviewed it positively okay so internally it's a computer and that's a good thing not because we weren't expecting a computer but because it's using standard Parts uh or at least from what we can see thus far we've got a standard form factor motherboard that's Micro ATX we have a standard but completely Overkill and unnecessary in a way that's not helpful actually liquid cooler and the reason it's completely overkiller unhelpful is just because you're spending a lot for something that this can be handled with a stock cooler especially because of the four fans that are included in the case as Redux ships it I think the original td500 might be three fans talk about that a little more later but they're putting four fans in here and then you got to push pole setup on the radiator which is just not beneficial for a 65 watt heat load you will barely see an impact from push pole like this on a 200 watt heat load or 250 watt heat load let alone 65 where stock cooler with an open Panel with one fan would be sufficient so way Overkill here and in a way that uh is contributing to cost where all of this money should probably be spent on this uh and then they wouldn't be in as bad of a spot as they will be later when we show you but in terms of the rest of it kill Management's okay I can see that some of these front IO headers and we get a closer up shot of this in a moment are actually not fully seated so that's not great that could be QC it could maybe be shipping uh but either way that's that's not something we want to see two sticks of ram that is great to see sadly very rare with pre-builts for some reason so let's take these out see what they've put in here so there's the ram it is this Patriot Patriot Viper Ram uh and it's going to be a 3200 MHz kit but it's not running at that speed we'll talk about that later as well because they technically spec this as a b460 board but what I'm seeing here this is a b560 m Pro e so it is actually a better board than it was technically specified and um that's just stock availability b560 is unlocked for memory for the uh the non-as skes so this memory could run at 3200 but they're not doing that so that's very unfortunate waste of potential there heat spreaders aren't necessary but it is a mark of quality at least uh typically is is uh associated with higher quality memory not always it's not not because the heat spreader just because they're spending more on it speaking of the GTX 1650 that's included in here is wul inadequate compared to one the CPU and to the price of the computer standard video card here you can see it's a cheap I it's a 1650 doesn't need a lot of cooling but uh not seeing any copper in there there's definitely no copper heat pipes that is just an aluminum fin stack now as far as Patrick and I are concerned we would like to see this with the tubes mounted down as long as there's slack for it this is okay the pump is not at the top so you've got the radiator tank a little bit above the pump it's not the highest point in the loop so it's not going to run too dry and die but uh this will over time affect minimally the Acoustics you'll get some more bubbling or pump wine noises occasionally as stuff moves around and um ideally it should be tubes down but it's not not as bad as the pumping at the top of the loop still not how how we would like to see it built though especially for like high volume where you're worried about every bit of longevity mattering but look at this has Digital Storm been watching Gamers Nexus look at the orientation of this all-in-one cooler motherboard quality no vrm heat sink on this pretty simple board for a 10400f you might not ever really need it uh we'd have to do a separate board analysis we cared about that but there's so much cooling in here with four fans two more up here for the push pull setup open air up at the top where there's no fans but air can move freely based on the pressure created by these fans there's so much air movement around here with a 10 400f at 65 Watts the vrm is going to be fine it's only really going to struggle if they keep using this board for a high end CPU so uh if they're using this board for like a 10 900k or 11 then that's a problem so here's a fan header we're going to talk about this in more detail later Patrick had a lot of thoughts on how this was set up you see SATA running up here to the fan header uh we've got standard pwm fan connections we have argb connections is this just taped in place that kind of sucks yeah this is kind of stupid so I like how they've got holes where they've filled them or they never punched them out that are four screws but uh instead of using those and securing it with screws somewhere they'd have to not really retool but they would have to modify the the chassis and presumably they're ordering enough volume from Cooler Master here where they could get a modification made but anyway yeah they just instead of using the screws here they just went with tape I guess it reduces risk if there's a maybe we should check it for a a potential short it certainly reduces risk of a screw scraping the PCB and causing a short if there's 12vt plane that's exposed but that shouldn't be happening uh then again talk to I guess fractal and ntxt about that um so anyway it's not particularly strong this feels like it's going to come off with age as well just like this would so I I'd like to see something else for that kill management looks pretty good this is all standard stuff zip ties everywhere and excessive amount of zip ties but very well cable managed PC let's get the board out okay that was definitely on there how's the p paste paste application is not great I don't know if this is being pre-applied by Cooler Master Redux is ultimately responsible for everything or you're kind of treating them as a hub that bottom Corner's got no coverage and you can see that here zero coverage there look it's not a big deal it's 65 Watts uh it's cooling just fine this is massive overkill for the CPU so I'm not really complaining about this particular setup because it's okay but um you really want to contact the whole IHS for cooling just always general rule so that's all fine way overkill on the cooling not necessarily bad but system like this money should be spent elsewhere it's not going to be competitive with high Cooling and nothing to cool that's of value fairly standard just a it's an off-the-shelf motherboard this is a good thing they haven't done some weird proprietary stuff so standard board we've got a by6 PCI slot you see by wiring and got a screw that's just stuck in there I dislodge that later so it's 80 plus gold 700 watt we've got a whole piece on 80 plus if you want to learn more about it uh a lot of people think it means more than it does terms of power capability his maximum power 700 Watts obviously you can get all this is good I like to see this uh 12 volts right there 12 volts you can get all 700 on 12 volts that's great Andrew has informed me that the case needs to be turned around because in his words the case's butt is facing the camera and that might get us demonetized so uh that's the Redux tear down we've seen enough at this point it is not incompetent in fact it is built fairly competently uh not many major mistakes most of them were things that could be potentially ascribed to shipping damage so better than we've seen in a lot of instances for pre-built there's value there unfortunately the price is so high that the value diminishes once we get into benchmarks which is what we're going to do right now time to get into the gaming benchmarks for this as always the Silicon parts are made by other parties that'd be Intel and Nvidia in the case of the Redux PC performance derived from these parts is pretty hard for an oem or an SI to screw up but it is possible the bigger thing that we look for is the component selection and the combination or how well the CPU and GPU work together Ram sometimes comes into play as well we'll start our gaming test with cyberpunk at 1080p the Redux PC ends up being actually worse value than the Dell G5 5000 and average FPS which is an impressive feat although the extra stick of RAM and the Redux means that it held better frame time consistency that's worth something but it's not worth $370 we don't recommend it but even buying the Dell G5 and installing $70 of ram would be a far better deal the $1,000 ABS Challenger blows away the Redux outperforming it by an absolutely staggering 61% while the Redux costs 27% more money and abs isn't an outlier here cyber Powers 3200 BSD had similar performance improvements at about the same price reduction the only real problem with the Cyber power PC was it CPU Cooler but that can be easily dealt with even if you bought the BST and paid someone to replace the cooler for you or just took the panel off it'd be better value and cheaper than the Redux while performing better so this is a horrible start for the Redux regardless of how competently it's built this doesn't really make any sense from a money perspective with Red Dead Redemption 2 a heavily GPU bound test in our suite the Redux ended up about the same as iby power system with a gtx650 and a 10105 F the CPU is worse in the iy power box and that'll matter in CPU bound tasks like maybe seven zip or something but the performance is so bound on the GPU that redux's Advantage becomes Irrelevant for some games like this one we're close to run to- run variance or error here with a 1 FPS Gap and the difference in specific GPU also has an effect from minor changes to frequency Redux has thoroughly at this point embarrassed itself in this testing performing actually worse or about the same at best as a $680 computer that arrived with the video card ripped out of the pcie slot that's not to speak of the $1,000 Challenger or the $1,000 cyberpower 3200 BST both of which outdid the Redux by 50% and cost less and so again we're we're not wishing for things that are are impossible here we're not being unreasonable with our price expectations because two computers on this chart exist that have far better performance and cost less and the I of power build that's on this one we don't recommend it there were a lot of reasons we didn't like it but half the price if given these two options it would make more sense to buy that and then upgrade from there Rainbow Six Siege drives another nail into the coffin the Redux only ran at 132 FPS average actually worse than the $680 iy power box once again that's because because despite having a 10400f the value of a good CPU is limited by the performance of the included GPU sticking a 1650 into anything and expecting high performance is a Fool's errand and this is clearly the limiting factor lows are a little bit better and that's likely thanks to the CPU but not in any way which is noticeable to a human nor important for the price so although this is more than playable obviously it isn't good value the Challenger in the BST once again land about 50% ahead on average FPS cyber power Tech had worse lows and that's thanks to the memory configuration so Redux outdid them there however another stick of RAM is cheap and the ABS box already had it and to the credit of other companies Dell iby power HP Lenovo they do all have boxes in $1,200 range that if you buy right would outdo the Redux here as well for $1,300 you'd expect 1440p would be a reasonable request that's fine for Rainbow 6 at least where the game isn't too demanding overall the Redux ends up worse than everyone else once again allowing the one ,000 computers to establish a 59% advantage and allowing really is the right word here Redux chose to bottleneck itself on this component selection thermals are up next this is the best cooled pre-built we've tested and that's because the Intel i5 10400f is a locked 65 wat TDP CPU and Redux has some reason slapped a 240 mm CLC on top of it which is something you're paying for on top of all of that the case has a total of six fans for this we don't have a fan curve complicate matters here more on that later so we can see that after an extended full system torture test with 100% CPU and GPU loads the CPU settled at 56° Celsius in 21c ambient for contacts the Dell G5 5000 got up to almost 90° using the exact same CPU in its test we tried increasing the pump speed past its default setting but this had no significant effect on thermals for this one and so we're not bothering to show the line here the GPU stayed fairly cool as well with the single fan GTX 1650 hitting steady state at 69° with hot spot temperatures of 80° the combination of extremely low power Parts with unnecessarily powerful cooling means that thermals are not a concern for this system so at least that's done well here because of the unnecessarily large liquid cooler that wastes budget the redu system is extremely quiet and because of the static system fan speed it doesn't get much louder Under full load running the noise test using our standard methodology the system ramped from a near silent noise reading that's close to our noise floor to just under 35 DBA as the GPU hit its maximum speed that's still extremely quiet for a system Under full load with this level of cooling performance so Redux does well for this one also if only due to overspending on cooling now as for the fan configuration there are two fan headers on the motherboard both of which are used the three- pin DC pump plug is connected directly to the Cy fan one board and the header and it's set to 7.2 volts maximum 12 meanwhile the CPU fan one header is connected via a 4 Pin pwm cable to a Fan Hub so this Fan Hub controls all four argb case fans as well as the two CLC fans take redux's claim of free 4 cm master fans $72 value with a mountain of salt because the normal retail td500 RGB already comes with three argb fans however the fan controls are absolutely awful it's not explained Anywhere But The Fan Hub has three speed settings low medium and external control out of the box The Fan Hub was set to medium which meant that for our stock testing it ignored all pwm input and ran the case fans between 600 and 700 RPM constantly at least it made testing simpler but the only way to cycle between fan speeds is with the cheap battery powered RGB remote which you should immediately duct tape to the side of the case to avoid losing there's no visual feedback at all for which speed setting is currently selected and also if the CPU is idling for example the external control speed might be slower than the static medium speed so hitting the fan plus button can actually make the fan spin slower if the cvu cooler weren't such overkill for 10400f even at low speeds this mess could have caused some serious problems by invisibly limiting the fan speed rather than just being an annoyance finally a quick power test just to show you where it lands the GPU loaded in gaming has full system power draw ranging around 140 Watts that's less than anything else on our chart containing a discrete GPU but as we've seen the drop in power here correlates with the drop in gaming performance time to talk about some of the setup potential for bloat Weare and the installation assistance Redux has printed a short quick start guide on the inner flap of the Box including a valuable reminder to connect your keyboard and mouse to the P that sounds painful but we're willing to try anything want a slightly more comprehensive quickart guide is included in the accessory kit and it's one of the better guides we've seen with the pre-built the illustrations in the guide are of The Cooler Master td500 the case that was actually sent with our system and there are specific instruction about removing its side panel that may be because the td500 is the only case that Redux uses right now but it's still nice the illustrations are simple and to the point and more detailed and genuinely helpful explanations are relegated to the footnotes the rest of the accessory kit is mainly spare Hardware from the various components used in the system built this includes alternate mounting hardware and paste for the 240 mil CLC and the antenna for the wireless card the exception is a live Windows 10 flash drive 32 gigabyt which Redux includes with the $110 Windows 10 home item on the bill this is intended to be used as a DIY recovery tool flash drives are cheap so not a lot of credit there and Windows 10 live media creation is free but this is an extremely useful tool and including it displays a level of trust in the consumer's basic mental faculties that we doubt will ever see from big companies like HP or Dell the level of convenience offered here is of significant value for end users the case in the cooler RGB patterns aren't synced and the cooler RGB isn't affected by the remote control in the accessory kit and there's a constant quiet ticking sound from one of the front fans but otherwise the PC powered on without issue after we tested its setup instructions we didn't notice any big mistakes in the bio settings and it's likely that they were left unaltered from the factory default bios is a couple versions old dating from April of 2021 so we'd like to see a newer version installed subsequent updates have notes about improved CPU and GPU compatibility as well as Windows 11 support as of September 15th the board itself is an msib b560 M Pro e which is technically an upgrade from the unnamed quote b460 chipset motherboard on our invoice the CPU SSD and GPU are all pcie gen 3 Hardware so the upgrade doesn't help us here but it's still a good thing XMP was not applied again but in this instance it's difficult for us to blame Redux too much the configurator page for Redux build states that with a 10400f memory speed will be 2666 MHz which it was out of the box the page doesn't allow selecting a specific motherboard so the implication is that a 10400f the CPU included in our good tier preset build you would get a motherboard from redux's stock that doesn't support CPU or memory overclocking the board we received does support memory overclocking and the 3200 MHz XMP on the memory received can and should be enabled but that's not technically what we paid for we just happened to look out and get a combination of Hardware that supports XMP b560 added this over b460 and marked a significant change for Intel the pre-installed Nvidia driver was version 47141 from July of this year which is fairly recent as far as pre-builts are concerned one PCI device driver was missing on first boot in device manager but the system functioned normally and the driver successfully updated when connected to the internet this still should have been installed and it is a Miss for Redux that the other companies haven't really missed in our test yet as for bloatware there's only the standard Windows 10 junk there aren't any obvious custom helpful editions from Redux like we've seen elsewhere and to be clear those additions aren't actually helpful so Redux is done well here there's zero zero business whatsoever to be using The Cooler Master 240 uh liquid cooler in here the 240 mil CLC because it's just it's not only wholly unnecessary for a CPU that's like 65 Watts Under full load uh it is pulling money it's siphoning money away from other components that could use it more so the video card is a fantastic example an extra 75 bucks is enough to bump it up a little bit uh right now the good tier from Redux as of uh October includes a660 instead it's priced at $1,420 it's not even better value uh because a lot of the systems we were looking at on those charts earlier they're 1660 supers and many of them were cheaper still now prices fluctuate a little bit based on availability so when you check uh their website it may be cheaper it may be different components so that's standard but overall we're not seeing good value here and even though the support was pretty good for what we had to use it we haven't tested everything of it but for what we had to use it for is pretty good it's just that's that's a massive upcharge you're paying for basically the privilege of being able to quickly ask where your computer is and you know if it hasn't shipped from most other compan even massive oems like d HP you can still cancel it online pretty easily so it's just it that doesn't seem worth it to us to get something that's this far down the stack and performance for $1,300 because again you've got it doesn't it's not even better than Dell in this one in terms of the overall average performance it is however far better than Dell in terms of the serviceability uh and the fact that you can upgrade it the fact that standard components the fact that it is built competently by someone who has built more than one computer in their life so those are all good things it's just there's not enough to justify the expense so what we would like to see in terms of tangible changes that we think make sense the case is overkill this case actually we reviewed very positively when it came out but its pric has crept up over time $120 $130 too much for something like this and there's far better options out there now Redux appears to be bulk buying the td500 because it's the only thing it sells and it custom badges it so we understand that they can't just easily swap in another case uh it's not that simple when you're running a business with supply chain and volume so we understand that but there's wasted money on the case versus the rest of the components for a build of this tier there's absolutely wasted money on the cooler a stock cooler would be completely adequate if there's still using this case this is so many fans it's all of the fans in fact and the cooler being a stock cooler at 65 Watts that's fine it'll save something like 75 bucks according to redux's own pricing table that could be allocated elsewhere or it could be cheaper as a computer which would improve the value so those are both options the power supply is tough to comment on it's a digital storm power supply I don't think it's sold retail or at least not commonly so difficult to know exactly what the value of that is uh technically they could step it down a little bit and be fine but it does appear that Digital Storm wants its own thing to be in there so either way you don't have to do that if you were to build your own but at the end of the day if you're buying a pre-built hopefully at this point it's not for the video card because if you just want the video card you can go get ripped off on eBay and you'll still be spending less money than on one of these things and you'll be less ripped off than one of these things not just Redux but basically any of them there was a period where it made sense to buy a pre-built four video card now it's not that much better off than if you especially if it's got uh proprietary Parts in it you're better off just buying it on eBay getting scalped there if you actually want a pre-built computer and you're not going to just rip it apart and build your own thing with the parts that came in it then buying from someone else seems maybe the better option from a value perspective so uh to wrap things up very succinctly the build was competent they knew what they were doing they assembled it properly we didn't really have any massive issues with the way it was assembled the component selection was mismatched in a way that was poor for value and uh it performed poorly compared to other pre-builts in terms of the price to Performance ratio as it were but it's not garbage so uh that's good it's not e- waste guess that's a good thing at this point that's what we're shooting for so uh not competitive but not offensive either for the most part a little bit offensive on the price that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more you can go to store. Gamers access.net if you'd like to help us out directly and get something quality in return or you can go to patreon.com Gamers Nexis for behind the scenes videos thank you for watching we'll see you all next timespeaking of the GTX 1650 that's included in here is woefully inadequate compared to one the CPU and two the price of the computer is this just taped in place that kind of sucks yeah that's not great oh that's really loose take a look at that adding to our growing massive playlist of pre-built gaming PC reviews is now reducted this PC has been advertised very heavily on YouTube and media online and so we wanted to buy it especially after requests from our audience in the YouTube Community page when we last asked hey what should we review next in the pre-built line so this is a Redux good PC they have a couple different tiers good is one of them it's one of the cheapest ones and this was just under $1300 when we ordered it the uh components are not particularly impressive for the price 10400f and a gtx650 so that that's going to be a little rough but we're also looking for if they built the machine competently and that might be where Redux has an edge over some of its competition in the pre-built Market if you've seen some of the other things we've reviewed let's get started before that this video is brought to you by us and store. Gamers nexus.net after months of production our next round of GN tear down toolkits now has an arrival date and is on back order on the store these toolkits have been an extremely high demand since we started making them a few years ago so if you want to guarantee that you get one from the next run while also helping us soak the cost on evaluating even more previous build gaming PCs back order one of them from the store today the tool kits include 10 highquality tools with matched rod and handle lengths at 100 mm each excellent for good balance and use and for providing good torque while remaining portable the tools include custom ground down hex heads that are flattened for small GPU screws and they're also ground down externally to give more clearance against small components we also include common Allen Torx and Phillips drivers and a convenient roll bag for transport visit store. Gamers nexus.net to back order your set of longlasting tools today so first we'll put the specs list on the screen this was a 10400 F and 1650 build the 1650 at the time was listed by Redux as $39 the MSRP as a reminder is $49 however the retail at the time when we checked this is about a month ago was $365 it's closer to when we ordered it so given that it does appear like Redux is sticking closer to the truth than not when it advertises that it doesn't charge extra for components it just charges a build fee which it claims is $75 uh it is still massively overpriced but if it's at least not a lie then it's more of market conditions as opposed to just BS marketing which it's more market conditions more tenable between the two so on the specs table what we've done has gone through and collect the retail price for as close comparison components as we could find and it does come out pretty favorable for Redux where it's not you're not spending that much more now yes you can pick things that make more sense one of the things in that list you'll see or in the computer you'll see is a liquid cooler and it's something like is it six fans I think it's like six fans in here we'll go over that but that's just it's the wrong place to spend money obviously for a system that has a 1650 in it so we disagree with the part selection but uh it doesn't look like you're spending much more if you were to build this exact system which we're not to be clear we're not recommending that if you built this exact system it'd be pretty close in price so again our biggest reason for looking at this was the feedback from the YouTube Community page you've all certainly seen it in ads at this point the reason Redux has popped up out of nowhere um and has been able to throw the massive amounts of money it has been able to at advertising is because it's not just a startup noname brand it is in fact a spin-off of some kind of digital storm which has been around a very long time at this point wellestablished system integrator and uh pre built PC Builder and so it's not Redux didn't just spawn out of nothing and start spending I don't even know maybe potentially Millions but at least hundreds of thousands on Advertising uh it does in fact have a larger company behind it so a couple things as we get into this the support and the turnaround time those are very important factors uh most of the PCS we've reviewed thus far in the pre-built List have been pretty quick to get in they haven't taken a long time except for the Alienware system and the HP system was a bit problematic this one did however take a long time to ship uh when we ordered it and just before we ordered it there was a statement that said your pre-built PC will ship within 10 to 14 days of us getting it built so it looks like it'll get there or ship sooner than it actually does technically they're not inaccurate it's just it's worded in a way where you might think it arrives sooner we ordered this August 16th it is currently October 18th when we're filming this uh and we received it last week so it took couple months to get here it was very expensive we had basically no feedback from Redux up until the point we emailed them and said where is it at which point they actually were extremely prompt and were very helpful uh provided links helped us out with figuring out when it would arrive so actually redox did a great job once we reached out and asked for an update and for that they do get good marks because support's important and if you ever have an order even if it's for our store for example you should always email first to ask for help cuz the companies that are actually trying to get you the product will respond Redux did that so that was a good start okay we're going to get started on the tear down and the benchmarking uh to be very clear Redux has never run an ad against our Channel normally we don't have to say a a negative we don't have to say this company hasn't run an ad on our Channel but just because Redux has been so spend heavy on Advertising we did want to point that out we haven't taken any money from them uh we have however given them money and that's for this computer okay time to take apart the Redux PC it's about $1,300 a good timing because our toolkits have just arrived back on back order so if you want to get one they've been out of stock for a while the case is a td500 we'll talk about this a lot during the review I won't spend too much time talking about it now but this is a case we've reviewed and we reviewed it positively okay so internally it's a computer and that's a good thing not because we weren't expecting a computer but because it's using standard Parts uh or at least from what we can see thus far we've got a standard form factor motherboard that's Micro ATX we have a standard but completely Overkill and unnecessary in a way that's not helpful actually liquid cooler and the reason it's completely overkiller unhelpful is just because you're spending a lot for something that this can be handled with a stock cooler especially because of the four fans that are included in the case as Redux ships it I think the original td500 might be three fans talk about that a little more later but they're putting four fans in here and then you got to push pole setup on the radiator which is just not beneficial for a 65 watt heat load you will barely see an impact from push pole like this on a 200 watt heat load or 250 watt heat load let alone 65 where stock cooler with an open Panel with one fan would be sufficient so way Overkill here and in a way that uh is contributing to cost where all of this money should probably be spent on this uh and then they wouldn't be in as bad of a spot as they will be later when we show you but in terms of the rest of it kill Management's okay I can see that some of these front IO headers and we get a closer up shot of this in a moment are actually not fully seated so that's not great that could be QC it could maybe be shipping uh but either way that's that's not something we want to see two sticks of ram that is great to see sadly very rare with pre-builts for some reason so let's take these out see what they've put in here so there's the ram it is this Patriot Patriot Viper Ram uh and it's going to be a 3200 MHz kit but it's not running at that speed we'll talk about that later as well because they technically spec this as a b460 board but what I'm seeing here this is a b560 m Pro e so it is actually a better board than it was technically specified and um that's just stock availability b560 is unlocked for memory for the uh the non-as skes so this memory could run at 3200 but they're not doing that so that's very unfortunate waste of potential there heat spreaders aren't necessary but it is a mark of quality at least uh typically is is uh associated with higher quality memory not always it's not not because the heat spreader just because they're spending more on it speaking of the GTX 1650 that's included in here is wul inadequate compared to one the CPU and to the price of the computer standard video card here you can see it's a cheap I it's a 1650 doesn't need a lot of cooling but uh not seeing any copper in there there's definitely no copper heat pipes that is just an aluminum fin stack now as far as Patrick and I are concerned we would like to see this with the tubes mounted down as long as there's slack for it this is okay the pump is not at the top so you've got the radiator tank a little bit above the pump it's not the highest point in the loop so it's not going to run too dry and die but uh this will over time affect minimally the Acoustics you'll get some more bubbling or pump wine noises occasionally as stuff moves around and um ideally it should be tubes down but it's not not as bad as the pumping at the top of the loop still not how how we would like to see it built though especially for like high volume where you're worried about every bit of longevity mattering but look at this has Digital Storm been watching Gamers Nexus look at the orientation of this all-in-one cooler motherboard quality no vrm heat sink on this pretty simple board for a 10400f you might not ever really need it uh we'd have to do a separate board analysis we cared about that but there's so much cooling in here with four fans two more up here for the push pull setup open air up at the top where there's no fans but air can move freely based on the pressure created by these fans there's so much air movement around here with a 10 400f at 65 Watts the vrm is going to be fine it's only really going to struggle if they keep using this board for a high end CPU so uh if they're using this board for like a 10 900k or 11 then that's a problem so here's a fan header we're going to talk about this in more detail later Patrick had a lot of thoughts on how this was set up you see SATA running up here to the fan header uh we've got standard pwm fan connections we have argb connections is this just taped in place that kind of sucks yeah this is kind of stupid so I like how they've got holes where they've filled them or they never punched them out that are four screws but uh instead of using those and securing it with screws somewhere they'd have to not really retool but they would have to modify the the chassis and presumably they're ordering enough volume from Cooler Master here where they could get a modification made but anyway yeah they just instead of using the screws here they just went with tape I guess it reduces risk if there's a maybe we should check it for a a potential short it certainly reduces risk of a screw scraping the PCB and causing a short if there's 12vt plane that's exposed but that shouldn't be happening uh then again talk to I guess fractal and ntxt about that um so anyway it's not particularly strong this feels like it's going to come off with age as well just like this would so I I'd like to see something else for that kill management looks pretty good this is all standard stuff zip ties everywhere and excessive amount of zip ties but very well cable managed PC let's get the board out okay that was definitely on there how's the p paste paste application is not great I don't know if this is being pre-applied by Cooler Master Redux is ultimately responsible for everything or you're kind of treating them as a hub that bottom Corner's got no coverage and you can see that here zero coverage there look it's not a big deal it's 65 Watts uh it's cooling just fine this is massive overkill for the CPU so I'm not really complaining about this particular setup because it's okay but um you really want to contact the whole IHS for cooling just always general rule so that's all fine way overkill on the cooling not necessarily bad but system like this money should be spent elsewhere it's not going to be competitive with high Cooling and nothing to cool that's of value fairly standard just a it's an off-the-shelf motherboard this is a good thing they haven't done some weird proprietary stuff so standard board we've got a by6 PCI slot you see by wiring and got a screw that's just stuck in there I dislodge that later so it's 80 plus gold 700 watt we've got a whole piece on 80 plus if you want to learn more about it uh a lot of people think it means more than it does terms of power capability his maximum power 700 Watts obviously you can get all this is good I like to see this uh 12 volts right there 12 volts you can get all 700 on 12 volts that's great Andrew has informed me that the case needs to be turned around because in his words the case's butt is facing the camera and that might get us demonetized so uh that's the Redux tear down we've seen enough at this point it is not incompetent in fact it is built fairly competently uh not many major mistakes most of them were things that could be potentially ascribed to shipping damage so better than we've seen in a lot of instances for pre-built there's value there unfortunately the price is so high that the value diminishes once we get into benchmarks which is what we're going to do right now time to get into the gaming benchmarks for this as always the Silicon parts are made by other parties that'd be Intel and Nvidia in the case of the Redux PC performance derived from these parts is pretty hard for an oem or an SI to screw up but it is possible the bigger thing that we look for is the component selection and the combination or how well the CPU and GPU work together Ram sometimes comes into play as well we'll start our gaming test with cyberpunk at 1080p the Redux PC ends up being actually worse value than the Dell G5 5000 and average FPS which is an impressive feat although the extra stick of RAM and the Redux means that it held better frame time consistency that's worth something but it's not worth $370 we don't recommend it but even buying the Dell G5 and installing $70 of ram would be a far better deal the $1,000 ABS Challenger blows away the Redux outperforming it by an absolutely staggering 61% while the Redux costs 27% more money and abs isn't an outlier here cyber Powers 3200 BSD had similar performance improvements at about the same price reduction the only real problem with the Cyber power PC was it CPU Cooler but that can be easily dealt with even if you bought the BST and paid someone to replace the cooler for you or just took the panel off it'd be better value and cheaper than the Redux while performing better so this is a horrible start for the Redux regardless of how competently it's built this doesn't really make any sense from a money perspective with Red Dead Redemption 2 a heavily GPU bound test in our suite the Redux ended up about the same as iby power system with a gtx650 and a 10105 F the CPU is worse in the iy power box and that'll matter in CPU bound tasks like maybe seven zip or something but the performance is so bound on the GPU that redux's Advantage becomes Irrelevant for some games like this one we're close to run to- run variance or error here with a 1 FPS Gap and the difference in specific GPU also has an effect from minor changes to frequency Redux has thoroughly at this point embarrassed itself in this testing performing actually worse or about the same at best as a $680 computer that arrived with the video card ripped out of the pcie slot that's not to speak of the $1,000 Challenger or the $1,000 cyberpower 3200 BST both of which outdid the Redux by 50% and cost less and so again we're we're not wishing for things that are are impossible here we're not being unreasonable with our price expectations because two computers on this chart exist that have far better performance and cost less and the I of power build that's on this one we don't recommend it there were a lot of reasons we didn't like it but half the price if given these two options it would make more sense to buy that and then upgrade from there Rainbow Six Siege drives another nail into the coffin the Redux only ran at 132 FPS average actually worse than the $680 iy power box once again that's because because despite having a 10400f the value of a good CPU is limited by the performance of the included GPU sticking a 1650 into anything and expecting high performance is a Fool's errand and this is clearly the limiting factor lows are a little bit better and that's likely thanks to the CPU but not in any way which is noticeable to a human nor important for the price so although this is more than playable obviously it isn't good value the Challenger in the BST once again land about 50% ahead on average FPS cyber power Tech had worse lows and that's thanks to the memory configuration so Redux outdid them there however another stick of RAM is cheap and the ABS box already had it and to the credit of other companies Dell iby power HP Lenovo they do all have boxes in $1,200 range that if you buy right would outdo the Redux here as well for $1,300 you'd expect 1440p would be a reasonable request that's fine for Rainbow 6 at least where the game isn't too demanding overall the Redux ends up worse than everyone else once again allowing the one ,000 computers to establish a 59% advantage and allowing really is the right word here Redux chose to bottleneck itself on this component selection thermals are up next this is the best cooled pre-built we've tested and that's because the Intel i5 10400f is a locked 65 wat TDP CPU and Redux has some reason slapped a 240 mm CLC on top of it which is something you're paying for on top of all of that the case has a total of six fans for this we don't have a fan curve complicate matters here more on that later so we can see that after an extended full system torture test with 100% CPU and GPU loads the CPU settled at 56° Celsius in 21c ambient for contacts the Dell G5 5000 got up to almost 90° using the exact same CPU in its test we tried increasing the pump speed past its default setting but this had no significant effect on thermals for this one and so we're not bothering to show the line here the GPU stayed fairly cool as well with the single fan GTX 1650 hitting steady state at 69° with hot spot temperatures of 80° the combination of extremely low power Parts with unnecessarily powerful cooling means that thermals are not a concern for this system so at least that's done well here because of the unnecessarily large liquid cooler that wastes budget the redu system is extremely quiet and because of the static system fan speed it doesn't get much louder Under full load running the noise test using our standard methodology the system ramped from a near silent noise reading that's close to our noise floor to just under 35 DBA as the GPU hit its maximum speed that's still extremely quiet for a system Under full load with this level of cooling performance so Redux does well for this one also if only due to overspending on cooling now as for the fan configuration there are two fan headers on the motherboard both of which are used the three- pin DC pump plug is connected directly to the Cy fan one board and the header and it's set to 7.2 volts maximum 12 meanwhile the CPU fan one header is connected via a 4 Pin pwm cable to a Fan Hub so this Fan Hub controls all four argb case fans as well as the two CLC fans take redux's claim of free 4 cm master fans $72 value with a mountain of salt because the normal retail td500 RGB already comes with three argb fans however the fan controls are absolutely awful it's not explained Anywhere But The Fan Hub has three speed settings low medium and external control out of the box The Fan Hub was set to medium which meant that for our stock testing it ignored all pwm input and ran the case fans between 600 and 700 RPM constantly at least it made testing simpler but the only way to cycle between fan speeds is with the cheap battery powered RGB remote which you should immediately duct tape to the side of the case to avoid losing there's no visual feedback at all for which speed setting is currently selected and also if the CPU is idling for example the external control speed might be slower than the static medium speed so hitting the fan plus button can actually make the fan spin slower if the cvu cooler weren't such overkill for 10400f even at low speeds this mess could have caused some serious problems by invisibly limiting the fan speed rather than just being an annoyance finally a quick power test just to show you where it lands the GPU loaded in gaming has full system power draw ranging around 140 Watts that's less than anything else on our chart containing a discrete GPU but as we've seen the drop in power here correlates with the drop in gaming performance time to talk about some of the setup potential for bloat Weare and the installation assistance Redux has printed a short quick start guide on the inner flap of the Box including a valuable reminder to connect your keyboard and mouse to the P that sounds painful but we're willing to try anything want a slightly more comprehensive quickart guide is included in the accessory kit and it's one of the better guides we've seen with the pre-built the illustrations in the guide are of The Cooler Master td500 the case that was actually sent with our system and there are specific instruction about removing its side panel that may be because the td500 is the only case that Redux uses right now but it's still nice the illustrations are simple and to the point and more detailed and genuinely helpful explanations are relegated to the footnotes the rest of the accessory kit is mainly spare Hardware from the various components used in the system built this includes alternate mounting hardware and paste for the 240 mil CLC and the antenna for the wireless card the exception is a live Windows 10 flash drive 32 gigabyt which Redux includes with the $110 Windows 10 home item on the bill this is intended to be used as a DIY recovery tool flash drives are cheap so not a lot of credit there and Windows 10 live media creation is free but this is an extremely useful tool and including it displays a level of trust in the consumer's basic mental faculties that we doubt will ever see from big companies like HP or Dell the level of convenience offered here is of significant value for end users the case in the cooler RGB patterns aren't synced and the cooler RGB isn't affected by the remote control in the accessory kit and there's a constant quiet ticking sound from one of the front fans but otherwise the PC powered on without issue after we tested its setup instructions we didn't notice any big mistakes in the bio settings and it's likely that they were left unaltered from the factory default bios is a couple versions old dating from April of 2021 so we'd like to see a newer version installed subsequent updates have notes about improved CPU and GPU compatibility as well as Windows 11 support as of September 15th the board itself is an msib b560 M Pro e which is technically an upgrade from the unnamed quote b460 chipset motherboard on our invoice the CPU SSD and GPU are all pcie gen 3 Hardware so the upgrade doesn't help us here but it's still a good thing XMP was not applied again but in this instance it's difficult for us to blame Redux too much the configurator page for Redux build states that with a 10400f memory speed will be 2666 MHz which it was out of the box the page doesn't allow selecting a specific motherboard so the implication is that a 10400f the CPU included in our good tier preset build you would get a motherboard from redux's stock that doesn't support CPU or memory overclocking the board we received does support memory overclocking and the 3200 MHz XMP on the memory received can and should be enabled but that's not technically what we paid for we just happened to look out and get a combination of Hardware that supports XMP b560 added this over b460 and marked a significant change for Intel the pre-installed Nvidia driver was version 47141 from July of this year which is fairly recent as far as pre-builts are concerned one PCI device driver was missing on first boot in device manager but the system functioned normally and the driver successfully updated when connected to the internet this still should have been installed and it is a Miss for Redux that the other companies haven't really missed in our test yet as for bloatware there's only the standard Windows 10 junk there aren't any obvious custom helpful editions from Redux like we've seen elsewhere and to be clear those additions aren't actually helpful so Redux is done well here there's zero zero business whatsoever to be using The Cooler Master 240 uh liquid cooler in here the 240 mil CLC because it's just it's not only wholly unnecessary for a CPU that's like 65 Watts Under full load uh it is pulling money it's siphoning money away from other components that could use it more so the video card is a fantastic example an extra 75 bucks is enough to bump it up a little bit uh right now the good tier from Redux as of uh October includes a660 instead it's priced at $1,420 it's not even better value uh because a lot of the systems we were looking at on those charts earlier they're 1660 supers and many of them were cheaper still now prices fluctuate a little bit based on availability so when you check uh their website it may be cheaper it may be different components so that's standard but overall we're not seeing good value here and even though the support was pretty good for what we had to use it we haven't tested everything of it but for what we had to use it for is pretty good it's just that's that's a massive upcharge you're paying for basically the privilege of being able to quickly ask where your computer is and you know if it hasn't shipped from most other compan even massive oems like d HP you can still cancel it online pretty easily so it's just it that doesn't seem worth it to us to get something that's this far down the stack and performance for $1,300 because again you've got it doesn't it's not even better than Dell in this one in terms of the overall average performance it is however far better than Dell in terms of the serviceability uh and the fact that you can upgrade it the fact that standard components the fact that it is built competently by someone who has built more than one computer in their life so those are all good things it's just there's not enough to justify the expense so what we would like to see in terms of tangible changes that we think make sense the case is overkill this case actually we reviewed very positively when it came out but its pric has crept up over time $120 $130 too much for something like this and there's far better options out there now Redux appears to be bulk buying the td500 because it's the only thing it sells and it custom badges it so we understand that they can't just easily swap in another case uh it's not that simple when you're running a business with supply chain and volume so we understand that but there's wasted money on the case versus the rest of the components for a build of this tier there's absolutely wasted money on the cooler a stock cooler would be completely adequate if there's still using this case this is so many fans it's all of the fans in fact and the cooler being a stock cooler at 65 Watts that's fine it'll save something like 75 bucks according to redux's own pricing table that could be allocated elsewhere or it could be cheaper as a computer which would improve the value so those are both options the power supply is tough to comment on it's a digital storm power supply I don't think it's sold retail or at least not commonly so difficult to know exactly what the value of that is uh technically they could step it down a little bit and be fine but it does appear that Digital Storm wants its own thing to be in there so either way you don't have to do that if you were to build your own but at the end of the day if you're buying a pre-built hopefully at this point it's not for the video card because if you just want the video card you can go get ripped off on eBay and you'll still be spending less money than on one of these things and you'll be less ripped off than one of these things not just Redux but basically any of them there was a period where it made sense to buy a pre-built four video card now it's not that much better off than if you especially if it's got uh proprietary Parts in it you're better off just buying it on eBay getting scalped there if you actually want a pre-built computer and you're not going to just rip it apart and build your own thing with the parts that came in it then buying from someone else seems maybe the better option from a value perspective so uh to wrap things up very succinctly the build was competent they knew what they were doing they assembled it properly we didn't really have any massive issues with the way it was assembled the component selection was mismatched in a way that was poor for value and uh it performed poorly compared to other pre-builts in terms of the price to Performance ratio as it were but it's not garbage so uh that's good it's not e- waste guess that's a good thing at this point that's what we're shooting for so uh not competitive but not offensive either for the most part a little bit offensive on the price that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more you can go to store. Gamers access.net if you'd like to help us out directly and get something quality in return or you can go to patreon.com Gamers Nexis for behind the scenes videos thank you for watching we'll see you all next time\n"