DinoPC Primal GT0 System Review (FX8320/RX480)

1. Introduction2. DinoPC Primal GT03. Testing Methodology and Configuration4. SiSoft Sandra5. Cinebench R156. Handbrake video encoding7. SSD and HDD Performance8. USB 3.0 Bandwidth Testing9. SteamVR Performance Test10. 3DMark1111. 3DMark12. Grid Autosport13. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor14. Grand Theft Auto V15. Doom (2016)16. Thermal Dynamics and Acoustics Performance17. Power Consumption18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

With the recent release of the new AMD RX 480 graphics card, system builders are keen to start shipping out PCs with the new GPU inside. We have already seen one such desktop with a RX 480 from PCSpecialist – review HERE – and today DinoPC have sent us their Primal GT0 rig for review. It boasts an FX-8320 CPU, Gigabyte 990X motherboard and 16GB RAM.

It has been a while since I have seen the FX-8320 CPU, so it will be interesting to see how it gets on with the latest games. Aesthetics are also emphasised within the DinoPC Primal GT0 – there are red, braided PSU extensions, an RGB LED strip and red LED fans in the roof of the case. All-in-all, it looks good so let's crack on with the review.

Specifications

• CPU: AMD FX 8320 Black Edition
• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212x
• RAM: 16GB AMD DDR3 2133MHz Radeon R9 Gamer Series (2x8GB)
• Graphics card: AMD Radeon™ RX 480 8GB
• Motherboard: Gigabyte 990X-Gaming SLI
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
• Hard Drive: ADATA 240GB Premier SP550 SSD
• Secondary Hard Drive: 1TB WD Caviar Blue HDD
• Case: NZXT H440 2015 Black
• Case Lighting: RGB LED kit (RF Controller)
• Case Fans: 2 x Aerocool Air Force 12CM Red LED Fan
• Braided Cables: PSU Braided Extension Cable set Red
• PSU: 650W Corsair VS
• Sound Card: Onboard 7.1 Audio
• Warranty: 5 Year Bronze Warranty

The DinoPC Primal GT0 arrived safely packaged in the NZXT H440 case box. Bubble wrap was stuffed inside the case chassis, too, protecting the internal components from damage.

Upon opening the box, we get our first look at the system.

The NZXT H440 is a minimalistic case, with little in the way of external ‘bling', though DinoPC have added a sticker to the front panel.

A semi-transparent, black window means you can just about see the insides of the chassis – although, realistically you want the RGB lighting turned on to see inside. More on that later.

The front panel is fully removable, and behind it are 3x 120mm intake fans. All three are covered by a dust filter so it is good to know your rig should not get too dusty, despite having 3 intake fans.

Turning to the rear of the case, we get a good look at the motherboard I/O panel. The USB 3.1 ports are the standout feature here, though they are Type-A, not Type-C.

The RX 480 has 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI output options.

Removing the side panel gives us our first look at the insides of the GT0.

The black and red colour scheme is immediately obvious, with the red cable extensions as well as the matte black RX 480 being very visible.

In the roof of the case, too, are two Aerocool 120mm LED fans – also red.

While they do look good and obviously exhaust air out of the case, the choice of red LED fans makes the RGB lighting kit redundant. After all, if the fan LEDs are red, different colours from the RGB LED strip will clash – meaning it may as well just be a red LED strip.

Moving down the case, we can see the CoolerMaster Hyper 212x cooler, which sits on the AMD FX-8320. Given this CPU is nearly 4 years old, it will be interesting to assess its performance today.

To the right of the cooler is 16GB of Radeon R9 Gamer Series 2133MHz DDR3 memory. Perfectly capable, DinoPC are continuing the AMD theme throughout the GT0.

Next we come to the main attraction – the new RX 480. The reference design is a fairly short card, and does not feature a backplate. It takes power from a single 6-pin connector.

The Gigabyte 990X-Gaming SLI motherboard also has a spare x16 PCIe slot for CrossFire should you feel the need down the line. Incidentally, both x16 slots are reinforced with metal for extra sturdiness and peace of mind that your shiny new GPU is not just about to fall out of its slot.

At the bottom of the case, the Corsair 650VS PSU is hidden by a full-length shroud. On top of the shroud sits the 240GB Adata Premier SP550 SSD. I think 240GB is a smart size – 120GB is just not enough any more, while a 500GB drive adds extra cost.

Turning now to the other side of the H440, we get a look at the cable management. While everything is tied down and tucked away out of sight – so from the front it looks great – I think things are a bit messy at the back. It would be tricky to untangle the bunched-up cables at the bottom if you were installing a new component, for example. Aesthetically, too, it is not very pretty.

In fairness to DinoPC, though, the motherboard cut-out is unobstructed by cables, so at least you could switch out the CPU cooler with no hassle.

That aside, we can also see the 1TB WD Blue data drive tucked away in one of the front 3.5-inch drive bays.

Finally we come to the RGB lighting kit. Above you can see some of the different colours the LEDs can be changed to – all via a small remote control.

Some work well with the red case fans – such as white, and (obviously) the red option.

However, as I mentioned, some colours clash – and it looks worse in real life than can be conveyed by a photo. Still, the functionality is cool and you can configure different modes too – such as rapid alternation between colours. It is just a shame the roof fans are not RGB – something like Thermaltake's Riing RGB fans would work very well with the RGB strip.

First things first – storage. After a fresh install of Windows, there is 201GB of SSD space, while there is 931GB of hard disk space completely unused.

Above we can see an overview of the CPU and GPU – courtesy of CPU-Z and GPU-Z respectively.

The FX-8320 is clocked at 3.5GHz and boosts to 4GHz. The RX 480 has a base clock of 1120MHz and boosts to 1266MHz. You can read our full review of the GPU over HERE.

Comparison Systems

Where applicable, I compare the GT0 with the following systems:

Dell Inspiron 15 7559

• Intel Core i7-6700HQ
• Nvidia GTX 960M
• 16GB Dual-Channel 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
• 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD

ECS LIVA X

• Intel Bay Trail-M Celeron N2808 SoC
• Intel HD Graphics
• 4GB DDR3L RAM
• 64GB eMMc storage

ECS LIVA X2

• Intel Braswell N3050 SoC
• Intel HD Graphics
• 2GB DDR3L RAM
• 32GB eMMC storage

PCSpecialist Lafité

• Intel Core i3 i3-5010U
• Intel HD Graphics 5500
• 8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
• 240GB Kingston V300 SSD

Dell Latitude 13 7370

• Intel Core™ m5-6Y57
• Intel HD Graphics 515
• 8GB LPDDR3 1866MHz Memory
• 256GB Solid State Drive M2 2280 PCIe

UK Gaming Computers Styx

• Intel Core i5-6500
• 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2400MHz DDR4 RAM
• Asus Turbo GTX 960
• 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD

ASUS ROG GX700

• Intel Core i7-6820HK
• Nvidia GTX 980 (desktop)
• 32GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM
• 2x 256GB Samsung SM951 PCIe SSDs in RAID0

And lastly my personal desktop with a Core i3-4160, 8GB 1866MHz DDR3 and a GTX 960.

Test software

• SiSoft Sandra
• Cinebench R15
• Handbrake
• CrystalDiskMark
• ATTO Disk Benchmark
• 3DMark 11
• 3DMark
• Prime 95 (version 26.6)
• CPUID HWMonitor

Test games

• GRID Autosport
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Doom (2016)

All games are tested at the 1920×1080 resolution using the latest Radeon Crimson 16.7.2 driver.SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girls’) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The FX-8320 and 990X chipset show their age a bit here. The CPU falls behind in the Sandra arithmetic test, with the Intel Core i5-6500 from UK Gaming Computers' Styx ahead of it.

Memory bandwidth is below the levels of the Styx, too – despite both RAM kits being clocked at 2133MHz, as well as the the GT0 having 16GB when the Styx has 8GB of DDR3.

Not the best start for the GT0 – but this is merely one synthetic test of many real-world and synthetic benchmarks we have ahead, so let us march on.CINEBENCH 15 is a cross-platform testing suite that measures hardware performance and is the de facto standard benchmarking tool for leading companies and trade journals for conducting real-world hardware performance tests. With the new Release 15, systems with up to 256 threads can be tested. CINEBENCH is available for both Windows and OS X and is used by almost all hardware manufacturers and trade journals for comparing CPUs and graphics cards.

In Cinebench, the FX-8320's extra cores help push it into a very slender lead over the i5-6500 of the UKGC Styx system. However, even the mobile i7-6700HQ from the Dell Inspiron 15 7559 scores nearly 100 points more.HandBrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

Even the extra cores of the FX-8320 cannot help the GT0 as it falls behind the quad-core CPU of the UKGC Styx. Still, the margin is by no means big – not bad stuff for a CPU approaching its 4th birthday.SSD Performance

Here we test the performance of the 240GB Adata Premier SP550 SSD, using CrystalDiskMark 5.1.1 and ATTTO Disk Benchmark 2.47.

The SSD is fast, though it does not quite reach the maximum SATA 3 speeds we have seen other SSDs achieve. Something like a Samsung 850 EVO would have given it that extra edge, although in the real world you are unlikely to notice the difference.

HDD Performance

Decent speeds from the WD Blue drive – nothing we have not seen before, but it performs as we would expect from a mechanical hard drive.

To test the USB 3.0 ports on the Primal GT0, I plugged in an OCZ Trion 150 SSD via a SATA-to-USB 3.0 5Gbps adapter, which uses the ASMedia ASM1053 controller. We reviewed the SSD HERE, finding it delivers good speed at a budget price.

Most importantly, it is capable of saturating the USB 3.0 bus, allowing us to test the speeds the USB 3.0 ports deliver. To test this, I ran both CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk Benchmark on the Trion 150 drive.

Again, speeds are not quite at the ceiling of the USB 3.0 interface. However, for USB 3.0 they are decent and will certainly get the job done.As AMD have focused heavily on the VR capabilities of the RX 480, it would be foolish not to include a test to confirm such claims. While I do not have an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, I ran the SteamVR performance benchmark to get a system score.

As you can see – the system is fully VR-ready. Not bad for a £899 system.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

The first proper benchmark of our graphical testing, the RX 480 storms to the top of the chart – even beating out the GTX 980 of the ASUS ROG GX700. It will be interesting to see if the RX 480 can keep this sort of performance up.3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance. Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good. To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

While the RX 480 cannot quite compete with an overclocked GTX 980, it does come out just ahead of the GTX 980 at stock clocks. Another very impressive result which should bode well for a proper gaming experience.Grid Autosport is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

We test using the ‘ultra' preset with 4x MSAA.

The GT0 does very well in Grid Autosport, with good frame rates at 1080p. The minimum frame rate is essentially the ‘magic' 60fps figure, meaning you are guaranteed smooth gameplay.In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the player plays as a ranger by the name of Talion who has wraith-like abilities. In this open world video game, players have the freedom to pursue side quests and roam around the world.

We test using the ‘ultra' preset.

A more demanding game, it is good to see the GT0 doing very well again. A minimum fps figure of just below 60 is very impressive.Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players may freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series. It may be fully explored after the game’s beginning without restriction, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content.

We test with every setting maximised, although MSAA is disabled.

A much less satisfying experience here with GTA V. This did puzzle me slightly at first, as I thought the new RX 480 should be doing a fair bit better. Checking back with Zardon's original review of the RX 480 (HERE) he averaged 71fps at the same settings. This suggests to me – although I cannot confirm this – but it suggests to me that the FX-8320 is impacting performance.

My initial theory was that it could be a driver issue – so I uninstalled the Crimson 16.7.2 driver and installed the 16.7.1 driver – but benchmark results stayed the same. This makes me think it can only be the CPU. After all, Zardon tested with a Core i7-6700K system and achieved substantially better results – and given the CPU and GPU are the main factors when assessing gaming performance, it would seem the FX-8320 shows its age in GTA V.
DOOM is a science fiction horror first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is a reboot of the Doom series and is the first major instalment in the series since the release of Doom 3 in 2004 and the fourth title in the main series of games. The game is played entirely from a first-person perspective, with players’ taking the role of an unnamed marine, as he battles demonic forces from Hell that have been unleashed by the Union Aerospace Corporation on a future-set colonised planet Mars.

We test using the ‘ultra' preset. Given Doom does not have its own in-built benchmark, I tested at the beginning of the game as the player destroys the very first Gore Nest. I benchmarked 3 closely-matched runs and then took the average figures from those runs to present here.

Doom runs very well, with another high minimum frame rate figure of 58fps. The GT0 clearly provides enough grunt for a smooth imp-destroying experience.Thermal dynamics

To measure idle temperatures, a reading was taken after having Windows open on the desktop for 30 minutes. A reading under load was taken while Prime95 and 3DMark Fire Strike ran simultaneously.

The FX-8320 does not get too hot – after all, it ships at stock clocks.

The RX 480 reference design is not hugely effective though – temperatures are high under load, but we would expect DinoPC to update the rig with a custom card once they hit the market.

Acoustics performance

With 7 fans in the rig (3 intakes, 2 roof exhausts, 1 rear exhaust and 1 on the CPU cooler) it is a bit noisy. Even at idle there is a constant whirr from the fans, although I am sure you could set a quiet fan profile in the BIOS. Out of the box though, it is certainly irritating.

System noise wasn't too bad even though the RX480 is equipped with a reference cooler. Be warned, then – you will always be able to hear the GT0, so headphones are recommended.For idle power draw, a reading was taken after having Windows open on the desktop for 30 minutes. A reading under load was taken while Prime95 and 3DMark Fire Strike ran simultaneously.

These figures are relatively high – especially the idle power draw of 149W. This would be because of the FX-8320 – it has a 125W TDP and is based on a 32nm fabrication process, which is now very out-dated.

Still, the 650W Corsair PSU is more than able to handle it – even under load the peak power draw is just 70% of the Corsair's rated limit.On the whole, the DinoPC Primal GT0 system is an effective gaming machine that can do the job.

For starters, it is a good-looking rig. Red cable extensions are tastefully used, while there are also red LED fans and an RGB lighting strip. Admittedly, the RGB strip is slightly redundant given some of its colours clash with the red fans. However, white or red lights do look good, and certainly adds some pizazz.

I do question the inclusion of the AMD FX-8320 CPU, though. It certainly shows its age in some tests – lagging behind the Intel Core i5-6500 in our Handbrake video encoding test, as well as SiSoft Sandra's CPU arithmetic benchmark.

For gaming, however, the GT0 is capable. The RX 480 steals the show, offering great frame rates across our game selection. However, Grand Theft Auto V did lag behind somewhat – and I wonder if this down to the AMD CPU.

Noise levels are a slight concern too, as the system has a total of 7 fans which are certainly capable of producing a racket. Even when idling, there is a constant whirr coming from the machine.

Whether you should buy this rig, then, comes down to a matter of compromises. Do you mind having a rather ageing, power-hungry CPU? Is it an issue if the system is not silent by any means? Do you prioritise aesthetics over bang-for-buck?

The last point is key here, as the DinoPC Primal GT0 costs £899. For £100 less, you can get the PCSpecialist Hyperion Master complete with the RX 480. Admittedly it does not look as good, but it can offer the raw performance of an Intel Core i5 at a lower price.

Despite all of this, the GT0 is a capable gaming PC, and certainly a good looking one. There are just a few issues worth considering before you buy it.

You can pick one up from DinoPC for £899 HERE. Alternatively, for just £100 more, you can pick up the GT0 with an AOC 24″ G2460VQ6 FreeSync monitor and TT eSports Commander Gaming Gear Combo HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros

• RX 480 offers good 1080p frame rates.
• Good-looking system.
• RGB lighting is funky.

Cons

• Fairly noisy.
• FX-8320 is pretty old now.
• RGB lighting seems redundant when there are already red LED fans in the system.
• There are cheaper RX 480-based systems available.

KitGuru says: If you do not mind the compromises, the DinoPC Primal GT0 is an attractive gaming PC capable of great 1080p frame rates. The compromises, however, are just one too many – which prevents the GT0 earning a higher award.

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