PCSpecialist Cobalt Spark R Prebuilt Review (i3 + RX 6600)

Starting our benchmarks with Cinebench Multi Core, it's not a surprise that a quad-core processor doesn't score too highly here – it's actually been some time since we benchmarked a quad-core CPU in a review so I don't have much relevant real-world data, but suffice to say the Cobalt Spark R is unlikely to be used for much rendering work.

Intel's Raptor Lake processors deliver solid single-core performance however, with the 14100F sitting around 1700 points.

Naturally, with 16GB of fairly slow DDR5 memory, read and write speeds aren't as high as the 6000 MT/s kit found in the PCSpecialist Topaz Spark prebuilt, though they're not awful either, particularly the read speeds.

PCMark 10 also shows similar overall performance to the PCSpecialist Magnus Spark that I reviewed about a year ago – that machine cost £999 at the time of the review and offered a six-core 12400F, and the Cobalt Spark R compares reasonably well considering its lower price.

It's also good to see that the XFX RX 6600 used in this system performs as expected, delivering almost 8000 points in 3DMark Time Spy, which is basically the same score that I saw from the Gigabyte Eagle model in my own testing.

Lastly, the SSD delivers performance that is basically as advertised, we see read speeds just shy of 3.5GB/s, while writes come in a little over 3.1GB/s. It won't win any awards for raw speed, but it is absolutely fine for gaming.

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