Box Cube Custom Built PC Review

1. Introduction2. CPU, RAM & Storage Performance3. 3DMark & Gaming Performance4. Thermals, Noise & Power5. Conclusion6. View All Pages

Today we’re checking out a custom-built system from Box using their website configurator. This is a fairly high-end machine with a price tag of £2752.04. At this price-point it aims to appeal to those wanting the most modern hardware to tackle any game 2022 may throw at it… but will it hold up during our tests when we compare it to a system that costs £1000 less? Let’s find out!

Specifications:

• Lian-Li O11D Air Mini-S Snow White Standard Gaming Case
• MSI MPG Z690 FORCE WIFI Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 12700KF Processor
• Lian-Li Galahad 240mm RGB AIO CPU Liquid Cooler
• 32GB (2x 16GB) Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 5200MHz RAM
• 500GB Seagate FireCuda 530 NVME PCIE Gen 4 M.2 SSD
• Seagate 1TB BarraCuda Hard Drive
• Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Vision OC V2 8GB LHR Gaming Graphics Card
• 750W – Corsair SF750 SFX Fully Modular Platinum Rated
• Lian-Li UNI Fan SL RGB Triple Pack 3 x 120mm White RGB Case Fans with Controller
• Microsoft Windows 11 Home
• Cube Windows 11 Recovery USB Drive
• Black | White Braided Styling Cable Kit
• Cube 7 Day Express Manufacture & Testing
• 3 Year Collect and Return Warranty Service provided by MendIT (UK Only)

There are some very solids specs here with the latest 12^th Gen Intel Core i7, with a Z690 motherboard that super fast DDR5 memory at 5200MHz. This system looks like it’ll be a very competent gaming and even productivity system that should handle most tasks that you throw at it but, of course, in true KitGuru fashion we’ll be putting it through its paces later on within the review.

Before we go any further, I did want to bring up the Cyberpower Infinity X125 GT I’ve just mentioned in a bit more detail. I reviewed that system in December, and I thought we could compare the system’s gaming performance later on in this review to see if a custom-built system makes sense compared to a standard prebuilt system.

The Cyberpower Infinity X125 GT has a Lian Li O11 Air Mini case, an i5-12600KF, 16GB of DDR4 3600MHz RAM, a 1TB Corsair M600 Core NVMe SSD, 750W Corsair PSU and an RTX 3070. The specs are similar, with the Box system offering an i7 and 32GB of memory, but also upping the price to £2752.04, whereas the Cyberpower system is almost £1000 cheaper at £1799. We’ll see later in our gaming benchmarks just how well this system fairs against the custom built one by Box.

The O11D AIR MINI Box have chosen for the system looks great, it is worth pointing out this is still an ATX case, so it’s not mini-ITX or anything like that. The top, back and bottom have a superfine mesh, which should definitely help with airflow and it gives it a great aesthetic too. We get a good selection of front IO on the case too with 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C and 1x HD Audio combo jack.

Taking the side panel off reveals just how much space there is inside and for a small case it’s actually very spacious. As our radiator is vertically mounted, we still get access to the top of the motherboard, which is a bonus. There’s a total of 9 fans in this system. We have 3 120mm RGB fans as intakes on the bottom, one 120mm RGB fan as an exhaust on the left and 3 more 120mm RGB fans as exhausts on the top.

One thing to note that is a bit of a shame is the GPU sag. Our Gigabyte 3070 Vision OC V2 is a heavy looking card with a shroud and heatsink, sadly this has some slight sag when you get eye level with it. It’s not horrendous but it is there and over time this will likely sag further. It would have been nice to see a support bracket of some kind to help prevent that.

The entire build is very clean, has been well managed and all components stick within the white and black theme. There’s plenty of RGB LED’s on offer here too from all of the fans that are installed as well as the CPU pump.

In Cinebench R20, comparing it to other prebuilts I’ve reviewed in the past we take second place, only barely losing out on 1^st place to a Ryzen 9 5900X for our multicore scores but we actually outperformed it quite a bit during the single core test.

In Cinebench R23 though we actually surpassed the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X in both our multicore and singlecore tests with a clear win during singlecore tests, but it was a close call once again during the multicore results.

Time taken to render our BMW CPU test with Blender was very fast at just 107 seconds.

PC Mark 10 shows how well the system performs at a variety of tasks and where it excels, scoring very well across the board but really excelling in the Digital Content Creation tests.

To test our 32GB of DDR5 RAM at 5200MHz we put it to the test within AIDA64 where, as expected, it scored very well and consistently across all three benchmarks here. Hitting almost 80,000 MB/s read is great, as is staying above 70,000 MB/s in the write and copy benchmarks too.

Moving over to CrystalDiskMark to test our 500GB Seagate FireCuda 530. As it is a Gen 4 PCIe SSD we expected to see some fast read speeds here and it didn’t disappoint hitting over 7000MB/s. The writes aren’t as great though as this is a 500GB drive, hitting around 3800MB/s, so ideally we would have hoped to see a 1TB SSD here instead, providing more storage and faster reads.

Now let’s look at our graphics card results. Looking at 3DMark Time Spy we can see the system performed well overall and excelled in the CPU part of the test.

3DMark Fire Strike also shows great scores across the board here too, excelling in the physics portion of the test.

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra saw the same consistency but once again keeping those physics scores very high.

Now let’s move onto some real-world gaming examples. As I mentioned at the start of the review, I’ll be comparing the test results from this system against the Cyberpower system that is almost £1000 cheaper to show you what performance to expect from a much cheaper system but with similar specs.

Forza Horizon 5, Ultra preset saw us hit 115 FPS average and 94 FPS for the 1% low at 1080p, and still performs well at  1440p with 95 FPS average and 81 FPS for the 1% low. However, when we look at the Cyberpower system's results, they’re almost identical. We see a dip of 3 FPS average in both 1080p and 1440p.

Gears 5, Ultra preset and vsync set to off, held up well almost getting 156fps at 1080p and it’s not too far behind at 1440p too. Looking at the Cyberpower system we do see a larger drop in FPS here with 15 FPS less in 1080p and 9 FPS less in 1440p but that’s not a significant drop in my eyes for the price difference.

The Division 2 is usually quite a tough one on GPUs, but at 1080p we got a solid 150 average and didn’t go below 100 FPS in the 1% lows either. In 1440p as it stays just above 100FPS average. Again, the Cyberpower system is hot on its heels though with just 13 FPS less in 1080p and just 7 FPS less in 1440p.

Now a game that is demanding is of course Shadow of the Tomb Raider, on Highest settings with Vsync off we saw excellent results with 156 fps at 1080p and 110 at 1440p. Comparing the Cyberpower results we see, once again, it’s very close. 9 FPS less in 1080p and 5 FPS less in 1440p.

Lastly, our final game was DOOM Eternal and as you’re probably expecting we get a great performance here with a huge 270FPS at 1080p and just shy of 215 FPS at 1440p. This sees our biggest dip in FPS when comparing the systems though with the Cyberpower coming in with 37 FPS less at 1080p but only 18 FPS less at 1440p. Despite that both systems achieve amazing results here.

Overall, both systems here are incredibly capable as modern gaming machines and as you can see, the £1000 cheaper Cyberpower system really kept up with the custom system from Box. Are you surprised by these results? We’ll talk about this more towards the end before the conclusion.

Looking now at temperatures, the Intel i7-12700KF remained relatively cool even when gaming but with an extended multicore run during our Cinebench R23 benchmark we can see it does get quite warm at 86 degrees, but nothing terrible.

GPU temperatures were kept very cool here, staying below 65C even after all our strenuous game tests.

As for power draw, we idle at 89W but under max load when gaming we can see it sits below 450W, which is absolutely fine because we have plenty of head room with our 750W PSU, making it ideal for any potential CPU or GPU upgrades down the line.

Lastly, in terms of noise levels, I was pleasantly surprised even at its loudest it still remained quieter than my own system too.

In conclusion, as an isolated look at a custom-built system from Box – and disregarding the price for one moment – I’ve had a fantastic time checking it out.

Aesthetically it looks sleek, smart and certainly makes a statement with the white/black and RGB LED theme, I absolutely love the O11D case shape and design. The entire build is very well put together and cable managed too, and I like that the radiator is vertically installed to still give you access to the top of the motherboard, while looking aesthetically pleasing too. This system is capable of pretty much anything you want to throw at it with the 12^th Gen Intel i7-12700KF, our RTX 3070, and 32GB DDR5 RAM.

On the other hand, we do need to address the Cyberpower Infinity X125 GT, as it comes close to matching the Box custom build's performance in our game tests, barring Doom Eternal, and that system is almost £1000 cheaper. For us, looking at this system in that context, it's clear you are paying a pretty penny for the upgrade to an i7-12700K over the i5-12600K, 32GB DDR5 memory, as well as the Box's sleeker aesthetics. The difference in raw frame rates, however, is much closer than the difference in price.

Reviewing this system has shown us that Box is more than capable at expertly building a beautiful gaming rig, so if you already have a spec in mind but don't want to build it yourself, we can absolutely recommend Box for that. It's just that this specific configuration doesn't make a whole lot of sense when competing prebuilts can offer similar gaming performance at a much lower price.

You can create your own custom-built system, from Box.co.uk, HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

Pros:

• Top quality components.
• Great for esports high FPS 1080p gaming and general 1440p gaming.
• Very stylish theme and aesthetics.
• Expertly built and cable managed.
• Great performance.

Cons:

• Very expensive compared to comparable prebuilt systems.
• Slight GPU sag without any support.
• 1TB SSD would’ve been a good addition.

KitGuru says: There’s no denying the quality you’re getting from Box here, we just find it hard to justify the price of this particular configuration. If money is no object, we’d definitely feel comfortable asking Box to build us a system given the level of care and detail they’ve put into the build.

Become a Patron!