Most folks cognize gathering a gaming PC tin prevention rather a spot of money, but not everyone's looking to assemble components and tinker earlier they tin leap into a lucifer of their favourite game. Pre-built PCs connection little tech savvy players an accidental to prime a show level that matches their fund and get close to the fun. And for those looking to crippled astatine 4K with precocious framerates, the NZXT Player Three Prime mightiness conscionable beryllium 1 of the astir charismatic and almighty options disposable close now.
NZXT Player Three Prime – Photos
Design and Features
The NZXT Player Three Prime comes successful the company's roomy H9 Elite PC lawsuit successful either achromatic oregon white. I emotion this case's dual-chamber design, which isolates the powerfulness proviso and SSDs successful the enclosure down the different components. This makes cablegram absorption overmuch much businesslike portion allowing the main compartment to stay tidy. It's arsenic gorgeous arsenic it is spacious, sporting tempered solid paneling that wraps from the near broadside to the beforehand truthful you tin respect the physique from aggregate angles.
The cablegram absorption is truthful orderly that it'd beryllium a shame to spot immoderate of it undone, but there's ever a accidental you'll privation oregon request to tinker a bit. Luckily, getting into either enclosure conscionable requires removing a tiny screw connected the backmost earlier popping disconnected the broadside panel. The apical sheet features a tiny articulator connected the back, truthful lifting it with mean unit is capable to region it, and it snaps backmost into spot with a spot of pressure. Easy peasy.
The apical of the H9 Elite provides 1 USB-C (3.2 Gen 2x2) larboard and 2 USB-A (3.2 Gen 1) ports, arsenic good arsenic a combo audio jack for headphones oregon microphones. That's reasonably standard, but determination are plentifulness much ports on the rear, including a full of 10 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C port, and an ethernet port. There are besides HDMI and DisplayPort connections connected the motherboard I/O, but those are much for audio oregon troubleshooting – you should decidedly beryllium plugging into 1 of the ports connected the GPU for video output.
There's plentifulness of customizable RGB, too, which tin beryllium easy changed via the NZXT Cam app. You tin acceptable unsocial lighting for each fan, some representation sticks, and the Gigabyte logo connected the GPU. You tin adjacent personalize the 360mm AIO's 1.5-inch LCD show with a clock, infographics for GPU/CPU temps, oregon adjacent a GIF. So, naturally, I enactment an Ace Ventura GIF connected excavation due to the fact that I'm an big and tin bash what I want.
Though I emotion the mode NZXT takes vantage of the H9 Elite's features, there's nary denying that the Player Three Prime is simply a large, dense pre-built that won't acceptable successful everyone's setup. At 19.49 inches gangly and 18.35 inches successful length, it takes up a important magnitude of abstraction connected my desk. And considering it weighs astir 40lbs, moving it tin beryllium cumbersome – particularly if you've got a atrocious backmost similar me.
Speaking of moving it around, I'm blessed to study that my Player Three Prime arrived densely packed wrong and retired to forestall immoderate of its costly components from getting retired of whack during shipment. In a clip erstwhile immoderate companies don't instrumentality arsenic galore precautions to support the delicate pieces housed wrong their cases, it's fantastic to spot NZXT taking this interest seriously.
Go Big Or Go Bigger
NZXT changes up its configurations randomly – including astatine slightest erstwhile during the clip betwixt maine receiving my portion and reviewing it – but astatine the clip of this writing, the basal Player Three Prime comes with a GeForce RTX 5080, Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD for $3,499. Every configuration supra it, however, includes an RTX 5090, which means you'll spot a minimum terms bump of $1,000.
The astir enhanced portion presently disposable is $4,899, which includes an RTX 5090, 128GB RAM, and a whopping 8TB of storage. There's nary denying that the 128GB RAM is brag-worthy, and it could beryllium a bully telephone if you're moving a streaming setup oregon doing aggravated video rendering, but it's perfectly overkill for gaming astatine the moment. I'd reason that the $4,699 mentation with 64GB should beryllium more than capable for astir folks.
With either of these configurations, though, the upgrade to an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the existent crushed to crockery retired a fewer 100 other bucks. The Core Ultra 9 285K is simply a flagship processor with fantabulous productivity and gaming performance, but the 9800X3D blows it retired of the h2o for gaming, specifically, portion besides moving a spot cooler successful astir cases. Since it's paired with the upgrade to the RTX 5090, this makes for important future-proofing.
All of this is ace premium worldly for the astir frame-chasing enthusiasts, truthful nary of it is required to person a bully gaming experience. Unless you're determined to spare nary disbursal successful pursuit of bleeding-edge tech, the basal configuration of the Player Three Prime is simply a perfectly harmless prime that volition support you satisfied for rather a fewer years without needing immoderate meaningful upgrades.
Unfortunately, you're ne'er capable to beryllium rather definite which components you'll person successful the Player Three Prime. A glimpse done its tech specs connected the NZXT website makes it wide that the motherboard, memory, and retention brands utilized successful their systems vary. This isn't wholly antithetic successful the satellite of pre-builts, but it does mean that you're fundamentally playing the lottery. You could get, say, a marque of SSD that is known for being highly reliable oregon 1 that has a higher nonaccomplishment complaint than others. The information that you don't get to cognize up of clip just, well, sucks –— particularly erstwhile you're paying truthful overmuch wealth for a PC.
The wording connected NZXT’s tract besides sends mixed signals astir what to expect from the Player Three Prime's CPU cooler. The "overview" conception mentions that it volition athletics a Kraken 360, portion the representation carousel astatine the apical of the leafage states it lone comes with a Kraken 280. I tin corroborate that it does travel with the Kraken 360, but small miscommunications similar this –- on with the random configuration updates and inconsistency with definite components – tin marque the buying process much frustrating than it needs to be.
That said, NZXT does connection escaped returns wrong 14 days if you find that you're unsatisfied with however your PC turned out. It besides offers a decent 2-year warranty, meaning you basal a reasonably bully accidental of having immoderate failed components replaced.
Performance
As idiosyncratic who plays a batch of my games connected consoles, I'm simply not a graphics oregon show snob. I've been utilizing a pre-built with a 4070 Super since past year, and I uncertainty I've ever spent much than 30 seconds successful the graphics settings of immoderate crippled I've played connected it. But that hasn't stopped maine from being wildly impressed with the wide show leap I've seen from the Player Three Prime during my clip with it implicit the past fewer weeks.
NZXT sent maine an upgraded configuration with an RTX 5090, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 64GB RAM. Unsurprisingly, it dominated each crippled I maxed retired astatine 4K portion maintaining precise tenable sound and cooling ranges.
Cyberpunk 2077's Ray Tracing Ultra preset with DLSS successful show mode consistently hovered astir 125 fps with nary framework generation. Black Myth: Wukong, contempt being notorious for its mediocre optimization, was inactive getting betwixt 100-110 fps utilizing the Cinematic preset astatine TK resolution, with DLSS acceptable to 40%.
3DMark Steel Nomad
14441 points
3DMark Speed Way
14356 points
3DMark Port Royal
37623 points
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra, 4K, DLSS Performance)
129 fps
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra, 4K, DLSS Performance, Frame Generation 2x)
221 fps
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra, 4K, DLSS Performance, Frame Generation 4x)
375 fps
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Extreme, 4K DLSS Performance)
184 fps
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Extreme, 4K, DLSS Performance, Frame Gen)
249 fps
Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic, 4K, DLSS 40%)
103 fps
Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic, 4K, DLSS 40%, Framerate Generation x2)
169 fps
Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic, 4K, DLSS 40%, Framerate Generation x4)
295 fps
Total War: Warhammer 3 (Ultra, 4K)
163 fps
Procyon Office Productivity
8969 points
Games similar these tin payment from framework procreation to scope immoderate outrageous framerates (often beyond the refresh complaint of each but the highest-end monitors). I'm not precise delicate to immoderate added latency that comes with framework procreation — particularly successful single-player games — truthful I enjoyed letting the Player Three Prime flex its muscles conscionable to ticker the big, fancy numbers creation astir connected the apical near of the surface portion I played.
The lone crippled to (barely) mean nether 100 fps was Metro Exodus, but that's not excessively abnormal. The crippled is known for being problematic adjacent connected exceptional hardware, and its benchmark instrumentality pushes things adjacent harder than astir gameplay sequences, not to notation that we tally this benchmark with ray tracing and without immoderate upscaling.
Do note, though, that the upgraded specs successful my Player Three Prime portion marque for a consequential bump successful show implicit the basal configuration, truthful the cheaper mentation simply won't enactment up numbers quite arsenic high. Even so, it's similar comparing antithetic models of Ferraris — nary substance which you pick, you're getting an immensely susceptible machine.
Billy Givens is simply a freelancer astatine IGN with implicit a decennary of acquisition penning gaming, film, and tech content. His enactment tin besides beryllium recovered connected GameSpot, USA Today, Digital Trends, Tom's Guide, and more. You'll find him blabbering connected astir video games and much connected Twitter astatine @mektige.