Review: PC Specialist Apollo Zen

Conclusion

AMD has set out to disrupt the CPU landscape by offering massive multi-core performance at aggressive price points. The firm's Ryzen processors are on course to achieve that goal and system integrators are now beginning to offer something different to the established Intel crop.

Highlighting a lot of what's good about AMD's Zen architecture, PC Specialist's Apollo Zen base unit marries a six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 1600X processor to 16GB of DDR4 memory and Radeon RX 570 graphics. The end result is impressive multi-core performance at a competitive £949 price point, and as the platform matures we expect future Ryzen PCs to ship with factory overclocks, faster memory and next-generation Vega graphics.

Bottom line: systems such as Apollo Zen give users reason to pause and consider their intended usage scenario. Intel retains a single-thread performance leadership while Nvidia dominates high-end graphics, but for power users who can make full use of many cores and threads, an AMD Ryzen base unit serves as a worthy alternative.

PC Specialist Apollo Zen

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The Apollo Zen base unit is available to configure and purchase from PC Specialist.

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