The purpose of this article is to share my review of Skytech’s Shadow 3.0 Prebuilt PC. The Skytech Shadow 3.0 is overall a good prebuilt PC. I will provide an overview about the hardware, pricing, and review its expected performance. However, I won’t go into all the details about the hardware, but I will talk about the most critical aspects, such as CPU, GPU (graphics card), RAM, and hard drive. I will also provide some benchmark videos of comparable PCs to show you results of similar builds.
Why I like PreBuilt PCs
I love building my own PCs. But that’s not to say that building your own doesn’t come with its own headaches. Especially if you’re only going to do it once every 3-5 years. PreBuilt PCs cost as much as it would cost if you were to build it your own. They also come with less problems because they test it before they go out of the factory. If there is anything wrong, a good vendor like Skytech will address it and offer any sort of returns needed. It’s much better than completing your build and then having to troubleshoot. Especially if you have to go through a return process on any of your parts.
Skytech Shadow 3.0 Overview
You will find that the Skytech Shadow 3.0 is a good build for anyone who is looking to game at 1080P or 1440P resolution with high to ultra-quality presets. You might not be able to get there yet with 4K on the Skytech Shadow 3.0.
Overall, the Skytech Shadow 3.0 has a decent processor and graphics card, 16TB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD drive. The specs for the Shadow 3.0 are listed below and I will talk about each one in detail and provide my reasons for liking this build, as well as some items that I’m not a big fan of.
It is also made in the U.S.A. (so you get U.S. based support) and comes with a 1-year warranty with lifetime technical support.
Review of Skytech Shadow 3.0
Review of the Skytech Shadow 3.0 Processor
I like AMD Ryzen processors for a gaming PC. What I especially like about AMD Ryzen CPUs is that all of them can be overclocked, which is different from Intel. With Intel, you can only overclock processors that are denoted by K (e.g. Intel i7 12600K). The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is a 8-core processor comparable to an i7 12700K series processor. The Intel i7 12700K processor does outperform the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X when benchmarked, but the pricing vastly favors AMD. The pricing for an i7 12700K is about $350 whereas the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is around $200. For what most gamers would use this build for that price increase would not make sense.
The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X is more than enough for modern AAA game titles. But it does not quite get you to the recommended system requirements called out for Ultra 4K gaming on titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The Ryzen 7 3700X will perform well for the kind of gaming and graphics that the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB was meant to provide.
Review of the Skytech Chronos Graphics Card
I like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB graphics card even though it is considered a low entry GPU in the 30 series line. It has a lot of VRAM, in fact the most out of all the graphics cards in the 30 series line. It does have a faster boost clock but also less CUDA cores compared to the 3060 Ti. I provided an in-depth review on using the RTX 3060 across twelve new games in 2022 that will go over its performance. Overall all though, this GPU will perform well for most games on 1080P and 1440P resolutions on high graphic settings.
RAM and Hard Drive
RAM: The Skytech Shadow 3.0 comes with 16GB of DDR4 3000MHz. I would not want a new PC with slower RAM than that, but it is decent performing RAM. DDR4 is mainstream today but DDR5 RAM is available on the market and will be mainstream soon. 16GB is a common amount of RAM these days but I would not want less than that for a new PC. Adding RAM to this PC should it be needed is pretty straightforward and easy, so if you need more in the future, you can just add it.
Hard Drive: The Skytech Shadow 3.0 comes with a 1 TB SSD drive. The motherboard on this build does allow you to add NVMe in the future if you want it. I would recommend adding NVMe to this build if you do get it due to its performance advantages. 1TB is a lot of data storage and unless you’re doing a lot with photos and saving videos you might find it hard to fill up that drive over the next 3-5 years.
Conclusion
I enjoyed providing my review of Skytech Shadow 3.0. Overall, the Skytech Shadow 3.0 is a great entry-level PC build. Again, I love building PC’s but Prebuilts are definitely worth it if you do not absolutely love building your own. The Skytech Shadow 3.0 will give you the ability to play a lot of different PC games. I have included a list below for your review:
- Elden Ring
- Modern Warfare 2 / Warzone 2.0
- Fortnite
- Halo: Infinite
- CS:GO
- PUBG
- Minecraft
- Starfield
- Diablo 4
- Far Cry 6
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Minecraft
- Dota 2
- Grand Theft Auto V
- CyberPunk 2077
- Civilization VI
- RUST
- Overwatch
- League of Legends
- Valorant