The purpose of this article is to share my review of Skytech’s Shadow 3.0 (ST-SHADOW-0394-B-AM) Prebuilt PC. The Skytech Shadow 3.0 is overall a good prebuilt PC for the entry-level gamer who does not care about gaming on the latest and greatest AAA gaming titles and is okay with 1080P resolution. 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 resolution with high to ultra-quality presets.
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.
Skytech Shadow Performance by Game
Different games will perform differently on the Skytech Shadow 3.0 depending on the resolution, and graphics settings applied. Here, I will provide games that will perform well on 1080P. This is not really a build I would recommend gaming on 4K with, but you are certainly welcome to try it.
| Game | Ideal Resolution | Ideal Graphics Settings |
| Elden Ring | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Modern Warfare 2 / Warzone 2.0 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Fortnite | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Halo: Infinite | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| CS:GO | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| PUBG | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Minecraft | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Far Cry 6 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Dota 2 | 1080P | Maximum |
| Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5) | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| World of WarCraft | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| CyberPunk 2077 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| RUST | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Civilization VI | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Overwatch 2 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| League of Legends | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Valorant | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Battlefield V | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Team Fortress 2 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Apex Legends | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Lost Ark | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| War Thunder | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| New World | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Terraria | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Battlefield 1 | 1080P | High-Ultra |
| Unturned | 1080P | High-Ultra |
Review of the Skytech Shadow 3.0 Processor
The Intel i5 10400F is an older generation processor that still has good performance left in it. However, do note that newer games like STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor are calling out newer processors, like the Intel Core i5 11600K in their recommended settings. Other notable games like Fortnite call for an Intel Core i5-7300U, which this processor is far more advanced than the specifications of that processor. You can see a table with differences below.
| Cores (Threads) | Base Clock | Boost Clock | L3 Cache | |
| Intel Core i5 10400F | 6 (12) | 2.9 | 4.3 | 12MB |
| Intel Core i5 11600K | 6 (12) | 3.9 | 4.9 | 12MB |
| Intel Core i5-7300U | 2 (4) | 2.6 | 3.5 | 3MB |
Review of the Skytech Shadow Graphics Card
I like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card even though it is considered a low entry GPU in the 30 series line. Overall all though, this GPU will perform well for most games on 1080P and 1440P resolutions on high graphic settings. However, given the RAM configuration of the Shadow 3.0, I would stick to 1080P resolution gaming. Should you upgrade to 16GB of RAM you may experience better performance on 1440P resolution.
The RTX 3050 graphics card is an overall good entry level graphics card because it will allow you to play modern AAA games on 1080P resolution and has good price-to-performance.
Skytech Shadow 3.0 RAM Review
The Skytech Shadow 3.0 comes with 8GB of DDR4 3000MHz. I would not want a new PC with slower RAM than that, but for this target audience it should be fine. DDR4 is mainstream today but DDR5 RAM is available on the market and is becoming more and more mainstream. 16GB is a common amount of RAM these and I would recommend upgrading the RAM on this prebuilt when you get it to increase its performance. It’s a small upgrade that provides a big impact. 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.
Skytech Shadow 3.0 Hard Drive Review
The Skytech Shadow 3.0 comes with a 1TB NVMe SSD drive. Having a 1TB NVMe SSD in a gaming PC significantly improves speed, performance, storage capacity, and overall system responsiveness, providing a more enjoyable gaming and computing experience. However, I would recommend adding an external drive in order to offload media files and use as a backup target. This is a good decision since if the NVMe drive goes bad some day, you have all your personal data backed up. I recommend the Buffalo LinkStation because it comes with native drive mirroring (RAID 1) and provides for 2TB of storage (4TB raw).
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.