PC Specialist Enigma K6

- James Archer

THE ENIGMA K6 seems quite expensive for an Intel Core i3-based system, but there are two good reasons for that.

First, it has a brand new Coffee Lake CPU, the Core i3-8100. It could be argued that lower-end chips such as this stand to gain the most from Intel’s core-adding strategy; the Core i3-8100 now has four, a full doubling of the core count on its dual-core Kaby Lake predecessor, the Core i3-7100. It comes with the trade-off of a slightly lower clock speed – 3.6GHz, from 3.9GHz – and a higher 65W TDP, but having twice the cores is no joke.

Second, this PC is equipped with the best mid-range gaming GPU around, the GeForce GTX 1060, and it’s the full 6GB VRAM version. Since most Core i3 systems go with either an entry-level graphics card or no graphics card at all, this pushes the price up in comparison, but then again we’re struggling to think of many other PCs that manage to include the GTX 1060 and stay this far below a grand.

SMASHING THE BOTTLENECK

The usual problem with pairing a low-end CPU with a powerful GPU is that the former can limit the latter. Happily, this doesn’t seem to be the case with the Enigma K6. Running Dirt Showdown on Ultra quality, the GTX 1060 didn’t seem held back at all, scoring 120fps at 1,920x1,080, 100fps at 2,560x1,440 and 55fps at 3,840x2,160. This is about dead even with what the £999 Wired2Fire Pyro Reactor (