The SkyTech Gaming PC (Chronos) has a design that signals a pleasurable gaming experience. With the glass side window and façade trim on the front panel with three LED-fans, it’s undeniably smart and stylish, an attractive gaming PC that’s over-the-top in its gaming aesthetic that ends up looks charming.
Still, we can’t help but wonder how it would fare against its powerhouse brother, the Skytech Shadow 3.0. The Chronos looks good, for sure, and it fits well on the desktop of a gamer who still values elegant design – but can it match rivals’ brute strength in the best modern PC games.
The simple answer is yes. But, its hardware resolve is more complicated than that once you look at price, specs, and available configurations. This Skytech gaming PC plays games like butter, that to splurged innards. If you consider yourself a hardcore gamer and going for our review configuration, you’re getting one of the best pre-built gaming PCs.
Skytech Gaming PC Review: Design
For gamers who are more partial to over-the-top gaming, looks will for sure find the Chronos satisfying. It has a gaming flair of its own – the glass side panel shows off the innards, spotlighted by the RGB lighting on the cooling fans. The façade has its front panel with a metallic grill, reminiscent of the rear design and the logo etched on the tapered upper section.
Beyond that, however, the SkyTech Chronos doesn’t have any design frills that are any different from predecessors. We also like it better than mainstream gaming PCs’ minimalist looks. The white measures 20.3 x 19.3 x 14.9 and weighs 28.1 pounds, within the realm of a standard tower case.
This Skytech PC comes with a diverse number of available ports, some in the front and a few others in the back so you have different ways of connecting your different peripherals and devices. While you don’t have USB Type-C, it comes with 2 DisplayPort, 2 HDMI, 5 USB 3.0 (1 front + 4 rear), 3 USB 2.0 and audio/microphone jack. It comes with a bundled gaming mouse and keyboard as well.
SkyTech Chronos Performance
As for the components packed inside the Skytech gaming PC, it’s very easy to see why this gaming desktop is taking competition to the next level. The hallmark component here is the 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor that rivals Intel’s Core i7-9700K processor. It’s a beefy 3.7GHz processor on a B450 motherboard, which is more than enough for multi-threaded applications.
In fact, it is not only beneficial for gaming, but also for professional creatives and multi-taskers who sometimes need to stream content side-by-side with CPU-intensive application. Additionally, you have 16GB RAM and 1TB solid state storage, quite enough for storing your games and downloads.
NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER VS RTX 2070
Thanks to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super, the Pro Trace 9240V2 is capable of gaming at the highest settings without many hassles, as well as enabling ray tracing in select games. Back in October 2018 when the Nvidia Turing line was released, it promised stellar performance coupled with ray tracing in games. And, while some of the graphics in the line delivered fantastic gameplay, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, some mid-range cards, particularly the RTX 2070 came off rather subpar.
With the RTX 2070 Super graphics card, Nvidia is here to course correct a little bit with the newer GPU, promising much stronger performance in this edition, by making it the already successful Nvidia Turing architecture more available to the masses. It takes the RTX 2070’s 2,304 CUDA cores and bumps everything up to 2,560 and also builds on higher clocks with a 1,770MHz boost clock. The only thing that remains the same between the two is the memory, which is constant at 8GB, but the newer iteration features more RT and Tensor Cores, and is rated for better ray tracing performance at 7 Giga Rays.
GAMING, GRAPHICS & VR
You will get smooth frame rates on modern games, making it a meaningful upgrade over the base RTX 2070 GPU. When you play Metro Exodus (2019) on Ultra settings at 4K, it runs between 33 and 36 frames per second (fps), with some screen tearing. But when you turn it down to FHD, it runs at a smooth 80-4 fps, only dropping those fluid frame rates during some intense scenes.
The Chronos gaming PC plays the Hitman 2 (2018) benchmark (ultra-settings) at 81 fps in FHD, tying the Trace 9230 and beating the average. The frame rate dropped to 61 fps in 4K, just below the gaming desktop average and MSI’s machine.
On Shadow of the Tomb Raider (highest settings), the Chronos hits 109 fps in FHD and 43 fps in 4K, falling just above the gaming desktop averages (94 fps and 34 fps, respectively) but only below the Vengeance in terms of our comparison group.
On the Grand Theft Auto V (2015) benchmark (very high settings), the Chronos runs at 140 fps in FHD and 102 fps in 4K. The former number is higher than average, but the latter is lower.
The SkyTech Chonos gaming PC earns a perfect score of 10 on the SteamVR performance test.
Bottom Line
The SkyTech Chronos (ST-CHRONOS-W-2700X-2070SUPER) configuration reviewed here is an excellent, future-proofed gaming machine that looks good and feels good in-game. Simply put, it’s a gaming powerhouse, with enough raw power to run any processor-hungry, graphics-heavy AAA games without pausing, ensuring your gaming experience is completely immersive.
That also applies to demanding applications like video editing programs, and for all that it rings a lower price that similarly specced mainstream gaming PCs. And since the SkyTech Gaming PC (Chronos) is designed to be upgradable, you can just upgrade the components later when you can afford and need to.
Recommended Configuration
Skytech Chronos Gaming PC Desktop
The Review
SkyTech Chronos (ST-CHRONOS-W-2700X-2070SUPER)
The SkyTech Chronos (ST-CHRONOS-W-2700X-2070SUPER) configuration reviewed here is an excellent, future-proofed gaming machine that looks good and feels good in-game.
PROS
- It brings great liquid cooling
- Design is impressive
- Ultimate and sturdy components
CONS
- The fan is quite loud
Review Breakdown
-
EDITORS RATING
