Yoyotech Warbird RS12 review

At a lofty £1,500, the Yoyotech Warbird RS12 is more than twice as expensive as the preceding Warbird RS10, but comes packed with the kind of premium hardware that ensures it remains just as much of a smart buy for gaming enthusiasts.

The build is a strong blend of tasteful looks and extensive functionality. There are four USB ports – two USB3, two USB2 – conveniently located at the front of the all-black case, and the MSI Z170A-G43 housed within grants an additional four USB3 and two USB2 ports, plus an S/PDIF connector for high-end audio equipment and even a PS/2 socket.

Between the motherboard and the graphics card, there’s also a heap of display connectors, totalling two HDMI, three DisplayPort and one dual-link DVI-D and DVI-I socket apiece. The Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX sound card also adds enough audio outputs for a decent 5.1 surround sound setup. It takes up the last remaining PCI-e x16 slot, so you’ll need to move it if you plan on upgrading to a dual-GPU SLI configuration, but there are two PCI-e x1 slots still free, as well as two spare RAM slots and room for one extra 2.5in drive and two extra 3.5in drives.

Card edged

Besides, there’s little need to add a second graphics card, considering the Warbird RS12 comes with the mighty Nvidia GTX 980 Ti. It’s been matched with the similarly top-tier Intel Core i7-6700K, a 4.0GHz quad-core chip that can be easily overclocked to 4.2GHz, plus a huge 16GB of DDR4 RAM, making for one very high-spec rig indeed.

As expected, it stomped through our 1080p gaming benchmarks. Running Dirt Showdown at maximum settings, it averaged 150fps – several multiples of what we’d consider a good framerate – as well as 72fps in Metro: Last Light, also at the highest settings possible. Call it overkill if you like, but taming the demanding Metro so effectively is worthy of praise.

At 4K resolutions, these framerates understandably dropped, plummeting to 71fps in Dirt Showdown and 19fps in Metro. The former is still great, but the latter falls short of playability. Of course, these were again recorded using the best possible graphics settings; by disabling SSAA and turning texture filtering down from AF 16X to AF 4X, I could squeeze out a much better 39fps, and that’s with texture quality remaining at its best.

The Warbird RS12 had no issues in our general usage benchmarks, either. It achieved terrifically high scores of 141 in the image editing test, 158 in the video editing test, 172 in the multitasking test and 162 overall. This is absolutely a capable machine for intensive media work, as well as 4K gaming.

Just as impressive as the benchmark scores was the performance of the NZXT Kraken X31 liquid cooler. Besides keeping the PC at a manageable temperature, the cooler and its fans remained almost whisper-quiet throughout; while the Falcon Predator Pro SLI piped up with loud whirring during games and benchmarks, Yoyotech’s PC kept outstandingly quiet under heavy load.

Speaking of the Predator Pro SLI, however, it’s worth noting that it managed slightly higher scores across all our tests, while costing exactly the same. Since the two machines actually share a processor and RAM amount, the obvious explanation is that the Falcon’s doubling-up on cheaper, 4GB GTX 970s yields better results than the Warbird RS12’s single 6GB GTX 980 Ti.

Still, that doesn’t necessarily make the Predator Pro SLI a better deal. Firstly, the Warbird RS12 offers far more storage, thanks to its 2TB hard disk drive compared to the Falcon PC’s 1TB HDD. The RS12’s 240GB SSD, where the system files are kept, is 10GB smaller than that of the Predator Pro SLI’s, but that’s nowhere near enough to make up for the HDD discrepancy. Both rigs’ SSDs are practically identical in performance, with the RS12’s scoring 470MB/s read speed and 408MB/s write speed in the AS SSD benchmark to the Falcon’s respective 469MB/s and 413MB/s.

Gearing up

Yoyotech also includes a set of peripherals for the price, something the Predator Pro SLI doesn’t. These include a Creative A250 2.1 speaker and subwoofer set, a Sound Blaster Inferno headset and a Thermaltake Commander mouse and keyboard set. Only the surprisingly comfortable mouse and the rich, bassy speakers are worth keeping, though; the headset is lightly padded and ill-fitting, with no protruding microphone, while the keyboard’s plunger switch keys produce all the distracting noise of a true mechanical board with none of the satisfying clickiness.

Regardless, the Warbird RS12 is a highly appealing rig even without the thrown-in hardware. It’s not quite as powerful as the Falcon Predator Pro SLI, but it’s more flexible, has a less divisive aesthetic and still possesses the ultra-high-end capability you’d want for £1,500. Load up a game, crank up the settings, and this bird can really sing. For more options see our Best PC 2016 rundown.