OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 review: something old, something new

Tempting as brand-new components are, you’ll still find plenty of value and performance to extract from older processors. This is OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1’s pitch, pairing fresh-faced GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics with an AMD platform from yesteryear.

Without spoiling too much, the end results of marrying the old with the new hold up quite well. Performance is only part of the equation when it comes to prebuilds, though, and there are other areas that OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 doesn’t quite sit as comfortably.

Specs

A 2025 prebuild centring around an AM4 CPU is surprising to me when AM5 alternatives are readily available and affordable, but Ryzen 7 5700X3D is at least one of the best gaming processors for the platform. Sporting eight Zen 3 cores, 16 threads, and 96MB of L3 cache, it’s still capable of keeping up with modern games despite its age.

	OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 specs
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D
CPU cooler	Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE ARGB
Motherboard	MSI B550M Pro-VDH WiFi
GPU	MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12G Shadow 2X OC
RAM	32GB (2 x 16GB) TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan Z Black DDR4-3200 CL16
SSD	MSI Spatium M450 1TB V1
PSU	MSI MAG A750BN PCIE5 (80 Plus Bronze)
Other features	1Gb Ethernet Bluetooth 4.2 WiFi
Case	Kolink Observatory HF Glass ARGB
Warranty	Three-year
Price	£1,349.99

Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE ARGB fits the bill perfectly to cool the system’s 105W CPU. There’s no need to throw anything more extravagant atop the chip, as the single-tower heatsink and TL-C12C-S 120mm fan make for a competent and compact package.

AM4 forgoes DDR5 RAM support, but OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 offers up a great dual-channel 32GB DDR4 kit. TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan Z Black runs at 3,200MT/s via A-XMP and is plenty nippy too with CL16 timings.

Graphics duties fall to MSI GeForce RTX 5070 12G Shadow 2X OC. This is where the bulk of the system’s price is going, and rightly so.

This is one of MSI’s most-affordable cooler designs, rocking two fans and throwing ARGB LEDs to the wind. That said, the shroud is attractively compact and boasts plenty of competent cooling tech under the hood.

The 30MHz overclock on this card won’t have a profound effect on performance. However, every little helps, and you can push frequencies up by a further 15MHz (for a total of +45MHz from stock) via MSI Center.

MSI B550M Pro-VDH WiFi isn’t the most feature-rich example of an AM4 motherboard, but it provides a solid-enough base for the system. With a Ryzen 5000 Series processor in tow, the board is able to offer up all of its features.

More specifically, Ryzen 7 5700X3D unlocks PCIe Gen 4 connectivity for the primary expansion slot. While RTX 5070 technically uses a Gen 5 interface, you won’t be leaving any noticeable amount of performance on the table running on the older standard.

The board also supports PCIe Gen 4 storage too, albeit only via one of its two slots. OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 arrives with MSI Spatium M450 1TB V1 which, while technically a Gen 4 drive, doesn’t make full use of the available bandwidth with relatively slow read and write performance.

Rear I/O is reflective of the chipset’s age, but the plethora of ports are still plentiful and quick enough for most. Headlining the assortment are four 5Gb USB-A ports, sitting alongside two 480Mb headers, and there’s even a PS/2 port if you’re still rocking some ancient peripherals. The lack of USB-C does sting a touch.

For networking, MSI B550M Pro-VDH WiFi offers up 1Gb Ethernet which will be the connection of choice for gamers as WiFi tops out at just 433Mb/s. Bluetooth is similarly behind the curve, running the 4.2 specification from 2014 with a low data rate (3Mb/s) and maximum range (60m) relative to Bluetooth 5 (50Mb/s, 240m) and beyond.

I’m glad to see a Flash BIOS button on the board, even if the I/O shield obfuscates it slightly. MSI is still supporting B550M Pro-VDH WiFi with new BIOS files in 2025, making this addition just as valuable as it was at launch.

MSI MAG A750BN PCIE5 takes care of reliably supplying the system with power. The unit’s 750W capacity is actually 100W higher than Nvidia’s recommendation for RTX 5070, providing ample room to further overclock the card if you wish.

Non-modular power supplies are inherently more difficult to keep tidy, but Overclockers UK has done a solid job in terms of cable management. However, the brand’s had to use a small collection of cable ties to keep the electrically-charged spaghetti under control, making future changes difficult to make while retaining the same finish.

To be clear, this is more the fault of the case than system integrator. What Kolink Observatory HF Glass ARGB lacks in cable management, it makes up for with a whopping six system fans and a toolless access tempered glass side panel. This isn’t a premium-feeling chassis by any means, with thin metal panels aplenty, but such shortcomings are easier to forgive given features elsewhere.

OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 normally retails for £1,479.95 but is available for £1,349.99 at the time of writing. It’s difficult to put together a comparable DIY build on account of Ryzen 7 5700X3D availability, or lack thereof, but PCPartPicker price history suggests you’d pay close to £1,300.

That £50 uplift accounts for build time, testing, and nets you a three-year warranty across the entire system. As such, I don’t have any issues with the price of the system relative to retail.

That said, I do have concerns about the value of the system. Going with AM4 in 2025 only makes sense if it’s demonstrably cheaper than AM5, which isn’t necessarily the case. Sure, you won’t get an X3D CPU at this price, but Zen 5’s IPC improvements will mostly, if not entirely, plug the gap.

Performance

I’ll test OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 gaming performance across FHD (1080p) and QHD (1440p) resolutions, as they’re the most applicable to this price range and the specifications of the system. I’ll also drill down into the wider capabilities of components including CPU, RAM, and more.

Here are the specs of the prebuilds I’ll be comparing to, along with links to their reviews:

• Novatech Reign Sentinel
  • AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
  • MSI B850 Gaming Plus WiFi PZ
  • 32GB DDR5-5600 CL40
  • 2TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus
• PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master
  • AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
  • Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice
  • 32GB DDR5-6000 CL40
  • 4TB Samsung 9100 Pro
• CyberpowerPC Ultra R87 Pro
  • AMD Ryzen 7 8700F
  • AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB
  • MSI Pro B650-S WiFi
  • 32GB DDR5-6000 CL36
  • 1TB WD_Black SN7100
• AWD-IT Evolv X2
  • Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
  • MSI Pro Z890-S WiFi PZ
  • 32GB DDR5-6000 CL36
  • 2TB Kingston NV3
• CyberpowerPC Ultra XT
  • AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
  • AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
  • MSI MPG X870E Edge Ti WiFi
  • 32GB DDR5-6400 CL32
  • 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro

CPU

Up against newer, more-advanced, processors, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D in OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 expectedly falls to the bottom of the Cinebench 2024 charts. While the CPU itself isn’t even two years old, its core architecture is closer to five years old.

Of course, the appeal of Ryzen 7 5700X3D lies in the processor’s gaming prowess stemming from L3 cache rather than the raw core capabilities. Even with this caveat in mind, it’s difficult to ignore just how much faster the oddball Ryzen 7 8700F in CyberPowerPC Ultra R87 Pro is, delivering a 27-30% performance improvement.

RAM

DDR4 sticks can’t compete with the speed of DDR5. With this in mind, OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 enjoys copy bandwidth of up to 40,000MB/s, putting it dead last behind all other systems.

However, latency is nice and low at 78.9ns. What these this set of dual-channel 32GB RAM lacks in speed, they make up for with their CL16 timings.

Storage

MSI Spatium M450 1TB does boast a PCIe Gen 4 interface but operates more akin to Gen 3 storage. Sequential read and write speeds of 3,443MB/s and 2,610MB/s, respectively, while relatively slow in 2025 are still enough for zippy general computing and gaming experiences.

Personally, I would prefer either a faster or more spacious drive in this system. SSDs that make greater use of their PCIe Gen 4 interface with faster speeds are inexpensive, particularly in the wake of Gen 5 prices collapsing. As such, OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 feels behind the times with its storage.

Gaming

As its name suggests, OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 shines brightest playing games. It’s in this arena that the system’s Ryzen 7 5700X3D and GeForce RTX 5070 come together in a potent one-two punch.

Both 3DMark Speed Way and Steel Nomad primarily put graphics horsepower to the test. RTX 5070 respectively scores 5,929 and 5,326 points in each benchmark. These results are a few hundred points ahead of the Founders Edition’s performance in our test bench, but this translates to 1-3fps at most.

Game	FPS @ 1080p (Min. / Avg.)	FPS @ 1440p (Min. / Avg.)
Assassin’s Creed Shadows	46 / 53	37 / 43
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail	75 / 195	73 / 147
Forza Motorsport	58 / 94	62 / 83
Mount & Blade II	170 / 260	146 / 200
Rainbow Six Siege X	245 / 325	255 / 317

Putting OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 up against the Club386 test suite, the prebuild performs well across FHD and QHD resolutions. There’s clearly room for the system to dabble in a spot of 4K gaming too, albeit with appropriate considerations for RTX 5070’s 12GB VRAM buffer.

There are no speed bumps spoiling the ray-traced drive in Forza Motorsport, with average frame rates of 83-94fps providing a smooth drive. Assassin’s Creed Shadows proves far heavier at 43-53fps across resolutions, but a 30fps cap or a sprinkle of Nvidia DLSS will help bring performance to suitable stable targets.

Switching from rays to raster unlocks a higher tier of performance as frame rates skyrocket from double to triple digits. Take Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, which each run well enough to make full use of a QHD/144Hz gaming monitor.

Rainbow Six Siege X frame rates are near-identical across FHD and QHD, indicating a CPU bottleneck. Though you could squeeze more frames out of RTX 5070 with a more-powerful processor, it’s difficult to complain about the 317-325fps the GPU throws out in tandem with Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

Cyberpunk 2077	FPS @ 1080p (Min. / Avg.)	FPS @ 1440p (Min. / Avg.)
Native	36 / 41	22 / 25
DLSS 4 (Quality)	63 / 71	42 / 48
DLSS 4 (Q) + FG x2	113 / 126	73 / 82
DLSS 4 (Q) + FG x3	162 / 180	106 / 118
DLSS 4 (Q) + FG x4	208 / 230	134 / 150

Cyberpunk 2077’s path-tracing preset is playable on OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1, with a 41fps average at native FHD. However, the intense demands of this workload prove too strenuous for the system as it fails to break past 25fps at QHD. Time to call upon the powers of Nvidia DLSS 4 for a performance boost.

DLSS Super Resolution alone provides a 73% (+30fps) increase to performance at FHD and 92% (+23fps) at QHD. These results are reflective of the feature running in ‘Quality’ mode, but I’d have no qualms dropping to ‘Balanced’ using the upscaler’s ‘Transformer’ model at the latter resolution to pull frame rates past 60fps.

A base frame rate of 71fps at FHD provides stable footing for DLSS Frame Generation, keeping latency at bay while the feature interpolates generated frames for greater motion clarity. Meanwhile, 48fps at QHD is a touch too low, further fuelling my desires to run the resolution with a more forgiving Super Resolution preset.

Vitals

With six system fans at the system’s disposal, it should come as no surprise that OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 has no problems managing thermals. Better still, these blowers don’t spoil their cooling performance with unruly acoustics either.

	Idle	Load (Max.)
CPU temperature	31°C	74°C
GPU temperature	32°C	69°C
Noise	38dBA	40-43dBA
Power consumption	83W	152-318W

Running in a quiet room, the prebuild hums away at 38dBA which while audible isn’t egregiously so. Stressing the system while gaming pushes noise levels up slightly to 40dBA, but it’s an all-core load that proves the noisiest at a still-reasonable 43dBA.

Stock idle temperatures are nice and low at 31-32°C, providing breathing room for a less-intense fan curve should you wish to make the system that little bit quieter. Under load, neither GPU nor CPU is anywhere close to thermal throttling at 69°C and 74°C, respectively.

Finally, power consumption is reasonable considering the specifications inside OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1. As the system waits for commands, it’ll pull 83W from the wall, rising to 152W during an intense CPU workload and then up 318W while gaming.

Conclusion

There’s no denying that OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 is more than a match for modern gaming, producing frame rates that will put a smile on any gamer’s face. However, even with such admirable, well-managed performance on show, I can’t help but feel apprehensive about the system long-term.

£1,349.99 is a fair price for these specifications, but I don’t believe it’s the smartest way to spend your cash. I’d sooner recommend the likes of CyberPowerPC Ultra R87 Pro, whether in the sub-£1,000 configuration I tested or with Ryzen 7 7800X3D for a mere ~£75 more than OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1.

Heck, you could even settle for Ryzen 7 7700X to maintain the same core count and only spend another ~£10. 3D V-Cache is lovely, make no mistake, but there’s no replacing the universal usefulness of broader architectural improvements.

That’s not forgetting platform longevity either, with upgrade options available presently and in times to come for AM5. While AMD is launching new processors for AM4 on an occasional basis, none will provide a major gaming uplift over Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

Personally, I place great value in the ability to swap out individual components in my build. For those looking for a turnkey solution that they plan to replace with entirely different system down the line, then OcUK Gaming Mach 3.1 is a solid pick of a prebuild that comes with a few important caveats.