PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master review: fabulous performance at a fair price

Having put together countless computers across the past few decades, having a system like PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master arrive at my door is a welcome, convenient break. Within 24 hours, I had all the performance I could want at my fingertips in beautiful system, not having endured the hassle of putting it all together. This is the stuff PC gamers dream of.

PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master

£3,999

Pros

• Best-in-class performance
• Beautiful build
• Excellent connectivity
• Fair price
• Three-year warranty

Cons

• High CPU loads run loud

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How we test and review products.

The honeymoon period with Luna Recon Master has continued long after the satisfying plastic wrap peel. This is an excellent prebuild, with next-to-no compromises when it comes to performance. I’ve enjoyed using it so much to the point that I’m seriously considering just buying this system rather than shipping it back to PCSpecialist.

Specifications

While PCSpecialist can get Luna Recon Master quickly out the door, it’s clear that the system integrator spent a deal time more putting together the specifications for this prebuild. This is a smart selection of components, both in terms of relative performance and from an aesthetic standpoint.

The undeniable star of this system is GeForce RTX 5090 Aorus Master Ice. This pixel pusher pairs Nvidia’s most-powerful consumer GPU and Gigabyte’s most-advanced, feature-rich cooler design. Together they make for a graphics card that’s as gorgeous as it is gargantuan.

I’m not mincing words when I describe this RTX 5090 as large, measuring in at 360 (L) x 150 (W) x 75mm (H), the card commands attention through size alone. This large footprint only serves to heighten the grandeur of Gigabyte’s design, which further dazzles through a tasteful mix of silver and snow white tones, as well as a sprinkle of RGB LEDs.

Most eye-catching of all, though, is Aorus Master Ice’s ‘LCD Edge View’. This small screen can display useful information such as GPU temperature, usage, and more. Alternatively, you can set up custom text or images on it via Gigabyte Control Center.

PCSpecialist preinstalls two support brackets for the card, one underneath the shroud and the other standing along its side. I’d personally have preferred the brand install the latter more centrally, so as to not obfuscate the ‘Aorus’ logo. It’s a minor complaint, but attention to detail matters all the more at this price point.

When it comes to squeezing the most gaming performance out of RTX 5090, there’s no better processor for the job than Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Sporting eight Zen 5 cores and 96MB of L3 cache, courtesy of AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology, the chip is more than prepared to deliver sky-high frame rates.

Nautilus 360 RS ARGB is on CPU cooling duties. This 360mm water cooler is actually one of the more affordable options Corsair offers, but the AIO is more than up to the task of handling Ryzen 7 9800X3D. It fits like a glove inside the system too, perfectly blending in to the white colour scheme of the build and arriving with three RS ARGB fans that match those inside the case.

It’s important that any processor has access to adequately speedy RAM, Ryzen 7 9800X3D especially, and PCSpecialist’s choice of Corsair Vengeance RGB memory mostly fits the bill. Luna Recon Master arrives with a 32GB kit of DDR5-6,000, meaning plenty of capacity and speed. However, CL40 timings do feel a touch slow for a build of this calibre, and I doubt pushing for CL36 would increase costs much.

In terms of storage, PCSpecialist has gone all out with Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB. This is one of the best SSDs on the market today, with class-leading PCIe Gen 5 speeds. While perhaps overkill for a gaming system, I’m not one to balk at more speed, and the performance from this storage won’t leave you waiting around however you use it.

All of these components rest on a Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice motherboard, which like much of the rest of the build is both pretty and performant. This board is full of modern conveniences, such as EZ-Latch and heatsinks galore, in addition to ripe connectivity, making it easy to set up Luna Recon Master from the word go as well as make adjustments down the line.

Round back, you’ll find a healthy assortment of ports. Two USB-C 4 ports offer the greatest bandwidth at 40Gb/s, but the board also offers two USB-A 10Gb/s inputs, four USB-A 5Gb/s, and four USB-A 480Mb/s. Shifting from peripherals to networking, you can connect Luna Recon Master to your LAN via 2.5Gb/s Ethernet or Wi-Fi 7.

The electricity coursing through the veins of Luna Recon Master is in the capable hands of Corsair RM1000e. This fully-modular 1,000W power supply is both ATX 3.1 certified and PCIe 5.1 compatible, and boasts a Cybenetics Gold rating for efficiency.

PCSpecialist sets up Luna Recon Master with all the cabling – white of course – that you need for the system. If you need any extra down the line, you’ll find all spares in the system’s packaging. Credit to the company for creating such a clean finish both inside the tempered glass chamber and behind the back panel.

Lastly, as you might expect given the matching fans, Luna Recon Master lives inside a Corsair chassis, namely Frame 4000D RS ARGB Modular. While I wish the case featured a dust filter up top, it’s an otherwise solidly-built and attractive chassis.

Attempting to put this system together myself via PCPartPicker, I was able to find all the components above for £4,005 across various retailers. PCSpecialist offers Luna Recon Master for £3,999, making these specs cheaper to buy than build.

This is an inarguably fair price from my perspective, considering this includes the cost build effort, a three-year warranty, as well as speedy shipping. This system can arrive at your door, completely assembled, with next-day delivery at no extra cost, stock willing.

Performance

I’m anticipating great things from Luna Recon Master, given the power its combination of CPU and GPU promise on paper. While I know it should dominate the majority if not all performance charts, I’m curious to see just how much further the system pulls ahead of alternatives.

As ever, I’ve made no changes to the out of box experience save for applying the latest driver and Windows updates. PCSpecialist rightly enables the XMP profile for the system’s RAM, so there’s no BIOS tweaking necessary to squeeze out maximum performance before diving into the realms of overclocking.

Here are the specifications of each system that I’ll be comparing Luna Recon Master to, complete with links to their reviews:

• CyberpowerPC Ultra R87 Pro
  • AMD Ryzen 7 8700F
  • AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB
  • MSI Pro B650-S WiFi
  • 32GB DDR5-6000
  • 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
  • 2TB Kingston NV3
• CyberpowerPC Ultra XT
  • AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
  • AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
  • MSI MPG X870E Edge Ti WiFi
  • 32GB DDR5-6400
  • 2TB Corsair MP700 Pro
• CyberpowerPC Ultra 5080 Pro
  • AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
  • MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi
  • 32GB DDR5-6000
  • 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade
• PCSpecialist Nebula Ultra R
  • Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
  • Asus Prime Z890-P WiFi
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
  • 32GB DDR5-6000
  • 2TB Solidigm P41 Plus

CPU

In Cinebench 2024, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor at the heart of Luna Recon Master performs expectedly well for its proverbial weight class. Though scores are slightly behind CyberpowerPC Ultra 5080 Pro, each system sharing the same CPU model, they’re well within acceptable tolerances.

Cinebench 2024 doesn’t relish in the delights of Ryzen 7 9800X3D’s abundant L3 cache as other applications do. What matters here is core count and frequency above all. As such, systems with processors more abundant in each category, namely Core Ultra 7 265K and Ryzen 9 9950X3D, pull ahead.

RAM

32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM is plenty of capacity and speed for a modern gaming system. These Corsair Vengeance RGB sticks do a decent job in the face of AIDA64, slightly weighted down by the constraints of Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

It’s worth remembering, 3D V-Cache processors like Ryzen 7 9800X3D suffer from slightly higher latency than their non-X3D siblings. Despite this small shortfall, the processor still communicates with RAM markedly more speedily than either Core Ultra 7 265K system.

Storage

SSDs don’t get much speedier than Samsung 9100 Pro. The 4TB variant falls slightly short of advertised 14,800MB/s sequential read speeds but not significantly so. Regardless, the storage has no problem achieving sequential writes of 13,400MB/s. This is more than enough performance and capacity to make short work of any game.

With a drive of such high calibre at its disposal, Luna Recon Master naturally tops the charts, above, relative to other systems we’ve tested. In fact, these are the highest speeds we’ve seen in a prebuilt to date.

Gaming

The powerful pairing that is Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5090 make for a spectacular showing in 3DMark. Together, the two components make short work of Speed Way and Steel Nomad benchmarks, delivering confident five-figure scores.

It’s clear from the results above that Luna Recon Master has the chops necessary to tackle the most demanding ray tracing and rasterised workloads. While synthetic tests like 3DMark produce impressive scores, real-world performance thankfully is equally impressive.

This is what best-in-class performance looks like. Luna Recon Master delivers average frame rates north of 60fps across the entire test suite of games at 4K. That’s no mean feat with all settings at maximum and without the assistance of upscaling or frame generation.

While the specifications of this system shine brightly at higher resolutions, aiming for fewer pixels at 1080p can net bonkers frame rates. Just look at Rainbow Six Siege X running one frame shy of 500fps, making for a truly exceptional responsive experience for the competitive FPS.

You’ll rarely come across a game that pushes Luna Recon Master below 60fps, but Cyberpunk 2077 is exceptionally heavy on any system using the game’s RT Overdrive preset. While a 35fps average at native 4K is more than respectable, utilising DLSS 4 proves transformative to performance.

At 4K, DLSS Super Resolution alone nearly doubles average frame rates to 68fps with similarly welcome uplifts at lower resolutions. These results reflect the highest quality preset for the upscaler.

I could enjoy greater performance by dropping to ‘Balanced’ or ‘Performance’. Doing so at any resolution is a much easier ask considering how excellent the ‘Transformer’ model renders frames relative to the older ‘CNN’ (Conventional Neural Network) alternative.

Establishing a 60fps floor at 4K in Cyberpunk 2077 with these settings effectively means you’ll have no trouble doing so elsewhere. As such, you’ve free reign to enjoy the motion smoothing splendour of DLSS Frame Generation. It’s freeing to know I don’t have to manage latency as I would on less-powerful graphics cards.

Vitals

Measuring how Luna Recon Master handles acoustics, power, and thermals, the system carries itself well in all categories.

With just 120W running through Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the processor doesn’t run particularly hot under adequate cooling. Faced with Cinebench 2024, AMD’s CPU peaks at a reasonable 74°C.

However, the default fan curve on Luna Recon Master is a touch aggressive in the face of high CPU load. Out of the box the system sets the noise ceiling at 52dBA, but there’s plenty of thermal headroom to create a more pleasant-sounding profile.

Neither GPU noise nor temperatures are an issue on this system. Stressing GeForce RTX 5090 with Cyberpunk 2077, it hums along at an agreeable maximum of 45dBA and 71°C.

Finally, Luna Recon Master expectedly pulls a lot of power from the wall under load. This is par for the course when you’re running components of this calibre.

Conclusion

A quick tweak to the CPU fan curve and Luna Recon Master practically becomes a perfect PC. It’s easy on the eyes, has all the performance you could want from a gaming PC in 2025, and is available for a reasonable price considering the system’s specifications.

While there is satisfaction and money to save in building a PC like this by yourself, there’s an undeniable joy in the convenience that prebuilds like this offer. So, if you’re after the highest-end specs on the market in a package that’s ready to go, you’d do well to consider PCSpecialist Luna Recon Master.