DinoPC Raging Lizard V3 review

Aside from the amusing mental images conjured up by DinoPC’s choice of name, the first thing that struck us about the Raging Lizard V3 was quite how noisy it is. It’s not offensively loud, but we’ve seen plenty of other PC systems at this price that are far quieter. The front intake fan and the PSU contribute the most to this, and there is no way to change either of their speeds. Thankfully, the noise doesn’t increase when the PC is under load.

The components in the case are neatly arranged, with good cable work routing all wires behind case’s inner side panel. The Corsair SPEC-01 case is popular with PC builders making budget systems, thanks to its distinctive looks, builtin red case lights and roomy interior. Easily accessible at the front of the case are a pair of USB ports – including one USB3 – and the usual pair of 3.5mm jacks. There are three more 3.5mm jacks at the rear, along with six more USB ports including two USB3-compatible connectors. The graphics card has an odd selection of ports: a pair of DVI connectors and the rarely-seen Mini HDMI port are your only options.

The Raging Lizard V3’s processing power comes from an Intel Core i5-4460 chip. This processor runs at its factory default clock speed of 3.2GHz, Turbo Boosting to 3.4GHz when thermal conditions allow for it. The chip is paired with a two 4GB Corsair RAM modules, and there are two free RAM slots on the motherboard if you want to expand your memory at a later date. This hardware is more than a match for everyday tasks such as web browsing, watching videos and working on complex documents. In our benchmarking tests, involving high-resolution image conversion, video transcoding and heavy multi-tasking, the Raging Lizard V3 scored a respectable overall score of 96.

The 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics card has fair gaming performance, and it should be more than capable of handling the latest for a little while to come. In the Dirt Showdown benchmark, with graphics set to Ultra and anti-aliasing set to x4, the PC managed a very playable 54.2fps. When it came to the sumptuously detailed post-apocalyptic world of Crysis 3, however, it struggled. While it managed a playable average frame rate of 30.6fps, it did at times drop as low as 23fps, which is stuttery. Dropping the settings to Medium, things improved slightly, with the average frame rate reaching 35.2 fps. While at low points it dipped to 26fps, this happened less often, so we’d happily play at these settings.

Just a single 1TB hybrid hard disk is supplied, which has a builtin SSD cache to speed up performance. At this price we’d have liked a full SD or a larger hybrid hard disk. There’s plenty of room for expansion, starting with four free high-speed SATA3 ports. There are three more 3.5in drive bays free, as well as a 2.5in bay for smaller SSDs. Below the optical drive there is also a second externally facing 5.25in bay for a second drive or a card reader.

There’s also space for PCI hardware expansion, including a second PCI-E x16 slot that runs at x4 speeds in addition to the full-speed x16 slot that houses the graphics card. There are two PCI-E x1 slots, although one of these is obstructed by the graphics card, and there are also two legacy PCI slots.

We like the Cooler Master Devastator keyboard and mouse set that DinoPC has supplied, although the blue backlighting on both peripherals are rather at odds with the red LED lights on the PC’s chassis. Nonetheless, the keyboard is a superb example of a membrane system, almost feeling like a more expensive mechanical keyboard. The mouse, meanwhile, is stylishly shaped, nicely weighted and has a couple of extra shoulder buttons to keep those important gaming moves closer to your thumbs.

The 24in Iiyama E2483HS monitor is good, although it lacks the top-end image quality of more expensive IPS screens. It covered a wide area of the sRGB colour gamut in our calibration tests, managing 92.2 per cent, and has a 2ms response time, making it suitable for the twitchiest of gamers.

Overall, the DinoPC Raging Lizard V3 is a fair performer, but it can’t match the power of its £700 rivals, and across the board is a less generous package than both the Chillblast Fusion Obelisk and the Palicomp i5 Devil Blaster. While this is a good general-purpose PC, it makes no sense to buy it when you can get more for the same price.