Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII Gaming PC review

Two-minute review

The Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII gaming PC is a convenient, high-quality buy. It gives you everything you need for the best gaming and streaming experience without trawling for components.

The Extreme MKII’s biggest weakness might be, depending on your taste, its visual design. The case is a Corsair 4000D Tempered Glass mid-tower ATX case, which is somewhat generically black and cuboid, though its soft, matte finish is very nice.

It’s strapped with an Intel Core i7 11700K processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GPU, and 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX Black DDR4 3200MHz Dual Channel Memory. For disk space, it has two drives: a fairly small SSD and a bigger HDD. It has an MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Edge Wifi motherboard, and it also comes with Windows 10 Home Advanced preinstalled.

It’s a neat build with all cables carefully, and might we say, expertly tucked away. If you’ve built your own PC before or know someone who has, you’ll know cables can be a pain to deal with despite many cases being designed to make wrapping them away easier to organise and manage. The Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII is clearly designed for ease of access and, should you wish, headache-free upgrading. This is thanks to the Corsair 4000D’s “Rapidroute cable management system” which provides 25mm of space behind the motherboard and routes cables through a single channel.

Novatech’s Sentry series promises “unfaltering high-end performance, at an affordable price-point”. The specs are indeed impressive, but the “affordable price-point” well, that’s debatable. But is the Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII worth it, and how does it fare when used?

Setting up the PC was as easy as one would hope. Power it on, and follow the Windows setup instructions and voila! You’re in. All of the programs you need to manage your system are preinstalled, like Nvidia’s GeForce Experience and Corsair’s iCUE4 software, which allows you to manage your RGB lighting settings.

Speaking of RGB, you get Corsair strip lights that run across the top and bottom of the PC and lighting on the motherboard and the GPU’s “Gigabyte” lettering. More would have been better, perhaps on the RAM and fans, but you might not be fussed about any of that. All drivers were up to date, though of course, we gave them a quick once-over in Device Manager to be sure.

It performed as admirably as you’d expect on all games tested. Metro Exodus managed 106.64 fps on 'Extreme' graphics and 126.98 fps on 'Ultra', while Total War: Three Kingdoms on 'Ultra' hit 105.7 fps, both at 1080p.

While you might be tempted by an Nvidia RTX 3080 or 3090, let it be known that the Extreme MK II’s RTX 3070 outputs at over 60 fps in 4K on all games we tested. And, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a 3080 or 3090 or its AMD equivalent in the current climate of things. Even the 3070 is scarce.

With GPU and CPU shortages likely to last through 2022, getting a pre-built PC might be your best option. The Extreme MK II isn’t the most exciting PC to look at (though the RGB lighting certainly brings it to life), and a larger SSD would have been great (because its small size means you can’t put that many big games on it) but, if you have the funds, here you’ll find a PC that will give you great performance on AAA games for years to come.

Price and availability

The Reign Sentry Extreme MKII Gaming PC isn’t cheap. Not a huge surprise, considering it’s packed with top-quality components.

The base model comes up to £1,968, and that doesn’t account for how much you could spend adding upgrades to it. But it really is a beast PC, coming with an unlocked Intel Core i7 11th-gen processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU – one of the best graphics cards of all time - and 16GB DDR4 RAM, so, what’s a couple of thousand pounds for gaming at 1080p to 4K resolutions?

Hey, you might even be flexing and happy to pay an extra £135 more to upgrade the GPU to a 3070 Ti. Keep in mind that the Extreme MKII is capable of hitting over 60 FPS in 4K with the RTX 3070, however.

So, yes, the Reign Sentry Extreme MKII is quite expensive, but if you’re looking for a high-end gaming PC anyway, you’re already expecting to pay quite a bit for it. Buying a pre-built system like this eliminates the hassle of having to find the parts you want yourself, particularly considering some parts like the 3070 (at times) and the 3080 and 3090 have been difficult to buy.

The Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII is currently only available in the UK, as with other Novatech products. Previously it shipped to Europe but due to Brexit it has ceased European shipping until more clarity is provided for businesses.

You can also head to our Novatech discount code page for all the latest ways to save on your next rig and more from the PC builder.

Design

The Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII comes in a Corsair 4000D Tempered Glass mid-tower chassis. Compared to Novatech’s Reign Sentry Fire, it’s an underwhelming design. It’s matte black all over with clear tempered glass on one side. There are no standout accents to mention, apart from a small logo at the bottom.

At the top, you get a Corsair Hydro Series H100X 240mm Radiator AIO Liquid Cooler, above which is a dust protector. There are also two pre-fitted Corsair 120mm AirGuide fans, one each at the front and back of the PC. There’s space for more fans: two total on the roof; ditto at the front. A Corsair CX650M PSU sits at the back of the chassis with a pull-out dust protector beneath it. The front panel is steel and designed with wide ventilation vents for substantial airflow.

The inside of the PC is something to behold. Neat, clean and sleek. The cable management in the Extreme MKII deserves a moment. No unsightly cables spoil the view as you gaze in awe and admiration through its tempered glass panel.

There is RGB lighting in the form of Corsair strip lights and on the GPU and motherboard -- manageable through the preinstalled iCUE software.

There’s loads more RGB lighting that could have been added, but if you want to add tweaks, there’s loads of space in the cavernous interior, and you can further customise your build on the Novatech site before purchasing the Extreme MKII. 

If you’re not a big fan of RGB, not to worry, because it looks perfectly fine without it.

At the back is what’s known by many as a “smorgasbord” of USB: three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-As, one 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-As and two USB 2.0 Type-As. There’s more on the top and the front, as well as a headphone/mic combo port. You won’t be starved for I/O!

Let’s be honest, the exterior design of the case isn’t anything to write home about, but its simplicity and black colour means it will fit into almost any set-up. Bear in mind, it’s large and heavy. So, for the sake of your back, place it in an appropriate location and let it become a permanent fixture, like Stonehenge.

Performance

You’re guaranteed a smooth gaming experience on the Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII, as it hit 60 fps no problem at 1080p at max settings on everything we tested. If you’re interested in the 4K experience, then you’re in luck, because it also comfortably maintains over 60 fps in 4K on 'Ultra' in many games.

Metro Exodus is one of the most commonly used titles to test out the beast levels of a PC, since it’s graphically intensive and designed for high-level specs. Playing it at 1080p on 'Ultra' and 'Extreme' settings posed no issues at all.

If you’re looking for a PC that can achieve both 1080p and 4K quality gaming, then this is the PC for you. In case you’re not a PC aficionado, be aware that you’ll need a suitable monitor to actually see (or, not see, as the case may be) those extra pixels.

Don’t worry if you don’t own any newer more graphically demanding games, because older titles like Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and GTA V and many more have 4K capabilities. Just adjust your settings and you’ll get to experience these titles as though they were new.

The defining feature of the RTX series of graphics cards is their raytracing capability. We tested it out in RTX-capable games, like Fortnite and Minecraft with RTX, as well as Bright Memory, a game by the one-man FYQD studio, which was developed on the Unreal engine, currently in its alpha. All of these games worked flawlessly and were frankly beautiful (even Minecraft!).

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Now let’s talk about speed. The Novatech Reign Sentry Extreme MKII comes with an unlocked 11th gen Intel i7-11700K. The i7-11700K has a slight blemish on its reputation, following some underwhelming benchmark tests that showed that it was outperformed by the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and AMD Ryzen 9 5950 X, but it’s still a terrific CPU. Even now it is still near impossible to get your hands on some higher-end AMD and Intel processors, so, you could cut your losses, and we guess, “settle” for the i7-11700K.

Then, there’s disk space. You get a WD Blue 250GB NVME PCIe SSD and WD Blue A2TB 3.5-inch HDD. The SSD is on the small side, capacity-wise, meaning you can’t stick all of your games on it, and will likely reserve it for the OS and games with long loading times like Destiny 2. The HDD is still fast, however, and it didn’t keep us waiting. Plus, it has enough space to last you a while.

All in all, the Reign Sentry Extreme MKII has proven it can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. Raytracing, modern games at max settings, in excess of 60 fps? Very little we threw at it bothered the fans or caused the PC temperature to rise maniacally, and running at 1080p at a consistent 120+ FPS didn’t make a dent.

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Based on the Extreme MKII’s performance, it will not need any big upgrades for a while, unless there are specific things you may want to add to it. That’s what anyone wants from an expensive purchase – to get as much use out of it as possible.

Monitors: to 4K or not to 4K?

If you want 4K performance, the Reign Sentry Extreme can achieve it with ease. If you don’t have the right monitor, you could miss out on seeing the breathtaking resolution that this PC has the chops to display.

We tested out the Reign Sentry Extreme on a 4K monitor and it is a whole other experience of gaming, but don’t feel pressured to go fork out for one.

If, however, you’ve reconciled yourself with the question of whether or not you need a 4K monitor, and have decided that you do in fact want one, rather than need one and are happy to spend the extra coin, then we would absolutely advise you to do so. You can really experience just how impressive this build is when you do and there are a number of top 4K monitors out there for you to choose from.

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

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