Review|Box Cube Republic

Appropriately for a system with both 'Box' and 'Cube' in its name, this premium gaming PC is pleasantly small, square and squat. It’s still got a conventional form factor and internal layout, but is definitely at the smaller end of the mid-tower spectrum, giving it a far more unassuming look than most £1,000+ gaming rigs while improving portability to boot.

It’s far from cramped on the inside, though; in fact, it’s beautifully tidy, with plenty of room for airflow. It also benefits from a hinge-mounted, transparent side door that’s much easier to get out of the way than the usual screwed-in panels.

Sadly, compact cases usually come with drawbacks as well, and in the Cube Republic’s case, the main cost is upgradability. The microATX motherboard, an Asus ROG Z170 Maximus VIII Gene, includes the staple four RAM slots (two of which are free) and two PCIe x16 slots (one of which is free), but there’s only room for one additional PCIe x4 expansion, and even the remaining PCIe x16 input is only barely accessible thanks to the bulk of the Asus GeForce GTX 980 STRIX graphics card.

Bay watch

There’s also nowhere within the case to securely mount an optical drive, and while there’s a neat little row of 2.5in bays, they’re inaccessible via the hinged door – you’ll need to unscrew the other side panel to get to them.

To be fair, the Cube Republic is already equipped with an extremely respectable combination of a 256GB Samsung 950 Pro SSD – mounted on the motherboard’s M.2 slot – and a huge 2TB hard disk drive. There’s also five spare SATA and two spare SATA Express sockets – they’re a tad obscured, again by the graphics card, but if you can reach them you shouldn't have any problem adding some SSDs.

It also compensates for its modest internal capabilities with a wealth of external ports; it’s got everything from a USB3.1 and USB Type-C connectors to five USB3 ports, one USB2 port, an S/PDIF socket for audiophiles, rear speaker and C-Sub ports (in addition to the standard mic in, line in and line out ports), four DisplayPorts, two HDMI connectors, dual-link DVI-I, Gigabit Ethernet and a legacy PS/2 socket. And that’s all on the rear – there are an additional two USB3 ports at the very front, plus extra headset and microphone inputs.

Box hasn’t skimped on power, either – though I’d expect nothing less for £1,600. The Intel Core i7-6700K is a mighty fine quad-core chip out of the box, but here it’s been overclocked to an imposing 4.6GHz per core, and the Asus GPU is a dual-fan variant of one of Nvidia’s higher-end, 4GB enthusiast cards. Even the 16GB of DDR4 RAM runs at 3,000MHz, a few hundred higher than what I'm used to seeing in gaming systems.

Thus, it put up a very strong fight against our intensive 4K benchmarking test, where it scored 158 for image editing, 172 for video editing, 191 for multitasking and 179 overall – great scores all round, ultimately beating other £1,500 systems such as the Falcon Predator Pro SLI and the Yoyotech Warbird RS12

Outplayed

However, in our gaming tests, the pricier Cube Republic actually performed a little worse than those two PCs. In Dirt Showdown, for instance, it managed 124fps at 1,920x1,080 resolution and 52fps and 4K, both at Ultra settings; the Falcon and Yoyotech machines, on the other hand, scored 77fps and 71fps respectively at 4K.

It’s a similar story with Metro: Last Light Redux, where at the maximum settings, Box’s effort scored 54fps at 1,920x1,080 and just 13fps at 4K. Under the same conditions, the Predator Pro SLI achieved 85fps at 1080p and 22fps at 4K, while the Warbird RS12 managed 72fps and 19fps.

It should be said that the Cube Republic’s scores in the benchmarks are still seriously good, and well within expectations for a system of its technical calibre. I could even get a vastly more enjoyable 38fps from Metro at 4K by dropping texture quality from Very High to High, turning SSAA off, turning down texture filtering to AF 4X and switching from Very High tessellation to High; a compromise that still allowed for good-looking gameplay.

This is a fairly quiet system as well. It faintly hums under heavy load rather than roaring, and the GPU fans don’t even spin while performing low-demand tasks like browsing the web. The CPU watercooler is appreciably hushed, too, resulting in a lovely balance of high performance and low volume that makes the high price tag much easier to swallow.

It’s just that for the same money – less, in fact – you could get a machine that’s both easier to upgrade and, even without further tinkering, capable of sufficiently superior gaming performance that the Cube Republic’s marginally better Windows and multitasking performance don’t quite make up for it.

Core specs
Processor	Quad-core 4.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700K
Processor socket	LGA1151
RAM	16GB
Memory type	DDR4
Maximum memory	32GB
Motherboard	Asus ROG Z170 Maximus VIII Gene
Motherboard chipset	Intel Z170
Ports and expansion
Front USB ports	2x USB3
Rear USB ports	1x USB3.1, 5x USB3, 1x USB2, 1x USB Type-C
Other ports	N/A
Networking	Ethernet
Case type	ATX
Case dimensions HxWxD	464x215x425
PCI (free)	0
PCIe x1 (free)	1 (1)
PCIe x16 (free)	2 (1)
Serial ATA (free)	6 (5), 2 (2) SATA Express
Memory slots (free)	4 (2)
Drive bays 2 1/2" (free)	3 (3)
Drive bays 3 1/2" (free)	2 (1)
Drive bays 5 1/4" (free)	0
Storage
Total storage	256GB SSD, 2TB SSHD
Memory card reader	N/A
Optical drive type	N/A
Graphics
Graphics card	4GB Asus STRIX GeForce GTX 980
Graphics/video ports	4x DisplayPort, 2x HDMI, 1x dual-link DVI-I
Sound
Sound card	Onboard
Sound card outputs	S/PDIF, rear speaker, C/SUB, speaker, headphone out
Speakers	N/A
Display
Display	None
Native resolution	N/A
Inputs	N/A
Other hardware
Keyboard	N/A
Mouse	N/A
Extras	N/A
Software
Operating system	Windows 10
Operating system restore option	Windows 10 restore
Buying information
Warranty	Two years RTB
Price including delivery (inc VAT)	£1,600
Price excluding monitor (inc VAT and delivery)	N/A
Supplier	Box
Details	www.box.co.uk
Part Code	CU-I7REB16GBW10

Specifications

Processor: Quad-core 4.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700K, 

RAM: 16GB DDR4,

 Front USB ports: 2x USB3, 

Rear USB ports: 1x USB3.1, 5x USB3, 1x USB2, 1x USB Type-C, 

Total storage: 256GB SSD, 1TB hard disk,

Display: None,

 Operating system: Windows 10

!    Zakaria Jabri

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Games|Far Cry Primal

Ten seconds into Far Cry Primal and I managed to get 10,000 BC's greatest hope for humanity squashed by a giant, angry mammoth. If that's not a sign of our historical, cosmic worth, I don't know what is. Fortunately, Ubisoft's latest foray into the Far Cry universe is anything but an evolutionary blip, as this Stone Age-set spinoff cuts out the fat from previous entries in the series and brings this open-world sandbox back to basics, making it a great starting point for new Far Cry fans while also giving returning players a slightly different kind of game to sink their teeth into.

At first, it seems like nothing has changed. The huge map is still littered with dozens of outposts and bonfire camps waiting to be claimed, and there are plenty of rival tribesmen roaming the forests who all want to put an end to your struggling Wenja clan.

However, since guns won't be invented for at least another 11,000 years, the set of tools you have to deal with these threats are a far simpler affair than your typical Far Cry game. With just a bow, club and spear at your disposal, you feel distinctly underpowered from the off, and its scant supply of resources mean you really need to make each hit count regardless of whether you're being pursued by a hungry pack of wolves, or being clobbered by a cranky brown bear.

Clubs are most effective for close-range combat, but whack too many beasts round the head with it and it will eventually break. When these run out, you'll either need to craft a new one on the fly, or fall back on your spear, Primal's approximation of the shotgun. Again, you can only carry a handful of them at any one time, but these can often stop smaller foes dead in their tracks if they hit home, making them more effective at saving your torso from rampaging boar tusks than trying to stave them off with your bow.

Admittedly, such a small range of weapons does somewhat limit your approach to either stealth or up-close melee attacks for the first couple of hours, but later skills allow you to get more creative. Sting bombs can be made from beehives, while berserk shards can turn enemies against each other. Likewise, fire bombs can quickly tear through the forest and flush out hidden wildlife, while animal traps can disrupt wandering patrol guards.

However, Primal's biggest draw by far is the ability to tame wild, prehistoric animals. These range from tiny hyena-like dholes (yes, I had to Google it too) to huge, imposing sabretooth tigers, and make effective weapons when exploring unknown territory. Of course, animal companions might sound a bit like old hat for anyone who's just walked in off Fallout 4's nuclear wasteland, and Primal's laughable taming process of throwing down a chunk of meat and holding down X doesn't exactly make it much of a challenge either.

Still, there's no denying how badass you feel when trekking through the undergrowth with a tame cave lion at your side, and once you master the ability to tame larger animals, those pesky boars and wolves that once bothered you endlessly at the start of the game will often run away in fear once they catch sight of your pet sabretooth. This kind of hierarchy is what makes Far Cry Primal such a joy to play, as the world is constantly adapting to the kind of choices you make. Yes, having large animals at your side makes pushing ahead a little easier, but when smaller animals scarper almost instantly, it makes hunting them down that much more difficult.

Thankfully, you can still stalk them through the trees by holding down the right analogue stick and activating our hero Takkar's hunter vision. It's a similar trick to Lara Croft's survival instinct in Rise of the Tomb Raider, which highlights important objects and telling blood trails. It's also handy for hunting down stray arrows and finding your kills in the bushes, as the sheer abundance of flora often makes it difficult to see where they've fallen at a glance, especially if they've tried to flee in the process.

It's best not to rely on Takkar's hunter vision too much, though, as some of the game's best moments come from simply surveying the beautifully rendered world around you. You aren't the only thing on the menu, after all, and the second you glimpse a panther stalking a goat through the reeds or get bitten by a cheeky, nigh-on invisible snake in the grass, the more natural and immersive the world becomes.  

The only thing Far Cry Primal's really lacking is a truly compelling story to go along with it. It's immense fun journeying across the world's dense forests and snowy mountains, and part of Far Cry's appeal has always been that gradual creep across the map as you slowly reclaim the landscape. However, the lack of narrative drive can often feel like you're only chipping away at that overall percentage bar rather than making great strides towards the end.

The environment itself doesn't have a huge amount of variation either, as the lack of discernible landmarks and different types of terrain make Primal feel more like one homogenous lump of woodland than a diverse mix of themes and topography. To be fair, central Europe probably was one huge stretch of woodland in 10,000 BC, but given Far Cry's penchant for absurd, mid-game gear shifts, it's a shame Primal doesn't utilise the series' inherent wackiness to dream up something a bit more magical.

Put those small niggles aside, though, and Far Cry Primal is still great fun. The PC version looks absolutely stunning and you don't need a beast of a machine to play it on the highest settings - although some systems I tried it on had a horrible tendency to crash unexpectedly. It might not be quite as chaotic or flexible as Far Cry 4, but for those who haven't yet joined the Far Cry bandwagon, Primal is a brilliant place to start.

Availability
Available formats	PC, PS4, Xbox One
PC requirements
OS Support	Windows 7 or higher
Minimum CPU	Intel Core i3-550 or AMD Phenom II X4 955 or equivalent
Minimum GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5770 or equivalent
Minimum RAM	4GB
Hard disk space	20GB
Buying Information
Price including VAT	£40
Supplier	www.store.steampowered.com
Details	http://far-cry.ubisoft.com/primal/en-gb/home/
Product code	N/A

!     Zakaria Jabri

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