Name: Starforge Horizon II Elite
Brand: Starforge

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Starforge emerged with quite the backing, less of a normal brand but supported by well-known personalities. It was established in 2022 with veterans in the industry alongside a bunch of content creators, which certainly should combine to create a whole lot of advertising and a great bunch of gaming PCs for everyone. In that case, we see if they can actually hold up against the established market.

In Starforge’s range of gaming PCs, you can find a wide selection catering to a range of different price points, with a selection of Core, Enthusiast, and Creator computers to choose from, which offer the models of Horizon, Navigator, and Voyager. Then also add some limited edition options for special selections. All of that means that the Horizon II Elite we’re reviewing now is the top choice of their core lineup, so let’s see what it has to offer.

Starforge Horizon II Elite

5 /5

Editor’s Rating

How We Review

Specifications

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT
RAM: Teamgroup 16GB DDR5 5600 CL40 (2x8GB)
Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVME

CPU cooler: Deepcool AK400 Digital Air
Motherboard: MSI Pro B650-VC II Wifi
PSU: MSI MAG A750GL PCIe 5
Fans: 4 x Deepcool FC 120mm
Case: Starforge Custom Deepcool CK560
Cables: CableMod Pro ModMesh Sleeved Cable Extensions (Black)

What We Think

Overall the Starforge Horizon II Elite is a top choice of a prebuilt gaming PC. It provides you with a strong and powerful machine with a top-notch focus on looks and performance. Of course, it comes at a bit more of a premium but certainly not the most in the market. With great attention to detail thought-out design and build quality, it makes it a strong choice and recommendation. Plus with a good range of budgets to cater for there is bound to be something for everyone and without bloatware on top that premium might be worth the quality and experience.

Reasons to Buy

Excellent packaging with lots of thought behind it means the PC arrives in one piece with a loose bit here or there
Thoughtful additions including spare PSU cables and routed SATA around the back
Excellent cable management and sleeved give it a nicer and cleaner look
Cooling and build well thought out and excellent performance
Clean out-of-the-box install, with no bloatware just clean Windows and necessary drivers
2-year warranty and strong customer support

Reasons to Avoid

A more expensive prebuilt gaming PC, but not as much as the top range
When fans ramp up it can get quite noisy
Limited hardware selection in the range

Out-of-the-box experience and setup

Both the hardware and software setup are crucial to your gaming experience as you both want to have your PC arrive in one piece and without any extras slowing it down and ready to play.

Packaging

A built PC does not come light and there’s plenty of sensitive hardware in there that you want to get in one piece, so it is key to get enough packaging and protection to keep it in one piece and without damage. Coming in a separate box filled with bubble wrap is a strong start to getting it in one piece.

Then you find the PC case box for the Starforge Horizon II Elite, which has a custom design and choice and so comes with its own box. Inside that, you can expect a standard of two foam panels at the sides at the bottom and top of the case. Opting for the hard insert it does take impacts quite well, but only once and so ours did come in cracked but with no visible damage to the PC itself.

Along with the plastic bag cover to prevent scratches on the case it does provide a strong overall protection to the outside. Now inside you also get a load of Instapak expanding foam, with a total of three size 10s inside. Fitting into each empty space it holds everything in place and makes sure to minimize movement of the components inside. Hopefully saving your graphics card from breaking away and damaging the motherboard.

The only problem we had was removing the foam from under the CPU cooler did undoing the clip which we had to put back. But that’s a lot nicer to do than having to send it in for repairs. Starforge does well to warn you to make sure you prep the PC before booting with instructions in the accessories box and sticker on the side panel film. With the hardware all intact and checked we look at the installation and setup.

BIOS and Windows setup

Firstly looking at BIOS on boot we check how that has been set up and in fact, it has been done to a good standard. The DDR5 RAM XMP has been enabled to overclock it and running at 5600MHz. It also displays the NVMe SSD installed (the Samsung SSD is our game drive so it didn’t come with the system).

The BIOS has been updated to the latest at the time (this machine has been away from them since March) and that keeps it updated and secure making sure you get the best experience as well as enabling TPM for working with Windows 11. However, the fan speed and curve setup in BIOS seem to not have been changed which is fine in general but could be altered to change the noise level and performance.

As for Windows, that has been put through a standard OOBE (out-of-the-box experience) treatment and you set it up how you like as a clean installation. After going through the ever-increasing needs of Microsoft to get it going and updates we can see what’s been done to the system.

There we see very little has been left, no bloatware to be seen or extra apps that you don’t need being featured, like some Antivirus being included as builders get commission on them. All that’s been done is the AMD drivers installed with Adrenalin software and that was up to date at the time which is good to see as well. The only other thing is the MSI utility software pop-up, which comes from the motherboard and doesn’t have to be installed but can make things easier if you’d rather.

We also found their installation folder left behind in Windows C. The Starforge Systems folder is what they likely use for setting up so it’s not the worst thing to leave behind and comes with wallpapers that you can use. You can also find the Windows key here although now that it links to your Microsoft account it’s less necessary. Otherwise, it’s a great state to leave it in, and gives you the best experience of your system without any unnecessary additions.

Build quality

Now when it comes to the build itself and the look of it, there is great attention to detail and making the design very nice overall. It shows to care and attention to detail of Starforge with the pride of what they provide. Of course, though our system is a review unit so we imagine it has had the top detail put on it, but looking at other reviews it seems to be the case for all systems.

First off the build looks clean, helped by the custom-sleeved cables from Cablemod and excellent cable management, it’s a system that looks good and is nice to look at. That even includes minor things like taping together the RGB connectors so they don’t come apart and stop working. It makes the build nice and clean but also ensures fewer problems and air cooling isn’t interrupted.

The air cooler is also digital which does require a separate app to control, but is compatible with MSI’s Mystic Light as well. But to get the most out of it and have customization you probably want to get that as well. The component choice is excellent as well with Deepcool and MSI the main providers for cooling and power, whilst the RX 7700 XT GPU is an XFX model. It also has an AMD CPU with the Ryzen 5 7600X and combines for a strong gaming PC build.

There is a lot of custom work here as well, with the Starforge logo featuring on a lot of the components as the PC fans and case sporting it. That makes it a bit more unique and comes with a good quality as some more budget PC builders might try to keep costs down but opt for cheaper components which these are certainly not. Although the case does have a bendy front panel when pushed on and the logo creates a sharp edge you want to watch your fingers around.

That includes the power supply. The MSI MAG A750GL is a PCIe5 ATX 3 PSU that does make it compatible with Nvidia’s native 12VHPWR connector if you want to change things up down the line and it has the wattage to do so. As Starforge does send you the spare cables so you can add in your own components down the line if you want. We got worried when trying to plug in our SSD but in fact, the SATA power and data cables had already been routed so in fact it makes it very easy to plug in some more storage as a 1TB drive this day doesn’t last too long.

Pricing

The Starforge Horizon II Elite comes with an MSRP of $1,549.99 for the system and even offers monthly payments if needed. But compared to other RX 7700 XT PC’s does come in a bit more expensive with the rest of the hardware it’s combined with. Speccing out the system as similar as we can on PCPartPicker, the system alone comes to around $1,100. But then adding in the labor, custom work, and warranty comes together to make that final price of around $400 on top. Which may make it worth it even compared to other prebuilt options.

Performance

Now we look at how well it does in performance both in gaming and productivity tasks. Also looking at the thermals of the system and how well the cooling does to keep things going.

Gaming

Dictated by mostly the graphics card, the gaming performance targets 1440p gaming. As we go through our RX 7700 XT review it offers a good performance at 2K but nothing too thrilling about it. Along with that ray tracing performance on AMD hardware is a lot more impacted but still playable in most circumstances and certainly compared to Nvidia alternatives. It also is capable of 4K in certain titles but would rely on FSR to get a boost in performance.

For a quick rundown of the benchmarks, we give the averages achieved at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k in that order. Starting with CS2 we saw 277, 180, and 87FPS. Cyberpunk 2077 achieved 118, 77, and 32 FPS in our rasterization with ray tracing averaging 39, 24, and 11, but without any upscaling help which is necessary for its performance. Doom Eternal achieved a 277, 229, and 123 FPS average with ray tracing dropping to 187, 145, and 77 FPS.

For AC Mirage it averaged 111, 91, and 54 FPS, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora gets 66, 47, and 25 FPS, with the last Ubisoft game Rainbow Six Siege running 371, 239, and 109 FPS. Then F1 23 gets an average of 95, 65, and 34 FPS with Shadow of the Tomb Raider achieving 186, 134, and 68 FPS at base rasterization, with the ray tracing slipping it to 112, 80, and 38 FPS.

Synthetics

Now for other performance work you might want to do on your PC, we test out the rendering performance of the system. 3DMark is first and gives us an overview of its score and capabilities, here the scores line up with where they should be for the hardware in it. Whilst with HandBrake we see the video rendering performance and how it performs with the 6GB 12 minute 4K movie. Then there are also Blender and Cinebench results for rendering performance. Although a strong contender for gaming the AMD system isn’t the fastest for this kind of work but is still a hard worker that can get the job done when required.

Thermals

Loading up both the CPU and GPU through Furmark 2 gives us a good indication of how well the cooling works. Putting them to 100% utilization, we get to see the thermal performance. Where the CPU jumps rights up to 95.1°C after three minutes of load, and the GPU flatlines at just 61°C. We also see the fan RPM of both CPU and GPU in cooling the components. Whilst the CPU cooler goes up to nearly 2000 RPM the GPU tops at 1,365 RPM but falls down to between 1,100 and 1,000 RPM as it keeps things under wraps.

The system fans also ramp up and reach around 2,050 RPM which does create a bit of noise at the front. With headphones on it’s not much but the inrush of air with those does make quite some noise that can be expected from any PC running so hard. It does keep temperatures from being too hot as during gaming the CPU doesn’t flatline out as much. During this test, the intake temp was at 23.7°C with the output from the back fan at 33.7°C.

Starforge Horizon II Elite thermal performance, source PCGuide

Conclusion

Overall the Starforge Horizon II Elite is a great piece of kit, when it comes to prebuilt gaming PCs it does provide a top choice piece of kit. It shows the company has a keen attention to detail and does provide a well-built system with care behind it. Well packaged and built it keeps things clean and intact and with a good knowledge of setup and build makes it a good experience for the customer.

It does come at a bit higher expense but the customization and additional costs do make it a bit more worth the extra if it has the hardware you want behind it. Although there are tiers to the selection of models, there is no other customization behind it and you are stuck with the components provided. These are capable and strong at this tier and do make it a lot simpler to build and manage without any trouble as changing parts gives plenty of issues as I came across in my previous job it’s certainly a lot easier with just the same components. So the Horizon II Elite is a standout in the prebuilt market and sits in the middle of the pricing range.