Skytech Prism II Review

Is the Skytech Prism II a gaming PC that can also handle graphics design apps, or is it a productivity powerhouse that can also run the latest games? Looking at the design, it looks gamer, but I do know it handles both spheres very well. This pricey PC blends a beautiful design with powerful hardware, and potential buyers will, without a doubt, spend lots of money on such a tricked-out machine.

The fact is, while the Prism II gets a lot (if not all) right, it also came out just after Nvidia’s big push to RTX 30-series GPUs. As such, the system comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 GPU, alongside the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 3900X CPU. It can’t get any better than this.

So far, the RTX 3090 is the most powerful graphics card you can buy today, delivering butter-smooth 8K gaming performance, along with jaw-dropping 3D rendering and encoding performance. Packing the latest hardware (both GPUS and CPU), this machine is absolutely powerful, and is quite as future-proof as it should.

The Skytech ST-PRISM-II-0105 certainly provides one way to get the most up-to-date specs in a premium, modern system, but you’ll absolutely shake your wallet for it. For all its worth, it’s easily one of the best gaming PCs for 2021.

Skytech Prism II Specs

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.80 GHz
• Processor Main Features: 64 bit 12-Core 24-Thread Processor
• Cache Per Processor: 64 MB L3 Cache
• Memory: 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz RGB
• Storage: 1 TB M.2 PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe SSD
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24 GB GDDR6X

Skytech Prism II design

When turned off, the Skytech Prism II doesn’t look like much – just a standard tower with clear-window front and side panel providing a realistic view of the interior.

But press the Power button and the system breathes with color from an elaborate custom RGB lighting setup. The three fans on the front panel (covered by a clear glass) each cycle independently, and the random lighting augments the RGB effects.

Through the clear glass side panel, you’ll see the system’s top-mounted radiator and three fans. The illumination reveals the clean aesthetics and tidy interior, with neat cable work and well-arranged hardware, including the CPU, GPU and the RAM.

Ports

The Skytech Prism II has plenty of ports. On the front, you get a USB-C port, two USB-A ports and a 3.5mm audio jacks combo: mic and audio. Around the back, you get six USB-A ports, one USB-C port, an Ethernet port, a PS/2 port, a handful of 3.5mm audio jacks, HDMI and DisplayPort.

Additional display ports are available on the GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card: one HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4a. There’s no VirtualLink port this round, s the VirtualLink is literally dead. All of these outputs are capable of 8K60 via DSC (Display Stream Compression), a visually lossless technique that’s not purely lossless, but you won’t notice at 8K.

That said, we’ve seen some cards with five outputs, many opting for dual HDMI 2.1, so keep that in mind if you’re buying this PC for a multi-monitor setup.

Gaming and graphics performance

Our Skytech Prism II review unit packs an RTX 3090 (24GB GDDR6X), Nvidia’s most powerful graphics card, so far. When it comes to gaming performance, we’re going to just come out and say it – the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is about 10-20% faster than the RTX 3080, and that’s clearly worth the upgrade.

This is a card primarily aimed at leveraging 8K gaming and professional 3D rendering; despite the fact that 8K pretty much exclusively exists in the realm of high-end TVs, meaning the panels aren’t exactly widespread. Sure, that will almost certainly change in the coming years, but right now there isn’t a single monitor that supports the resolution.

In real-world gaming, though, the RTX 3090 is an excellent performer: Control played at 4K resolution with RTX at highest settings, as well as DLSS on, the game stabilizes around 60 frames per second (60 fps), but it sometimes falls to the mid-50s in heavy combat.

The Prism ST-PRISM-II-0105 will tear through Shadow of the Tomb Raider on its highest settings at both 1080p (151 fps) and 4K (65 fps), easily outshining both the CUK Mantis and the OMEN 30L.  it even beats the RTX 3070-based Skytech Chronos, with the gains more visible in 4K.

On the Grand Theft Auto V, the Skytech Prism II hits 162 fps at 1080p resolution and 63 fps at 4K on very settings, blowing away mot desktops outfitted with 20-series GPUs. Again, the Skytech Prism beats the Chronis by 14 frames at 4K but only by a smidge at 1080p.

Performance

The components in our configuration of the Skytech Prism make for a powerful productivity machine as well as gaming, and if you can make use of lots of cores, a Ryzen-based system is a better option over Intel-based machines. Ten cores is enough for gaming, but for tasks like video editing and other highly threaded tasks, our review model with an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 12-cores and 24-threads is more than sufficient.

While the Ryzen 9 3900X isn’t quite as potentially on paper as the flagship Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s still a powerful 12-core CPU. And paired with Nvidia’s RTX 3090, along with 32GB of RAM and a fast 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, the Skytech Prism II is just as potent in productivity and workstation tasks as it is playing games.

The Bottom Line

With one of the best CPUs and the most powerful graphics card available in the market today, both powerful and quiet, in an attractive, stylish package, Skytech’s Prism II offers a whole lot to like. The almost around $4000 asking price is certainly daunting, but in these times when that graphics card alone sells regularly for more than $2000, the Ryzen 9 3900X often sells for close to $700, and even most desktops with the current-gen graphics cards are mostly sold out, it’s tough to decide which high-end gaming rig is more or less of a bargain than something else.

Just in case you have more time to look around, you might probably find a system with similar specs as the Prism II for a bit less. But unless and until you’re going to find mining craze subsidies, that system won’t cost substantially less than Skytech’s pricing.

That said, with its sleek, upgradable shell, quiet operation, and top-tier performance in both gaming and productivity, the Skytech Prism II is easy to recommend for those who can afford it.