During AFA last year, Typhoon Systems were gracious enough to lend us one of their custom built Roku systems for use during the event. Used to host the live streams during AFA, we took the system for a spin for a few weeks to see how it stacked up against the ones we already had. We tested the system using a few test cases, ranging from regular gaming, to content creation.

Having used Intel system for most of my life, I was rather interested in the difference between the Ryzen 5 1600 (AMD) sitting inside the Roku, and the Core i5-6600 (Intel) residing in my personal build. Also, I wanted to see why Typhoon systems coveted AMD so much, choosing to only use AMD chips in their builds. That being said we made pains to ensure that the builds were as similar as possible, with the only difference being the 2 chips and the chipsets supporting them. Both systems are running on Nvidia’s GTX 1060 6GB, 16 GB of RAM, 250 GB of SSD, and 1TB of HDD space. Both PCs also used a 144Hz Samsung monitor, the 24″ CFG70 Curved Gaming Monitor. Here’s the lowdown of what we experienced so far.

Gaming

Many of my friends would know that I’m a huge fan of shooter games, from Overwatch to Rainbow Six Siege. I’m enthralled by the genre and have sunk countless hours into it. Also it needs to be said that I prefer framerate over how pretty a game looks, so for shooter games especially I play at on low or even very low settings to achieve the highest frame rate possible. I was blown away by the massive improvement that the Roku system had provided.

The i5 system had given me a reliable output of roughly 120 frames per second (fps), while playing Rainbow Six Siege. The Roku system on the other hand constantly gave me an output of over 144 fps. I had not expected such a big change in performance, especially since games usually focus on putting pressure on a system’s graphics card or GPU, rather than the CPU.

Streaming

On my personal build, the go-to software I used for streaming was Nvidia’s proprietary software, Shadowplay. This was due to massive drops in framerate when I loaded up common streaming software like Open Broadcast Software (OBS), and XSplit. On the i5, the drops ranged from 40 frames to more than half of the frames I was accustomed to, 120. This resulted in stuttering, missed shots, and most importantly an incredible amount of lag.

However on the Roku, the lag had vanished. While streaming using OBS, the system was running comfortably with almost no frame drops, and an experience as smooth as butter.

Video Editing

While video editing itself is virtually the same on both system, the true test came when it was time to render the finished products. We ran the test by rendering a 20 minute clip, where the i5 took over half an hr to get the job done, the Roku did it in about 10 minutes. Needless to say, this was a huge improvement.

Conclusion

The difference in power between both system is fairly obvious, even to the layman. With both systems competitively priced, I can wholeheartedly recommend Typhoon System’s Roku for gamers or content creators looking for a low-end to mid-tier custom build. With friendly support staff willing to help you find the right fit for your budget and needs, Typhoon Systems is definitely a place to go. If you’re looking for the build I used for the test, and has since become my daily driver, here it is!