If you want a ready-to-go gaming PC that’s affordable, strong, and pretty, the iBuyPower RDY Slate 9MP R01 may be for you. Despite it being incredibly smooth to access the internals with the clip-on platings, the PSU in this gaming PC is completely inaccessible, with all the wires trapped in a mysterious black box that you’d need to void the warranty to open. The Nvidia RTX 5070, an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and 32GB of RAM do perform well enough to make gaming in 1440p with max settings more than possible. But while it’ll be easy to upgrade this PC if all the connectors remain the same, this PC comes with a non-modular power supply, which means you’ll have to outright replace it to add any new cables – not a great look from a ‘premium’ PC builder.

Design and Features

Ever wonder what a prism being eaten by a prison looks like? Well, me neither, but the iBuyPower RDY Slate 9MP R01 kind of looks like that. The full glass panel takes a sharp chunk out of the front of the case, which contrasts against the grilles and vents around the chassis. I love this look, especially with the RGB turned on, because it makes the interior look like it’s floating.

There’s RGB lighting on the three front fans, CPU fan, back fan, and even the RAM. What ties everything together, though, is the L-shaped light bar on the interior that starts at the top of the front fans and ends toward the back ports. It gives the whole case a more three-dimensional feel. Both the glass and back panels just snap into place, too, so you can pop them off and on easily, which is great because the GPU that ships with the PC does not come installed.

Installing the graphics card took little effort. There’s a panel on the back ports that covers a hole next to the expansion slots. It’s attached via a thumb screw, so it’s easy to pop off and slide the edge of the graphics card into place, and then reattach the panel. However, when I went to connect the GPU to the PSU, I realized that the PSU is non-modular, which means you’re stuck with a mess of pre-installed cables that you can neither remove or add to. The cable for the GPU was available but it wasn’t pre-routed through the case, so I still needed to feed the wire through the chassis to plug it into the graphics card.

As far as the ports go, you’ll find two USB Type-A, two audio ports, and a USB Type-C on the top right of the chassis. It might be only slightly inconvenient for folks that position their PC on the right side of their desk.

The back features four USB 2.0 Type-A, two USB 5Gbps Type-A, and one USB 10Gbps Type-A. I wish we got at least one more 10GBps Type-A port, but there is one USB Type-C back there. There’s also one DisplayPort and HDMI slot, an RJ45 Ethernet port, and 3 audio ports. There’s a Wi-Fi module, too, with two prongs jutting out of the I/O.

Connecting the Wi-Fi extender was vital for me, as my office is above where my router is. The motherboard comes packaged with a ASUS Wi-Fi moving antenna, which was kind of a pain to connect. The prongs are surrounded by a piece of plastic that’s designed to warp around the ports upon connection. However, it took great strength and grace to connect these without snapping it in half. Why couldn’t it have just been screwed on?

Configurations

Do you want a prebuilt gaming PC from a custom PC-building company without having to customize anything? Well, boy howdy, do I have a PC for you: the iBuyPower RDY Slate 9MP R01. For $1,799, it's outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Beyond that, there’s a 750-watt PSU and a five-fan cooling system, all packed into a ASUS Prime B650M-A AX6 II motherboard. That’s a pretty decent price for an RTX 5070 gaming PC, but you’re still going to want to pick this thing up on a sale.

There’s only one other model that features the Slate 9MP case, and that’s the RDY Slate 9MP Valorant R02, which costs $1,499. It comes with all the same specs as our review unit except downgrades the GPU to an RTX 5060 Ti. There’s absolutely nothing tying it to the game, Valorant, other than signaling that this PC can run it well. But that’s pretty solid for the price.

The iBuyPower RDY Slate 9MP R01 ships with the iBuyPower MK9 RGB mechanical keyboard and mouse. The keyboard sports tactile brown switches that felt dull to type on – it wasn’t very snappy and produced a mushy thonk with every press. It’s fine for a “free” mechanical keyboard, even the RGB looked nice. Although, if you’re anything like me, you’re going to hate that the right Shift key is so small. The mouse elicited a similar middling experience, and the RGB was not as good-looking due to the mouse’s cheap transparent plastic. The real issue, though, is that it felt flimsy, and the clickers produced a dull bassy sound as opposed to a pleasant sharp click.

Performance

Jumping in the mid-range of GPUs is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, which is packed into the iBuyPower RDY Slate 9MP R01 alongside the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and 32GB of RAM. Despite being in the more affordable range of gaming PCs, the RTX 5070 manages to take on a decent load, achieving near 60 fps at 4K Ultra settings and near triple digits at 1440p in select titles, all without DLSS 4. Unfortunately, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X is a bit old at this point — it launched 2022. It could’ve had the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X at the very least, although it would’ve been pricier.

Whether you’re jumping across the rooftops of Night City or hacking your local grocery store, you should be averaging 56 fps at 4K set to Ray Tracing Ultra and DLSS Performance in Cyberpunk 2077. You’ll get the most out of the RTX 5070 in 1440p, however, as it scored 95 fps. And of course, frame generation takes that up to a whole new level. At 1440p, we got 146 fps at x2 and 236 fps at x4, whereas at 4K it hit 92 fps and 159 fps, respectively.

You’ll be able to saturate a high-refresh rate display when playing multiplayer games like Black Ops 6 and Forza Horizon 5, which scored 147 fps and 154 fps at 1440p, respectively, and then 99 fps and 118 fps at 4K. Those clutch around-the-corner encounters and sharp turns on the track might be a little easier to manage. However, the RTX 5070’s biggest weakness is revealed when there’s no upscaling tech available. I ran Metro Exodus at Extreme, 4K settings with no upscaling, and it averaged only 39 fps. At 1440p, it did cross the 60-fps threshold, at 69 fps.

I queued Cloak & Dagger in Marvel Rivals, and as I was racing down our tank who made the mistake of pushing too hard, the RTX 5070 hit 113 fps with a 67ms delay when set to 4K, Ultra, Native DLSS, 4x Multi-Frame Generation. (Our tank was a menace, but the RTX 5070 pulled through).

At the highest settings, you’re likely to get close to 60 fps in most games, even at 4K. But if you want to make use of a high-refresh rate monitor, then you should settle for 1440p. One of the biggest issues I noticed, however, is that the PC blasted its fans under the slightest pressure, even when a game wasn’t running. When running all the benchmarks, the fans went wee and woo like a jet engine, so keep that in mind if you don’t like blaring fans – or at least get ready to tweak the fan curve.

Rami Tabari is a contributing writer at IGN with over 9 years of experience in the tech and gaming industry. You can find his bylines at Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide (and on a random Predator review at Space.com). When Rami isn't wading through a sea of the latest gaming tech, he's agonizing over the worldbuilding in his upcoming novella.