PCSpecialist Nebula Supreme R review: Arrow Lake hits its mark

With the arrival of Intel Arrow Lake, you now have your pick of 2024’s best and brightest CPUs. PCSpecialist Nebula Supreme R comes ready-made with Core Ultra 7 265K at the helm, making a solid case for the new generation.

PCSpecialist Nebula Supreme R

£2,199

Pros

• Extremely cool under load
• Very quiet
• Beautiful showcase build
• Quick-release window

Cons

• Sideward step for gaming

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How we test and review products.

Since Core Ultra 9 285K didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for Intel’s latest line-up, 265K has a lot to prove. Fortunately, it’s wrapped in a tantalising hardware burrito that strikes a balance between forward-looking performance and low-power footprint. A combo that bodes well for a cool, calm and collected PC build.

Specifications

Despite a new socket, compatibility with existing coolers allows Core Ultra 7 265K to sit comfortably beneath PCSpecialist’s FrostFlow 360 AIO. Arrow Lake’s high-end chip packs eight Lion Cove performance cores, backed with 12 efficient cores – just four short of Core Ultra 9 285K. In fact, it has a lot in common with the flagship, featuring an extremely close 5.6GHz boost clock, 30MB L3 Cache, and identical 250W power draw, all for a couple of hundred dollars less.

A new platform grants you plenty of new boons from Gigabyte’s Z890 Eagle WiFi 7 motherboard. The headline is onboard 6GHz wireless connectivity complete with an antenna to boost your signal, but there’s also a 2.5G Ethernet port and a CPU-attached USB4 port that runs up to 40Gbps with DP Alt. Round this off with a mixture of five USB 3.2, four USB 2.0 ports, Bluetooth 5.4, and the usual front I/O ports, and you can connect just about anything to it.

A 2TB Samsung 990 Pro handles storage, which is plenty to start off but might fill quickly with the size of games these days. Fortunately, there are several options if you want to expand in the future. It occupies just one of the three PCIe Gen 4 M.2 slots, and there’s a faster Gen 5 slot for good measure.

The final feathers on the platform’s cap are integrated Intel HD graphics and a baked-in Intel AI Boost NPU. The usefulness of the AI accelerator is yet to be realised during common everyday tasks, but it’s clear which way the industry is heading. Onboard graphics, meanwhile, remain useful as an easy way to get 4K/144Hz visuals when in a pinch. It’s ideal for troubleshooting, but you’ll otherwise lean on the beefy discrete option here instead. After all, it’s the most expensive part of the entire build.

Zotac’s GeForce RTX 4080 Super Trinity Black is where Nebula Supreme R’s middle name comes from. It generally makes short work of any game you chuck at it thanks to 16GB GDDR6X video memory, a 256-bit bus, and a 2,550MHz boost clock. Alongside DLSS 3 support, you won’t need to upgrade for years to come. That said, be mindful of the 850W Corsair RMx Series if you do. It has plenty of juice for this system but not a huge amount of headroom for future flagship cards rumoured to be especially thirsty.

All of this is packed into a bespoke PCS Lumin ARGB mid-tower case measuring 475 x 310 x 514mm (L x W x H). It’s not quite the true panoramic view we’re accustomed to in 2024 since the frame interrupts the tempered glass, but it’s by far the easiest case to open. Simply press the button, and the latch comes loose, releasing the hinged panel to swing freely. I wish every window was this simple.

The finished result is as neat as can be, both front and back. The dual-chamber design hides the power supply behind the motherboard, while PCSpecialist routes cables seamlessly to their destination. It leaves the six ARGB fans and AIO cooler to glow synchronised and uninterrupted for a very tidy light show.

Nebula Supreme R costs a pretty penny at £2,199, but it’s surprising just how much value PCSpecialist packs into its price point. Firstly, you’d save no more than £80 by sourcing near-identical components and building it yourself. For that premium, PCS will piece it together, ship it to you ready made, and cover you with a three-year warranty by default. The cherry on top is a neat 20% code for select peripherals at corsair.com, helping you round out your setup.

Performance

Although we usually test devices out the box, all our Nebula Supreme R benchmarks use Windows’ High Performance power profile. This is due to Intel Arrow Lake processors struggling with the default Balanced preset. Without further ado, here are the main competitors:

• PCSpecialist Helio Elite
  • AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
  • Asus Prime B650-Plus
  • Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti 16GB
  • 16GB DDR5-5200
  • 1TB Samsung 990 Evo
• CyberpowerPC UK Ultra R99 Pro
  • AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
  • MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4090
  • 32GB DDR5-6400
  • 2TB WD_Black SN850X
• CyberpowerPC UK Ultra R77 RTX
  • AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
  • MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4080 Super
  • 32GB DDR5-6000
  • 2TB WD_Black SN850X
• CyberpowerPC UK MSI Infinity Elite
  • Intel Core i7-14700KF
  • MSI Pro Z790-S WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4070 Super
  • 32GB DDR5-5200
  • 1TB MSI Spatium M371
• Corsair One i500
  • Intel Core i9-14900K
  • MSI MAG B760M Mortar WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4090
  • 64GB DDR5-6000
  • 2TB Gen 4 NVMe

CPU

Top marks right off the bat. Core Ultra 7 265K outperforms the previous generation flagship in single-core Cinebench 2024 tests. It slips to second place in multi-core efforts, but when you consider it has four fewer cores and no hyper-threading, a score of near 2,000 marks is a sterling effort.

As the first desktop processor with a neural processing unit in Intel’s line-up, Core Ultra 265K doesn’t quite stack up against its more mature mobile counterparts. That said, you can see just how much of a difference the NPU makes, nearly doubling the half precision scores compared to relying on the CPU for the same tasks. Much better to have it ready and waiting for your machine learning workloads than not.

RAM

DDR5-5600 on the Z890 Eagle WiFi 7 board represents a safe bet, and Corsair Vengeance memory performs admirably at 75,078MB/s in AIDA Bandwidth Copy benchmarks. Latency, as evidenced in our Arrow Lake review, isn’t a strong suit for the latest Intel architecture.

Storage

We’ve bore witness to the prowess of Samsung 990 Pro plenty of times before, and I’m happy to report nothing’s changed. It’s still a beast of a PCIe 4 SSD with 7,137MB/s sequential read and 6,796MB/s sequential write speeds.

Apps

Extra threads and faster RAM take other configurations a little higher in PCMark 10, but Nebula Supreme R is no slouch.

Gaming

Armed with one of the best graphics cards, the first Arrow Lake system in the charts has no trouble with synthetic 3DMark tests, yet real-world gaming performance is a sideward step compared to previous generations. While high framerate QHD or UHD gameplay is well within this PC’s remit, folk rocking a similar 14th, 13th or 12th Gen build won’t see a generational leap in gaming performance.

Then again, if you’re coming from a much older system, gaming at this level sure looks and feels good. HD textures in Far Cry 6 and ray tracing in the already taxing Cyberpunk 2077 prove a bigger task at 4K, but Nebula Supreme R pushes far above the 60fps margin we normally aim for in those conditions. Take those constraints away, and there are enough frames to satiate high refresh rate monitors.

Some titles see diminishing returns by lowering the resolution, while others, like Rainbow Six Extraction, show the heights you can push if you really want to get competitive – even at Ultra Quality.

Vitals

One area in which Core Ultra excels is efficiency, requiring a mere 276W under load. Satisfyingly economical, considering it’s a high-end chip under the hood.

Alongside slim power demands, Core Ultra 7 runs as cool as a cucumber. At 65.1°C, Nebula Supreme R with its PCS FrostFlow 360 AIO features incredibly low CPU temperatures under load, with no signs of thermal throttling.

While the GPU is slightly toastier, it’s not even close to concerning. RTX 4080 Super is a workhorse, and 71°C is fairly tame for something so powerful.

Greater cooling usually comes at the expense of some noise as fans push a little harder, but Nebula Supreme R is as elegant as they come. You won’t notice it’s running when idle at 30.2dBA or need earplugs when it comes time to game, despite fans cranking up to 47.1dBA.

Conclusion

Unlike the latest flagship, Core Ultra 7 265K makes a bigger splash by taking the fight to the previous-gen Core i9-14900K. It rarely outright wins, but even dancing the same dance shows modest generational uplifts with solid efficiency to boot.

The remaining specs leave little wanting, as RTX 4080 Super does all the heavy lifting, driving great frame rates in just about anything, and the 2TB WD Black SN850X has room for a decent game library. Faster RAM wouldn’t go amiss, but ultimately, if you’re coming from much older hardware, you’re going to feel the injection of speed and responsiveness.

Overall, £2,199 is no small chunk of change, but there’s good value here for a 4K gaming PC. It’s £100 less than its closest rival and worthy of consideration when shopping prebuilt. Plus, it’s the easiest system I’ve tinkered with, offering plenty of headroom to add your own upgrades later down the line.

Verdict: Intel Core Ultra 265K is surrounded by components that shine a flattering spotlight on the CPU, offering high-end performance in a sleek, efficient rig.