iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop review: Strong gaming value and extras

The $1,999 iBuyPower Slate arrives with a formula that's hard to argue with: an RTX 5070, a Ryzen 7 7700X3D, a 360mm liquid cooler, and a tempered-glass chassis with plenty of RGB lighting. It even goes beyond expectations by including gaming peripherals that don't feel like afterthoughts.

But in an increasingly competitive mid-range desktop market, attractive extras and gaming prowess alone aren't always enough. The question is whether the Slate's gaming-first focus justifies its price when rivals offer stronger all-around performance for similar money.

Design of the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

There’s no mistaking the Slate for anything but a gaming machine. It’s designed to be seen inside and out, with a full-view tempered glass side panel. The front panel’s triangle glass partially shows off a trio of 120 mm RGB fans. The tower sits firmly in mid-tower territory, at 8.7 x 19.3 x 19.5 inches.

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The mesh covering the rest of the front and top permits airflow and should do a decent job of blocking dust, though the case’s only removable air filter is under the bottom-mounted power supply.

Inside, the Slate’s blacked-out interior offers an RGB light strip running along the power supply compartment and up the front panel. Additional lighting comes from the two memory DIMMs. The GPU, an Asus Dual RTX 5070 in our review unit, lacks illumination. The lighting can be controlled via the Hyte Nexus app, though not on a per-component basis. (See the Software section later in this review.)

iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop Specifications

Ports and Upgradeability on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

Mid-tower desktops tend to include lots of ports, and iBuyPower’s Slate doesn’t disappoint. The top-mounted front connectivity includes one USB-C and two USB-A (all 5 Gbps) plus separate headphone and microphone jacks. The positioning of these ports works best if the desktop is placed on the floor; it’s less ideal on a desk.

Rear connectivity on the ASRock B650M-CX motherboard includes one USB-C 3.2 (10 Gbps), one USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps), two USB-A 3.2 (5 Gbps), four USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, and audio jacks. Though there are no truly high-speed ports, they aren’t expected outside of high-end towers with pricier motherboards. The desktop also includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth – the antennas must be connected as shown here for meaningful range.

The side panels come off with a tug at the top rear, hinging outward and away. Seven 120 mm fans – three front, three on the top-mounted 360 mm CPU cooling radiator, and one rear – provide plentiful airflow. Cabling is reasonably tidy, though the bundle of unused cables from the non-modular 750-watt power supply is a bit of a mess.

The CPU cooler is more than a basic model, with an LED screen showing CPU temperature, frequency, and load. The display can’t be customized, though it can be toggled off in the Hyte Nexus app.

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The Slate’s expansion options include one open PCIe x16 slot and four DIMM slots, two of which are unpopulated. The motherboard offers two M.2 2280 drive slots. There are two 2.5-inch drive sleds behind the motherboard, but no room for a 3.5-inch drive.

Gaming and Graphics on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

We are testing the iBuyPower Slate with a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, and 32GB of RAM.

Playing 007 First Light, at 3840 x 2160 with High settings and DLSS enabled, I observed between 60 and 70 frames per second (FPS) in outdoor scenes and closer to 80 FPS indoors. Using DLSS was required for smooth gameplay, as I saw roughly half the FPS without it.

Our comparison desktops include the Asus ROG G700 (Core Ultra 7 265KF, RTX 5070, $2,029.99 when reviewed) and the CyberPowerPC Gaming Desktop GXi3800BSTV2 (Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, RTX 5070, $2,309.99), both mid-tower systems with the same GPU but Intel processors.

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At 1080p, iBuyPower’s Slate proved competitive overall, matching the Asus and CyberPowerPC in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest settings), Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra), and Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic). However, its Ryzen 7 7700X3D paid dividends in Far Cry 6 (Ultra), where its 185 FPS was well ahead of the Asus (110 FPS) and CyberPowerPC (141 FPS). It led by a similar amount in Red Dead Redemption 2, with 145 FPS against the Asus’ 120 FPS and the CyberPowerPC’s 126 FPS.

The Slate generally didn’t differentiate itself from the other desktops at the 4K resolution, an expected result since that resolution is almost always GPU-limited and these systems all rely on an RTX 5070. The exception was Far Cry 6, where the Slate’s 97 FPS greatly outperformed the 80 and 81 FPS produced by the Asus and CyberPowerPC, respectively.

Overall, despite its Ryzen 7 7700X3D not being nearly as powerful for general use as the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus featured in our competing systems, it can outperform both chips in games.

We stress-test gaming desktops running 15 loops of the Metro: Exodus benchmark at RTX settings. The iBuyPower desktop posted highly stable performance, averaging 145.7 FPS across all runs with less than a one frame variance across all runs. The Ryzen 7 7700X3D’s average temperature was 43 degrees Celsius and its average clock was 4.29 GHz. The RTX 5070 ran at 64 C and had an average core clock of 2.64 GHz.

I noticed a decent amount of fan noise from the Slate particularly when the CPU was stressed, causing the triple-fan CPU cooler to quickly ramp up to high speed. The fan noise was hardly noticeable for daily use and was relatively low while gaming as well.

Productivity Performance on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

We tested the iBuyPower Slate gaming desktop featuring a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, 32GB of dual-channel DDR5-5200 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive (a Patriot P410 as tested).

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Productivity performance isn’t a strong point for this Slate configuration. Though its Ryzen 7 7700X3D remains potent for gaming, its previous generation eight-core architecture is outmuscled by the Core Ultra 7 K-class chips in both the Asus and CyberPowerPC systems, particularly the latter with its refreshed Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. The delta was significant: iBuyPower's system scored 14,222 in Geekbench multi-core versus 22,485 for CyberPowerPC, and took 3:35 to complete our 4K to 1080p Handbrake transcoding test versus just 2:03 for the Asus and 1:45 for the CyberPowerPC. The iBuyPower system does, however, include a decent storage drive, proving competitive in our 25GB file transfer test.

Despite the Slate’s performance delta versus the Core Ultra 7 systems, this PC is still highly capable for daily productivity and moderate content creation, such as video editing. Only those squeezing every last drop of performance out of their CPU will find it compelling to go with a more powerful chip than the Ryzen 7 7700X3D.

Keyboard and Mouse with the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

The Slate includes much better than average peripherals. The mechanical keyboard is the standout. Though not stated in the specs, it feels like it uses linear switches favored by gamers for their predictability. It felt rock solid in my testing and wasn’t overly loud. The keyboard supports RGB backlighting, though not per-key – the lighting can be set in the included Hyte Nexus app for various colors and patterns. You can also control the lighting through keyboard shortcuts – Fn+Ctrl cycles colors, Fn+Left/Right arrows alter brightness, Fn+Space Bar disables lighting, and Fn+Alt cycles through 16 backlighting patterns, such as breathing, pulsing, and steady. It’s also nice to see that the keyboard uses a detachable USB-C cable.

The mouse is also better than average, though it’s only for right handers. The standard buttons offer a solid feel, with two side buttons and a notched scroll wheel. The DPI button behind the scroll wheel switches between 1,200, 2,400, 3,500, 5,500, and 7,200 DPI, which are visually indicated by the DPI button illuminating in red, blue, green, purple, and yellow, respectively. The mouse fits my medium-size hand well. It’s internally backlit in RGB color, which can be configured in Hyte Nexus or toggled through 10 modes pressing the button on the underside. Patterns include color streaming, steady, and breathing, to name a few.

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Software and Warranty on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

Besides the usual preinstalled Windows 11 apps, iBuyPower only preloads one app – Hyte Nexus. It provides basic component temperature and frequency monitoring, but its real focus is RGB lighting control.

The menu is confusing – there are tiles for different components, such as the case, but these have no effect since the particular case used in the Slate isn’t recognized. Instead, all the action happens in the Lighting section. Many preset lighting recipes are included, such as Rainbow, Aurora, Ice, Fireplace, and Forest, which even apply to the keyboard and mouse. There are also options for screen mirroring, audio visualization, and static colors. You can save your settings in profiles.

That said, there’s no way to control lighting on a per-component basis – colors and patterns apply to all components at once since they are all connected to ARGB header 1. Confusingly, the app lets you change settings for the other headers, but this has no effect since nothing is connected to them. If the app indicated that those headers aren’t connected, this would have been more straightforward. The Slate nonetheless allows a decent amount of lighting customization despite lacking an advanced lighting controller, which would have increased the cost.

iBuyPower covers the Slate with a one-year parts and labor warranty.

iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop Configurations

We tested the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop with a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, 32GB (2x 16GB) of DDR5-5200 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. A mechanical backlit gaming keyboard and mouse are included in the box.

Best Buy offers several other variations of the Slate. A $1,679.99 starter model included a Core i7-14700F and RTX 5060 while a $1,799.99 model stepped up to a Core Ultra 7 265F and RTX 5060 Ti. Above our test model, a $2,299.99 variant included a Ryzen 9 9900X3D, while a range-topping $2,999.99 model offered a Ryzen 9 7900X, an RTX 5080, and a 2TB SSD.

Bottom Line

iBuyPower’s Slate gets the mid-tier gaming desktop formula almost exactly right. Visually, its RGB lighting is attractive and reasonably configurable even if it lacks per-component control, and its RTX 5070 and Ryzen 7 7700X3D comfortably power through today’s games at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K possible using dialed-down visual quality or DLSS. iBuyPower goes above expectations by including a liquid CPU cooler with a built-in screen and by including a mechanical RGB keyboard and gaming mouse.

Where the Slate stumbles, as least in our reviewed configuration, is processing power. Though the Ryzen 7 7700X3D remains potent for gaming, it’s outclassed by Core Ultra 7 K-class chips for general use, which can be had in systems costing similar money. But for pure gamers, this Slate is a standup performer.