PC cooling specialist Arctic has come out with a new mini gaming PC from the left field. Dubbed the Senza, the company describes it as an “under desk PC,” and it comes packed with a Ryzen 5000 APU to turn your entire desk into a PC.
The Senza has a lot in common with the slew of mini PCs that are currently popping up everywhere. However, rather than using the hardware inside the best mini gaming PC designs, it instead falls back on a two-generation old processor. Arctic has specced up the base model with an AMD Ryzen 5 5500GT, while more powerful versions use the Ryzen 7 5700G and 5700G Pro.
While these machines won’t blow anyone away in terms of gaming performance, Arctic isn’t exactly aiming it at this space. Instead, it seems to want to eliminate the PC from the top of the desk to create more room.
When the Ryzen 7 5700G launched, it wasn’t a slouch in terms of performance. It neatly matched up with most of AMD’s mid-tier Ryzen processors at the time, but had the added bonus of including an integrated GPU. This Radeon RX Vega 8 can play some non-demanding games pretty easily, and it’s also fine for work on the Windows desktop. A machine with this spec will set you back €699.99 from Arctic, which translates to around $739.
Meanwhile, the 5500GT is what you’d expect to find in a low-end office-based PC, where the user isn’t going to be expected to be running applications that will seriously tax a GPU. This base spec is priced at €599.99 on Arctic’s website, which works out at around $634.
All three systems also come with some top-line features, including Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and 2.5G Ethernet, making it a potential solid option for a low-powered self-hosting server.
One of its main attractions is that it’s entirely passive-cooled. The PC itself is encased in what looks like a giant cooling radiator, and the inputs are split between the box itself (where you’ll find the HDMI output), and a breakout hub with your usual front panel I/O (such as the headphones and USB ports).
Arctic’s offering might not be the most powerful, but AMD’s lightweight processors have been giving their all in the best gaming handhelds market. It’s not going to rival the best gaming PC designs around, but we love the fact that you can tidy this rig under your desk out of the way.