Expensive high-end systems are certainly good, but more affordable builds should not be forgotten, as they make up the lion's share of sales. That's why we decided to introduce you to one of these PCs from Vinga, which is priced close to the psychological mark of $1000.

The Vinga Wolverine A4015 model features a decent configuration, including a 6-core Intel Core i5-9400F processor and a GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card. This pair is well complemented by 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and an HDD+SSD combo for a capacious and fast storage solution. Let's start by looking at more detailed specifications.

Specification

Like most similar solutions, the Vinga Wolverine A4015 comes in the box of the case used for the system assembly. Inside, we found a standard power cable, documentation, and a remote control for the case lighting.

On one of the sides of the packaging, there is a sticker with the configuration of the assembled system, serial number, and other information.

Appearance, Element Placement

The Vinga Wolverine A4015 is assembled in the Vinga Orc case. This is a spacious solution with a lot of glass elements and five pre-installed LED-lit fans. The package includes a hub and a remote control for managing the lighting. The case dimensions are 450 x 192 x 420 mm, and the main material used is steel with a maximum thickness of 0.55 mm. Inside, 350 mm graphics cards and CPU coolers with a height of 164 mm will fit without any problems.

One of the side panels is made of semi-transparent acrylic. It allows you to admire the work of the components with LED lighting and interesting design.

The entire top panel of the case is covered with 4 mm thick tinted glass. It is removed only for the installation of front fans. It will not be possible to connect an optical drive or a fan controller. Behind the front panel, there are three installed 120 mm fans with LED lighting.

Another pair of 120 mm fans with lighting are located on the top panel. The illumination can be controlled using the included remote.

The rear part has a standard look for models with a bottom-mounted power supply unit. Here you can notice the video card with its own set of ports, the motherboard's interface panel, and a space for a 120mm fan.

There is perforation at the bottom, covered with a removable dust filter. A sufficient amount of air is supplied thanks to the high feet with rubber pads.

On top of the case is a panel with power and reset buttons, two indicators, a pair of audio jacks, and three USB ports: two USB 2.0 and one USB 3.1 Gen 1.

Internal Layout and Hardware Platform

To access the inside of the case, you need to unscrew four knurled head screws and remove the side acrylic panel. The absence of a special shroud to hide the power supply is immediately noticeable. But overall, the internal decoration looks standard, and the assembly is done neatly.

Most of the wires are hidden behind the motherboard tray. Here is also the aforementioned hub with magnetic mounting.

The Vinga Wolverine A4015 is based on the GIGABYTE H370 HD3 ATX motherboard. It is built on the Intel H370 chipset and does not support overclocking. There are a pair of M.2 Socket 3 interfaces for fast solid-state drives and six SATA 6 Gb/s for slower disks. There is also a budget Realtek ALC887 audio codec and an Intel WGI219V network controller. Notably, it supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C on the interface panel, as well as an M.2 Socket 1 interface for a wireless module (purchased separately).

Other specifications of the motherboard are quite standard for a not very expensive model: four DIMM slots, one PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot (in x16 mode) for the video card, as well as one PCI Express 3.0 x16 (in x4 mode), four PCI Express 3.0 x1, and one PCI for other expansion cards.

The role of the processor is assigned to the 6-core 6-thread Intel Core i5-9400F of the Coffee Lake Refresh generation. It is almost a complete analog of the Intel Core i5-9400, only its iGPU is locked, so a discrete video card is necessary. The performance of the Core i5-9400F is sufficient to run any modern games and work comfortably with demanding applications.

For cooling the processor, a small tower-type cooler Vinga CL3003 is installed. Its dimensions are 125 x 85 x 155 mm. The passive part of the design contains two copper heat pipes that penetrate longitudinally arranged aluminum plates. For blowing, one 120mm fan is installed on a hydrodynamic bearing with a maximum rotation speed of 1800 rpm, noise level of 26.5 dBA, and white LED backlighting. There will be no overheating problems, as the cooler is rated for 105W, while the processor's TDP is only 65W.

As for RAM, the eXceleram Black Kudos DDR4-2666 (EKBLACK4162618AD) kit is installed. It consists of two 8GB modules. The modules feature a pleasant design and low-profile heatsinks. A total capacity of 16GB can now be confidently called the golden standard for mid-level gaming solutions. And there is no point in chasing frequency, as 2666 MHz is the maximum value for this processor and motherboard combination.

Graphics processing is handled by the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER OC video card. This is a modified version of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER.

It is based on the 12nm NVIDIA TU116-300 graphics chip. It consists of 1408 CUDA cores, 88 texture units, and 48 rasterization units. Its base frequency is 1530 MHz, and the dynamic frequency reaches 1830 MHz, which is 2.5% higher than the reference 1785 MHz.

The GDDR6 video memory with a total capacity of 6GB is made up of Micron chips with an effective frequency of 14000 MHz. The memory bandwidth reaches 336 GB/s with a 192-bit bus. The set of external interfaces includes one HDMI and three DisplayPort.

The disk subsystem is represented by a decent combination of SSD and HDD. Let's start with the first. For installing the OS, games, and frequently used software, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus solid-state drive with a capacity of 250GB is suitable. This is a very fast solution with proprietary V-NAND memory, a Phoenix controller, and a PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 interface with NVMe 1.3 support. The maximum sequential read/write speed is stated at 3500/2300 MB/s, but in reality, we achieved higher figures - 3554/2379 MB/s. This is more than enough for everyday use, quick system startup, and no problems with long game loading times.

For file storage, a WD Blue WD10EZEX hard drive with a capacity of 1TB is installed, with a spindle speed of 7200 rpm and 64MB cache memory. The maximum sequential data read speed reaches 172 MB/s, and the write speed is 170 MB/s.

The power supply role is performed by the Vinga VPS-750G model with a peak power of 750W. It boasts an extraordinary design, high efficiency (80PLUS Gold), modular cable organization, a 120mm fan with a hydrodynamic bearing, a good power reserve, and a quality component base with Japanese capacitors.

Testing

Vinga Wolverine A4015 comes with FreeDOS OS, but it doesn't suit our needs. For the tests, Windows 10 Pro version 1903 with all current updates was used. All games were installed on an external hard drive Transcend StoreJet 200. If you install them on an SSD, the performance will be even higher.

The test results in synthetic benchmarks are presented in the table:

Synthetic tests confirm our assumptions: the performance level of Vinga Wolverine A4015 is sufficient for comfortable execution of everyday tasks.

Test results in games:

Overall, there are no complaints about the gaming performance of the Vinga Wolverine A4015. The system handles any projects in Full HD resolution excellently. In some particularly demanding games, you may need to lower the graphics settings to achieve the desired 60 FPS, but this is rare. However, in most multiplayer games, you can connect a high refresh rate monitor without sacrificing graphics settings.

Noise level and temperature regime

The cooling system's efficiency is at a good level - there were no overheating issues. During stress test load, the CPU and GPU heated up to a maximum of 73°C, and the motherboard - up to 48°C. The CPU fan speed was 1850 RPM, and the GPU fans - 2240 RPM. The system operated stably.

At idle, the CPU temperature did not exceed 35°C, and the GPU - 46°C.

The case fans always rotate at a maximum speed of 1200 RPM, but they do not stand out against other components. The fans on the graphics card stop completely under low load. The CPU cooler also does not attract increased attention. Overall, the cooling system provides effective heat dissipation and does not disturb your acoustic comfort.

Conclusions

Vinga Wolverine A4015 is a well-balanced solution. This system looks great as a home workhorse. It will easily handle all everyday tasks and provide a comfortable gaming experience in Full HD resolution.

All thanks to the combination of a 6-core Intel Core i5-9400F processor and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER OC graphics card with a slight factory overclock. They are assisted by 16 GB of RAM in dual-channel mode and a 250 GB M.2 PCIe SSD, which is successfully complemented by a capacious hard drive for storing large data arrays.

The appearance of the case with LED backlighting and the ability to control it using the included remote was also pleasing. In turn, the cooling system does its job well and won't bother you with unnecessary noise.

Overall, we did not find any serious drawbacks during testing. If you don't want to spend your time selecting components and assembling the system, purchasing the Vinga Wolverine A4015 seems like a logical and justified decision.

Advantages:

• strict restrained design;
• high performance in its segment;
• neat assembly and cable management;
• good selection of components;
• support for most modern interfaces.

Features:

• requires OS installation.

Author: Kostyantyn Shorokhov
Translation: Liliya Masyuk

We express our gratitude to the company Vinga for providing the PC for testing.

Link to the review on the site GECID.com