PC gaming has hit a point where “just build it yourself” is almost a reflex answer, usually followed by a parts list that accidentally adds up to more than you meant to spend. The iBUYPOWER Trace Gaming Desktop PC, available at Best Buy, cuts straight through that noise. It is not trying to be a dream rig or a benchmark chaser. Instead, it lines up a solid list of parts in a flashy fish‑tank case, then dares you to price it out part by part and come back with something genuinely cheaper. Spoiler alert: you won’t.
Instead of leaning on mystery components and proprietary oddities, iBUYPOWER sticks with standard parts, which makes the Trace Gaming Desktop PC feel less like a sealed appliance and more like a real PC you can live with and upgrade over time. On paper, it is exactly what you would expect from a low‑to‑mid tier prebuilt: good enough CPU, entry‑level GPU, just‑barely acceptable RAM configuration, and a 1TB SSD. The question is whether that mix actually holds up in real‑world gaming, or if it is just another “you can do better” box that exists to annoy DIY builders in the comments section.
Please note: The PC reviewed was provided as a loaner for evaluation purposes and has since been sent back to the manufacturer.
Trace Gaming Desktop PC Specifications
Before we get into the nuts and bolts, it is worth noting that while the configuration you receive will always meet the listed specs, individual components can and will vary slightly based on current pricing and availability. That is standard behavior for most low‑ and mid‑tier prebuilts, and true “I want this exact brand and model of every part” control is usually reserved for top‑tier and custom builds. The good news here is that iBUYPOWER is not using any proprietary oddball hardware, which is important for future upgrades and repairs.
Main Components
- Model: TBI5N5601
- Price: $1,399.99 (Best Buy)
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 225F
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8GB
- RAM: 1x16GB DDR5‑5200
- Storage: 1TB ADATA Legend 860 NVMe SSD
- Motherboard: ASRock B860M‑C (mini‑ITX, Intel B860 chipset)
- PSU: 600W ATX power supply
- Case: iBUYPOWER TraceX mid‑tower with wraparound “fish tank” glass panel
- Cooling: iBUYPOEWR AC5 CPU tower cooler with RGB fan, plus 4 RGB case fans
- Operating System and Peripherals: Windows 11, RGB membrane keyboard, optical mouse
The Intel Core Ultra 5 225F sits right in that modern mid‑range sweet spot. It is built for everyday gaming and general PC use, not for chasing record‑breaking benchmarks. In a low‑to‑mid tier prebuilt, this is exactly the sort of CPU you expect to see. It should be perfectly capable of handling 1080p and entry‑level 1440p gaming paired with the RTX 5060, along with background tasks like voice chat, browsing, and light content creation. You are not getting a halo product here, but you are also not being stuck with last‑gen silicon dressed up as “new.”
On the GPU side, the RTX 5060 8GB defines the gaming expectations for this configuration. Eight gigabytes of VRAM is the minimum we want to see on a card, and it will limit the maximum resolution available. It will handle competitive titles and many AAA games at sensible settings, but it is clearly tuned for the 1080p and “medium‑to‑high” preset crowd, and ultra settings are out of range unless DLSS is enabled. For a low‑to‑mid prebuilt, that trade‑off makes sense. It keeps the price in check, and most buyers in this bracket are not trying to drive a 240Hz 4K panel with ray tracing cranked.
Securely packaged
The memory configuration is probably the weakest link in the Trace. You get 16GB of DDR5, which is the minimum we would want to see in 2026 and far better than the 8GB you still find in truly budget prebuilts. The catch is that it is a single 16GB stick running at 5200 MT/s. That speed is on the slower side for DDR5, and running a single stick means you are stuck in single‑channel mode, which will bottleneck memory throughput compared to a dual‑stick setup. Even though it isn’t an optimal choice, the decision is a sensible cost‑saving move given current memory prices. The upside is that the ASRock board gives you four DIMM slots, so there is a clear upgrade path to a proper dual‑ or quad‑stick configuration later if you want to unlock more bandwidth.
Storage comes in the form of a 1TB ADATA Legend 860 NVMe SSD. It is a PCIe 4.0 drive installed in the motherboard’s PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. For gaming workloads, that mismatch is basically a non‑issue. The jump from PCIe 4.0 to 5.0 is mostly noticeable in large sequential transfers and specialized workloads, not in typical game loading. Using a solid PCIe 4.0 drive here is actually a smart place to save some money without sacrificing real‑world responsiveness.
The ASRock B860M‑C mini‑ITX motherboard is a surprisingly capable platform for a prebuilt in this tier. It offers four PCIe slots, one PCIe 5.0 slot currently occupied by the RTX 5060, and three PCIe 4.0 slots, with only one of those gen‑4 slots fully clear of the GPU’s footprint. On the storage side, you get three M.2 NVMe slots in total, one PCIe 5.0 and two PCIe 4.0. That is a lot of expansion room for a compact board and goes a bit beyond what we typically see in low‑to‑mid prebuilts, which often give you a single extra slot and call it a day.
Rear I/O on the B860M‑C is another highlight. You get:
- 1x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type‑C port (20Gb/s)
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type‑A ports (10Gb/s)
- 4x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type‑A ports (5Gb/s)
- 2x USB 2.0 ports
Alongside that, there is the usual RJ‑45 Ethernet port, 1 HDMI port for the integrated GPU, HD audio jacks, a BIOS flashback button (very nice to see at this level), and 2 antenna ports for the onboard Wi‑Fi 6 module. While I would always like to see more rear Type‑C ports, having one on the back and another on the front of the case, plus a generous stack of Type‑A, is very solid for this segment. Many low‑tier prebuilts cut this area to the bone; here, you actually have room to plug things in without playing musical chairs.
The TraceX case itself is very much designed to look like a “modern gaming PC” in the way buyers expect. The wraparound fish‑tank style glass panel gives you a full view of the internals, and iBUYPOWER fills that view with RGB. You get four RGB case fans plus an RGB fan on the tower CPU cooler. It is not a bespoke airflow‑optimized enclosure, but the side panel fan layout allows for adequate cooling for this level of CPU and GPU. For this tier, the visual presentation is genuinely above average, and the cooling meets expectations rather than falling short.
Power is handled by a 600W ATX power supply. For an Ultra 5 and RTX 5060, that is an appropriate size and should be more than enough under normal gaming loads. It leaves some headroom for minor upgrades, but if you eventually decide to jump to a significantly more power‑hungry CPU and GPU combo, the PSU will likely need to be replaced. That is typical for this class of build: right‑sized for the current configuration, not designed for unlimited future growth.
Finally, it is worth calling out the “box ready” nature of the package. Windows 11 is preinstalled, and iBUYPOWER includes an RGB membrane keyboard and optical mouse. They are very entry‑level peripherals, and most enthusiasts will eventually replace them, but they do get you up and running without needing any extra purchases. That cost often gets ignored when people do quick prebuilt vs DIY math. If you are starting from nothing, having functional input devices in the box is a practical plus, even if they are not the long‑term endgame for your setup.
Real-World Performance
The memory configuration is probably the weakest link in the Trace. You get 16GB of DDR5, which is the bare minimum we want to see in 2026 and far better than the 8GB you still find in truly budget prebuilts. The problem is that it is a single 16GB stick of DDR5‑5200 running in single‑channel mode. That speed is on the slower side for DDR5, and single‑channel effectively bottlenecks your memory bandwidth compared to a proper dual‑stick setup. It is clearly a cost‑saving measure given current memory prices, and for everyday tasks you may not notice it much. In games, especially at 1080p where the CPU is more of a bottleneck than the GPU, it can shave off performance depending on the title. The silver lining is that the ASRock board gives you four DIMM slots, so dropping in a second matching stick later will bump you up to dual‑channel and unlock more throughput.
In synthetic benchmarks, the reduced performance of a single stick of RAM vs a dual-stick configuration will show up over and over again. No matter how you slice it, you are limiting the maximum data transfer rate.
But what about in the real world, for the average user? The limitation is still there, but how noticeable is it really? For day to day productivity, you may not even notice it at all. A second here, another there. That will jump up depending on the task, but even so, casual users will see better performance out of the Trace than their work computer or smart phone.
For gaming, there’s probably bigger fish to fry. Single data rates will reduce a game’s performance, especially at 1080p, which is where the Trace is meant to be used. Lower resolutions are usually bottlenecked by the CPU, not the GPU, even when you are dealing with a lower-end card like the RTX 5060 in the Trace. Depending on the game and other hardware, real-world testing shows a wide range of results, from 5% all the way up to a 50% performance hit. As you move up to higher resolutions, like 1440p and 4K, the gap narrows.
In my time with the Trace, I could tell the difference in performance compared to my personal rig, but it’s hard to draw a conclusion on how much that was due to the RAM. Everything about my personal rig puts it in a class above the Trace – more memory, a faster CPU and GPU, and a better SSD drive. And of course that also means that it would cost more to build it. So, if you have a couple thousand dollars extra sitting around and want better performance than the Trace can give, you can do better. That’s how it has always been with PCs, and that’s how it’s going to always be.
So let’s put the “You can do better” argument to rest, and look instead at what the Trace has to offer. I ran a few of my favorite games at various resolutions to see how the Trace would perform, and I can’t say I was disappointed.
I ran internal benchmarks for three games: Forza Horizon 6, Total War: Warhammer 3, and Cyberpunk 2077. I ran each game at 1080p and 1440p at the highest graphical settings with DLSS enabled and Frame Generation disabled. DLSS has undoubtedly increased the overall score, but I think it represents the typical settings used by anyone running an RTX 5060. Please note that these benchmarks were run casually, without stringent testing conditions, and the results should be taken with that in mind. Still, I think the results give a general representation of what you can expect from the Trace, and won’t be surprising to anyone familiar with the hardware presented.
At 1080p, every game was able to average above 100fps. After just those three games, it was obvious that the Trace is built for 1080p gaming. With DLSS enabled, 100+fps is totally acceptable in my book, and a few tweaks to the settings could take it even higher.
The rig definitely starts to show its weaknesses at 1440p, but it fared slightly better than I expected. Cyberpunk 2077 and Total War: Warhammer 3 were able to stay above 70fps. Forza, on the other hand, could barely maintain a 50fps average at 1440p; with reduced settings you could still get over the 60fps minimum, but many gamers consider 100fps, or even higher, as their minimum. Sacrifices will have to be made if you want to consistently play at 1440p.
Just for fun, I tried running Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K, and I got a slide show, with the fps dropping down to single digits at times. The RTX 5060 and its 8GB of VRAM just isn’t enough for 4K gaming, no matter how low you move all the sliders. That really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, though.
Upgradability
PC hardware is always evolving, and today’s top-end machine will be mid-tier gear in a matter of months, not years. The one benefit of a desktop PC is its upgradability, giving you a way to extend the usability of the rig piece by piece as your budget allows.
Out of the box, the Trace we reviewed will be able to run 1080p games for several years. The RTX 5060 may be an entry-level card, but DLSS allows it to punch well above its weight with minimal impact to image quality. You’ll eventually have to swap it out for a better card if you want to jump up to 4K gaming at some point, but this rig isn’t built with that in mind.
In fact, this Trace is already pushing its limits just by switching to 1440p resolution. 60 fps is the minimum I want to see in any game, and 100+ fps is much more comfortable for shooters and racing titles. And I’m not that picky. Many gamers scoff at anything less than 144 fps, and others expect 200+ as a minimum. Those are numbers the RTX 5060 in the Trace will never see, except maybe in Minesweeper.
So long story short, if you are good with 1080p gaming with DLSS on, the Trace is a solid option. And as a solid base, there are ways to extend its life. The most obvious upgrade, especially if you want higher resolutions, is to change out the graphics card. It’s also the most expensive single upgrade you can make. I could see putting an RTX 5070 (or AMD equivalent) into the Trace to get 1440p gaming, but I wouldn’t go any higher than that. Slamming in a 5080 or 5090 into this rig would create an unbalanced machine with multiple bottlenecks. You’d have to upgrade the CPU, RAM, and power supply at a minimum, and if you’re going to do all of that at once, you might as well just buy or build a new PC.
More sensible upgrades include RAM and storage. As we already mentioned, a single stick of RAM isn’t optimal, and adding a second stick will not only give you more memory headroom, it’ll unlock double data rate for faster overall throughput. Although it’s always best to pair identical sticks from the same manufacturer with the same timings, the stick of T-Force RAM isn’t a waste. It is possible to mix and match RAM, just keep in mind that the better stick will always match the performance of the cheaper, slower stick. Using non-paired RAM can also introduce instability into the system, but that usually only happens if you are overclocking and pushing the RAM to its limits.
The ADATA 1GB NVMe SSD is also another upgrade option, but only if you are inconvenienced by its size. The real-world difference between a gen5 and gen4 NVMe for gaming is negligible, as in tenths of a second. The real reason to upgrade to a larger SSD would be if you like to have access to your favorite games at all times. A 1TB drive can easily hold 5 or 6 games along with pictures, videos, and other day to day file needs. But if you’re the type of gamer that likes to add 1000 mods to Skyrim or load up the entire world in Microsoft Flight Simulator, a 1TB card is just fine.
Final Verdict
With the Trace Gaming Desktop PC, you are getting exactly what you paid for, and in the prebuilt world that is not a bad outcome at all. The Core Ultra 5 225F and RTX 5060 pair up about how you would expect, delivering very comfortable 1080p performance with DLSS on and just enough headroom to dabble in 1440p if you are willing to make some visual compromises. This is not a rig pretending to be anything more than that, which is refreshing.
The weak spot is clearly the memory configuration. A single 16GB stick of DDR5‑5200 in single‑channel mode is not ideal, and you can see the impact in benchmarks and in how hard it leans on DLSS at 1080p. That said, it is a cost‑conscious decision that keeps the price down, and the four DIMM slots on the ASRock board at least give you an easy upgrade path. The storage choice, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot, is the opposite story: smart corner‑cutting in a place that barely matters for gaming, with enough capacity that you are not immediately uninstalling half your library to make room for the next big release.
Where the Trace overperforms for its tier is in the platform and presentation. The TraceX case is a nice looking case, and the cabling is better than you’d expect from a lower end model. The B860M‑C board offers more PCIe and M.2 expansion than you usually see at this price, the rear I/O is generously populated with fast USB, and the wraparound glass plus five RGB fans make it look like a “real” gaming PC instead of a black box with a small window. The 600W PSU is appropriately sized for the current hardware, and while it will need to be swapped if you go chasing higher‑end GPUs, that is the usual story with entry‑level prebuilts.
Taken as a whole, this Trace configuration lands in a sweet spot. It costs less than a truly equivalent DIY build (most parts are exact, with a couple as close to spec as possible due to availability) once you factor in Windows, a keyboard, and a mouse. It is constructed well enough that you do not have to babysit it. It hits 1080p gaming performance that will satisfy a huge chunk of players for the next several years, and it leaves you just enough upgrade hooks that you are not locked into its day‑one spec forever. If your goal is a straightforward, reasonably priced machine that plays current games at 1080p without drama, the Trace does exactly that. It will not impress the crowd that insists 200+ fps is the minimum acceptable frame rate, but for the vast majority of gamers who simply want their games to run smoothly and look good, this is a very solid buy.
