The Fishbowl Gaming PC You Want to Swim In

A river of RGB light flows through the iBuyPower Trace See-through glass, bathed in glow, this stack of glass, aluminum and silicone is like a fish tank floating with lights.

These types of beautiful “fishbowl” PC cases have become popular over the past few years. Trace Then, you open the side panel, exposing the RGB light strips underneath, and find the power supply cables at the bottom almost impossible to reach. That’s not to knock iBuyPower’s latest tower too hard. This is probably the most attractive of its 2026 Gen 10 prebuilt gaming desktops and a solid PC in its own right. This is just a reminder that the Trace

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With supplied components including the top-end AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D gaming CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU, the iBuyPower Trace Who knows if the cost of RAM will increase the price of this PC even more. Just half a year ago, you could build a similar PC for even less. When I put the same components into Buildcourse, I get a PC that costs about the same.

The end result is that pre-configured PCs are now not only easier for the end user; They can save you money as well as time. This is the kind of statement that would seem to be anathema to the entire concept of PC gaming, but that’s where we are. At the very least, the Trace

Practice setting up your own GPU

There are many prebuilt PC brands that focus on creating a seamless package. You spend a lot of money, and you don’t have to do anything except take it out of the box, plug it in, and start playing. iBuyPower is more traditional, which is necessary due to the size of the case. There is no GPU bracket to keep the GPU stable during transport. Instead, the RTX 5080 GPU came in its original MSI-branded packaging. This means you have to slot it into the top PCIe Express slot on the motherboard yourself, then plug it into the waiting 12VHPWR cable.

It really doesn’t require much effort. If this is your first PC, you should learn what types of skills you will need to upgrade your tower. The case is so beautiful that you can potentially stick with this design for several generations, as long as AMD continues to support the AM5 CPU socket (the chip maker recently promised support for AM5 in the “long term”).

You don’t have to do anything else other than set up your PC as you normally would — which would require spending a lot of time sorting through Windows 11 through its myriad settings and updates.

When all is said and done, this PC is worth a look. The soft glow of iBuyPower’s branded side fans and the company’s AW5 360mm AIO liquid cooler provided a cool gamer ambiance at my work desk. If you don’t mind the sight of a screen-filled CPU cooler’s power and connection cables above and behind the motherboard, the Trace

And getting to the point is equally easy. There are two thumbscrews holding the front panel in place. The rear panel is even easier to access with a little effort. Even the rear cable management is relatively efficient. Most of the power cables are running in a single stream to the power supply on the left side of the motherboard. You will need to cut the zip ties and tear each cord into pieces to identify any problems in the future.

The major complication with this case design is how tightly all the cables are pressed into the power supply unit (PSU). Any socket trapped in an aluminum PSU shield is not easy to access. Keep this in mind if you ever intend to replace your GPU in the future.

Loud, but at least the motherboard has HDMI

The Trace It is also less practical than a traditional PC case in some circumstances. So if I compare the Trace But honestly, which one would you rather have on your desk?

Once these fans start running at high speed, this can be a relatively loud PC. Pushing the CPU as far as it could in my benchmark tests, the PC clocked up significantly, much more so than other recent PCs I’ve tested, like the HP Omen Max 45L. The case design requires a unique airflow. Three side-panel fans draw air in, while a CPU cooler mounted on the back and top expels that heat up and out.

The imbalance of four exhaust fans to three intake fans creates a negative pressure environment. This means that more air is going out than coming in. Apparently, this is better for keeping the components cool, although it means you may have air looking for entry (which is why there’s a front vent next to the front glass panel). This may cause some noise, but it’s something to consider if you plan on displaying this case prominently on your desk.

And despite my reservations about noise, I may prefer this case to many of the others I’ve tried recently. This is not just a matter of show. The Trace There’s an abundance of rear I/O ports, including two 40Gbps USB-C, three USB-A 2.0 (plus another for flashing BIOS), three 5G USB-A, one 10G USB-A, Ethernet, and a decent HDMI, so you won’t have to rely on the graphics card for monitor output if something goes wrong. It also includes some old-school line-in audio ports for wired headsets. Below the front panel you’ll also find one USB-C, two USB-A, and a headphone jack.

As far as other devices are concerned, the iBuyPower PC also comes with a basic keyboard and mouse. These are not what you might consider cream of the crop ingredients. As long as you don’t necessarily spend more on better peripherals, they’re good enough to keep you occupied.

A Tasty, Potentially Powerful Fishbowl

You should already have a fair idea of ​​what performance to expect from the Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU and AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850 X3D CPU. The GPU is a more sensible choice for 4K-ready gaming than the RTX 5090. High-end cards could cost thousands of dollars more now than when they launch in 2025. AMD’s best gaming CPU is a slightly overclocked version of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. You can remove a few more frames in some games by adding an extra “50” to the name. but that’s about it.

It runs in my Geekbench 6 tests. Compared to a 2025 Maingear Rush desktop PC that runs a 9800X3D CPU, an RTX 5080 GPU, and similar specifications, this configured Trace In rendering tasks, the new CPU was essentially on par with our Cinebench 2024 benchmark. This is the CPU of choice for gamers who like to pay attention to the numbers in benchmarking scores. Any gamer should feel safe choosing a PC with a 9800X3D or 9850X3D, whichever is cheaper.

When Gizmodo tested the HP Omen Max 45L last month, I got used to the unmatched power of the RTX 5090 as well as the unlocked CPU performance of the 12-core AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D. In terms of CPU performance, this means you’ll see advanced rendering capabilities. This equates to 24% better multithreaded performance in Cinebench 2026. Overall, it doesn’t matter as much as you think. In our Blender tests, where we measure how long it takes a PC to render a scene of a BMW on the CPU, the Maingear Rush was just six seconds faster than this version of the iBuyPower Trace

So it’s really no hassle for more high-level tasks like rendering. You’re going to be using the GPU for any kind of graphics testing or other high-end workloads. Plus, you really want to know how this thing is for gaming. In 3DMark, iBuyPower trace

In any kind of high-end GPU tests like 3DMark’s “Steel Nomad” or “Steel Way”, I didn’t see any real performance boost over the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D on Maingear Rush. At peak load, I saw it reach close to 80 °C (176 °F). This is still within safety limits for CPU health. This is more than I expected with the massive 360mm fan attached to the liquid cooler device.

Thankfully, the temperature never became a problem in any gaming scenario. For 4K gaming, this PC can handle a variety of titles on its own cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Horizon Zero Dawn RemasteredAnd more benchmark-ready titles. I also saw that the iBuyPower Trace black myth At 4K, with or without Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling.

What I find more interesting is that while the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D will beat the Ryzen 7 9850X3D in the same games at 4K, it offers diminishing returns for lower resolution games. iBuyPower PC performed 20% better cyberpunk 2077 Compared to the $6,000+ HP Omen Max 45L with RTX 5090 GPU at 1080p. The story is flipped for 4K gaming, where HP’s PC with maximum specs can perform 20% to 22% better than the Trace X with low-end components.

In CPU demanding games, e.g. Total War: Warhammer IIIThe Trace Again, if you hope to push every game to its limit, know that you’ll have to compromise somewhere. If you want to advance path tracing in a game cyberpunk 2077You’ll have to rely on DLSS to even hope to get close to 60 FPS.

Appearances aren’t all that matter

Installing your own GPU isn’t really a big deal. This avoids the need to pack the PC with annoying expanding foam on the inside. As far as everything else is concerned, the iBuyPower Trace Is this the pinnacle of airflow design? Probably not.

At around $3,500 with all the options I tested, you won’t be disappointed with the looks or performance. Another high-end “RDY” pre-configured model with the older Intel Core i9-14900KF CPU installed is priced at $2,900. Anything with 32GB of RAM and an RTX 5080 will be expensive, whether you’re buying from a prebuilt PC manufacturer like iBuyPower or not.

For what you get, the Trace X is a solid all-around PC. It certainly drew a few second glances and at least one “ooh” from a colleague on Gizmodo’s consumer tech team. Is the envy of your friends worth more than $3,000? This is for you to decide.