Cobratype Elevate Legend Limited Review: A New High-End Boutique Gaming PC Peak

For those looking to dip their toes into PC gaming, choosing a mass-produced pre-built PC from a major manufacturer can be tempting. However, these often come bundled with compromises, and while you could always build your own, that can be a daunting task. To get the best PC possible without putting in the work to assemble it DIY style, your best option may be a boutique PC builder such as Cobratype. While Cobratype may be a relative newcomer to the custom PC builder space, their machines are a highly-attractive alternative to more conventional mass-produced PCs.

Cobratype provided a sample of their gaming PC build Elevate Legend Limited for the purposes of this review. It's important to note that it is a prototype, so there may be variations in the final product. They made it clear that, while they've extensively tested this particular machine, they are still conducting tests on the overall build.

The shipping process is the most potentially dangerous time in the life of a custom gaming PC. Horror stories are whispered online in tech enthusiast communities of tragic fates of innocent, newborn gaming rigs destroyed before unboxing by the careless treatment of one shipping service or another. It's almost as if a package being labeled "fragile" is treated as an invitation to see how many times it can be bounced off the concrete floor of the warehouse.

All this is to say that it's essential that custom PC builders take the utmost care in ensuring the safe arrival of their products by swaddling them in many layers of foam. The Cobratype Elevate arrived in an excellent, well-protected manner. Within the outer box were two heavy layers of foam surrounding a further cardboard box on every side. Inside this was further protective foam around the PC itself.

In the interior of the PC case was further foam protection designed to prevent the enormous graphics card or any other components from shifting, bending, or breaking during shipping. This is absolutely essential to the safe shipping of gaming PCs, and Elevate seems to have this part of the process figured out from the get-go. 

The clear goal of the Cobratype Elevate was to create a powerful gaming PC that doesn't dominate the room with neon glowing RGB lights and gaudy styling. The Elevate uses Fractal Design's new "North" case, which features a unique and distinctive front panel made from real wood, with the rest of the construction being from black metal. This includes the mesh side and top panel, which allow for excellent ventilation. The effect achieved is a remarkably subtle PC that's far more elegant and stylish than most other case designs on the market.

The focus on a clean, dark aesthetic is more than skin deep here too, as it extends to the interior components. Remove the mesh side panel to reveal a black motherboard, black case fans, black CPU cooler, GPU, RAM, and cables. The inside of the Elevate is a tapestry of midnight hues, with no hint of disfiguring RGB to intrude upon the stealthy aesthetic. Only a single indicator LED at startup illuminates, and this quickly goes dark once the Elevate is up and running.

If you prefer minimalist PCs that can blend into almost any space, there's never been a better gaming rig. It's a fairly large case at 447 x 215 x 469 mm, but its good looks make it less of a potential eyesore compared to more blatant and edgy designs. The Fractal Design North is also a great case to work in if you ever need to upgrade or replace components (and it can also be purchased on its own from Fractal Design on Amazon for around $172).

Under the hood, or more accurately, behind the mesh, the Legend Limited version of the Elevate we tested uses top-tier name-brand components. This unit uses the aforementioned Fractal Design North charcoal black mesh case, and future builds will be available with the option of a Corsair case. Inside, the configuration we tested includes an Intel Core i9-13900KF CPU, which is cooled by a Noctua 120mm Chromax Cooler and is set in an MSI Pro Z790-A WiFi motherboard. The Core i9-13900KF is just about the best CPU you can buy for gaming right now, the MSI Pro Z790-A WiFi is a premium quality motherboard, and Noctua makes the best air coolers and fans in the business.

The Asus TUF RTX 4070 Ti in the configuration we tested isn't as powerful as its big brother the RTX 4090, but the 4070 Ti is still a super powerful card nonetheless. Its massive, chunky profile dominates the interior of the case, and its 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM gives you plenty of headroom to run video RAM-dependent modern games.

For storage, this Elevate PC came equipped with a WD Black SN850x Gen 4 2TB NVMe solid-state drive. This is an extremely fast SSD, and it complements the 32GB of 6000 MHz Corsair Vengeance RAM. Finally, the Corsair RM1000x Shift power supply has plenty of juice for the cutting-edge components it must support.

The Cobratype Elevate only takes a few seconds to boot up to the desktop, and once there navigating the system is snappy and responsive. This computer isn't phased by practically anything you throw at it.

This performance translates to real-world gaming prowess. The Elevate was able to handle "Battlefield 2042" at maximum settings, including ray tracing, and maintain frame rates between 130 fps and 144 fps. Even in the latest and most demanding games like "Star Wars: Jedi Survivor," the Elevate delivers consistent frame rates of around 60fps with maxed graphics with raytracing, only occasionally dipping lower. The computer was tested primarily using a 2560 x 1080 pixel monitor, so in cutting-edge games that push the limits of graphics fidelity, you might need to do some fancy settings footwork if you want to run them at 4K resolution or achieve consistent ultra-high framerates.

However, this is more an indictment of the poor optimization of modern AAA games than it is a critique of the Cobratype Elevate. Games like "Jedi Survivor" and "Lord of the Rings: Gollum" launch in a sorry state where even computers equipped with RTX 4090 cards struggle to run them consistently. This makes the excellent performance displayed by the Elevate in games that are a few years old like "Battlefield 2042" more indicative of its performance. The fact that it can handle "Jedi Survivor" as well as it does is a remarkable achievement. The cooling system remains quiet and effective, even under heavy loads.

The Elevate is equipped with all the ports you're likely to need, which is something always expected of a larger PC like this. On the front you've got two USB type-A ports alongside a USB type-C port and 3.5mm headphone and microphone jacks next to the power button, all highlighted with attractive cold-colored metal.

On the rear IO panel, the Elevate includes six USB type A ports and another USB type C port, as well as a 2.5G ethernet port, Wi-Fi 6E antenna ports, S/PDIF-out, RS-Out, CS-out, Mic-in, L-out, L-in, as well as HDMI and Displayport on the motherboard. The graphics card provides three displayport ports and two HDMI ports. There are more than enough connections here, even if you intend on plugging in many peripherals simultaneously. This is particularly useful for virtual reality enthusiasts, as VR headsets sometimes occupy several different ports. It's also a boon for folks who store a lot of data on external drives.

When buying from a custom PC builder, it's natural to assume you'll be paying extra for the labor expended in assembling and testing the system. While you'd be able to purchase the components individually for cheaper, even if you're used to building PCs it's a massive time sink, even if the process goes without a hitch. Furthermore, with Cobratype you get a three-year standard warranty which covers three years of labor and parts, which is something you certainly don't get when you go out and build your own PC.

At $2799.99 the Elevate Legend Limited certainly isn't cheap compared to a home-built setup. However, compared to other competing custom PC builders such as Maingear, a roughly similar PC would cost far more to buy. Even more mainstream manufacturers such as Alienware charge far more for far less than Cobratype delivers. The closest off-the-shelf PC which you could walk into Best Buy and purchase is an HP Omen 40L, which is $100 cheaper at the time of writing than the Cobratype Elevate. However, the Elevate is a far higher quality product than the HP.

Overall, the Cobratype Elevate is highly attractive from a value perspective. Also, Cobratype will offer a less expensive version with the same specs as the Legend Limited version tested for this review, but with less expensive in-house brands of components, for just $2479.99. The Elevate will be highly customizable on Cobratype's website, and more powerful options will be available.

There really isn't any serious way to fault the Cobratype Elevate Legend Limited. It's expensive, yes, but it's a surprisingly good value compared to the competition. The use of the beautiful Fractal Design North case, paired with dark, quiet components makes the Elevate a gaming PC that is equally at home in an office or a living room as it is in a gaming den. The power under the hood is as much as you really need in the configuration we tested, as beyond its specifications the issue of diminishing returns starts to rear its ugly head. As tested, this really is a great high-end gaming sweet spot.

That power, those looks, and the value proposition of the Cobratype Elevate Legend Limited make it also a great option for creative applications, though for that you'd probably want to add more storage. It's a highly versatile machine, and it's clear from the solid construction and stability of the Elevate that Cobratype can deliver the quality you expect from a custom PC builder. Elevate is a fitting name for what could easily be considered the current peak of modern desktop gaming PCs. 

You can find the most basic version of the (non-limited) Cobratype Elevate on Amazon for around $1700. The Cobratype Elevate Legend Limited can be found on the Cobratype store starting at around $2,800 — or around $2,700 with a price reduction as of this writing.