ZERO-POINT THISSYSTEMCINEBENCHR15MULTI(INDEX) 2,178 2,016(-7%)
CRYSTALDISKQD32SEQUENTIALREAD(MB/S) 3,136 3,560(14%)
CRYSTALDISKQD32SEQUENTIALWRITE(MB/S) 2,126 2,510(18%)
RISEOFTHETOMBRAIDER(FPS) 68 84 (24%)
TOTALWAR:WARHAMMERII (FPS) 42 57 (36%)
TOMCLANCY’SGHOSTRECON:WILDLANDS(FPS) 38 49 (29%)
3DMARK:FIRESTRIKE(INDEX) 6,988 8,357(20%)Wemaynothavebeenconcernedabout
the cost of this rig when we were
piecing it together, but now it’s
whirring away, that $5,300 certainly
makes its presence felt. At five times
the price of this month’s budget, an
obvious question would be: Are you
getting five times the performance?
The short answer is yes, the longer
answer is that it depends on what
you’re doing. Or more importantly, how
you’re doing it. We’ve benchmarked our
budget star at 1080p, and played games
at 720p to see if it can actually game,
while this machine struts its stuff at
full 4K, with everything turned up as
highasitwillgo.It’shardlya fair
comparison.
Some more relevant figures are born
out of comparing this machine to the 4K
zero-point, which we built just over a
year ago. The zero-point cost a bit more
than this rig when it was pieced together,
but you may be able to pick up the parts
for less today. Still, it’s stood the test of
time well – something that tends to be
true at the top of the hardware pile (far
more than at the budget end).
The key takeaway is that while we’ve
had plenty of impressive advances over
the last year, the same sort of money
still nets you the kind of machine thatdreamsaremadeof.You’relooking at a
machine that can handle the best
games around with ease, and produce
the kind of experiences that games
developers want you to enjoy. It isn’t all
flawless, though, and Tom Clancy’s
Ghost Recon: Wildlands continues to be
a thorn in the 2080 Ti’s side, keeping it
off the magical 60fps mark at the
highest settings – if you want silky
smooth performance, you have to
fiddle with settings. That’s also true if
you want to strut your stuff with any
ray-tracing titles. They still look better
than anything you could produce with
a more mainstream machine, but it’s a
bit galling to drop this much cash on a
rig and not just be able to play it
smoothly at the highest settings.
As ever at this stage in the build, we
have to ask if there’s anything we
would change if we were to embark on
such a system again, and the answer is
more emphatic than it usually is: No,
not really. The case was a challenge to
work with, but this was partly due to
the fact that we didn’t remove the PSU
shroud at the beginning; if we had, the
chassis would have felt much more
open to work in. It would have been
nice to have a few more options with
the cable management in the rear, but
not enough to make us want to use
another case. Ultimately, we were
happy with the build and how the final
machine looked. It’s not a bad
performer either.Ourzero-pointconsistsofanIntelCorei9-7900X,32GBG.SkillRipJawsV seriesDDR4@
3,000, an MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X, and a 512GB Samsung 960 Pro PCIe SSD. All
tests performed at 4K at the highest graphical profile.
BENCHMARK RESULTS0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%1
We could have installed the
all-in-one’s radiator in a few
positions, but it worked well at
the front of the case. Under load,
we saw the temperatures rise to
around 60 C, which isn’t too bad.
We had the option to attach the
original fans behind the radiator
as well, but didn’t feel the need
towithoutoverclocking.2
The PSU shroud at the
bottom of the case
produces a neat final build, but it
does make for some frustrating
times when actually piecing it
together, particularly when it
comes to attaching the front
panel cables at the bottom of the
motherboard. You can remove
this shroud at the start of the
buildforaneasierlife.3
While we’re happy with the
cabling on this side of the
build, the back of the machine
isn’t quite so pretty. The space
behind the motherboard tray is
tight, and routing all the cables
neatly felt like a Herculean task.Power to spare
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