maximumpc.com JAN 2020 MAXIMUMPC 73
THIS PC MAXED OUT the “very high” quality
meter on Valve’s SteamVR Performance
Test tool. Testing it with a regular Oculus Rift
headset proved successful, as did playing
conventional games. It’s a big, powerful,
flashy machine, well suited for VR gaming if
money isn’t a concern.
Sometimes it is, though, so there are a
few things we might change if we started
again from scratch. The XPG Battlecruiser
is a pricey case, and has a lot of features we
didn’t use. We also might consider a smaller,
cheaper HDD, as 6TB is a whopping amount,
even for the dedicated gamer. If you think
you can get by with the 1TB SSD, you might
not even need to splash out on a hard drive.
That SSD is a worthy inclusion, though, as
the MP600 offers practically unparalleled
transfer speeds for the fastest load times.
The Zotac RTX 2070 Super performed
excellently. V R headsets tend to use esoteric
resolutions, but the 2070 Super handled
them fine. Latency was all but non-existent,
and although benchmarking is difficult
in VR, we were able to test a few games.
SUPERHOT VR, Beat Saber, and Space
Pirate Trainer looked awesome, reminding
us that PC-tethered VR is still superior to
standalone units like the Oculus Quest.
The Ryzen 7 3800X performed admirably,
but we suspect that a 3700X would have had
the same effect. This rig isn’t designed for
CPU-heavy tasks, and while VR is a bit more
demanding on the CPU than regular gaming,
there’s not too much need for a particularly
high-end part. The 3700X is $80 cheaper
than the 3800X, and the difference in VR
performance likely wouldn’t be noticeable.
There’s not much else we’d want to
change for this build. It served its purpose
well, but this could have been a cheaper
system. We stand by our choice of memory;
the Sniper X RAM from G.Skill is super-fast,
which benefits our Ryzen processor a fair
amount, and 16GB is more than sufficient
for VR gaming. If you prefer your systemssuper-charged, 32GB would be fine, too, but
it’s an unnecessary addition.
The MSI mobo worked well, but any X570
board would’ve done the job. With PCIe 4.0,
these boards tend to be a bit more pricey, but
checking sales should net you a comparable
board for a lower price. The same goes for
the power supply, although the Ion+ 760P is
great, and we wouldn’t advise using anything
other than fully modular PSUs for this build.
All in all, this build achieved everything we
wanted. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have
Beat Saber high scores to beat (saber).VIRTUALLY PERFECT
(^1)
We removed the top
radiator bracket for
this build, along with
some unnecessary
drive mounts.
2
XPG’s 120mm case
fans are many-
bladed and relatively
quiet, with some nice
addressable RGB lighting
if you’re willing to buy a
fan controller.
3
The Battlecruiser’s
lower shroud is
inexplicably split into
two parts for the PSU
and drive cage.
1
2
3
BENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT
Cinebench R15 Multi (Index) 959 2,196 (129%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Read (MB/s) 3,442 4,989 (45%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Write (MB/s) 1,706 4,269 (150%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 95 105 (11%)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps) 55 76 (38%)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
Wildlands (fps)^48 59 (23%)
3DMark: Fire Strike (Index) 9,128 12,376 (36%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our zero-point consists of an Intel Core i5-8400, 16GB (2x 8GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX @ 2,666MT/s, an MSI GeForce GTX
1080 Armor, and a 500GB Samsung 960 Evo M.2 PCIe SSD. All tests were performed at 1440p at the highest graphical profile.