FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION
MEMORY
32GB Corsair Vengeance
RGB Pro 3466MHz DDR4
£216 inc VAT
scan.co.uk
You’ll be hard-pressed to find any quad-
channel memory kits with less than 32GB
capacity, but as you can buy the latter with
high frequencies for barely more than £200,
there’s little point trying to scrimp. If you’ll
be splurging those browser tabs, opening
multiple programs and hiding all that in
the background for those casual gaming
sessions, then you could well see your
system use more than 16GB anyway, so
32GB is a sensible choice for such a high-end
desktop system.
Memory speed is also very important
with Threadripper CPUs just as it is with
Ryzen. The high speed interconnect, or
Infinity Fabric, which links various parts of
the CPU together is still tied to the memory
speed. This means that the faster memory
you use, the better performance you’ll see
in a lot of tasks. With 3rd-gen Ryzen, AMD
has improved the memory controller,
which can now hit 3,600MHz at a 1:1
ratio with Infinity Fabric. However,
we’ve found 3,466MHz to be the
sweet spot, especially as most
3,466MHz kits can hit, 3,600MHz
anyway. The best-looking RGB lighting
kit we’ve tested recently is Corsair’s
Vengeance RGB Pro, which costs a little
over £200 for 32GB. However, we prefer
it filling all DIMM slots on a motherboard,
as the lighting looks best with the modules
sandwiched together. Rather than spend
another £200 on four rather pointless
modules, we’ll be using Corsair’s Lighting
Enhancement Kit. These
are dummy modules that
cost a fraction of a real
kit, but make it appear
like all your slots are
filled. A pair of dual-
module kits only costs
£60, saving you £150,
but giving you all the
necessary eye candy.Alternatives
Corsair’s Dominator Platinum
RGB memory has a slightly less vivid
lighting array if you want to dial down the
RGB and its non-illuminated Vengeance
modules are available in similar speeds
and capacities but for a little less cash too.GRAPHICS CARD
Nvidia GeForce RTX
2070 Super
£489 inc VAT
nvidia.com
AMD lacks presence at the higher end of the
desktop GPU market and this means your
only option for a powerful GPU is Nvidia’s RTX
series. Even for a casual gaming PC such as
this, you’ll want at least an RTX 2060 Super,
but we’ve chosen the RTX 2070 Super, as it
has excellent performance at 2,560 x 1,440
and can handle plenty of titles at 4K too,
paving the way for using high refresh rate
monitors. The Founders Edition we’re using
sports a very snazzy and effective cooler as
well as higher frequencies than standard
models, but there are plenty of options from
third-party manufacturers out there if you
prefer other designs.Alternatives
There are three more powerful options here,
but all are from Nvidia. The next step up is
the RTX 2080, which Nvidia has stopped
selling, but there are plenty of partner cardsstill for sale, starting at around £600. It’s a
better choice if you want to dabble more in
4K gaming or high refresh rate ultra-wide
monitors and is only slightly less powerful
than the RTX 2080 Super, which doesn’t
offer particularly good value for money. At
the top of the stack is the RTX 2080 Ti, which
will set you back at least a grand. It’s a great
choice if you intend on gaming solely at 4K or
need maximum frame rates for high refresh
rate monitors, but demands
a hefty premium.CASE
Phanteks Evolv X
£200 inc VAT
overclockers.co.ukThere are dozens of great options when it
comes to a case capable of housing a high-
end PC, but as we’re gunning for a water-
cooled rig and ideally one that’s expandable
in terms of cooling and storage, that does
narrow things down. One of our favourites,
though, is Phanteks’ Evolv X. We’re still not
sure how Phanteks manages to cram so
many features and so much premium
aluminium into cases that cost less,
but are often better than those of the
competition, but we’re not complaining
and the Evolv X is the pinnacle of its current
crop of attractive Evolv cases. Retailing for
£200, you expect a seriously high-end case
and that’s what you get here.
There’s a splash of RGB lighting, twin
tempered glass size panels and Phanteks offers
plenty of optional extras that allow for up to ten