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BY
CHRISTIANGUYTONWE STARTED OUT with a budget for this.
Our initial idea centered around an eight-
core CPU and a Radeon RX 5700 XT, but
this was soon scuppered by the arrival of a
beautiful, mirror-fronted RTX 2070 Super
FE at the Maximum PC office. The price
rose, and our CPU/GPU cost ratio skewed,
so up we went from a Ryzen 7 3700X to the
3800X—sticking with our eight-core plan.
Of course, a gaming PC needs more than
just a good CPU and powerful graphics. We
needed an X570 motherboard to support
that chip, and those don’t come cheap.
The addition of memory and a non-stock
cooler drove us over our original budget.
And so, this build shifted; no longer a
sensibly priced machine, but a gaming
powerhouse. Treasure this rare glimpse
into the inner workings of Maximum PC,
where the temptation to throw money at a
build is ever-present.
We didn’t go too overboard; this isn’t
a Dream Machine, after all. So, 16GB of
high-speed RAM and lots of storage—
3TB, to be exact. If you can’t download
your whole Steam library, what’s the
point? High-speed 2.5G Ethernet and Wi-
Fi 6 connectivit y from our mobo mean that
downloads shouldn’t even take too long (if
your Internet connection is up to scratch).
We’re also opting for the full “gamer”
treatment, which means RGB lighting,
of course. We’ve got some specific fans
in for that, courtesy of Fractal Design—a
few to replace the existing fans in our
Thermaltake case, and a couple of extra
ones to improve the case airflow. Our CPU
likely won’t be bearing the bulk of work
done by this PC—with a gaming rig, auto-
overclocking for the GPU is important—
so overall airflow is more significant
than dedicated CPU cooling.
All five case fans we’re using are
translucent plastic with RGB LEDs inside,
and our CPU cooler also features RGB
fans. The memory uses RGB lighting,
too; the motherboard is LED-free, but its
black-and-gray finish will contrast nicely
with whatever color scheme we decide
to use. We’re also including a 30cm RGB
lightstrip from Asus’s Republic of Gamers
line, to provide the ultimate in case
illumination, although this is an optional
addition that we found buried in our gear
cupboard and decided to use, so feel free
to skip it. Our case has large tempered
glass side panels, so the guts of this
machine will be fully on display.
That means cable management and
general tidying, but we’ll get to that. We’d
like this to be a PC that you can show
off to your less technologically capable
friends; a monument to the fact that you
are the superior system builder as well as
the superior gamer. Let’s get to it!G
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gaming powerhouse
24 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2020 maximumpc.com