BUILDING A CUSTOM liquid loop yourself
is hard. Why do that work yourself,
when you could pay someone far more
experienced to build it for you? While
we here at Maximum PC will always
advocate for building systems with your
own hands, it’s hard to argue against the
level of professionalism on display in the
EK Fluid Gaming range.
We’re looking at the Fluid Gaming 270
Vanquish, the “mid-range” offering from
EK’s pre-built gaming series—although
calling this $2,900 beast mid-range is
laughable. The 270 Vanquish rocks an
RTX 2080 Super for graphics, and an
eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 3800X
processor, backed up by 32GB of high-
speed memory from HyperX.
So, it’s a powerhouse machine. All
of EK’s systems are capable gaming
maxhines, and this one is no exception.
As you can see from our benchmarks,
the 270 Vanquish can handle the latest
games in 4K, although more demanding
titles might be better off at 1440p. We’d
expect as much for a system that costs
this amount, but the main draw here is
that sweet, sweet liquid-cooling loop.
This is EK’s own design and parts,
collectively called the EK Hardline loop.
EK-HD tubes and fittings connect to high-
end RGB-lit water blocks for the CPU
and GPU, fed not by a conventional tower
reservoir but a sleek distribution plate
at the front of the case. Heat dissipationWhat’s cooler than being cool?
EK Fluid Gaming
270 Vanquish
9
VERDICT EK Fluid Gaming 270 VanquishVANQUISHER Great all-round
performance; looks incredible;
good value for money.
VANQUISHED Still expensive;
requires some regular maintenance; heavy
as hell.
$2,900, ekfluidgaming.comSPECIFICATIONSProcessor AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Graphics Nvidia GeForce
RTX 2080 Super
RAM 32GB (4 x 8GB) HyperX
Fury DDR4 @ 3,200MT/s
Motherboard Asus Prime X570 Pro
Primary Storage 1TB Samsung 970 EVO
NVMe M.2 SSD
Additional Storage 2TB Seagate BarraCuda
HDD
Cooling Solution EK Hardline Custom
Water Loop
PSU EVGA 650W 80+ Gold
Case Lian Li PC-0011D Black
Warranty Three yearsis handled by a 360mm EK-Alustream
radiator with three RGB fans. The plate
is also illuminated by an LED strip, which
looks great when filled with clear coolant.
The setup process is relatively
straightforward. A large bottle of
Cryofuel coolant comes included, along
with a tubed bottle to easily fill the
distribution plate. It’s not exactly plug-
and-play, since completely filling the
system requires restarting and cycling
multiple times before it’s ready to use,
but it comes with a simple step-by-step
guide and only requires the standard
Windows 10 setup once you’ve got it
running. It does need more TLC than an
average air-cooled system, but topping
up and cycling the coolant is easy enough.
Despite the powerful components,
front-mounted pump, and multiple fans,
the Vanquish isn’t a particularly noisy
machine, perhaps a feature that can be
accredited to the stylish Lian Li case. Even
during stress tests, the CPU temperature
never rose above 50 C, while a spot of
regular gaming barely saw it scrape 35 C.
That liquid loop clearly does the job.
CPU performance is strong, but this is
a gaming system, and the graphics card is
the main attraction here. The RTX Super
line has some of the best performance
GPUs available right now, and the 2080
Super is an excellent choice for this
machine. A slightly cheaper RTX 2070
Super version of the Vanquish is alsoavailable, and might appeal to those who
don’t have a 4K monitor (or don’t quite
have $3K to drop on a gaming PC).
Let’s break that $2,900 down for a
moment, and consider the value proposition
at play here. We did a bit of online browsing,
and we reckon that any dedicated builder
could assemble a system just like this—
sans the custom cooling loop—for around
$2,300. That leaves us with $600 going
solely on cooling (and the knowledge that
your system will be perfectly built with no
effort on your part).
It might sound like a lot to dedicate to
system cooling, especially given that the
Ryzen 7 3800X comes with a free stock
cooler, but the breakdown actually fits.
The RGB water block for the GPU alone is
worth over $100. If you’re looking to build
a high-end liquid-cooled system, buying
a pre-built model from EK will barely cost
you more than buying the components
new and assembling the system yourself.
So, the EK Fluid Gaming 270 Vanquish
is a stunning gaming PC with absolutely
top-notch cooling and dazzling aesthetics
to boot, and we can’t recommend it
enough. 3TB of high-speed SSD storage
and a sweet three-year product warranty
are simply icing on the cake. Just please
negotiate among yourselves to determine
who gets to buy one; if they sell too
many pre-built machines, we might find
ourselves out of a job! –CHRISTIAN GUYTONOur zero-point consists of an an Intel Core i9-7900X, 32GB G.Skill RipJaws V series DDR4 @ 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.
Metro Exodus tested at 4K at High.BENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT
Cinebench R15 Multi (Index) 2,178 2,195 (1%)
CrystalDisk QD32
Sequential Read (MB/s) 3,136 3,565 (14%)
CrystalDisk QD32
Sequential Write (MB/s) 2,126 2,494 (17%)
3DMark: Fire Strike Ultra
(Index) 6,9 8 8 7,147 (2 %)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps)^42 50 (19%)
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (fps) 38 46 (21%)
Metro Exodus (fps) 37 44 (19%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%in the lab
66 MAXIMUMPC SEP 2020 maximumpc.com