Obviously, the starting point for this
build was the Ryzen 7 1800X, the high
end of AMD’s current Ryzen lineup. We
did briefly toy with the idea of trying to
build a machine on a much tighter
budget, to see what sort of value for
money we could squeeze out of AMD’s
new architecture, but looking at the
Intel rig that follows on afterwards, cost
is clearly the last thing on the young
reviewer’s mind. Time is money, after
all. Once we’d decided on the chip to
use and the general ethos of building
something that needs to at least give
Intel’s finest a run for its money, a lot of
the other components came together
quite easily.
On the motherboard front, we went
for, the MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon.
Into that we slid four 8GB sticks of
Corsair’s sleek Dominator Platinum
RAM, alongside a serious graphics card
in the form of the AMD Radeon Pro
WX 7100. There are plenty of all-in-one
solutions for keeping a Ryzen cool, but
here we wanted to go with an air cooler,
and so reached out to Arctic, who
provided us with a Freezer 33 for our
build. We’ve used the same hard drive
and M.2 system drive as the Intel
machine, which give us a good base for
a fast boot drive, coupled with plenty of
space for data at the same time. We
eased all of this gorgeous gear into the
spacious Corsair Carbide Air 740 case,
and powered it all with the frankly
over-the-top HX1200i Platinum from
Corsair as well. Read on to discover
how this build came together and
whether the Ryzen managed to give the
Intel machine a suitable run for its (not
insignificant) money.INGREDIENTS(^) PART STREET
PRICE
Case Corsair Carbide Air 740 £125
Motherboard MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon £190
CPU AMD Ryzen 7 1800X £310
Memory 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair Dominator
Platinum 2666 £465
GPU AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 £625
PSU Corsair HX1200i Platinum £260
Storage 1 Samsung 960 Pro 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD £276
Storage 2 Western Digital Black 2TB 7,200rpm HDD £102
Cooling Arctic Freezer 33 £33
OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM £80
Tot al £2,466
Feature
BUILD IT: RYZEN TO THE CHALLENGE
There are two schools of thought when it comes to building PCs:
one, check the core components outside of the case first, and two,
the more optimistic route of throwing it all together in the chassis,
and only finding out if you’ve got problems once you flick the switch
(Which, let’s face it, is not the recommended course of action). For
this build, we were of the more pessimistic persuasion, partly
because our chip had some bent pins that needed straightening. It
also means you have lots of room when piecing together the cooler.
The Arctic Freezer 33 was fairly straightforward, as it uses the
backplate that comes with the mobo. Even so, we ran into a few
problems while screwing in the heatsink, which resulted in a screw
shearing. We had a spare backplate, but if you’re not so lucky, don’t
force it. Like we did.
INSIDE OUT
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STARTING ON THE RIGHT FOOT
We love compartmentalised cases, because they
promote good airflow and clean builds, and the Carbide
Air 740 gives you plenty of space in both sections for your
components (Also, if you’re less familiar with building PCs,
the LEGO-like shapes and sectioning make it much easier
to see what you’re doing and where things are going). The
rear area is for the power supply and your hard drives,
with removable drive cages for 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch
drives. There is ample space for the slightly oversized
power supply we used in this build, and the fact that it is
completely modular made for a particularly easy
installation. A thumbscrew helps position the PSU in place
with a tiny retaining bracket, as you get it lined up with the
rear grille, which is a neat addition.
ROOM FOR POWER
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