FEATURE
BUILD IT: Ryzen to the challenge
Sliding the motherboard into place was every bit as easy as
installing the power supply. In fact, because the PSU is in its
own compartment, it frees up plenty of space around the
motherboard, making this one of the easiest installs we’ve
ever done. After clipping the rear IO shield into place, the
board slotted in neatly. One thing to note here is that we had
to spin the rear case fan around, so that it was working in
tandem with the Arctic Freezer 33, as opposed to fighting
against it. We could have avoided this by installing the cooler
fan the other way around, but we didn’t want to obstruct the
RAM slots, despite there being plenty of clearance.CAPACIOUS INTERIORS
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Once the motherboard was in place, it was a straightforward task
of installing the memory and the M.2 drive. The only awkward bit here
was getting the heat spreader, which MSI includes to keep those M.2
temperatures in check, screwed into place. This uses a very small
screw, which escaped our grasp a few times when trying to anchor it
in place. In hindsight we should have installed the M.2 drive before
placing the motherboard in the case. It’s also worth noting that we’re
using the top M.2 slot, as there are two slots on this motherboard.SMALL SCREWS
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The next step was to spin the case around so we could work on
the cabling after installing the hard drive. The Carbide Air 740 uses a
tool-free design for holding your hard drives, which means that
popping the data drive into the system was really easy – clip the drive
into the caddy, then slide it into the cage. There’s only room for three
3.5-inch drives in this cage, although there’s space for four 2.5-inch
drives as well. Cabling was also straightforward, thanks to the
copious number of rubber-edged cutouts on the motherboard tray.CABLE GUY
The Radeon Pro WX 7100 is something of an oddity in
these days of oversized coolers, because it’s just a single-slot
card. There’s an air of no-frills seriousness about its design,
and it’s refreshing to not have to worry about making room
for a two- or three-slot behemoth. The card only requires a
single six-pin power connector, too, which was easy to route
around the back of the motherboard. We connected the rest
of the cabling at this point as well, pulling it as tight as possible
around the back to keep airflow clear on the business side of
things – this is particularly important when using an air cooler
on the CPU.SINGLE SLOTTER
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