HOL 2021 MAXIMUMPC 73
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YOU KNOW, as a final build, in a chassis that
we didn’t originally plan to build in (the latest
Bitfenix Prodigy was ordered, but won’t
arrive until next month), this turned out to
be a really fun exercise.
We’ve been using this rig for a few days
and it’s a smooth-running piece of kit. Let’s
talk performance because that addresses
some of the pitfalls with the build process
and more. The big one is the temperature.
Does the H 510 Flow have enough grunt in it
to keep our RTX 3080 Suprim X and 5 950X
16 core processor cool? Short answer: yes.
We’ve been doing some lengthy Middle
Earth: Shadow of War playthroughs lately,
keeping an eye on HWMonitor as we do
to track GPU and CPU temperatures, and
neither seems to go above 80 °C at all. Now,
admittedly, the card does top out at 8 3°C in
its BIOS settings anyway, but we’re nowhere
near that and the CPU is pretty cozy too.
There are no temperature warnings or
anything of that ilk. It’s a well-cooled case,
and using all of the possible fan mounting
locations has helped that. One thing to note,
though, is that the top of the chassis gets
hot—like, can’t put your hand on it hot—after
four hours of continuous use or so.
Aside from that, performance is as
apocryphal as it always has been with this
kind of combo. CineBench R 15 scored a
seriously impressive 4 ,299 in multi-core,
and 262 in single-core performance, our
SSD topped out at 3, 114 MB/s read and 2,9 38
MB/s write, and well, the RTX 30 80, did what
RTX 3080 s do at 4K. Munched frames.
With that out of the way, there are a few
post-build thoughts that have crossed my
mind, particularly with the GPU situation
and that missing fan. There may be two ways
of remedying this, which we didn’t perform
on the day. First, we could have made better
choices with our GPU. If we had gone with
the RX 6800 XT, which measures just 2 67mm
or 1 0.5-inches, it’s a full 2.7-inches shorter
than the Suprim X. Swapping that out would
have allowed us to install the additional fan.
If you don’t want to give up the RTX 3080,
another solution might have been to mount
the entire radiator unit to the exterior of
the radiator bracket. There’s a good inch or
so between the front intake fans and thatfan filter on the front grill. Shift the entire
unit so the radiator and intake fans are on
the outside of the bracket and the pulling
fans are on the inside, and you’d gain the
clearance necessary to fit the card.
That said, it’s still a sweet build. A sad
reminder of what you could build if the
industry wasn’t currently messed up (read
our review of the H51 0 Flow on page 82).
Alas, this is where we say goodbye.
Whoever you are, no matter what your age,
when it comes to picking your next PC, I
implore you to build your own. Yes, it can be
frustrating and occasionally difficult, but it’s
such a satisfying thing to do and well worth
it, in my humble opinion.HA DET BRA!
BENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT
CineBench R15 Multi (Index) 4,278 4,299 (0%)CrystalDisk QD 32 Sequential
Read (MB/s) 4,985 3,114^ (-38%)
CrystalDisk QD 32 Sequential
Write (MB/s) 4,199 2,938^ (-30%)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps) 65 73 (12%)Shadow of the Tomb Raider (fps) 80 86 (8%)Red Dead Redemption II (fps) 69 77 (12%)Middle Earth:
Shadow of War (fps)^7279 (10%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%100%
Our zero point consists of an AMD Ryzen 7 59 50X, 32GB of DDR4 @ 3600, an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, and a 1TB
Corsair Force MP6 00 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD. All tests were performed at 4K on the highest graphical profile available.(^1)
We’ve adjusted this
adjustable bracket
a little bit too high, so
it’s putting too much
pressure on the GPU, and
making the bar lean
inwards, annoyingly.
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Moving the radiator
to the outside of the
bracket may allow us to
install that missing fan
here instead.3
White cables would
help better reflect
our light choice on the
RGB setup. Neutral tones
help a lot with lighting.