98 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2022
blueprint
Maximum PC (ISSN 1522-4279) is published 13 times a year,
monthly plus a Holiday issue following the December issue,
by Future US, Inc., 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, New York,
NY 10036, USA. Website: http://www.futureus.com. Periodicals
postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing
offices. Newsstand distribution is handled by Curtis Circulation
Company. Basic subscription rates: one year ( 13 issues) US: $30;Canada: US$30; Foreign: US$50. Canadian and foreign orders
must be prepaid. Canadian price includes postage and GST (GST
#R128220688). PMA #40612608. Subscriptions do not include
newsstand specials. POSTMASTER: Send changes of address
to Maximum PC, PO Box 2024, Langhorne, PA 19047, USA.
Future US, Inc. also publishes Mac|Life, and PC Gamer. Entire
contents copyright 2021, Future US, Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. Future US, Inc.
is not affiliated with the companies or products covered in
Maximum PC. Reproduction on the Internet of the articles and
pictures in this magazine is illegal without the prior written
consent of Maximum PC. Products named in the pages of
Maximum PC are trademarks of their respective companies.
PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.IN A SIMILAR FASHION to the Intel mid-range build, we are bringing in
the top-of-the-range Alder Lake offering. Yes, that’s right, the Intel
Core i9-1 29 00K—technically the world’s fastest gaming chip. Just
like the i5- 126 00K, this CPU features the new hybrid architecture,
with eight performance and eight efficiency cores for a straight50/50 split. Compared with Intel’s previous top offering, the Intel
Core i9-1 19 00K, the new chip has double the core count and eight
more threads. With claims that it is up to 50 percent faster, even
when running on DDR4, we had to put this in the build. There is one
catch though, the price. Retailing between $5 90 and $600, street
prices already start from $6 70.
Like the mid-range build, we had to introduce a Z6 90 board, but
with some tasty new DDR5 RAM to bump the price up. Corsair’s
Vengeance sticks come in at $3 00 but, hopefully, this will drop soon.
For the mobo, we went for the MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi LGA1 70 0, an
efficient board to support the new CPU and DDR5 memory.
On the AMD side, we can’t yet justify the jump to the Ryzen 9 59 50X
as that’s around $7 20 but have upgraded to the Ryzen 9 5 900X. At
$484 on sale at Newegg, it’d be a shame not to grab this Ryzen 9
chip. Both machines come with Corsair’s iCUE H1 50 i Elite Capellix
AIO. This 3 60mm cooler will do a great job of keeping both of these
high-performance chips nice and cool. Also on both setups is the
same 6TB WD Blue 5400 HDDs. With a sale still on, this is a great
way to get a huge capacity secondary storage on both systems.
One last similarity is that the same PSUs from the mid-range have
made it into the turbo builds. At under $1 00 , the 7 50W PSU offering
from EVGA is hard to ignore with its 80 + Gold efficiency.
Finally, for the graphics cards, the same situation applies to
the turbo-build GPUs as with the others. They are available for a
hefty premium and if you can afford to pay the street prices, you
will certainly get great performance. Knowing what these cards
“should” retail for, that can be a hard pill to swallow. But what
alternative do you have, right now?Approximate Price: $2, 248 or $3, 048 Approximate Price: $3, 174 or $3, 805AMD INGREDIENTS INTEL INGREDIENTS
PART PRICE
STREET
PRICE
Case Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2
Tempered Glass
$160
PSU 750W EVGA SuperNOVA
GA 80 + Gold NEW
$95Mobo Gigabyte X5 70 GAMING X $188CPU AMD Ryzen 7 590 0X NEW $484Cooler Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE
CAPELLIX AIO 360mm
$159GPU Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080
Gaming OC 10 GB NEW
$700
$1,5 00RAM 32GB (2x 16GB) G.Skill Ripjaws V
32GB @ 40 00MHz
$135SSD 1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCIe 4. 0 $185HDD 6TB WD Blue 5400 HDD $110OS Windows 10 Home 64 -bit OEM $32PART PRICE
STREET
PRICE
Case Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2
Tempered Glass
$160
PSU 750W EVGA SuperNOVA GA
80+ Gold NEW
$94Mobo MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi LGA1 700 NEW $240
CPU Intel Core i9-1 29 00K NEW $590 $670
Cooler Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE
CAPELLIX AIO 360mm NEW
$159GPU ASRock OC Formula Radeon
RX 6900 XT GDDR6 16GB NEW
$999
$1,5 50RAM 32GB ( 2 x 16 GB) Corsair Vengeance
DDR5 @ 5200MHz NEW
$300
SSD 1TB Gigabyte Aorus Gen4 7 000s
M.2 PCIe 4. 0
$190HDD 6TB WD Blue 5400 HDD $110
OS Windows 10 Home 64 -bit OEM $32