APR 2022MAXIMU MPC 69
5 6
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WITH THE CPU back in the motherboard, I screwed the
main board into the Corsair case. The ASUS ROG X570
Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi is a fantastically well-specced
board, with Wi-Fi 6, two M2 SSD slots with big heatsinks,
four PCIe slots, a USB-C port, and a 2.5G network port.
There are also 11 USB-A ports, so you should never
run out of places to plug in your peripherals or devices.
It has everything I’d want, but if you don’t need all of
those fancy features, don’t pay for them. I personally
built an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 system at the beginning of
the pandemic and used an MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX
motherboard with it for only $150. I still have it at home
and would be tempted to go for that in this build, the only
downside is that it doesn’t support addressable RGB,
which is something of a big feature in this build.WITH THE MOTHERBOARD and the AIO cooler in the case,
the next step was to connect the two together to finally
start bringing this puppy to life. This was probably the
fiddliest part of the build, just because I had to lie the
case down on its side, apply thermal paste to the CPU,
keep the Corsair cooler steady, and then screw the thing
into place. It’s one of those jobs that’s slightly easier with
an extra pair of hands, one to hold the unit steady and
another to use a screwdriver to get it mounted. All things
considered, it’s done in a matter of minutes, and then it’s
a case of attaching one cable to the motherboard and
another to the Corsair controller. We love the look of the
Corsair cooler, which lights up beautifully when it’s up
and running. I fully admit it’s overkill for a build like this,
but forgive me for wanting to live a little!I PROBABLY SHOULD have noticed this before now, but in
the excitement of creating my first build, I’d missed the
fact that the motherboard had a dodgy PCIe slot. Yes,
only after getting most of the main board into place did I
notice that the latch holding the card in place was missing.
Annoying, but these are the sort of things that can happen
when you’re raiding a stock cupboard for old PC gear—
they might have been to many reviewers before me. In this
case, I made sure that the graphics card went into slot 1
tightly and screwed it in place. But I later decided not to
risk it and opted to put the graphics card in PCIe slot 2,
which in the case of this motherboard, is just as fast as
slot 1. Both of the slots worked, but it’s probably best to be
on the safe side. We won’t be running any graphics cards
in SLI, so there’s nothing to worry about long-term.I FOUND THREE power supplies for this build. The Cooler
Master RS650, a 650W power supply that isn’t sold
anymore, a SeaSonic Prime SSR-600TL 600W fanless
model costing $300, or an EVGA Supernova 1200W P2
which retails for $220. I started with the CoolerMaster
model to keep things simple, but when I tried to wire in the
graphics card power, the cables wouldn’t fit. I then chose
the SeaSonic Prime silent model, my first experience with
a fanless PSU, but it wouldn’t power on. So after all that, it
had to be the EVGA! If you’re speccing an equivalent build,
you can save a lot of money here. The Cooler Master MWE
650 W 80+ Gold features a similar modular design and
retails for $100. If you don’t care about keeping things neat
and tidy, the Cooler Master MasterWatt 650W 80+ Bronze
semi-modular model is a steal at just $60.HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO ICUE’D UP THE CORSAIR
OFF THE LATCH MAD WITH POWER