98 MAXIMUMPC SEP 2019 maximumpc.com
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Maximum PC (ISSN 1522-4279) is published 13 times a year,
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PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.For more of our component recommendations,
visit http://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/buying-guides/ Approximate Price: $2,676INGREDIENTSPART PRICE
Case NZXT H700i $190PSU 850W Corsair TX-M Series 80+ Gold $110Mobo ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 $240CPU AMD Threadripper 2950X $830
Cooler Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360
RGB AIO
$130
GPU Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 8GB NEW $620
RAM 32GB (2x 16GB) Ballistix Sport LT Red
@ 3,200MT/s NEW
$156
SSD 500GB Samsung 970 Evo M.2 NVMe NEW $140HDD 2x 3TB Seagate BarraCuda Compute $160OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM $100AT THE TIME OF WRITING, we didn’t have access to the RTX 2080 Super
cards—expect to see one in this build next issue. For now, though,
Zotac’s twin-fan offering of the original RTX 2080 is significantly
discounted, so we’ll be swapping to that from last month’s MSI GPU
to save a sweet 80 dollaroos. Given the 2080 Super will have the
same baseline price point as the 2080, and won’t be likely to go on
sale anytime soon, snapping up a discounted high-end card like this
is a good call right now.
While the Gigabyte Aorus RGB SSD remains great value, we
decided to use the spare cash from the GPU to splash out, going
for Samsung’s 970 Evo M.2 drive. While we lost 12GB of storage,
Samsung remains the king of SSD write speeds, netting us an extra
300MB/s of maximum transfer rate for just $20 extra. We’ve also
changed up the RAM, going with Ballistix for a small saving.
As usual, there’s no call to trade out our CPU and motherboard
here. ASRock’s Phantom Gaming 6 has been the best-value X399
mobo in the game for a while, and Threadripper prices are staying
stalwart, even in the face of Ryzen 9. Upgrading the processor
in this build would throw a significant price hike into the overall
system; bear in mind that if you’ve got the extra 400 to upgrade to
the 2970WX, splashing out at extra 80 on a superior motherboard is
almost always a worthy investment.UPGRADE OF THE MONTH
The RX 5700 XT might have been the star AMD card this
issue, but its little brother shouldn’t be disregarded. We’ll
touch more on the RX 5700 next month, with a full review,
but for now, just be assured that it’s a quality GPU that
modestly outperforms the GeForce RTX 2060 for exactly
the same price. That’s all that needs to be said; gains
only range from 5–15 percent with various games and
graphical settings, but that’s an improvement that costs
not one dollar more. Sapphire is a trusted manufacturer
of Radeon GPUs—XFX and Asus are good options, too.
$350, http://www.sapphiretech.comSAPPHIRE RADEON RX 5700
©^AMDTURBO