Maximum PC - USA (2022-06)

JUN 2022MAXIMU MPC 67

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MSI Special Single

Manufacturer Build

MSI SENT SOME fantastic components for us to work with—we’re

not talking money-no-object stuff (see Sam’s water-cooled build

on page 16 for that), but the type of components I’d choose if I

was trying to spec out a value for money future-proofed system.

Key to this is the motherboard, the MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI

($310), which supports Intel’s 12th generation processors, PCIe

4.0 SSDs, and DDR5 RAM. You can save $20-30 by opting for

MSI’s DDR4 version of the same board, which I’d recommend if

you have existing RAM you can reuse, because DDR5 RAM is still

just so ridiculously expensive right now.

Thankfully, PCIe 4.0 SSD drives aren’t as much of a premium

over their 3.0 equivalents, despite offering nearly double the

speed. The MSI Spatium M480 PLAY 2TB ($330) is $100 more

than a PCIe 3.0 equivalent like the Samsung 970 Evo Plus. MSI’s

drive seems custom-built to appeal to the PS5 market thanks to

its giant heatsink, but this cooling will at least keep the storage

cool during serious PC use. MSI provided a relatively low-end

graphics card for this build, so if you have the budget, we’d

recommend the 3060 or 3070 instead.

MSI’s AIO cooler, the MEG CoreLiquid S280 is a dual-fan

(2x 140mm) design. The MPG A1000G 1000W power supply is

overkill, but gives plenty of overhead for future upgrades. A

realistic power draw here is 480W, so we’d go for a 600W PSU.

For the CPU, Intel graciously offered an i9-12900K, which is

total overkill when matched to the RTX 3050. For RAM, we found

32GB of Corsair’s Vengeance DDR5-4800, again overkill for this

system, but will definitely max out the performance of the chip.

WE START WITH MSI’s dragon-emblazoned Sekira 100R

Case (see review on page 89)—a full-size chassis that’s

compact and won’t take up a lot of space. The case comes

with four RGB fans pre-installed—three of which are in

the front and one at the rear. There’s also space for two

more fans at the top, which we’ll end up using later (see

step 7). The case is easy to take apart—a top panel keeps

both the glass panel on the left side and the metal panel

on the right stay in place. The trickiest part is the cable

management on the rear, as you need to keep cables flat

to slide the panel back on. We bent a set of pins on the

RGB controller as a result of our messiness.

THE NEXT STEP was to install the radiator before doing

anything else with the case. The front of the case features

a window, but only halfway down the cover, meaning you

can only see half of the RGB fans. I decided to remove all

of the RGB fans from the front and put two of them at the

top later in the build. I then installed the non-RGB fans

that come with the cooler in the top part of the case front,

as they’d be obscured by the metal part of the cover

anyway. In hindsight, I should have made things easier

and put the rad at the top of the case, but I still think it’s

better at the front. MSI’s radiator is dead easy to install

as it’s relatively small, although the large cooling block

is a little cumbersome. I removed the large plastic cover

over the display to make the build a little easier.

ENTER THE DRAGON FANNING THE FLAMES

INGREDIENTS

PART STREET PRICE

Case MSI MPG Sekira 100R $120

Motherboard MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR5 $320

CPU Intel Core i9-12900K $610

GPU MSI GeForce RTX 3050 GAMING X 8G $360

Memory Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2 x 16GB)

4800MHz DDR5 C40

$285

PSU MPG A1000G 1000W $180

Storage MSI Spatium M480 Play M.2

2280 PCIe 4.0 2TB

$330

CPU Cooler MSI MEG CoreLiquid S280 $220

OS Windows 11 Home 64-bit OEM $32

Total $2,438

THE INGREDIENTS