R&D
68 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022
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NEX T, IT WAS TIME to start adding components to the
motherboard while it was outside of the case. I started
with Intel’s chipset by unhooking the socket’s arm,
opening the latch, and simply dropping the chipset into
place. It should sit comfortably on the motherboard with
the writing on the chip facing up and not moving laterally
once in place. The bracket requires a little force to hook it
back under and hold the processor in place, but nothing
to be afraid of. One challenge we faced was that MSI’s
cooler comes with an LGA1700 bracket for Intel chips but
this wasn’t included in our package—presumed missing
after doing the rounds with other reviewers. No matter,
we pilfered the bracket from Sam’s NZXT H1 chassis and
that worked fine. Make sure your cooler comes with the
right brackets and order separately if needed.MSI’S SPATIUM M480 PLAY SSD isn’t half chunky, coming
as it does with a heatsink that makes it compatible
with Sony’s PS5 console. I removed the cover on the
motherboard and had intended to reinstall the heatsink
pre-installed on its cover. However, after opening the
SSD drive’s box, the first thing I saw was a warning
against taking the heatsink off. I ignored this and began
removing the screws on the drive holding it in place.
It remained difficult to remove thanks to whatever
adhesive MSI has used. “You win, MSI”, I thought, and
put the screws back in place and screwed the drive into
the motherboard as is. One of the benefits of using all-
MSI components is that everything matches, and looks
pretty good to boot. Our photographer, Olly, who has an
aversion to MSI’s dragon logo, begs to differ, however.BEFORE ADDING the graphics card to the newly-installed
motherboard, I figured I’d use two of the three RGB fans
left over and add them to the ceiling as exhausts. Should
I have done this before installing the motherboard? Sure!
But this is only my second Maximum PC build, so it’s a
lesson for next time. Besides, these fans are relatively
small and the mounting screws are screwed in from the
top of the case on the outside, so it wasn’t fiddly. The
lighting on these fans is controlled by a pre-installed unit
on the rear of the case, which has a single RGB connector
that goes to the JRAINBOW1 header on the motherboard.
This unit controls lighting only, so you need to connect
the fan leads directly to the motherboard. Thankfully,
this mobo has plenty of SYS_FAN headers for the five
fans inside this case, so no problem there.MSI’S RTX 3050 GAMING X is fairly compact inside the
case thanks to its twin-fan design. Before we install it, we
need to remove two of the shields in the rear of the case.
MSI’s case design means that the screws holding these
shields in place are covered by another metal shield,
which has holes to get a screwdriver through. I found
this fiddly and unscrewed the shield during installation.
The RGB logo can be controlled by MSI’s Mystic Light
app. The graphics card also boasts a higher boost clock
of 1845MHz over the standard 3050’s 1777MHz boost
clock for some minor performance gains. We also found
the card relatively easy to buy, at the time of writing,
indicating that it’s of limited use to crypto miners or not
profitable enough for scalpers. The only catch is that it’s
still $100 more than the RRP of the standard RTX 3050.CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE SPATIUM STATION
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