maximumpc.com aug 2019 MAXIMUMPC 75
we mAy noT have been concerned about
the cost of this rig when we were piecing it
together, but now it’s whirring away, that
$3,400 certainly makes its presence felt.
At nearly 10 times the price of this month’s
cover build, an obvious question would be:
Are you getting 10 times the performance?
The short answer is yes, the longer answer
is that it depends on what you’re doing. Or
more importantly, how you’re doing it. We’ve
benchmarked our budget star at 1080p, and
played games at 720p to see if it can actually
game, while this machine struts its stuff at
full 4K, with everything turned up as high as
it will go. It’s hardly a fair comparison.
Some more relevant figures are born out
of comparing this machine to the 4K zero-
point, which we built just over a year ago. The
zero-point cost a bit more than this rig when
it was pieced together, but you may be able
to pick up the parts for less today. Still, it’s
stood the test of time well—something that
tends to be true at the top of the hardware
pile (far more than at the budget end).
The key takeaway is that while we’ve had
plenty of impressive advances over the last
year, the same sort of money still nets you
the kind of kick-ass machine that dreams
are made of. You’re looking at a machine that
can handle the best games around with ease,
and produce the kind of experiences that
games developers want you to enjoy. It isn’t
all flawless, though, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost
Recon: Wildlands continues to be a thorn in
the 2080 Ti’s side, keeping it off the magical
60fps mark at the highest settings—if you
want silky smooth performance, you have
to fiddle with settings. That’s also true if you
want to strut your stuff with any ray-tracing
titles. They still look better than anything
you could produce with a more mainstream
machine, but it’s a bit galling to drop this
much cash on a rig and not just be able to
play it smoothly at the highest settings.
As ever at this stage in the build, we have
to ask if there’s anything we would change ifwe were to embark on such a system again,
and the answer is more emphatic than it
usually is: No, not really. The case was a
challenge to work with, but this was partly
due to the fact that we didn’t remove the
PSU shroud at the beginning; if we had, the
chassis would have felt much more open to
work in. It would have been nice to have a few
more options with the cable management in
the rear, but not enough to make us want to
use another case. Ultimately, we were happy
with the build and how the final machine
looked. It’s not a bad performer either.power To spAre
(^1)
we could have installed the
all-in-one’s radiator in a few
positions, but it worked well at the
front of the case. under load, we saw
the temperatures rise to around 60 C,
which isn’t too bad. we had the option
to attach the original fans behind the
radiator as well, but didn’t feel the
need to without overclocking.
2
The psu shroud at the bottom of
the case produces a neat final
build, but it does make for some
frustrating times when actually
piecing it together, particularly
when it comes to attaching the front
panel cables at the bottom of the
motherboard. you can remove this
shroud at the start of the build for
an easier life.
3
while we’re happy with the
cabling on this side of the
build, the back of the machine isn’t
quite so pretty. The space behind
the motherboard tray is tight, and
routing all the cables neatly felt like
a herculean task.
1
2
3
bENchmaRkS
zero-
poinT
Cinebench R15 Multi (Index) 2,178 2,016 (-7%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Read (MB/s) 3,136 3,560 (14%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Write (MB/s) 2,126 2,510 (18%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 68 84 (24%)
Total War: Warhammer II (fps) 42 57 (36%)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon:
Wildlands (fps)^38 49 (29%)
3DMark: Fire Strike (Index) 6,988 8,357 (20%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%100%
Our zero-point consists of an Intel Core i9-7900X, 32GB G.Skill RipJaws V series DDR4 @ 3,000, an MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Gaming X, and a 512GB Samsung 960 Pro PCIe SSD. All tests performed at 4K at the highest graphical profile.