Maximum PC - USA (2019-07)

98    aug 2019 maximumpc.com

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Maximum PC (ISSN 1522-4279) is published 13 times a year,

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INGREDIENTS

PART PRice

case NZXT H700i $185

PSU 850W Corsair TX-M Series 80+ Gold NeW $100

Mobo ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 $250

cPU AMD Threadripper 2950X $830

cooler Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360

RGB AIO NeW

$135

GPU MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ventus 8G NeW $700

RAM 32GB (2x 16GB) G.Skill TridentZ RGB

@ 3,200MT/s NeW

$170

SSD 512GB Gigabyte Aorus RGB M.2 NVMe $120

HDD 2x 3TB Seagate BarraCuda Compute NeW $160

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM $100

as you can probably tell just by glancing at the table, we made

a lot of adjustments to our turbo build this time around. Those

adjustments have led to a bit of a jump in price, but the machine is

better off for it. RTX 2080 GPUs have risen back to the $700 mark,

so we decided to take the opportunity to shift over to MSI with

its RTX 2080 Ventus 8G. We mixed up our cooling solution, too; it

seems Cooler Master is the flavor of the month this issue, because

its MasterLiquid ML360 enabled us to upgrade from 240mm to

360mm of radiator space—which can be fitted either to the top or

the front of the NZXT H700i—for just five dollars more than the

previous Kraken X52 cooler.

As expected, we also had to change out the PSU again, thanks

to the constant price shifts, so we’ve gone with a reliable 850W

model from Corsair this month. We also managed to scrape

together a small saving by following the example set by the mid-

range build, and switching over to G.Skill RAM, using a 32GB kit

from the TridentZ RGB series at 3,200MHz. Our final change was

an upgrade to storage—no longer content with four terabytes,

we’re upgrading to two of Seagate’s 3TB BarraCuda hard drives.

We also considered swapping out the Gigabyte Aorus RGB M.2 drive

for a Patriot VPN100 of the same size, but ultimately decided that

the drop in speed wasn’t worth the potential saving.

UpGRaDE

of ThE

MoNTh

All right, we know—HDDs aren’t sexy. This one is no

exception; hold it in your hand, and it’s little more than

a heavy metal rectangle. But this HDD is particularly

good value; a mere 80 dollars for three terabytes of

storage, and we’re using two of them in our turbo build.

By comparison, if we wanted 6TB using the 2TB drives

we were using previously, it would run us an extra $20 in

total—plus the extra hassle of setting up cables to a third

drive. As such, we feel pretty comfortable naming this

drive (the ST3000DM008 model) our Upgrade of the Month.

$80, http://www.seagate.com

3TB SeagaTe

BarraCuda

CompuTe Hdd

©^

BarraCuda

turBo