Maximum PC - USA (2019-10)

98 MAXIMUMPC OCT 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 $190

PSU 850W Corsair TX-M Series 80+ Gold $120

Mobo ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 $240

CPU AMD Threadripper 2950X $830

Cooler Fractal Design Celsius S36 Blackout

360mm AIO NEW

$120

GPU EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 Super

Black Gaming 8GB NEW

$520

RAM 32GB (2x 16GB) Ballistix Sport LT Red

@ 3,200MT/s

$156

SSD 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe NEW $120

HDD 2x 3TB Seagate BarraCuda Compute $160

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM $100

A WIDE SELECTION OF CHANGES led to a significant s av ing on the Tur bo

build this month, lowering the price by over $100. Most crucially

was a new GPU: the RTX 2070 Super. Thanks to its upgraded

architecture, this new card provides performance only marginally

beneath the original 2080 for a significantly lower price. We’ve gone

with a twin-fan offering from EVGA, costing a measly $520 for a

1440p powerhouse. The RTX 2070 Super is so good that we even

considered putting its little sibling the 2060 Super in our mid-range

build, but if we were planning on raising the price by that much, we’d

have chosen the Radeon RX 5700 XT instead.

There wasn’t much need to change the processor; while we

considered the new Ryzen 9 3900X, the fact is that Threadrippers

are simply more powerful. As such, the motherboard didn’t need

re-evaluating either, although we did spring for a cheaper AIO

cooler from Fractal Design for the 2950X (albeit a less flashy one).

Lastly, the dawn of Gen4 M.2 drives has led to a pleasing drop in

prices for previous-generation NVMe SSDs. This may not last, so if

you’re looking to upgrade your storage, now might be the best time

to do so. The Samsung 970 Evo we had been using dropped in price

so much that we decided to upgrade to the 970 Evo Plus, netting

us superior SSD performance without having to raise our storage

budget. At $120 right now, the 970 Evo Plus is an absolute steal.

UPGRADE OF THE MONTH

The new Super cards are, to put it bluntly, just good

products. They’re not particularly exciting, but what they

set out to do, they achieve with gusto. The improvements

over their original counterparts are modest, but significant

enough to make a difference, and this was achieved without

raising the price tag, too. The 2070 Super is far closer in

both performance and internal design to the original 2080

than the 2070, and that really makes a difference in game.

$520, http://www.evga.com

EVGA GEFORCE RTX 2070

SUPER BLACK GAMING 8GB

©^

EV

GA

TURBO