BEGIN THE BUILD

1 EXCESS EXTRACTION

Let’s begin with a case stripdown. Start with the side panels, which open with a latch and a magnetic clasp, and can then be lifted off their hinges. Be careful with the glass panels! Put them in the box until you’re finished. The metal front panel pops off with a bit of force. The top panel comes off the same way, but needs more care to avoid damaging the front I/O. We left that one on for now, as it only needs removing when installing the case fans later. Remove the drive cages above the PSU shroud, as we’re not using them and they’ll hamper airflow. You can remove the vertical GPU mount, too. Lastly, remove the case fans, and donate them to a pal with a dusty case.

4 MOTHERBOARD MOUNTING

Time to put that board inside the case. Often, we’d recommend fitting an air cooler before doing this, but the MasterAir MA610P is a big cooler that’ll get in the way of our fan installation. Before you mount the board or get stuck in with fans, though, take a look at the various screwpoints and standoffs around the case. You might want to file some of these down; during our build, blood was spilled when an errant thumb caught the sharp edge of an unused screw hole. Remove the largest M.2 heat shield from the motherboard first, as it covers the hole for the central mounting peg. Lower the board in, making sure all the holes line up with the standoffs and the rear I/O, before screwing it down with the circular screws. Once secured, replace the M.2 shield.

2 PROCESSOR PRIMED

Grab your motherboard and put it on top of its box, or on your workbench. Don’t let the board touch the outside of the antistatic bag it comes in – only the interior of the bag dispels static, the exterior can have the opposite effect. Install the CPU by lifting the metal retention arm, carefully dropping the chip into the socket, and lowering the arm to lock it into place. Remember to align the little gold triangle on the corner of the chip with the triangle on the bracket. Next up is memory; there’s a little printed direction on the board highlighting which two DIMM slots you should be using, in this case A2 and B2, the second and fourth slots away from the CPU socket. Simply open the clasps at either end and slot the RAM into place, making sure that both clasps click shut.

5 FAN FOLLY

Pop off the top panel if you didn’t earlier, then check the fan casings for arrows indicating airflow; the 140mm fans should draw air in, and the 120mm fans should expel it from the case. We started with the rear fan first, using one of the 120mm Prismas, holding it in place, and affixing the screws from outside the case. Be sure not to overtighten them, as it can warp the aluminum frame of the case. Move on to the front, fitting the two 140mm fans so they are both clear of the PSU shroud. Lastly, install the two 120mm fans to the case ceiling. Be sure to feed through the cables from all the fans, installing them so the cables are closest to the hole you’re going to feed them through. Leave them bundled for now, though, or they’ll get in your way during the PSU installation.

3 DRIVE DILEMMA

It’s time to deal with our drives. First up is the HDD. Remove the two screws from one side of the drive tray (it doesn’t matter which side) and release the plastic clasp beneath. That lets you slide one side out to widen the tray, at which point you can insert the drive, making sure to align the holes on the side of the drive with the two blunt screwheads. Then reset the plastic clasp and return the two screws you removed, screwing them in to secure the drive, then return the tray to the cage. Next: the M.2 SSD. Remove the heatsink from the MP600 drive by unclipping it on each side and extracting the drive. Unscrew the motherboard’s heatsink and slot your drive into place, then remove the cover on the sticky heat pad, and push it down over the drive to screw it back into place.

6 COOLING CRISIS

You’ll likely want the MA610P’s manual here. You need to use the AMD side of the backplate, fitting the square-headed screws and locking them in place with plastic caps. Make sure the backplate fits through the four holes around the CPU socket, then push it through from beneath, and screw on the standoffs. Next, attach the AMD brackets to the base of the heatsink tower, then remove the two fans, before screwing it down over the CPU with a small glob of thermal paste between the chip and the copper plate. Plug the fans back in and snap them on to the heatsink, then connect their power cables to the mobo on the CPU fan and pump headers. Check the fans are the right way around, to feed air toward the back. Feed the RGB cable through to the back of the case.

7 GRAPHICAL GOODNESS

Now we’ve got a nice easy step: GPU installation. Remove two of the blanking plates covering the rear I/O, setting the screws aside for later (we recommend keeping the plates in the GPU box), then make sure the clasp on the PCIe slot is open, and push the GPU down into it until it locks in place. With the card in position, take the two screws and return them to their original position to secure the GPU. There’s not much else to be done here, so pour yourself a nice refreshing drink, and take a short break to slap a Band-Aid on your thumb. Speaking of thumbs, we advise you to keep your digits well clear of the reflective central plate on this 2070 Super, because it’s a positive magnet for grubby fingerprints that’ll ruin the glorious pure aesthetic of the card.

9 CABLE CAPERS

On to the power cables. Untie the front I/O cables, as they can get in the way of threading cables into the main case cavity. Do them in size order, starting with the large ATX mobo power cable. Fitting the CPU power cables can be a squeeze up in the top corner of the case, so listen for the click of the connectors locking into place. The accessory cable is likely to have a lot of slack, so bundle it with any other excess cable lengths, between the PSU and the drive cage. Now move on to the front I/O cables, tucking any slack back into the Velcro strips in the case. The tiny power and LED cables are the trickiest. Find the closest hole in the frame to each connector, then thread through your cables, and secure them to the rear of the motherboard plate with cable ties or Velcro strips.

8 PSU POSITIONING

Nearly done. Unscrew the rectangular plate from the rear of the case and unpack your PSU, keeping the power block and cables separate for now. Use four of the screws included with the case to affix the plate to the power block, then sort through your cables. You need five: a 24-pin ATX motherboard power cable, a split-end GPU cable (this should have two split eight-pin connectors on one end), a SATA cable for the hard drive, and two eight-pin CPU power cables. The system will run fine with just a single eight-pin cable, but the second one adds power for overclocking. Feed the cables through the hole in the rear of the case, then slide the PSU into place, and secure it with the thumbscrews on either side. Take this opportunity to plug in the SATA cable for the HDD, too.

10 FAN FITTING

Untie the bundled fan cables. Feed through and plug in the power cables to the four-pin connectors closest to each one, then separate the RGB cables and daisy-chain them to each other. Each cable has a male and female connector, so you should have one of each type of connector left. Leave the male one unconnected, and plug the female one into the three-pin RGB connector on the mobo. Double-check that the cooler fans are connected to the same RGB cable via the two tiny connectors that run through the heatsink, then plug the RGB cable on to the four-pin header on the motherboard. Secure any remaining slack cables, and return all the panels to the case.