THE LUCID DREAM

MYTHICAL, BEAUTIFUL, LUMINOUS. TAKE A LOOK AT OUR CASTLE IN THE SKY

LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY TO MEDIUM EV ERYBODY WHO KNOWS AN YTHING

about t he PC ma rket right now, knows about the shortages we’re seeing in the indust ry. Tha nks to a multitude of dif ferent factors, the world of computing is fragmented in ter ms of stock, a nd it’s only snowballing further. There’s a massive disconnect between the RR P and t he actual price you can buy these components for now, a nd it’s a ll due to demand far out stripping supply, with some unscrupulous agents in the m iddle to boot.

We live in unprecedented times, and in a world so connected to its technolog y, especially for ent husiasts, professionals, and hobbyists like ourselves, we’re suf fering because of it. That’s why for the first t ime, we’ve included t wo pr ice lists in our ingredients table at the beginning of the feature—one for the actua l RRP t hat these things should be selling for, a nd t he other to indicate the current street price you could t heoretica lly buy the parts for today.

Now let’s just star t by saying this: do not buy this today at its current pr ice. Encourag ing scalpers on ly leads to more of it happening in the f uture, further dr iving up costs for us all and putting what are meant to be a ffordable parts way out of reach of the everyday enthusiast. What we’re looking at here is an example of what can be built and achieved when stock finally comes back into existence again—somet hing that should hopef ully occur by t h is summer.

This build’s a lso a bit of a special one for us, for a number of reasons. First up, it was act ually meant to be in an earlier issue. The reason why it wasn’t was because this editor came down with COVID, and Christian is a lso out due to health concerns. You’ll also notice that t here’s a ton of Corsair stuf f in the build too. Corsair sent us t he 5000D Airflow long before the NDA was due to lif t . In fact , the whole idea was that we’d have this k ick-ass AMD build ready, color-coordinated, and illuminated in the mag, right on time for the case’s NDA to drop. If you work in print media , let us assure you, meeting an NDA is like golddust, and somet hing we a lmost always pursue. Obv iously, that didn’t quite go to plan, but that’s not stopping us from putting this epic build together for this issue.

This t ime around, again due to that pesky pandem ic, we’re going to show you some of our favorite h ighlights f rom this system, what considerat ions we made, and how we put the whole thing together. It’s a bit more unorthodox than our usua l builds, but sadly COVID rest rictions are also having a n ef fect in our workplace, a nd we’re no longer allowed in the same room as our tech-savv y photog rapher wh ile we actua lly do the build.

So let ’s go th rough this 4K gaming build, take a look at th is awesome system, and explain how we forged every element of it .