PHYSICAL REALITY

WHILE WE’RE GOING TO BENCHMARK this system against our usual selection of 1440p gaming PC zero-points, we’re also going to try out some VR tests. To that end, we have an original Oculus Rift and an Oculus Quest equipped with Facebook’s beta Oculus Link software. We’re not including those in the price, though, as there’s a few VR headsets that you could choose, and they’re all priced very differently.

In terms of the physical hardware, we’ve got a Ryzen 7 3800X and a Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2070 Super, bringing octa-core CPU performance and high-end graphics together to make a gaming powerhouse. Cooling is handled by the surprisingly good Wraith Prism air cooler packaged with the 3800X, but there’s the potential to spend more and snag a more powerful cooler. Those components are backed up by 16GB of high-speed Sniper X RAM, courtesy of G.Skill, all mounted on an MSI MEG X570 Unify motherboard. Don’t forget to enable the A-XMP profile in the Unify’s BIOS to make sure you’re squeezing maximum performance out of that memory.

That’s a mobo equipped with PCIe 4.0, so we’re going to be using a fourth-gen M.2 drive: the excellent Corsair MP600 1TB. That means our transfer speeds will be as fast as it gets, making sure our games load ultra-quick. The MP600 comes with its own heatsink, but you’ll want to remove that before getting started.

All that hardware is being powered by Fractal Design’s awesome Ion+ 760P power supply, a competitively priced offering with a fully modular design; useful, considering that the case we’re using comes with plenty of its own cables. That case is the XPG Battlecruiser, a beefy case that comes equipped with four of XPG’s own 120mm RGB fans. It’s got glass panels on four sides, magnetic dust filters, and numerous mounts for SATA drives. And lastly, as always, we’ll be installing Windows 10 Home as our OS.

1

OPEN AND SHUT CASE

WE’RE STRIPPING DOWN THE CASE even more than usual. Both glass side panels of the Battlecruiser and the roof remove with thumbscrews; under the roof panel, there’s a magnetic dust filter that lifts off, revealing the screws that secure the upper radiator bracket—as we’re not using liquid cooling, we removed that, and the two plastic drive mounts behind the mobo plate. There’s also an HDD mount on top of the PSU shroud, which can go.

2

GET IT TOGETHER

WITH ALL YOUR COMPONENTS READY, place the motherboard atop its box (or a dedicated workbench), and slot in the 3800X after lifting the metal retention arm. Next up is the memory; open the clasps, and fit the Sniper X sticks into slots A2 and B2. Simple. You need the Corsair SSD next, so pick a slot and plug it in after removing the relevant heatsink. Don’t forget to remove the plastic cover from the sticky pad on the heatsink, too. Now mount the motherboard inside the case and screw it down. The rear I/O shield comes pre-attached, so that’s one less thing to worry about, and the Battlecruiser’s size means it’s easy enough to fit the board beneath the rear case fan. Time to move on to the bigger components.

3

SUPER HERO

YOU NEED TO PUT THE CASE on its side for this section, as Zotac’s 2070 Super is a massive three-fan affair. If the cables are in danger of getting tangled, you may want to temporarily replace the side panel covering the rear of the mobo plate for this step. Fit the cooler first, with a small glob of thermal paste on the CPU before the Wraith Prism slots down over it. Fit both clasps on either side of the AM4 mounting bracket, then snap the black plastic lever across to lock it in place. While we’ll get to the bulk of the cable management later, plug the Prism into the mobo now, on to the CPU fan connector. For the GPU, remove the two blanking plates on the rear of the case, then slot the card into place before screwing it down with the same two screws from the blanking plates.

4

POWER TRIP

SET THE CASE UPRIGHT and remove the side panel again. The WD Black hard drive can go in next, slotting into the two-bay drive cage toward the front of the case. The plastic clasp that holds it in place is a bit flimsy, so be careful not to flex it too much. Now you can install the power supply. You need the PSU backplate, which you can find in the box of bits and pieces that comes with the Battlecruiser. Screw this metal oblong on to the PSU block, then attach all the cables you need: That’s the two cables needed for the motherboard and CPU, the twopart GPU cable, and a SATA accessory cable for the HDD and fan lighting. Feed these through from the back of the case, then slot the PSU into place behind them, and secure it with four screws from that accessories box.

5

CABLE CAPERS

TRY TO KEEP THE DIFFERENT groups of cables separate, starting with the power cables. Going largest to smallest is the right way to go, so start with the 24-pin motherboard power cable, then work your way through the rest, routing them through the sharktooth rubber seals, and plugging them into the mobo. You don’t necessarily need both connectors for the CPU; the second one simply provides more power for overclocking and demanding CPU-bound tasks. On to the front I/O cables; leave the fan and RGB connectors for now, instead sorting out the interface cables and USB connectors. Cable management is daunting in this case; some of these cables are quite long, so coiling them and tying them up behind the motherboard plate is the way to go.

6

LIGHTS ON

THE XPG BATTLECRUISER has a ton of cables to deal with, so we’re dedicating some space to explaining exactly how these fan cables work. You’re going to need to split your cables into three groups: fan power cables, gold-pin fan RGB cables, and front I/O RGB cables. As the Battlecruiser doesn’t have a fan hub, we’re ignoring that last set; we bundled them neatly and tucked them under the drive cage. The other two sets need to be daisy-chained together, leaving one connector for fan power and one for RGB lighting for all four fans. Make sure that the cable with the most slack is the final one to be connected, as that one needs to be plugged into the motherboard. This is the easiest way to set up the lighting, and gives you the default pulsing rainbow effect.