READY TO (LAN) PARTY
THERE WERE UPSIDES and downsides to this build. We were satisfied with the GPU’s performance at 1080p, as it comfortably handled our gaming benchmarks and the single fan kept it cool. In fact, this build ran cold throughout our testing; the case fan is brilliant, keeping the whole motherboard chilled. The CPU idled below 30 C, and even heavy stress-testing barely saw temperatures rise much higher than 60 C.
At these low temperatures, the Ryzen 7 2700 performed well, making good use of its 16 threads. We don’t overclock our CPUs for benchmarking, but the 2700 definitely has the headroom. Ryzen Master’s autooverclocking options are useful if you prefer not to meddle with the BIOS. Perhaps we should’ve selected a third-gen Ryzen chip, but we’re happy with the numbers we got.
Had we done that, it would have driven the price up significantly. We’d have wanted an X570 motherboard, and the selection of ITX boards with that chipset is limited, plus the price would’ve risen by close to a hundred bucks. We would be able to use a PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD, however, and the Gammix S10 drive was the main weak point of this build.
While the SSD was well priced and outperformed any SATA III drive we could have used, the numbers were lower than we’d hoped for. A good M.2 SSD should be able to hit at least 3,000MB/s read speeds, but the S10 peaked below 2,000MB/s across multiple tests. In practical terms, though, this shouldn’t be much of a problem for a gaming build; M.2 drives are so much faster than HDDs that games should load quickly anyway. The difference between the S10 and a faster SSD probably means load times of two seconds instead of one in many games.
Power-wise, we might have wanted a less powerful PSU. The Ion+ is good, but 560W is more than we need. However, a fully modular supply was necessary due to the case, and it’s hard to find a good one under $100. Cable management was hard enough already; introducing excess cables from a non-modular PSU would be a nightmare.
Connectivity-wise, both the mobo and GPU work well. Our LAN-party-inspired choices mean this rig can be hooked up to a monitor or TV via DisplayPort, HDMI, or DVI ports. The lack of USB-C ports is a shame, but between the front and rear I/Os there are eight USB-A ports, so plugging in multiple controllers for a spot of couch gaming is an option, too. There are a few things we’d change if we built this PC again, but we’re reasonably happy with how it turned out.