BUILDING THE COMET LAKE CHAMPION

DELVING INTO THE MURKY WORLDS OF RGB, GAMING, AND RENDERING GLORY

LENGTH OF TIME: 1–2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY

1 UNBOX THAT CASE

SO HERE’S OUR FIRST LOOK at the Corsair iCUE 465X RGB, with the side panel off. It’s not a bad layout at all—it’s nice to finally see Corsair fully embrace the full-length PSU cover, as opposed to what the company had been doing with the three-quarter length adjustable plastic— and there’s some seriously good ventilation for that front panel as well.

What’s up for debate? Well that front fan filter for one thing. The cross-pattern lining is just a bit ugly and boring in our eyes, and as dust filters like this typically hinder airflow significantly, the first thing we’ll be doing is removing it.

2 TEAR DOWN

THE FIRST THING on the list is to remove as many panels as we can. The front tempered-glass panel comes off easily enough; undo the four lengthy thumbscrews (one in each corner), then the entire front section can be pulled away from the case itself. Easy as pie. We’ll also remove the three front intake fans here as well, being careful to unclip them from the RGB controller in the back of the case, and remove the dust filters all round.

One thing we’re not doing at this stage is removing that bottom-most hard drive cage. In hindsight we should’ve done that, but more on that later.

3 INTEL’S LGA1200 SOCKET

INTEL’S LATEST 10th-gen processors feature a new socket. LGA 1200 increases the size of the overall socket and the CPU itself. This has been done primarily to give Intel room to spread the CPU die out further, effectively using a thinner, wider die to dissipate more heat across a larger surface area, which in turn has allowed Intel to increase core count and clock speed without running into thermal bottlenecks so often. The cooler mounting points are in the same position as they were before, so any old AIOs or fan towers you’re using should fit fine.

The installation process is also much the same as it’s always been; lift the retention arm, identify the gold triangle on the CPU (bottom-left corner), gently place the processor in, resecure the bracket, and pop the retention arm back into place. The plastic cover will then pop off.

4 DDR4 INSTALLATION

HERE WE’VE GOT our first look at Corsair’s white Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4. This special-edition memory looks killer, and those high frequencies should ensure we have a fair playing field with our comparative build. Although the CPU architecture doesn’t benefit in the same way as Ryzen does with higher frequencies, in video-editing tasks the faster your memory is the more bandwidth you have, and the quicker you can render those video files.

To install, lift up the tabs at each end of the DDR4 slots on the motherboard, and carefully slot the sticks into position, making note of the offset notch on each RAM stick and the DIMM slot. If using fewer than four sticks of memory, refer to your motherboard manual as to which slots you need to install your memory into.

5 M.2 STORAGE INSTALL

IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT and have support for it, we’d recommend you opt for M.2 storage over everything else outside of backup hard drives (even then, you’re probably better off going with a local NAS storage solution). The reason being is they remove cables and clutter, improve airflow in your chassis, and can be hidden out of sight.

We’re hiding these drives under the Gigabyte Aorus Pro AX’s massive M.2 heatsinks located between those three PCIe slots. To install, remove the heatsinks, carefully remove the 2280 M.2 screws, note the notch on the M.2 socket and your M.2 drive, slide them into position, and resecure them down using the M.2 screws. Then reinstall the motherboard heatsink, making sure to remove any plastic film on the thermal pads first.

6 MOTHERBOARD IN

NOW THAT WE’VE GOT our motherboard prepped, it’s time for it to go in the chassis. One thing we forgot to mention earlier (darn word counts getting in the way) is that we’ve also pre-installed the EK-AIO’s mounting backplate to the board itself. It’s simply a case of identifying the four long thumb screws you need for your socket, lining up the included backplate, and installing it by hand.

To install the motherboard, carefully place it in the case—it’s best to have the system laying flat on a table when you do this—line it up with the motherboard standoffs, then secure it using the included screws found in the case accessories box located in the hard drive caddy.

7 360MM AIO COOLER PREP

AT THIS POINT we’re going ahead and prepping the cooler itself. The EK-AIO comes as standard with pre-applied thermal paste, but as we’re not a fan we’re wiping it off with a Noctua thermal paste cleaning wipe (isopropyl alcohol will also do the trick), and installing the Intel LGA bracket.

It’s a simple process; find the two brackets included in the cooler box, and the four screws. Slot them into position, making sure the folded edges are facing downwards, and secure them with the four Phillips screws. If we were mounting this in a pull configuration, with the fans on the inside, we’d install the EK Vardar 120mm fans now too, using the longer screws designed for the radiator. However, for this build, we’re going to use the fans as a pushing intake, situated at the front of the case, so we can leave this until the next step.

8 FAN INSTALLATION

NOW THE COOLER’S all prepped and the mounting mechanism ready on the motherboard, it’s time to mount the radiator and the fans to the case. Carefully slide your radiator into the front of the chassis, then place a 120mm fan in the bottom segment, making sure you orient it so that the cables are facing toward the rear of the chassis. Once in, pre-thread those same cables through into the back of the case for cable management later on. Then, use the included long-threaded screws to go through the fanmounting locations and into the radiator screw threads.

Only install two per fan, in a diagonal pattern, and don’t secure them all the way down until all three fans are in. This gives some slack to fit the last two fans, without there being too much tension. Once all three fans are in, tighten the screws, and install the remaining ones.

9 THERMAL PASTE APPLICATION

OH BOY, where to begin with this one? The amount of thermal paste you use isn’t that important, as long as you’re using the bare minimum. What’s the bare minimum? For an Intel LGA1200 processor, a pea-sized dot will do; for Ryzen, you might want to bump that up a bit. Alternatively, using more isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless your paste is conductive, at which point if you get it on the processor’s PCB or the motherboard itself you could end up with a shorted processor.

Pro overclockers often dump an entire tube of thermal paste on top of processors when they’re competing at events, but the best advice for the average person is to aim for that lower amount and you’re good. The pressure from the CPU block itself (especially on these smaller chips), will spread out the paste and ensure you have good contact across the entirety of the block.

10 CPU BLOCK INSTALLATION

IT’S NOW TIME to install the block. Carefully place your block on top of the CPU, then use the included thumb screws to secure it. Do this in a diagonal pattern—install the bottom-left thumb screw, then the top right, then bottom right, then top left, tightening each a little bit at a time until you reach the end of the thread. This ensures you’re not putting too much pressure on one side of the processor during the install, makes it easier to install the thumb screws, and doing it by hand means you won’t overtighten and potentially damage the processor’s PCB. Once that’s done, plug the pump’s fan header into the motherboard, and with the EK unit, its D-RGB header too.

Our EK block looks really clean unlit like this. The tubing is a bit tight, but we’ve been told this is due to the fact EK reinforces its tubing with a protective internal sleeve to prevent against long-term wear and tear.

11 FRONT-PANEL HEADERS AND FANS

AS THIS BUILD is going to be fairly intense when it comes to lighting we’re not going to worry too much about installing any other front-panel header cables other than the power switch itself. Everything else, aside from USB and audio connectors, is superfluous.

On top of that, we’ve decided to connect all three of the front intake fans into the headers on the bottom of the board here. The EK cooler does come with a three-way to one-way connector, but we’re big fans (ha!) of having control over each individual fan in our build; that way, if need be, we can dump more cool air directly onto our GPU, and then run the top two fans quieter if we so desire.

12 THE MONSTER GPU

CAN WE APPRECIATE how massive this graphics card is? It’s ridiculously big, and comes with a serious triple-fan cooler and twin 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It makes its competitor GPU situated in the comparison build—the EVGA RTX 2080 Super XC Ultra Gaming—look puny.

The big downside? That GPU sag. It’s real, and it doesn’t look that great. You can buy support bars to install underneath a card like this, but we find that it detracts from the overall look. Alternatively, some Phanteks cases come with a rear-sided motherboard bracket that helps to reduce GPU sag as well. Either way, it shouldn’t cause any major problems, but it does look unsightly.

13 POWER SUPPLY WOES

NOW TO TACKLE the power supply and cabling. The Corsair iCUE 465X is what you’d expect for a mid-range tower— short and sweet, in length anyway. It’s designed for midrange products, including power supplies, so it’s difficult to fit our full-length PSU in (it’s around 7.08 inches in length), especially with the cables pre-installed.

You could easily install it without the cables attached, and then try to install them afterwards, but since we’re not using the hard drive caddy at all in this build, we thought heck, let’s just remove it. To do that you need to turn the case on its side and remove the four Phillips screws from the base, and one attached to the back of the motherboard tray, then slide the hard drive cage along to the back where the power supply will be situated, and pull it out. Then just install your power supply, sorting out the remaining cabling situation, and you’re good to go.

14 ALL WRAPPED UP

WE DIDN’T HAVE a chance to configure all of the RGB in this build before taking the final shots (photography time is limited in this era of lockdowns), so some of the components are set to rainbow mode, and some are connected directly to the Gigabyte motherboard (namely the EK cooling), which defaults to orange, but it looks darn cool.

You’ll note we’ve omitted that front fan filter. This does two things: Firstly, it means we are inevitably going to have to dust the interior of the case a bit more often than before, but more importantly it improves airflow significantly compared to running the chassis with it in place (we’ve got a feature coming up on that soon). Also, it removes that gaudy criss-cross pattern from the front of the 465X.