STEALTH MODE ENGAGED

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, one crisp, clean Ryzen 3 3300X build complete. And what does it look like? A dark box. That’s a very underwhelming gaming PC. The only thing that has a speck of RGB is the graphics card, and even that’s negligible.

But boy doesn’t that look clean. Okay, so the first thing we’d change is to add an LED strip inside, preferably one that we could just hook up to a SATA connector and call it a day—a 12-inch white LED strip. BitFenix sell a magnetic one for just under $13 from Newegg, and it’ll add a tonne of light to the interior for very little outlay, and hopefully pierce through that smoked window.

So how was the building experience? Honestly, a cake-walk. Figuring out exactly how the Pure Rock 2’s bracket was meant to be installed to the AMD backplate took a few minutes, but other than that everything was easy. The motherboard went in seamlessly, there was plenty of space for cable management, the case panels popped off nice and easy too—it was a pleasant experience. The only downside was the lack of included fans. That would be one of the first things we’d change—even swapping out that front one for two or three 120mm Corsair MLs or Noctuas would make a big difference to system temperatures.

It’s also, as far as cases go, perhaps a little too subtle for our taste. Even square boxes need a bit of flair, and the Carbide 110R hasn’t committed one way or the other. It’s not a sharp, square NZXT box, nor is it a curved, elegant Phanteks, or a cooky Fractal. It’s got a very 2010 vibe to it, and it feels like it’s missing a bit of extravagance.

As for performance, overall it did really well. The Ryzen 3 3300X might not be the fastest chip in AMD’s arsenal, but for price to performance it hits the nail on the head for mid-range gaming. In Cinebench we saw a multi-threaded score of 1,123, and its single core prowess tapped out at 198, which is impressive for such a budget processor.

Gaming did fall a little flatter than we’d have liked compared to the zero-point, but then that’s to be expected, as more titles are taking advantage of more cores, and the

GPU in that build is none other than Nvidia’s improved RTX 2070 Super.

The biggest hit this build took was in the storage department. Although it’s a relatively quick drive compared to a standard SSD, the 665P just doesn’t keep up with the Corsair Force MP600 found in our zero-point. But then you are only paying $115 for 1TB of PCIe storage space. Yes, QLC isn’t the best flash memory, neither in flat performance or long-term endurance, but for the price it’s hard to knock.

Ultimately our stealthy killer PC is perfect for those on a budget looking to cut their teeth in the world of 1440p gaming.

Installing a fan into the rear of the case is one of the first things we’d change. That way we’d have an airflow system running completely through from the front, through the CPU tower and out the rear of the chassis. We’ve not installed the GPU power cable in through the PSU cover cable passthrough, due to the size of the graphics card and the port locations, instead opting to go through the large cutout at the front. This looks a bit cleaner, in a more vertical orientation. Surprisingly for such a budgetoriented case, the Carbide 110R actually has a tonne of cable management space at the top of the chassis. We’re not expecting the Ryzen 3 3300X CPU to get that hot, but if it does we have the option of adding another fan to this heatsink tower. 1 2 3 4