Smooth sailing

SO THEN, cable management aside, what was it like to build this beauty? Honestly, it was a fairly simple process. The biggest issues we faced mostly revolved around those cable management considerations. The H6 Flow is an incredibly welldesigned chassis, but its commitment to form factor does tend to lead it somewhat astray when it comes to clearance in some areas. Take the bottommost 140mm intake fans and those side 120mm intakes, both of which are insanely tight, spacewise. It looks fantastic when finished, but getting the fans in there and the cables routed correctly took time, was finicky, and can be a little frustrating.

The same goes for the top of the case as well, just above the motherboard tray. One glance at that during the build process immediately gave us pause, knowing that if we didn’t act before installing the CPU cooler, we’d be in for a bad time trying to get those CPU power cables in. Yes, you could theoretically try to wedge them in with the use of a screwdriver, lacerate your fingers pushing them in, or mount the fans after the fact, but if it’s something that we can avoid from the get-go, then we’re definitely taking that option.

That’s a thing that we’ve always tried to push here at MaximumPC. If anyone ever tells you that there’s an absolutely correct do-or-die order to building a PC, just ignore them. You need to be fluid in your approach—if something looks out of whack, or like it’s going to give you clearance ahead of time, it probably will, and you need to act accordingly. Moore’s law might be the go-to reference in the world of PCs, but honestly, when it comes to building them, Murphy’s law holds far more weight. If you assume that every facet of your build could be an issue, then you will never be caught off guard by it.

Philosophical building tips aside, the PC itself looks absolutely stellar. We had concerns about those floor intakes being a bit muted due to the LED rings facing the wrong way, but the rear of the Light Wings also have a fine thin RGB outline on them that looks absolutely incredible. Speaking of lighting, our ancient 24-inch light strip still punches hard too, and really does help illuminate that interior. However, it’s one of the few things we’d change. You can’t see it in the photography (our art and photography team are remarkably skilled at their jobs), but as we’ve coiled it around the internal wall there, if you’re facing this PC at the wrong angle, you do get blinded by it as it shines in your face. Going for a shorter 12-inch strip would reduce the need to curve around, and hide the light strip better.

But otherwise, the challenge, to build a clean-looking and refined PC, with just enough RGB and some potent hardware at the same time, seems to have been a success. What do you reckon?

You can’t see it here, 1 but just above the topmost radiator is our 24-inch LED strip. A really nice upgrade to this would be to move to a 12-inch strip instead. The CPU pump block 2 looks great here, but if we’d rotated the bracket so that uppermost cable was coming out on the left side instead, we could potentially route it through the gap between the rear I/O and VRM, near the power, which would look cleaner. Unironically, a nice 3 RGB DDR5 RAM kit here would look incredible, and this build could probably use it. We’re starting to 4 sound like an old record here, but a custom black cable kit—or a white one, for that matter— would really make our components pop, and take this build to the next level.