CASE STUDY

THE CASE OF THE DAY is MSI’s MPG Sekira 500X, a bulky case with some seriously large fans. In addition to the 120mm rear fan, there are four 200mm fans pre-installed here—two in the roof, and two in the front. Only three of these are packing RGB lighting, since the fourth is hidden behind the solid black panel at the front of the case. An RGB strip divides this panel from the glass window beneath it, and it all lights up quite appealingly when it’s provided with power. A single button on the front I/O allows for immediate lighting changes.

We won’t be using any brand-new parts here, since we don’t want to blow up the pricing of this build right away. Our GPU is a good oldfashioned GTX 1080 Founders Edition. We built this machine before Nvidia blew everyone away with the staggering RTX 3000 series announcement, so we know it looks a bit silly now. Similarly, even the i9-9900K we’re using looks a little dated beside Intel’s shiny new goodies. Nonetheless, these parts will serve our needs excellently.

We’re using a pretty standard motherboard here—the Z390 Aorus Pro from Gigabyte. Not too many bells and whistles to be seen, just good all-around performance. Also going onto that mobo is a Corsair Force MP510 SSD with 240GB of capacity (no need to slap a massive drive in a testing build), and a Noctua NH-U12A, a dependable choice of air cooler with dual 120mm fans.

Memory will be handled by another familiar face, the Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB. This time around we’ve got a simple 2x8GB kit at 3,600MT/s, both sticks equipped with Corsair’s custom 10-layer PCB and 12 ultra-bright, fully addressable LEDs. Finally, we’re bringing a good amount of power to this build with the Ion+ 860P PSU from Fractal Design. Its 860W capacity, modular design, and 80+ Platinum efficiency certification make it a strong choice.