THE 4K BUILD STEPS
01 Torrential Downpour
You got it, we’re doing another case stripdown. This one’s a bit more involved; you need to remove all the panels, starting with the glass sides, which remove easily with push-pins. From there, you’ll also need to yank off the front panel, remove the dust filter behind it, then unscrew the roof panel from the rear and slide it off. Since we’re installing a big AIO cooler in the front of the case, you’ll have to unscrew the Torrent’s front two fans along with the black cover plates above and beneath them. Be careful when doing this; these big fans are liable to fall into the case when you extract the final screw.
02 Ryzen to the Occasion
You might expect AMD’s current top-end processor to be different from the 5600X, but nope, we’ve got another super-easy Ryzen chip to install. You know the drill; lift that retention arm, drop the processor into the socket with the gold triangle lined up, and lower the arm back into place. Unlike our 1080p build, you’ll want to leave the plastic bracket around the CPU socket in place, since we’ll need it to install our cooler later. If your motherboard didn’t come with this bracket and backplate preinstalled, check the box.
03 Stylish Sink
Slot the memory into the priority DIMM ports and push until it clicks at both ends and the clasps on each slot snap shut. Once it’s in place, we move on to our SSD. The Spatium M480 comes with an integrated heat sink that is hard to remove, so we won’t be using the motherboard’s own heat shield. Remove the slim shield closest to the CPU socket (marked ‘Lightning Gen4 M.2’) and move the silver M.2 standoff one hole closer to the M.2 slot. Insert the drive and push it down to align it with the standoff, then secure with the tiny M.2 screw. Our mobo and drive are both from MSI, so they actually match perfectly.
04 Mothership Connection
Let’s install our motherboard. No messing around with standoffs needed here; just lower the board into the case and line up the rear I/O with the slot, making sure the central mounting peg fits in the matching hole. Secure with the included screws, and as always, be careful not to over-tighten these as you may risk damaging the PCB. This X570 motherboard is fairly heavy with its masses of heat spreaders, so handle it carefully as you install it. You may also want to tuck away the cables from the fans pre-installed in the base of the case so you don’t accidentally trap any of them beneath the board.
05 Bracket Racket
Installing the radiator of our Lumen cooler inside the Torrent can be a bit tricky. You’ll need the case’s separate fan brackets, which come in a small extra box handily labeled ‘Torrent Fan Brackets’. These brackets
need to be installed between the fans and the radiator, using the long screws included with the cooler, with the fans on the inward side of the radiator (the same side as the coolant tubes). The fans should face into the radiator itself, so they suck air into the case when it’s mounted. With the bracket fitted, mount the radiator at the front of the case and screw it in using the same screws that secured the plates surrounding the original case fans. Fit the AMD bracket and clips to the pump block and clip it on over the CPU, tightening above and below with the spring-mounted screws.
06 Confounding Cables
There’s a shock twist! We’re going to install the PSU before the GPU this time around, to make things easier for cable management. The power supply mounts cleverly in the roof of the Torrent case, so attach your cables (ATX, CPU, two PCIe cables, and one accessory cable) and then slide the PSU into the space at the top. Screw it into the case, then proceed to cable management, leaving the PCIe cables loose for now. You’ll want to daisy-chain the power and RGB cables from the masses of fans where possible to minimize your header use; the power cables can be plugged into the fan hub behind the motherboard, which itself should then be plugged into the sys_fan1 header on the board. Use the JRainbow1 header for the daisy-chained RGB cables.
07 Big GPU, Big Price
The final component we’ll be installing in this feature is the ludicrously expensive RTX 3090, our monster GPU. There’s not much to say here; remove the case’s blanking plates and then insert the card into the PCIe socket, ensuring the clasp snaps shut before screwing the card in at the rear I/O. You may notice that there’s some sag in the GPU (and in the 3070 Ti found in the 1440p build) but this isn’t a huge concern and it won’t impact performance. It’s vital to remember, though, that these hefty GPUs need to be robustly packaged inside the case if you plan on transporting the completed build since they’re not as wellsecured as more lightweight graphics cards. Don’t forget to plug in those final power cables once the GPU is in place.
08 Shutting Down
And with that, our final build is complete. Return all those panels to the case—don’t forget the dust filter behind the vented front panel—and screw the top panel back into place. Mission accomplished; now all that’s left is to hop into the BIOS to enable XMP and check our fan curves are all up to scratch. The X570 and B550 motherboards we’ve used may require a BIOS update before they will support 5000-series Ryzen processors; we did this using a Ryzen 5 3600X, but any pre5000 Ryzen chip should do. Time to install Windows, download some games, and start benchmarking!