IN CONCLUSION

A WILD GOOSE CHASE FOR A GOLDEN EGG

PICTURE THE SCENE. We were almost complete, every component attached, cables connected, and the day was going so well. We walk over to the outlet, connect up the PSU power cable, flick the switch on the wall, and then turn on the power supply itself. The motherboard lights come on and our hearts are filled with joy. We reach over to press the power button on the case, fans spin, lights come on, the pump header LCD panel shows a glimmer of hope, and then bam! The PC chokes and fails to boot up.

Our once joyous faces fall, the classic head scratching begins. We tried another PSU, reseated every single cable and component, and even shorted the connection on the power switch front panel pins to boot the system, but kept on getting the same result. We then dreaded the thought of the GPU or CPU being faulty and knew we didn’t have any time to get alternatives, especially not another GPU. We had a backup build in mind, so we took all the components necessary to complete that build to our photo studio, as well as this build. After finishing another machine, that system also crashed and burned (not literally, thankfully) and was having motherboard issues, so we turned to the original system and tried something we hadn’t yet tried, namely swapping out the cooler.

We overlooked this initially as being the component that was causing the system to post, as usually the system would still run for a little while before overheating and shutting down. Yet our system would turn on for a matter of seconds before failing. The bottom line is that the stock AMD Wraith Stealth cooler saved the day and we couldn’t, unfortunately, get another NZXT Z73 RGB cooler quick enough to add it back to the system. We’re still unsure exactly what part of the AIO failed, but these things happen and you have to be able to adapt. We’re working to deadlines, but in the real world, we’d have filed the issue with NZXT and hoped for a quick replacement.

Regardless of the issues, what we ended up with was a system that proved how strong this spec is overall—and also how snappy the RTX 4080 is, despite its fairly steep price. We were mightily impressed by the performance of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU that orchestrated this build, especially when it came down to its efficiency.

As a chip that may get overshadowed by the faster, more premium Ryzen 7 models, this build proved it can hold its own and would be a great addition to a new build in 2023. This is a system that can do it all: game, design, create, work, procrastinate and have scope for improvements down the road.

Sure, it’s not the flashiest of systems, especially since we had to swap out the RGB NZXT AIO, but it still ran fine with the air cooling alternative.

We’re impressed with how the system performs, it’s just a shame we had issues and the RTX 4080 is currently somewhat too expensive right now.

1 Of course, we would love to be showing you this build with the NZXT Z73 RGB in all its glory—but that plan was short-lived. 2 If only the PCIe splitter had been longer, we could have hidden the main bulk of the ‘GPU snake’ below the case. 3 Like the fan situation in the case, we were excited to feature the LCD CPU pump here, but we’ll save it for another day. 4 It’s a shame we couldn’t tuck the 24-pin cable into the rubber gap directly next to it, but the angle was just a little too tight.