Build or Bust?

OKAY, SO THAT’S THE BUILD DONE. How is it to use day-to-day? Beautiful, is the answer. We’ve built a lot of PCs here at MaximumPC, but this might just be one of our favorites. Whether it’s that crisp display, the stand-out red colorway, the plethora of RGB fans littered everywhere, or all the tiny little thermistors telling us exactly what temp each thing is, it’s an incredibly pleasurable thing to look at.

It’s not flawless. The case does have its faults, albeit they are rather small: the half-height PCIe slots, and lack of flexibility if you want a traditional GPU mounting solution. The less than obvious way to install three 120mm fans. The rear mounting of 140mm fans (spoilers, it’s really not obvious), and the rather ugly

PCIe riser do leave us with questions. That said, in almost every other department, it’s hard not to love the experience.

Is the touch display a gimmick, though? At the moment we’re not sure. It’s nothing if not aesthetically pleasing. From a personal standpoint, this editor has used its touch capacity probably three times in a week since having it. Until it gets a bit more support and more program capacity, or some wizz finds a really useful application for it (Android emulator using a Stream Deck mobile app, perhaps), it still feels a bit gimmicky. But again, it’s a crisp-looking IPS panel with an impeccable resolution and pixel density.

What about iCUE LINK then? Is it good? Yes. Is it worth the extra money? That’s the challenging part. At the moment, a starter set of three 120mm fans will set you back $160. That’s a lot of cash, and although the performance is what you’d expect, and the build experience clean (although very different), you could effectively get the same experience building without RGB and grabbing some Noctuas for a lot less.

If you live and breathe RGB, and have the cash to spare, then go for it. But if we’re honest, as you can probably see from the benchmarks below, and from the fact that this build costs $30 more than last month’s one, despite having a far less powerful CPU and GPU, you might just be better off investing that cash into your core hardware first.

1 Rotating that top mounted radiator so the tubing is going the other way and the cables are connecting to those exhaust fans might give this a much cleaner look. MSI’s $700 2 motherboard is still using that dragon logo on it, and honestly it’s starting to look a little dated at this point. That doesn’t affect performance, but at this price, it just lacks a little class. A custom white 3 cable kit would look a treat here, and would really make the rest of the build pop. This power 4 button on the bottom right of the chassis? Hyte label it as a ‘tactile mechanical switch’—it’s terrible. It looks like it’s been taken directly from a 1970s vacuum cleaner.