Maximum_PC_June_2017

1
3
the new kraken Cpu
1
coolers have always
looked good—but, boy, are
they irritating! why? Cables,
cables everywhere.
2
4
plastidip is a good
2
insulating material.
fortunately, your vRms and
chipset don’t actually get
hot enough for it to have
any effect.
the back of the z170i
3
pro gaming features a
neat m.2 pCie x4 slot for all
your nvme-capable devices.
which is useful,
4
because of how few
accessible sata ports there
are for a clean build.
the Classy ConqueRoR
we Could have given this build a funky
Warhammer 40K name, such as the Emperor’s
Chosen, or Gabriel Ti-gelous. But that’s not
our style, and the Classy Conqueror fits the bill
a hell of a lot better. After all, this is a system
that any PC enthusiast could be proud of.
Building a rig at such short notice threw up
a lot of challenges. Usually, we spend an hour
or two planning each build, requesting the
parts, then piecing it together however we see
fit. Having to improvise and make decisions
on the fly, however, turned out to be far more
satisfying than we thought. The Kraken X42
forced us to rethink our cooling strategy:
Instead of having two intakes in the front,
two exhausts in the roof, and leaving the rear
blank, we opted to run three intakes top and
front, and one exhaust running out the rear.
We also chose to use a BitFenix Alchemy
30cm LED white strip along the top, to
illuminate the interior, pulling light straight
down on to the GPU, CPU, and memory. It
looks stellar, glinting off the braided tubes
connected to the AIO. That said, it was actually
an older, used adhesive LED strip, and toward
the end of the build, it repeatedly fell off, even
with a brand new layer of double-sided tape.
Solution? Cable-tie it. It’s held in place by
three cable ties, through the unused 140mm
fan mounts at the top of the chassis. We also
only used two screws in each fan, to save time,
even if it was only seconds in reality.
What about performance? Well, it’s a weird
one—with Ryzen dropping, and the 1600 and
1600X coming in at Core i5 prices, it’s hard
to say that this system actually represents
respectable processor performance. Singlecore
performance is identical to team red’s,
but multicore is a bloodbath: 606 points
in Cinebench R15—hardly anything worth
writing home about. That said, there currently
aren’t any ITX Ryzen boards worth investing in,
and the game difference can be staggering in
some instances. Speaking of games, the GTX
1080 Ti really does push the limits when it
comes to our benchmark suite, smashing all
of the 1080p tests with ease. The lowest, Deus
Ex—a title notorious for both its poor Nvidia
optimization and ridiculously aggressive
antialiasing at x8 MSAA—came in at 29fps.
Otherwise, it was an easy 60fps sweep across
the board, with an average of 92 frames per
bENchmaRkS
zeRopoint
Cinebench R15 Multi-Thread 987 606 (-39%)
Cinebench R15 Single-Thread 196 151 (-22%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Read (MB/s)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Write (MB/s)
1,895 534 (-72%)
949 520 (-45%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 76 92 (21%)
Far Cry Primal (fps) 72 106 (47%)
Attila: Total War (fps) 42 52 (24%)
The Division (fps) 73 127 (74%)
second in Rise of the Tomb Raider, and 106 in
Far Cry Primal.
That said, this rig shines in both high
refresh 1440p and 4K gaming. We’re not quite
at 60fps with the AA ramped up just yet, but if
you drop those AA tendencies down a tad, it’s
not difficult to hit that 60fps sweet spot.
When all’s said and done, this build was a
pleasure to produce, and a very proud moment
for this reviewer, seeing it going out live in the
Dawn of War III campaign. It looks a treat, and
would be at home on any enthusiast’s desk.
Drop down to some more suitable memory, a
Z270 Strix ITX board, a lower-end PSU, and a
reference GTX 1070, and you’d be looking at a
very graceful 1440p gaming machine.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our desktop zero-point PC uses a Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.6GHz, an AMD R9 Fury X, and 32GB of RAM.
All games are tested at 1080p on max settings, with HD texture packages installed.
maximumpc.com
Jun 2017
MAXIMUMPC
75