Assembling a gaming PC for Elden Ring, God of War and Dying Light 2

The AMD Ryzen 5 4500 is one of the latest socket AM4 processors, designed to temporarily compete in price with the Intel Core 12th Gen until the all-new Ryzen 7000 AM5 is released. It costs about $150, which is on par with the i3-12100F. At the same time, it has one and a half times more physical cores and virtual threads - 6/12 versus 4/8.

In fact, the Ryzen 5 4500 is the same Ryzen 5 4600G on the Zen 2 architecture, only with the integrated graphics deactivated (most likely due to its marriage). This gives both certain disadvantages and advantages. The downsides are the relatively small 8 MB cache and the lack of support for the PCIe 4.0 bus. A plus is the ability to overclock DDR4 RAM in synchronous mode up to a frequency of 4400 MHz.

In addition, the Ryzen 5 4500, like other APUs, does not have separate chiplets under the heat cover, but a single crystal, which contributes to uniform heat dissipation. In terms of performance per core, the AMD Zen 2 architecture is noticeably inferior to Intel Alder Lake, but in well-parallelized tasks, the number of thread cores still wins. The Ryzen 5 4500 has two brothers: the $100 4100 with a 4/8 core-thread configuration and the $200 5500 already on the more advanced Zen 3.

Noctua NH-U9S Chromax.Black is one of the most efficient "little towers" for CPU cooling. All current sockets are supported, including Intel LGA 1200, LGA 1700, AMD AM4 and AM5. The height of the cooler is only 12.5 cm, the fan diameter is 9 cm, and the total weight of the structure is 600 g. In order to accommodate five heat pipes and at the same time not interfere with the installation of high RAM, the array of ribs is shifted towards the motherboard power subsystem.

Both aluminium plates and copper tubes are painted with black matte paint (this gave the name of the Chromax.Black sub-version), which performs not only a decorative function, but also an anti-corrosion one. I contact the tube processor through an intermediary plate coated with nickel and polished to a mirror finish. The complete Noctua NF-A9 PWM fan on a self-stabilizing SSO2 bearing rotates at speeds up to 2000 rpm.

With the help of an LNA resistor, the speed can be reduced to 1550. And when the computer is idle, the turntable slows down to a generally indistinguishable 400 rpm. The cooler also comes with a pair of brackets for attaching a second fan (purchased separately), a tube of proprietary NT-H1 thermal paste and a metal nameplate with the Noctua logo, which you can proudly decorate your PC case with.

Biostar B550MX/E Pro is a mid-sized Micro-ATX motherboard based on the B550 chipset. Recently, the range of AMD processors has expanded significantly: starting with the low-cost Ryzen 3 4100 and ending with the flagship Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which, thanks to the large cache size, is now the fastest gaming solution. Support for the above chips requires a manual BIOS update.

The processor power subsystem is made according to a 10-phase scheme, where 8 phases feed the computing cores, and 2 more - the memory controller and integrated graphics. Overclocking the RAM to the claimed 4800+ MHz sounds fantastic, but you can count on 4266 - 4400 MHz, in the case of the Ryzen 4000 APU. There are two slots for M.2 SSDs: the first is ultra-fast PCIe 4.0, the second is just high-speed 3.0.

The top long PCIe x16 slot also runs on the 4.0 bus, which is especially important for the Radeon RX 6500 XT discrete graphics card, but this requires a corresponding Ryzen processor without an iGPU. The sound is represented by a 7.1-channel Realtek ALC897 chip, and wired Internet is a gigabit Realtek RTL8111H. It is also possible to install a Wi-Fi adapter, even the antennas are laid. The trio of video inputs includes analogue VGA, digital DVI and the latest HDMI 2.1.

Neo Forza Faye DDR4 is a paired set of 3200 MHz RAM. Moreover, this is not a standard JEDEC profile with high timings (delays) CL22, but a factory overclocked XMP with reduced latency CL16-18-18-36. True, for this it was necessary to increase the supply voltage from 1.2 to 1.35 volts. Fortunately, at the same voltage, the memory is manually overclocked up to 3600 MHz, and if you're lucky with a specific instance, then even higher.

For more efficient heat dissipation, the memory modules are dressed in thick-walled aluminium heatsinks that protrude one centimeter in height. This should be taken into account when choosing a tower CPU cooler. Hynix C-die chips with 20nm transistors are hidden under the heatsinks. While higher-frequency modifications of Faye DDR4, up to 5000 MHz, are already based on Hynix D-die, made according to the progressive 15 nm process technology.

In general, the Neo Forza Faye DDR4 series is a variable memory (from 8 to 64 GB), and it is also very moderate in price compared to competitors (this especially applies to ultra-high-frequency versions). It may not be liked except by lovers of brighter design. For this case, the Neo Forza assortment has a Mars DDR4 model with red heatsinks and customizable RGB lighting.

The Sapphire Pulse RX 6500 XT is perhaps the most affordable discrete graphics card that can be called a true gaming card right now. Despite only 4 GB of video memory, it allows you to run all the latest blockbusters at high graphics settings at FullHD resolution or at medium graphics at 2K (although for 2K it is still better to pay extra for the RX 6600 with 8 GB of memory).

The bus of the Radeon RX 6500 XT is narrow PCIe x4, so it is desirable to use a processor and motherboard with PCIe 4.0. However, in most games, the frame rate drop when connected to PCIe 3.0 is negligible (about 10 percent). Hardware accelerated video editing RX 6500 XT does not support. But thanks to the RDNA 2 architecture, many proprietary AMD FidelityFX technologies are able to improve the picture in games: Super Resolution, Variable Shading, Contrast Adaptive Sharpening and others.

If we talk specifically about the Sapphire Pulse modification, then this is a compact, less than 20 cm long graphics card with two heat pipes and two fans. The TDP level of 130 W allows you to dissipate heat without unnecessary noise, and the proprietary TriXX application allows you to get a free increase in FPS through simple overclocking. There are only two video inputs - digital HDMI and Display Port. But this is not savings from Sapphire, but an official requirement from AMD.

The Patriot P210 is one of the most affordable classic 2.5-inch SSDs available. It belongs to the category of so-called Full Size drives, in which the volume of 1 terabyte is exactly 1024 GB, and not 960, such as the Patriot Burst Elite. The thickness is 7 mm, making the drive suitable not only for desktop PCs, but also for laptops.

The manufacturer claims sequential read and write speeds of up to 520 and 430 MB/s, respectively. But in the case of the 1 and 2 TB versions of the Patriot P210, the real figures are even higher - up to 560 MB / s, which is the maximum bandwidth of the SATA 3 interface. Random reading and writing of small 4K blocks is claimed up to 50 thousand IOPS (input-output operations per second). But in reality, these numbers are also higher - up to 75K.

This is achieved thanks to, as written in the official specifications, a “modern SATA 3 controller”, the role of which is most often performed by Silicon Motion SM2259XT (depending on the batch, the controller and flash memory chips may vary). The XT suffix means the presence of a small integrated cache, which allows you to do without a separate RAM chip and, thereby, minimize the cost. The rewrite resource for a 1 TB model is at least 480 TB.

QUBE Block is a complete set of a computer case and a 600W power supply. It weighs a total of 5.4 kg, which indicates the average thickness of the metal. For comparison, top-end cases of a similar Mini-Tower format weigh the same without taking into account the PSU. But the thickness of tempered glass is solid 4 millimetres. For neat cable management, the power supply is covered with a decorative casing.

In addition to the PSU, the case is equipped with three 12 cm RGB fans. If desired, the two front ones can be rearranged upwards, and a 240 or 280 mm water cooling system can be installed in their place. The tower cooler fits up to 16 cm high, and the graphics card up to 29.5 cm long (the longest models may not fit). There is no magnetic dust filter on top.

On the interface panel of the QUBE Block case, there are separate audio jacks for headphones and a microphone, as well as three USB ports, one of which is “blue” 3.0. There are three drive slots: two for 3.5-inch HDDs and one for 2.5" SSDs. The pre-installed power supply is not modular and without an 80 PLUS certificate. However, 600 W of power is more than enough to build a mid-priced PC with a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or Radeon RX 6600XT.