Assembling a gaming PC for Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield

Deepcool CH510 Mesh Digital is a Midi-Tower computer case with good ventilation, because the front and top panels are almost entirely made of mesh. Dust filters, including the bottom one for the power supply, can be easily removed for cleaning. The case is made of thick-walled steel and tempered glass with a magnetic mount, which results in a weight of 7.5 kg.

The main highlight is the display on the front panel, which displays the temperature of the processor or video card. There is also a cheaper version of the CH510 without a display, including one in white WH. Inside the case there are as many as nine places for fans. By default, only one propeller with a diameter of 12 cm is installed without illumination, but with a quiet hydro-dynamic bearing.

A 280 mm or 360 mm droplet can be mounted on the front or top. The video card is placed up to 38 cm long, and a height-adjustable stand is provided to support it. And the shafts for cable management are covered with rubber shutters. The interface panel has a twin stereo headset jack, USB Type-A and Type-C ports.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600 is currently the most affordable processor with the new AMD AM5 socket for DDR5 RAM, respectively. Although the release of an even more budgetary 7500F is approaching, which will receive a slightly lower frequency and lose the integrated video card. However, the Radeon, with only two RDNA micro-core clusters, performs poorly in games.

But iGPU can smoothly play even 8K HDR video with the latest AV1 codec. Unlike hybrid 13-generation Intel Cores with large and small cores, the Ryzen 5 7600 has all the cores of uniformly powerful Zen 4. Each core is divided into two virtual computing threads using SMT technology (an analogue of Intel's Hyper-Threading).

Auto-overclocking Precision Boost up to 5.1 GHz on a single core is supported. With a simultaneous load on all cores, the frequency will fluctuate from 3.8 to 4.5 GHz. The exact figure depends on the efficiency of the cooling system. Therefore, it is recommended to immediately replace the complete Wraith Stealth cooler with a tower or dropsy. Auto-overclocking of AMD EXPO RAM (an alternative to Intel XMP) has also been implemented.

The Patriot P400 Lite is one of the most affordable 2TB progressive PCIe 4.0 SSDs available. This makes it an excellent choice not only for laptops and desktop PCs, but also for the PlayStation 5 game console. After all, it definitely needs a PCIe 4.0 drive, and not too hot. P400 Lite is just that, thanks to a modern controller.

The exact model of the SSD controller is not reported, it is likely that Phison, Silicon Motion or Maxio may alternate depending on the batch. In any case, useful technologies will be supported: SmartECC software write error correction and speed reduction in case of Thermal Throttling overheating. But the graphene radiator is unlikely to allow overheating to happen.

The speed of sequential reading and writing of large files is declared 3500 and 2700 MB / s, and random processing of small files is up to 540 thousand IOPS (read-write operations per second). The rewriting resource for the 2 TB version of the disk is declared a solid 1200 TB. This means that you can overwrite a third of the total volume of the disk at least daily for five years of warranty.

Zotac RTX 4070 Ti AMP AIRO is the pre-flagship graphics card of the latest Ada Lovelace architecture, which competes on equal terms with the old RTX 3090 in terms of raw performance. At the same time, the new product is much more energy efficient: 285 vs. 350 watts. This is achieved by the advanced TSMC 5 nm process technology. The amount of fast GDDR6X video memory is a solid 12 GB with a 192-bit bus.

In addition to ray tracing and tensor cores, which are responsible for realistic lighting in games and artificial intelligence in production applications, a frame generator has been added. The DLSS 3 technology based on it increases FPS by an average of 60% For comparison, the more primitive DLSS 2 and FSR add only 30% FPS, and even with worse picture quality.

The Zotac AMP AIRO version is equipped with a three-fan IceStorm cooling system with a metal backplate and Spectra RGB lighting. Given the massiveness of the video card, the manufacturer carefully included a support in the kit. Fans can stop completely using Freeze technology. The Zotac FireStorm proprietary utility will help you set the threshold for turning them on.

Chieftec Polaris 3.0 850W is a fresh ATX 3.0 power supply, that is, with a reinforced 16-pin video card power cable. It is required for the latest GeForce RTX 4000-series graphics cards. And thanks to the modular design, the kit also includes classic 6 + 2-pin connectors for competing Radeon RX 7000-series.

A power supply unit was built on the HEC platform with an LLC half-bridge circuit and separate stabilization of low-voltage lines: +12, +5 and +3.3 volts, respectively. The holding capacitors are Japanese Rubycon, and the filter capacitors are Taiwanese Teapo. All this results in a high efficiency of 92%, for which the PSU has been awarded the official 80 PLUS Gold certificate.

Responsible for cooling is a 135mm Globe Fan on a reliable hydro-dynamic bearing. Up to 20% of the load on the PSU, the fan does not rotate at all, passive cooling is enough. Further, the propeller starts at a speed of 700 rpm and smoothly accelerates to 1400 rpm. Able to work Polaris 3.0 850W both at a slightly increased and at a greatly reduced voltage in the outlet (100 - 240 V).

Xilence LiQuRizer 240 Pro RGB is a water or, more precisely, liquid cooling system, because inside there is not water, but a special refrigerant liquid, which is a dielectric. Made in the most versatile 240 mm format, which is significantly more efficient than air towers and at the same time fits in almost any computer case.

The pump has a copper sole with microchannels, an anti-corrosion ceramic bearing, decorative ARGB lighting and a fixed pumping speed of 2100 rpm. Whereas the pumps of most competing SROs are one and a half times noisier. Complete fans automatically adjust the speed from 500 to 1500 rpm and are built on a wear-resistant FDB hydro-dynamic bearing.

If desired, the fans can be replaced with luminous ones, there are also such fans in the Xilence assortment. Compatible with even the latest processor sockets Intel LGA 1700 and AMD AM5. The only exception is TR4 for AMD Threadripper processors. Mounting the LiQuRizer 240 Pro RGB is not difficult at all, and the hoses are soft and pliable, but with kink protection.

ASRock B650 PG Lightning is a full-size ATX motherboard with socket AM5, i.e. for existing Ryzen 7000 as well as future generations of AMD processors. The B650 chipset supports overclocking of the processor, integrated graphics card and RAM. But unlike the B650E, the PCIe x16 graphics card slot is limited to the PCIe 4.0 bus.

But the SSD can still install ultra-fast PCIe 5.0. Two more M.2 slots support PCIe 4.0 SSDs. A shortened M.2 slot with an alternative Key-E pinout is designed for a Wi-Fi wireless Internet module. The power subsystem is solid 17-phase: 14 phases for the computing cores, 2 for the iGPU and 1 for the RAM controller.

The mosfets are covered with large aluminum radiators, and there are two processor power connectors at once, 8-pin each. However, it will work if only one is connected. The rear interface panel of the motherboard is pleasantly surprising, on which, in addition to 2.5-gigabit Ethernet and a BIOS update button without a processor, there was a place for 12 USB ports. And one of them is ultra-fast Gen 2x2 (20 Gb / s).

Patriot Viper Venom RGB DDR5 is a 6000 MHz DDR5 ready-made RAM kit. This is already significantly higher than the starting frequency for DDR5 4800 MHz. At the same time, timings, that is, delays, on the contrary, are lower: CL36 versus CL40. You can enable automatic memory overclocking by pressing literally one button in the BIOS settings menu.

On Intel platforms, the memory auto-overclocking technology is called XMP, while on AMD it is called EXPO. The first one can overclock over 6000 MHz, but the second one automatically adjusts not only primary, but also secondary timings. True, overclocking entails an increase in the supply voltage: from 1.1 to 1.35 volts. Fortunately, metal radiators effectively dissipate heat.

The heatsinks are decorated with Viper Gaming snake logo and customizable RGB lighting that can be synced with any motherboard: ASUS Aura, MSI Mystic, Gigabyte Fusion, ASRock Polychrome or Biostar Vivid. The heatsinks are comparatively tall, which is worth considering when choosing an air tower. But with dropsy there will definitely not be a conflict.