Jimbly
Description
I use this machine to game and do light editing on the side. I hope to make a YouTube channel that I upload highlights of me and friends playing games. Not for subs or anything (for now) but just to showcase the best parts of my gaming career.
As you can probably infer from the title, it is indeed a very trendy PC. It has two tempered glass panels, one for the front that covers the fans and the one on the side that showcases the hardware. Every component of this system has RGB on it, from the case (obviously) to the RAM sticks. The one thing that doesn't have RGB is the power supply, but nobody cares about that.
I should add that this is my first computer build. Built the entire thing myself. I earned the money working minimum wage until 12:00 A.M. on school nights. I can say for sure that it was TOTALLY worth it.
It runs every game I throw at it at simply fantastic frame rates (maybe not for y'all 1080 nerds out there, but coming from a dude with integrated graphics I couldn't be happier!). ARMA III online: 50 fps all high settings in a King of the Hill match inside of a city with 120+ people. DOOM runs max settings at around 90 fps, dropping to medium makes the system bump the fps limit of with, albeit, quite the trade off on graphical fidelity. But it doesn't look bad by any means and it hits the cap, so ¯\(ツ)/¯
The overall theme for this system build is a black computer with RGB highlights. You'll notice that it has lot's of RGB, but it isn't exactly bombastic as in let's say, all white builds. I did this for the simple fact that IMO this is a more classy approach at RGB; instead of being a crazy lightshow, the RGB highlights the parts that really matter and the black suck up all the rest of the light, making it not distracting or over the top, per-se.
You can fight me all you want but this is exactly what I was looking for and I honestly can NOT have been happier with how it turned out.
I have finally done it boyos. I can finally take my rightful place upon the PC master race table. (ง ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ)ง
Part Reviews
CPU
Can render 1080p 60fps vids unbelievably well. It has exceptional game performance too and unpacking really large files through winrar is so fast I don't even have time to look at my phone and look at memes
CPU Cooler
I have heard big scary things about this cooler breaking and sending liquid doom all over PC parts, but it hasnt done that yet one month in and every time I have heard it happen, Corsair will RMA the entire system. If it breaks i'll be sure to angrily let everyone know to never buy Corsair AIO's ever again. The onboard fans are absolute rat **** but I mean it came with the AIO so what gives. I just use the Static pressure RGB fans that came with my 460x and it works just fine.
Motherboard
We have all heard the horror stories about AM4 motherboards having horrible support for RAM, but all of those issues have been non-existent with my build. My RAM worked at rated speeds directly out of the box with the factory BIOS from MSI. Of course I flashed a new bios anyways, but yeah. No issues from me whatsoever. RGB looks super dope and MSI's software control is absolutely exceptional, even more-so than Corsair's RGB support in my honest opinion.
It should be noted that you can control Corsair Vengeance RGB ram through this software with no hiccups.
Memory
It's RGB RAM. It runs at 3000 mhz. It does it's job and looks dope as hell while it does it. Highly recommended. If you are going to spend ~$200 on 16 gb of RAM, you might as well spend that extra ~$10 to get some CRISP and MINTY FRESH RGB RAM.
Storage
I used this in an old trash desktop that I had before this one. I've been torturing it with games for nearly a year and a half with no hiccups or corruptions. I bought it on sale for $75 and it is definitely my favorite deal on any part in this system. I admit I really need more storage, so I am going to save up for an m.2 samsung 960 evo for important applications and maybe a few games (such as ARMA) and I might buy another Reactor to put into RAID 1.
Video Card
The one issue with my system, this card just loves to stop working at random intervals any time while putting a heavy load onto it. It isn't really that big of an issue because very few games of mine really push it so far it kills itself but it is still super ******* annoying. (Sorry for language!) I think from what I have seen onto the internet that it is an issue with the card pulling too much power from the PCIE slots (which makes sense) and not the actual VGA power cable. But trying to flash a new bios onto it is super Big_Sketch™ to me for the simple fact that MSI's site doesn't have any info on bios's for this card and I would have to get one through some bootleg 3rd party site. Once the GPU crisis finally dies I am going to save for a MSI 1080 Duke and i'll sell this for LODS EMONEY to some miner.
Also it is worth mentioning I got it for MSRP almost 2 months after it was released. I tried to put it into the junk system I mentioned before, but the power draw issue was so more pronounced it was practically useless, not to mention that the bottleneck was so bad the r7 370 I used in the mean time (from a friend) would give me the exact same performance.
If anyone wants it, check my profile bio. Miners will flash a new bios onto it anyways and this will resolve the power draw issue for sure.
Case
AESTHETIC PERFECTION in a case! This is BY FAR the most aesthetically pleasing case I have ever had the privilege of laying my eyes upon, and the included RGB fans are an amazing deal considering buying just these fans alone is ~$70. I'll admit the Darkbase 700 looks phenomenal as well and so does this cases' big brother, the 570x but I saw reviews for both and I am not willing to spend that much on a case with so many obvious shortcomings. (A quick trip to Gamer's Nexus will show you what I mean.)
One thing to note is that cable management is a pain in the *** to do because there is literally around maybe a half an inch of room to stuff so many dadgum cable into there. Luckily, you can slide the hard drive tray further up ahead and that will give a little bit more room so you can fit all your power cables under the shroud. While I absolutely adore the aesthetics of this case, the cable management really is the only Achilles' heel here. TBH I just ended up cable tying as best as I could and just jamming the rest of the cables back there as hard as I could.
At least unlike the 570x, any bad cable management will go unnoticed due to not having dual glass side panels. That was another reason for me to choose the 460x, the glass all over that case seemed super over the top for me.
Power Supply
The one part everyone hates buying, the trusty ole' PSU. Went with the basic one for my needs, 80+ gold rating and such a super high power draw headroom for my system means I'll get plenty of use out of it. Semi modular with black cables also is exactly what I needed as well.
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