LOS ANGELES, July 18 — Time to look behind the couch for a spare US$4,500 (RM19,197).
Film and TV star Henry Cavill caused a stir with a five-minute video recapping his PC assembly adventures.
Putting together your own PC is not that much different from snapping together a building block toy — carefully follow the instructions, keep your fingers safe, and everything should work out OK.
Still, as Cavill himself demonstrates, there's more than likely going to be a bit of headscratching involved regardless of the financial outlay. If in doubt, it's better to take a break and come back refreshed the next day.
Cavill blurred out branding information at the start of his DIY PC reel, but his Instagram video suggests that the Superman star is using an ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard as a base (US$599), on top of which is placed an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core chip (US$499) as the system's Central Processing Unit. Temperature regulation for that is provided by a NZXT Kraken Z73 all-in-one liquid cooler (US$279).
Though the Ryzen 9 already contains a capable intergrated graphics chip, like many enthusiast gamers Cavill has opted for a dedicated card, in this case the ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti OC (US$1,199).
For storage, there are a pair of Samsung 970 Pro 1TB NVMe M2 solid state drives (US$349 each), while operating memory comes from a pair of 16GB G-Skill TridentZ RGB DDR4-2133 sticks (US$99).
Powering the setup is a Seasonic 80 PLUS certified Prime Series power supply, perhaps the 650w, 750w, 850w or 1000w Prime TX, or the 1300w Prime Platinum (US$299-$529); the whole thing is placed within a Fractal Design Define 7 case with a tempered glass side (US$169), hooked up to a ROG monitor display ($1,099 for a 43in 4K screen), and controlled via one of Razer's reprogrammable BlackWidow Elite backlit mechanical keyboards ($129).
High precision mice can run from US$49 to US$149, with wired equivalents usually offering lower response times and lower price, while PC-compatible console gamepads go for US$59 to US$169, depending on specifications.
While it's more than equal to the demands of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands (an opt-in beta began this week) and Cyberpunk 2077 (November 19, 2020), expect the current total cost of this powerful build to top out at around US$4,500, sale deals notwithstanding. I'll be sticking with my current build a while longer. — AFP-Relaxnews
