It's time to build another Gaming PC!
And this one is sponsored by NZXT.
I'm super excited to get this one assembled
because this is a white themed build.
You can see our H7 Flow here
has pretty much totally been whited out.
There are white case fans even included,
and white cables attached to those case fans.
That's the kind of attention to detail
we're working with here.
We have a white motherboard.
We have a power supply here.
This one's not white,
but you're not gonna see it anyway.
We've got a cracking X63 AIO.
We've got a capture card here,
we'll talk more about.
This is an external one.
Some white F140 RGB fans.
It's gonna look pretty sweet.
And those who are OGs to the channel,
will remember our first Walter White PC build
had a white theme to it.
We built in I think it was the original NZXT S340.
So, kind of paying some homage to that,
with the H7 Flow here.
Great airflow case.
Again, totally whited out.
You can get this in black as well.
Clear tempered glass here.
It's gonna look sweet.
I can't wait to get started.
Are you ready?
Stay with me.
(air whooshing)
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(air whooshing) I wanna kick things off
by talking about the centerpiece of this build,
that is the NZXT H7.
This is the Flow variant,
which means it has a very airy, perforated front panel.
Get also two included one 20 mil fans.
These are only a voltage control, no PWM support here.
But it is nice that they're totally whited out
to match the remainder of this white variant.
So, it's the Flow case.
It's also the white version of the case.
And I think this is the ultimate combo.
It looks so freaking good.
You can see the iconic cable bar is still here
from the NZXT lineup.
The S340 lineup, I guess is what this is paying homage to,
but it's nice to see it's still there.
I'm not the biggest fan of it,
but at this point I'm so used to it,
it would just feel weird if it wasn't included.
We'll get seven PCI slots at the rear,
so by definition, a mid tower.
We're gonna have perforations here at the basements.
If you wanna flip your power supply fan side up,
you could totally do that.
This will support up to ATX motherboards by the way.
And you can fit four 360 millimeter fan-radiator combos up front
through that cutout right there.
So, you can slide things all the way down.
Your hard drive cage is just behind that.
So, yeah, I don't see too much in the way
of limiting hardware here.
Another awesome feature,
the fact that you can mount fans
all the way across the top of this thing.
This is kinda like a hybrid, if you will,
between like the H710,
and the H510.
The H510 only allows you to mount one fan up top here,
and it was closer to the rear.
So, you couldn't really do much
in the way of like AIO mounting up top.
But this case gives you access all the way across.
You can see they cut off this cable bar here,
so you get about two to three inches worth of clearance.
Pretty sweet.
Also, check this out with the left and right panels.
You can remove them by simply pulling back here,
you see this little indention,
you can just pull there back,
and the feet are held in at the bottom,
they'll just slide right up.
So, very easy to get this situated.
Totally toolless.
Gotta push a little hard.
But yeah, I like that.
No screws.
And lastly, check it out here behind the motherboard tray.
Looks like cable routing is going to be a breeze,
thanks to these very large cable combs, Velcro straps.
You've got tons of them all over the place,
even up top here,
for fans that you mount maybe up top or at the rear.
It's gonna look pretty darn clean,
and it looks like it's gonna be very easy to manage these.
Now, apart from other NZXT hardware,
which I'm sure you've seen before,
we have a Corsair Vengeance kit of DDR5 5600 megahertz
16 gig DIMMS a piece,
that's 32 gigs in total.
And for our CPU, we have an Intel Core i7 12700 K.
For storage, we use a WD Blue SN550 500GB NVMe.
It could go with larger storage,
but again, we're trying to keep the cost
somewhat manageable here.
You could always upgrade
with like a 1TB hard disk drive later,
and that'll only cost you an extra 40 bucks or so.
Lastly, this is an RTX 3060 Ti.
And normally,
I'd hesitate to show you a card like this on the channel,
because, well, recently these have been
just like in insanely high prices,
that you, you can't really justify them, right?
I mean, even if you could find one new,
they were marked up two or three times MSRP,
which is just ridiculous.
But nowadays, cards are much more attainable.
They are much less expensive,
because we are no longer being constrained
by the mining demand.
We're also not being constrained
by as big a silicone shortage as before,
because manufacturing is more or less ramped up now.
You can find these new, mostly,
for decent prices.
Not at MSRP, but pretty darn close.
We'll have one linked below if you wanna check it out.
Let's get our motherboard out of its box.
Ooh la la, check out that beautiful white shroud.
CPU installed.
That's a nice looking socket.
Would be a shame if somebody screwed it up.
I'm gonna try my best to just gently drop it in.
Lower the socket cover.
This is always kind of sort of cringey here.
Yeah, 'cause that always happens.
But yeah, there we go.
Save this by the way,
in case you wanna recycle the board
or give it to someone else.
Yeah, it's nice to have.
We'll also get RAM situated here.
Slots two and four are, wait, what?
This is a DDR4 board, not a DDR5 board.
What am I doing?
I suppose then we can just switch to this kit here.
Four DIMMS, if I can get them situated.
Of course, they're Dom Plats in white,
so they'll look really nice with this white motherboard.
Give me a one, a two, three and a four.
Also, can't forget our M.2
which will slot right in here.
Not totally toolless,
'cause we do have two Phillips screws to take care of.
We do have a functional, more like a just a metal heat slab.
And that sits right there.
And then two Phillips screws.
Go ahead and fast forward through this, Jeremy.
No one wants to see me torque some screws down.
But once this is taken care of,
you've got this little cover
that simply snaps into place,
because it's magnetic.
I love that.
We'll gently set the platform in the case.
And oh my, this is already looking so dang good.
Love the white on white.
Just, it just fits.
Of course, it's an NZXT motherboard,
with an NZXT case.
I mean, come on.
Also take care of some simple front IO wiring.
It's nice that these USB 3.0 headers
are oriented at 90 degrees,
because, well, yeah, you can barely see it now.
The build's looking pretty darn sweet right now,
no doubt about it,
but we still have obviously major components missing.
We're gonna tackle the AIO next.
I think I'm gonna mount it up top,
because it's a 280 mil AIO,
and it'd just look kind of weird
not having like the full 360 up front.
So, we'll mount a top rad,
and then we'll put three extra white RGB fans up front,
so we get a bit more color in the build.
Gonna remove this top panel.
Again, totally toolless.
Very nice.
And we'll get our AIO prepped for install.
I think I'm gonna have the tubes
run down the backside of the case,
just to keep our runs a tad cleaner.
Oh yeah, this looks pretty good.
Tighten things down.
Oh yeah, I dig it.
We gotta fix these cables though.
But yeah, I dig it.
CPU block situated.
And yes, we do have thermal paste pre-applied.
We're just gonna roll with that for now.
You can very easily remove this front fan bracket
with a couple of Phillip screws.
There we go.
And we'll get these a beautiful F140 RGBs in there.
Here we go.
Ooh la la, looking nice.
Couple of Phillips screws,
and we'll get these cables routed.
Up next is the NZXT C1000 Gold power supply.
Now, to be clear, 1000 watts is overkill
for a combination of hardware like this.
A 12700 K is gonna be a bit spicy on power draw,
but the 3060 Ti is actually pretty efficient,
relatively speaking.
So, I'm expecting somewhere in the ballpark
of like 600 to 700 watts to be the sweet spot
for a rig like this.
We're only gonna consume, you know,
maybe 400 to 500 at the very peak,
if you're like overclocking everything.
But I'd say 700 watt's gonna be your sweet spot.
I just wanted to preface this
by saying, yeah, the 1000 watt is overkill.
That said, this is still a fully modular unit.
It's also very compact given the wattage, which is nice,
and it's 80 Plus gold certified.
We'll slightly edit it in here from the right side.
I like that there's no fancy like bracket or anything
where you have to thread everything through the back.
I used to think that was cool for some reason,
but it actually ends up just taking a bit more time
getting things situated.
So, this way it's very straightforward.
And we'll take four screws and tighten it from the rear.
Take care of the 8-pin EPS up top.
It's a tight squeeze but I think we're good to go.
Can't forget our 24-pin.
Gonna carefully bend this around,
and connect to the header.
Last on the agenda is our RTX 3060 Ti,
Founders Edition model.
I really like the way these cards look.
I'm not really a fan
of this like proprietary connector here.
I think that looks a tad ugly,
but otherwise a pretty darn looking good card.
We'll install in the uppermost full length PCI slot.
Something like that right there.
Oh yeah.
And we will connect to power.
I believe that's it.
That's all we have to do.
Well, apart from cable manage,
which I'll take care of right now.
What's that?
Oh, you wanna see it just jump?
You want us to jump straight to when it's ready to go?
Okay, cool.
Alright, Three, two, one.
It doesn't look much different.
We already kind of cable managed as we went.
This is a little messy here
and it's a little bunched up here.
But yeah, it works, okay?
It works.
We only needed a few zip ties.
Pretty much everything else you're gonna need
for cable managing
is already included (phone pinging)
in the case.
I should mute my phone.
Why is that ring tone on?
So, here's one more shot from the right side, straight on.
I'll try it installing the left side panel.
Let's see how easily you can snap this into place.
Again, totally toolless.
I love how easy it is.
And here is our shot from the left side.
So, looking pretty darn good.
We'll straighten these cables out,
or these tubes out a tad.
This kind of bothers me,
but this isn't NZXTs fault.
It's just because we're working with, you know,
the weird proprietary connector.
But other than that, I like this.
I actually like that the card is not white.
I was a little worried about that,
just being such a clashing piece of hardware.
But we do have a nice black accent on top here,
and that matches some of the black accents,
in the motherboard and such.
And then this lighter silver color,
especially in the light,
looks really good next to the white in the case.
I do think custom white sleeve cables
would've been the icing on the cake,
or heck, even just extensions.
But I wanted to show you
that just using the black stock cables
can still look good in an all-white build,
because we still have, obviously,
some of those black accents across the build.
So, now that everything is in the H7 Flow,
it is time to fire the system up for the first time,
hopefully, in post.
And from there, we'll run a few benchmarks.
Just wanna show you a few games,
not gonna run the whole suite,
but just to give you an idea
of what a 12700 K plus 3060 Ti is capable of.
It's actually a really good combination here.
It's not unbalanced by any means.
You can get away with a lot of 1440p game play,
and maybe even squeak out some 4K
in the right in-game setting.
So, let me get my cables,
and my portable monitor.
Power switch at the rear,
and the power button up front.
There it goes.
Oh yeah, I love that.
We've got white LEDs in the fans,
and that just helps illuminate the interior of the build.
Uh, uh oh.
(static hissing)
Hey, there we go.
That's more like it.
I should probably pick a storage drive in the future,
that doesn't already have an operating system on it.
Well, this one does,
but this is specifically for my latest Intel rigs.
Also, I'm not sure if the camera's gonna pick this up.
I dropped the ISO all the way down,
so you could see the LEDs in these modules here.
I got this nice sweeping effect going on.
I think that's a nice, subtle way
of breaking up the otherwise white and black theme.
Just a small bit here
on the north side of the motherboard.
Looking pretty sweet.
And like I said before,
these cracking X63 fans
set to white by default,
just helps illuminate everything else in the build,
so we can see what's going on.
Now, for the gameplay footage you're about to see,
I'm gonna be recording everything
with NZXTs brand new external capture card,
the Signal 4K30.
Records up to 4K, 30 FPS,
or 1080p 60 or higher.
You can run your HDMI cable into this.
Remember, this being external,
means you don't need extra PCI slots,
which means you could work this in, let's say an ITX build,
or even a micro ITX build,
where a space is rather limited.
If you have a capture card
that has to connect to your motherboard,
and you have a smaller board,
well, you're kind of SOL.
But in this case,
you can just run this thing externally.
You could even use this with consoles if you wanted.
In the box, you'll get the capture card itself.
You can see a very small footprint,
HDMI in and out,
along with a USB type C port.
This is for power.
You'll also get an extra HDMI cable to run either,
well, you can use it either from your graphics card
to the card,
or from the card to your screen.
So, you get a pass through there.
And you'll also get a USB type A to type C cable.
You'll run one side of this of course into the capture card.
The other side of this, you can just run into your PC
so that it receives power,
that way you don't need an external brick
or anything like that.
We're gonna start things off with "3DMark Time Spy."
Our score at the end of the day was pretty darn good,
better than 69% of all submitted results at 11031.
Graphic score was just under 11000,
and CPU score was just over 11000,
just to show you how well balanced these two components are.
We're just above the very large bump
in times-by-score submissions.
You can see we're pretty much in line
with the quote high-end gaming PC for 2020,
that 3DMark has labeled here.
Now, a game I wanted to test
was "Shadow of the Tomb Raider,"
mainly because we have DXR built into here
so Ray tracing,
as well as DLSS.
Now, DLSS, the super sampling,
is gonna be able to alleviate some of the stress
on the graphic card,
on the system overall,
because much of these games that have DLSS support
have been trained via an AI.
Thanks to the tensor cores
and things built into these cards,
we're able to get a much better looking image,
with less hardware taxation.
That said, our frame rate is over 100 FPS.
It's very comfortable there.
And this is with DXR enabled,
set to medium,
medium settings across the board.
Now, as the detail in the village increases,
the camera pans in a bit more,
now you'll notice that that frame rate drops
to around 100 FPS.
But I think this is still very playable.
Of course, you could just disable DXR outright,
and your frame rate would jump up quite a bit.
Also bear in mind, this benchmark is not indicative
of actual in-game performance.
This is more or less just a standardized way
of comparing two or three different platforms
at the same time.
Nonetheless, I think the results speak for themselves.
This combination of hardware, it works.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone
at this point here in 2022.
Another thing I'll add
is that the system runs very quiet
while under any sustained load,
especially during the "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" benchmark.
I mean, this AIO really wasn't having to work too hard.
It was the graphics card
that was mainly taking the hit here.
And we have plenty of airflow up front.
Having an airy case overall
might seem a bit counterintuitive for a quiet system,
because, well, you can easily hear inside of it, right,
because there are a bunch of holes punched everywhere.
But that just means that your fans
don't have to spin as fast,
they don't have to move as much air into the build,
or work as hard to do that.
The effort here is minimal,
and as a result,
it kind of balances things out.
I think it makes a lot of sense,
especially for a heavier-end build,
something that's gonna consume a lot of power,
run fairly hot,
get yourself an H7 Flow.
You won't be disappointed.
With that, if you wanna build a system just like this one,
we'll have all these parts linked in the video description,
as well as NZXTs Signal 4K30,
if you want an external capture card
for doing some of the things
that we showed you earlier, right?
Just capturing footage.
It's pretty much just peace of mind there,
and not having to worry too much
about having your system taxed
while it is also gaming,
because that will cut into your frame rate.
So, that's why having a capture card,
whether it be internal or external,
is pretty important there.
If you care a lot about your frame rate,
you don't wanna see it dip
while you're just capturing your screen, let's say,
in OBS or something like that.
So, all these parts will be linked below
if you wanna build something similar to this one.
Remember that the Flow,
or the H7 in general,
not just the Flow variant,
comes in either white or black.
You can kind of mix up if you want.
If you don't like white components,
they obviously offer the standard black ones as well.
Let me know what you think about this build here,
and what you would do different,
and maybe what you're currently sporting in your rig.
If you're thinking about upgrading a case,
again, the H7 Flow in particular,
is one I would definitely go after.
It's a bit larger for a mid tower,
but not too large
to the point where there looks like it's a ton
of wasted space.
Especially if I had like a front-mounted 360 mil radiator,
there would just be a lot of just consumed real estate
in here,
so I think it would make the build look very filled out.
And that's always the best for me.
Aesthetically, I don't like seeing too much dead space.
It just looks a bit weird.
So, good on NZXT for improving a case
that was already pretty darn good to begin with,
and it is now much more airflow centric.
Thanks so much for watching.
Again, consider subscribing.
If you haven't already, give this one a thumbs up,
and stay tuned for the next one.
My name is Greg.
Thanks for learning with me.