All AMD & Asus Build and Performance Testing
Introduction
Introduction
If you just pass through here to view particular reviews you might not know that we are, at heart, enthusiasts. We love to tinker and to play. Testing and tabulating hardware is fantastic. It allows us to get a feel for a piece of hardware by flexing our decades of experience, but also have hard data to either backup, or shatter, those feelings.
When we’ve got a massive pile of fairly similar things to test, it can become a little routine though. If you need to run the same 20 benchmarks on 10 basically identical graphics cards, it’s interesting but can feel like factory work. We end up gazing out of the window and dreaming of putting systems together. What would our spec list be if money was no object? What would it be if money was extremely tight? Maybe we want the best zero-RGB build. Or Blackpool illuminations in PC form. If only we weren’t so lacking in free time. We all got to eat after all.
Unsurprisingly then when the stars aligned and we could build a system that covered a lot of ground in one fell swoop, we leapt at the chance. Which brings us to today’s build.
What’s On the Desk?
First up the recent AMD Radeon launch of RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT cards has been a roaring success. Even if we discount – ahem – the early price subsidies, the issue of actually having stock on hand is almost enough to give AMD an early victory already. When you also take into account how much they have improved their ray-tracing performance and how good the introduction of FSR4 has been, we jumped at the chance to play with them again. It also means we can put it in with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the gaming processor of the zeitgeist. Two big boxes ticked.
We’re building a whole rig though. ASUS, provider of loads of affordable options alongside their flagship ROG lineup, are running a promotion at the moment where you can get GamesPlanet vouchers with the purchase of an eligible product. If we can point you towards a way of getting more games we’d be remiss if we didn’t do so. We love games so much our typing home keys are WASD. So we’ve grabbed an ASUS case, cooler and motherboard too.
That just leaves us with memory and storage to cover. With Amazon’s Spring Deals running it’s the right time to check out Biwin DDR5 and M.2s. We’ve known the company for ages as the people behind a lot of the big names you already own. Like so many in the market they’ve broken free of having their hard design and build work having a different company’s sticker on it, and strode out themselves under their own banner. Already with a high performing, great value range, we can point you towards a company you might not have heard of, but who can save you some cash without compromising your performance.
Ready? Let’s do it to it.
Build Specifications
GPU : ASUS Radeon RX 9070 Prime OC
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Motherboard : AMD B850 TUF Gaming Plus WiFi
Case : ASUS ProArt PA401
CPU Cooler : ASUS Prime 240 LC ARGB
Memory : Biwin DW100 32GB 6400
Storage : Biwin NV7400 2TB (data) and Biwin X570 Pro 2TB (OS)
Windows 11 24H2
ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070
We’ve already reviewed this ASUS Prime Radeon RX 9070. You can read that here if you wish. The short version is that it takes the excellent RDNA 4 formula AMD have brought with their newest graphics cards, and wrapped it up in a package which gives you everything you need. So often you’re paying through the nose for RGB you can’t see because the fans point downwards, or esoteric extras you’ll never use. Why not just buy a card which is as great as a particular GPU will be, and leaves you money to buy more games? Exactly.
A useful element of the RX 9070 is the use of regular 8pin PCIe connectors. Most people without infinite money have PSU that don’t come with the fiddly 12VHPWR cable. This Prime card is compatible with everything. Job done.
