LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
3 GOING TO THE TIPPITY TOP
PCIE DEVICES SUCH AS M.2 SSDS nearly always go in the uppermost slots available, as these usually offer the fastest speeds. Not on this board, though. The Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero comes with a ‘Hyper M.2 Card’ expansion board which is the only way you can take advantage of PCIe 5.0 drives, as the three M.2 slots on the board are PCIe 4.0. No problem though, as that’s what we’re using here. We remove the reassuringly enormous heatsink below the CPU by unscrewing two small screws, take the blue plastic off both sides of the thermal pads, insert the PNY SSD at a 30° angle, and use the plastic retention clip to secure the drive in place. Finally, we screw the heatsink back on and that’s the storage sorted.
4 MOUNTING MADNESS
WE CAN FEEL you silently judging us here as we now drop the motherboard into the case. “What about the RAM sticks?” you may ask. Well, worry not, as this is intentional—see step 9 to learn why we skipped that for now. To get the motherboard in place, we lay the case on its side, gently lower the mobo in, line the I/O ports up with the rear of the case, and locate the eight screws required to lock the motherboard in place from its box. It’s one of the easiest parts of the build, but it’s here we start to appreciate just how good this case is for cable management. The case has holes in all the right places, which should keep everything neat and tidy.
1 BOXING CLEVER
IT’S BEEN FIVE ISSUES since I did my previous build for Maximum PC. In that time, I’ve read enough guides from our writer Sam to know it’s always a good idea to kick things off by getting the case as empty and accessible as possible. As the NZXT H7 Elite is a mid-tower case, there’s plenty of room to work with without making the case ridiculously big, like the massive Corsair 7000D Airflow from our October issue. We removed the side, front, and top panels from the case, all of which can be detached without tools, took out the three pre-installed 140mm F Series RGB Fans that come with the case, and removed the mechanical hard drive cage from the base of the machine, as we won’t be using it.
2 PROCESSING THE INFORMATION
and ready to be filled, we next turn to the motherboard, which we populate with components before securing it into the case. We like to use the motherboard’s box as a base when building, as it’s the right
