Published 1 year ago: May 3, 2021 at 11:30 am
Image: AftershockHowever good you think your gaming PC or setup is, it will not come anywhere close to matching the enormity of this $30,000-plus build done for one Aussie gamer.
The build was put together by Aftershock PC, a Melbourne based retailer that specialises in custom PCs, builds and high-end laptops. Ali Kaos reached out to the company and said, hey, here’s $30,000, build the best possible PC you can.
So that’s what exactly what Aftershock did. Want the most expensive GPU on the planet? How about two of them. Like RGB? The whole thing has more lights than a shopping mall. You like water cooling? Then let’s pump the Snowy Hydro into the CPU block.
This article has been updated since its original publication.
Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock
The PC, Aftershock told Kotaku Australia over email, started with the best parts. There’s an AMD 3990X Threadripper CPU inside, dual ASUS ROG Strix RTX 3090 cards, 128GB G.Skill NEO RAM, 4TB of storage from Gigabyte Aorus Gen 4 SSDs, the fastest drives on the market today.
The case is a heavily modified Corsair 1000D, which reportedly took a full week of retooling to fit all the parts inside. “It took four people just to carry the beast down the stairs,” Aftershock said.
All of the water cooling effort added a ton of weight to the build. The distribution plate for the EK water blocks — the EK Quantum Reflection 1000D, which costs almost a grand in Australia — weighs 6 kilos by itself.
There’s even a neat little bronze plaque for Kaos, sitting towards the bottom of the machine. It’s real classy.
Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock Image: Aftershock
“It features 18 Corsair fans, dual loops and top of the line components with EK water blocks throughout and 3 x EK D5 pumps to ensure reliability. It has two flow meters, two temperature monitors and the motherboard has an LED screen that also shows temps – you’d struggle to not know the temperature,” Aftershock added.
The 7-inch LED screen can even be used as a second monitor, and when I asked if the custom builders had any footage of this, they sent over this video of them playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the mini-screen.
There’s something beautiful about gaming on a $30,000 PC with such a budget mouse, but anyway.
The PC is actually still in Aftershock’s showroom for display, because the PC’s owner is in the middle of building a new house with a room just for the gaming PC. For what it’s worth, Aftershock’s efforts in cooling and overclocking pushed the rig into the top 25 PCs worldwide in 3D Mark scores, which is pretty impressive.
Kaos explained over email that the room for this PC / production workhorse will be quite special. “[It’s] built complete with bioscan deadbolts, finger print door handle, with a solid reinforced door and security system, it’s own aircon even,” they told Kotaku Australia.
With a PC so powerful, I wondered whether its new owner would ultimately just end up playing Call of Duty or Counter-Strike at some hilariously low resolution. According to Aftershock, two of the main priorities for the new owner? Battlefield 6 later this year, and after a bunch of updates, Cyberpunk 2077. Kaos added that they will also be using the PC for 3D scanning, CAD programs and manufacturing.
What a build. If you’re after something similarly flashy that doesn’t need an AFL team to move it from room to room, there’s some smaller custom builds on Aftershock’s website. I’m really partial to the neon blue/red dual coolant, myself.
Update 7:00pm AEDT: This story has been updated with additional information.
More From Kotaku Australia
The Aftershock Rapid is marketed as a desktop computer for esports games. But since it's highly customisable, you can outfit it with practically any component you like, from integrated graphics to flagship graphics from AMD or Nvidia. What caught my attention: Aftershock offers several premade hardware builds for the Rapid. These ready-to-ship builds offer fewer options — you can only add more memory or storage. But Aftershock can have the PC delivered to you on the same day for an extra S$25 (if you place the order before 2pm). I can imagine several scenarios for when this would be useful, though having to quarantine in a hotel was not the first thing that came to mind.
Quick specs
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD
- High-flow black mesh with tempered glass chassis
- PNY RTX 3060 graphics 12GB
- 4x Addressable RGB fans
The Rapid's compact chassis offers excellent ventilation, thanks to a meshed front and top. It comes with four fans that run so quietly that you probably won't hear them till close. But you'll definitely notice their LEDs, which can be adjusted to your preferred colour and brightness using the Gigabyte RGB Fusion app. You can also tap the LED button at the top of the chassis to cycle through several preset lighting schemes. The tempered glass side door gives easy access to the PC internals. However, you'll likely have to unscrew the other side panel to change a component. The cable management is excellent, with the power cables routed neatly under the micro-ATX motherboard.
Specs-wise, my review unit — dubbed “Level 4 AMD” by Aftershock — falls in the mid-range category. The choice of processor, memory and graphics card are spot-on. Perhaps its main weakness is its 512GB Lexar SSD, which produced average speeds of around 3,500MB/s (read) and 3,000MB/s (write) in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. Of course, you can remedy this by picking a PCIe Gen 4 SSD like the 1TB Gigabyte Aorus (up to 5,000MB/s read and 4,400MB/s write) at the Aftershock website by topping up an extra S$170.
The Rapid hits the 60fps sweet spot when running at Ultra setting and 1080p in games like Metro Exodus and Watch Dogs: Legion. While it supports ray-tracing, you'll have to lower the settings to maintain the performance if ray-tracing is turned on. Besides games, the Rapid's six-core AMD processor is more than decent in system benchmarks like PCMark 10. Its overall score of 6,719 is competitive with expensive gaming notebooks I have tried.
My ready-to-ship Aftershock Rapid review unit costs S$1,750, and comes with a three-year warranty for the components. If required, Aftershock will collect, repair and return your PC for free in the first year. The mid-range specs of the Rapid is good enough to handle most games, but it is obviously not as fast as a high-end desktop or premium gaming notebooks like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 15. But the Rapid is much more affordable, and you can have it delivered on the same day, too. Buy it now from Aftershock PC.
See Also
Audio, PC, Roundup, Smart Home
Note: Review unit provided by Aftershock.
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