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It's hard to build a machine right now. We're going to do a build video, and we're going to do another build video with the i7 270K Plus. An upgrade from the Core Ultra 7 265K Plus, and we did like three or four build videos with these for random people on the forum and other, you know, other sort of side projects. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is like having a Core Ultra 9, but with better power envelope and better power performance. Like, it's a really solid deal for about $300. Unfortunately, the entire rest of the system is going to be
kind of expensive because that's where we are now, but [clears throat] the local Walmart has parts that are on clearance. I know, I know. Walmart and Best Buy might actually be a source of parts that are weirdly on clearance for no reason or less than what you can buy them for on the internet, which is weird. Super weird. So, let's talk about it. Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, that's the CPU that I'm going to use for this build, but if you wanted the Core Ultra 5, you're just going to have this for like a gaming type use case, you could
totally do that. We did a full review of these processors. You can check out their performance in different contexts, productivity apps, games, Linux, you name it. MSI is of particular interest to me because the thing that's well, the thing that surprised me is that for these Intel CPUs, being able to run DDR5 8000 two sticks of memory has been really stable, like surprisingly stable, much more stable than on the AMD side of things. The other thing that we've generally struggled with is four DIMMs for memory capacity. It doesn't really matter now because memory is not affordable, but I really liked experimenting with 128 gigs of memory
and even 256 gigs of memory when it was affordable. There was a brief period there where 128 gigs of memory was like five, six hundred dollars. And that opens up a lot of possibilities for fun things you can do with your machine. Those days are over. But, it's really weird because like this is a 4070 Ti. This is probably old stock. I think this came from Walmart. So, we were shopping around for deals at Walmart and Best Buy and you know, like local places looking for stuff online. There it's so bad that people will buy from local and then resell it online or resell it on eBay which is not fabulous. If you're buying new, you're more likely to find something like a 5070 Ti or something like that, but
for this build, we're going to use a 4070 Ti because I think it was $474 which seems like that doesn't seem like that would be a good deal, but in April of 2026, that is a screaming good deal. I also had a difficult choosing a motherboard. So, I really wanted to use the B860I Edge Ti Wi-Fi because this is a particularly good ITX motherboard from MSI. But, the Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi 2, like the full-size desktop boards generally are cheaper than the ITX boards. Like you pay a price premium for having a physically smaller machine. Which is counterintuitive. Like you would think that micro ATX would be the happy medium. So, like three sizes of motherboards. ITX which will work in,
you know, a desktop case or micro ATX case, micro ATX, and then full-size ATX. The Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi 2. These both have 5 gigabit Ethernet. They have some similar features, although the Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi is physically bigger, so there's more room for stuff. It's got four M.2. Can't do four M.2 on a ITX, but I had this case from MSI. And is a micro ATX case. And so, I could put this ITX motherboard in this micro ATX case. And I thought about using This is a Deepcool Assassin power supply. You can't get Deepcool anymore cuz they're on the naughty list, but this design is sold by other people other than Deepcool. And so, like this could be a really cool i7 build. But, I think um I think instead I'm going to do
I think I'm going to do the Tomahawk. And on the Tomahawk over here, you can kind of see this is a Noctua. This is a D15. And so, like this kind of an option for tower cooling is a good option for the i7. Like I say, the these i7s and i9 CPUs, they don't have a lot of overclocking headroom. So, you're not going to dump 300 watts into them. They generally will work really well with a tower cooler. You can even use a small AIO. Uh Best Buy stocks MSI and Corsair brand AIOs, they're fine. The secondary sources of the Assassin tower cooler are generally a really good deal. Like that is a really good tower cooler for processors in this power envelope. I
mean, this is the same power envelope as an i9, don't get me wrong. But, the refresh, they've tweaked some things, obviously. It's Core Ultra 7 instead of a Core Ultra 9, but you do extra e-cores. So, like the i9 um so, it does, you know, benefit from being cooled adequately. But, you could use a tower cooler and it would work just as well as some of those lower tier AIOs. If you get a really high-end AIO, a more expensive all-in-one cooler, it will do a better job cooling the CPU. But, for performance, it really doesn't make a huge difference. So, I think we're going to go with the Tomahawk. And this is the Z890. So, this is like the splurge chipset. What's the difference between Z890 and B860? This is the chipset. This is the chipset that
you use. And so, the chipset on the motherboard Z890 implies that it's a higher-end motherboard with a better set of features. But, really, it can be misleading. You have to actually look at the features of the board cuz like you look at this and it's like, "Oh, Z890, it has four M.2." Those are all PCIe Gen 5, right? No. Just one. One is PCIe Gen 5. The other three are PCIe Gen 4. So, you wouldn't, you know, want to run a raid set on that cuz the difference is in speed. But, if you have a lot of older, like 128 gigs, 256 gig, you know, like an ancient computer that you can harvest parts out of, you can use the old flash storage cuz, you know, buying modern parts is unaffordable. And you
got a lot of M.2 slots in this to be able to recycle and reuse that old storage. Same kind of thing with the DDR5 memory. If you have old DDR5 memory, it'll work fine. You do suffer a little bit of a performance penalty, but hey, what are you going to do? And I think when you're building a system like this, like who cares if it matches or it doesn't match or like you go for a color scheme. Just put it in a box. Put it in a cardboard box. If you can save a bunch of money, just do that. With the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, that's legit. For the best deal on memory that we were able to find, it's DDR5 5200. Don't laugh. This is old stock. It's old Corsair Dominator. It's CAS latency is 40 and it's 5200. So, like this is some
of the most OG DDR5. That has been sitting on the shelf for a while. I don't remember if that was Walmart or Best Buy. Yeah, it's the old stuff. Sometimes you can ask is like, "Hey, where's the old stock?" For storage, we're going to be using the MP700. Now, that is brand new. This is the Phison-based microcontroller. This is uh you know, this is a modern drive, the MP700. Like there's nothing wrong with this. It's just that this hasn't yet been marked up. You There were some of these were stocked at retail and you could find them at still like not marked up retail prices. But, this is an MP 700 Pro XT uh 2 terabytes
and I want to say it was 279 but you're not going to find it for 279. There's no way. Should be like 179. But again, 2026. So, yes. Okay. Let's get this put together. And honestly, you know, the Noctua cooler looks better if I'm going to use the Tomahawk motherboard but the Assassin is just so cool cuz I already had it. I don't know. I already had both of them but yeah, just depends. I tried to pick up another Corsair SSD but this particular MP 700 I've had for a while because Corsair sent it to me a while back. But something to keep your eyes open for because you never know when it's going to be old stock or old box or something
like that and that would definitely be I mean Okay, the MP 700 is modern PCIE Gen 5 and it's fast but if you save $100 or more and it's a little slower, that's fine. You'll make it in 2 or 3 years or 4 years or 7 years until the next time you upgrade. But it's going to work great and our primary slot here is PCIE Gen 5 so the MP 700 in here works good for this setup. All right, so this is what we ended up with. It's a Fractal. It's old though. Again, you never know what you're going to find open box, scratch and dent, Micro Center, everywhere.
This is just something that I had laying around. You don't need a case. Well, okay, you need a case but like you can retrofit any kind of case. It's it's it's totally okay. But this is what we ended up with internally. Now, the Noctua fan, that is overkill. Noctua tower D15. Like I say, sometimes you get a special, sometimes you get something on sale. Kind of makes sense. 4070 Ti is going to plenty of room in this case. One of the downsides with this Fractal case is especially if you got an AIO or something in the front, it doesn't give you a lot of depth for a GPU. So, this
fine for our use case. This would also be fine with like a 5070 or 5070 Ti, but double-check the length of your GPU because that can be a problem on these older cases. There's also no front panel USB-C, doesn't have some of the niceties, but again, this machine will do everything AAA titles. The 4070 GPU is pretty good. This is our MSI ultrawide OLED. And this is also like this machine is like if you were to get this monitor, this would be the most expensive component. The monitor is as nice or nicer than the entire rest of the machine. And the monitor kind of blows the budget for the rest of the machine cuz the motherboard is like a, you know, $250, $220 motherboard. And then the memory, you know, is insane because And so you got to
And the storage is insane because The processor is $300. The power supply is a 750 W power supply. So, that's you know, we're just squeaking by here on some of this, but it is a delightful computing experience. Hey, look at that. First post. All you got to do is go into BIOS. Well, update your BIOS. Check your BIOS version. Go to the website for the motherboard. See that Oh, there's a BIOS update cuz I'm using one of those new plus CPUs. Update your BIOS. If your system doesn't post, don't worry. That's possibly normal because newer processors sometimes require an updated BIOS. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg problem. On the back of the motherboard, there's a BIOS flash button. You have to
follow the manufacturer instructions to specially prepare a USB flash drive, put it in a certain USB port, and upgrade the BIOS. There's videos to do that we've done in the past and all over the internet. We have a forum, a user forum where you can get help with this kind of stuff. If you're stuck or you don't know, or if you have a friend that, you know, builds computers or does that kind of thing, they can help you, and you can learn, and it's a lot of fun, and the DIY cost-benefit analysis definitely makes sense. But, if it doesn't post, don't freak out. There's some work you can do to get it up and running. This motherboard also has a diagnostic readout for numbers, and it shows you numerically what the
problem is. A lot of motherboards will just have a little light that's like, CPU error, memory error, hard drive error, can't, you know, can't boot, and then like a green or white LED that's all good. This motherboard actually gives you a numeric readout, which makes it a little easier to do diagnostics, and that's because it's a higher-end, you know, Z890 motherboard. So, you know, building a computer is a lot of fun. That's not really what this video I mean, this video is a build video, but not super step-by-step. Uh if you want a step-by-step build video, and you would watch it and enjoy it, we could do more of that kind of stuff. I'm game to do that. But really, I just I want to get to the benchmarks. How fast is this little guy?
It's a 4070 Ti. That's a last-gen graphics card, but it was also kind of a deal. So, yeah, let's give it a try. Now, what do you miss out on having an old last-gen GPU? Not much. Multi-frame generation in some of the new 5000 series. Uh if you're into AI, there's some AI features, but I know most of you aren't when you're doing this kind of stuff. So, you know, gaming perfectly fine 4000 series GPUs. Yeah. All right. Let's get this thing benchmarked. All right, so these are the benchmark results for this i7 270K plus system with the 4070 Ti. The comparison systems are the Core Ultra 5 250K plus with a 5090, and a Core Ultra
7 270K plus also with a 5090. It's like, "Oh, the 5090 is going to tempt." No, it's not. It's you'll see. Also, look at our memory. Look at this. It is 73 GB a second and 97 ns latency. I could do tuning, and we could really bring in those secondary timings and adjust this, but I want you to see how the system performs even with the worst memory latency and the worst memory bandwidth cuz remember it's DDR5 5200 versus our comparison systems from the review like the one those CPUs launched. You can check out the full review of the CPUs to know how it breaks down, but you know, it's this is fine. CPU-Z again, it's like Core Ultra 7 versus Core Ultra 7.
Why is it pulling slightly ahead in this configuration versus the other configuration? It's a different Core Ultra 7 CPU, a silicon lottery, different board, slightly newer BIOS from the launch day BIOS. So, yeah, but single thread performance eight it's it's identical. This is basically identical performance across the board when we're talking about per core configuration, but the game benchmarks are where things get really interesting. Starting with Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk on the 4070 Ti, look at this, 157 FPS, 106 for 1% lows. Now, remember it's like, "Oh, the other two systems were a lot better." Yeah, but with a 5090. But, look at the performance delta here from 157 to 201. Does it really
make sense for you to splurge on a 5090 when you could get a 4070 Ti in the discount section at Walmart potentially? Like, that's it's like No, it's the cost delta there is not it's not worth spending three grand on a GPU for that. Now, if we go to 1440p, it's a little different story, but I still think Cyberpunk 2077 is eminently playable at 96 FPS at 1440p, but that's just me. 4K, 41 FPS. Okay, the 4070 Ti can't do 4K. I don't is does this really shock anybody? It's fine. Final Fantasy Dawntrail 247 FPS at 1080p 180 FPS at 1440p. Again, yeah, 5090, but who cares?
4K, 90 FPS Final Fantasy Dawntrail. This is fine. You should this is totally okay. It's all good. Monster Hunter Wilds, 90 FPS. Same kind of a story. 1080p. Like, are you noticing a pattern here where 1080p really the performance is not dramatically different than a 5090? The 5090 performs better at a higher resolutions. But, again, Monster Hunter Wilds, 73 FPS at 1440p. That's playable. That's reasonable. And this is also ultra. You can turn it down from ultra. You can use scaling technology. There's There's a lot of options if you wanted to bring your 1440p resolution back towards something like 90 FPS.
4K, 45 FPS. If you're going to do 4K, I mean, you could do scaling. It's like if you do scaling to 4K native on a panel with a game that's actually rendered at 1440p, 70-80 FPS is achievable with a 4070 Ti. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it's an ancient title. 256 FPS. I mean, look at this. This is very similar performance at 1080p. There's not a lot of difference between a 4070 Ti and a 5090. Certainly not thousands of dollars difference. 1440p, I would argue is much the same story. And 4K is like, okay, now I'm starting to There's a 100 FPS difference at 4K, but it's still 148 FPS on the 4070 Ti. 4070 Ti is fine. You will be
fine. You don't need to spend crazy amount of money on a GPU to have an amazing gaming experience. And actually, I really I probably should redo this video. I should probably use that eighth gen Intel in here instead of the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus with the 4070 Ti cuz the first upgrade you should do on this kind of a system really is going to be your GPU. And then your GPU is probably the GPU upgrade is probably going to force you to have a new power supply. And then after that, maybe you think about the other upgrades. But, Intel's also pulled out a win here, I think, with the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus because it has a lot of performance. The other thing with a Core Ultra 7 is that you
wouldn't buy that just for gaming. This is the one you for gaming and productivity. So, everywhere here where the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus has been showing you that hey, the performance is basically identical. You should know that the Core Ultra 5 in the same plus 4070 Ti configuration is going to be basically identical from a gaming perspective. Now, rendering and multi-core workloads, yeah, the Core Ultra 7 is going to be faster cuz more cores more better. Has two more performance cores. I think that's a big deal. I think it's worth the extra $100. But, you know, $100 may not be worth it if you're mostly using machine for browsing the web, gaming, and that sort of thing. But, this is what we got for performance.
So, [snorts] yeah, the benchmarks show this is a perfectly modern machine and that makes sense because we've built the platform around a modern CPU and motherboard. And yeah, the memory being a little slow does cost us a little bit of performance, but we also don't have the absolute fastest graphics card available, either. So, you might be wondering it's like, should you even upgrade? And everything is so expensive, my answer changes a little bit. Probably no. If you are on, say, an eighth generation Intel, which is positively ancient by modern standards, I mean, the speed of the individual cores is a little bit every generation, but when you go back to the eighth generation, the core is pretty
slow. You know, six cores, eight cores in that generation is um glacial compared to modern processors. And yet, if you just upgrade your GPU, that's probably the first place you should start. You may also have to upgrade your power supply if you upgrade your GPU because modern GPUs use a heck of a lot more power, even our 4070 Ti here, uh than ancient GPUs from that era. So, eighth or ninth gen Intel, I'm kind of on the fence about, but you could probably get another year or two out of it, maybe, especially if you consider switching to Linux. Switching to Linux would give you a much better experience, I promise. And yeah, there probably would be a little bit of a learning curve. We have a whole other channel
dedicated to that. You should check that out. But eighth or ninth generation performance is really good. If you are on AM4, AMD AM4, your best bet honestly is probably to upgrade you know, after you upgrade your GPU and maybe your power supply because you upgraded your GPU, your processor. Cuz AM4, you could run a 5800X 3D. And that is why those are as expensive as they are. You don't necessarily have to get the 3D, but like the CPU swap would probably make more sense if you're on AM4, even if you're on a really old AM4 platform, as long as you can get a BIOS update for it. So, consider that before you splash out a bunch of money in what is probably the worst time to buy an upgrade. That said,
this is a modern platform and it is ridiculously fast and there's not really like we got the full benefit of a new gaming computer compared to what a system like this would cost if you were buying the full system online or you know, like as a pre-assembled or a pre-built machine. It's it's probably about twice the cost versus you know, just recycling a couple of parts and then getting a couple of brand new parts. So, you're getting as good of an experience with this as you would with that 95 to 98% and this machine will be great for next two, three, four, five years. Well, you may want to upgrade the GPU again, but you know, like three generations from now. I don't know. Two generations.
Maybe. We'll see. But there you go. That's been a fun quick build. We're on the i7 2700K plus. It's nice to see this much performance at the $300 price point or the $200 price point if you want the i5. Again, if you're just doing gaming, I did the video, there's not a huge difference between the i5 and the i7. I like the i7 for future compatibility, especially when we're talking about a machine that's going to last two or three years. That's always been a really solid advice, but hey, let's discuss and chat further in Level One Forums. I'm signing out and I'll see you there.
