Next-Level Liquid Cooling With Ryzen

Follow our guide to building your own piece of computational perfection.

- Zak Storey

EVERY TIME we hit up the drawing board for a build like this, there’s a sense of apprehension. The degree of organization and luck required is Herculean, and even with all our experience, it never comes easy.

From planning the spec list, to requesting hardware, arranging photography, and more, it can take months for everything to come together, only for a new product to launch, or a shipping deadline to fall through, and scupper the entire thing.

Unlike our Dream Machines, these oneoff specials are not about absolute power, and pushing everything to the bleeding edge of technology, but about crafting a PC that’s perfect for the individual it’s designed for.

Let’s be realistic: You can probably get the same performance for half the cost, or twice the performance for less than double the price. But you rarely find someone who’s invested this much time and effort into a rig and regrets it. It’s a real labor of love.

This time around, we’ll be crafting a super-small liquid-cooled ITX Ryzen 2 rig, packing some incredible hardware into as small a chassis as possible. On top of that, we’ll be divulging all our tips and tricks to make the micro manageable, giving up our secrets on exactly which manufacturers and products we chose to make our system build as easy as can be, and hopefully inspiring you to create your own slice of silicon perfection, on any budget, in any chassis. 

AMD Ryzen 7 2700x $325