Prime has been ASUS’s entry level gaming hardware for a while now, widely known for their motherboards and cases, beyond this the range has been fairly limited. That’s all changing with the introduction of an all in one cooler, power supply and a graphics card. Finally we have enough components for a Prime build! This has made us very happy, the Prime AP201 has been one of our favourite small form factor cases for a while now, we’re itching to start building but first lets have a look at the new components!
Prime 850w Gold PSU
Power supplies, seen by many as uninteresting and not given the importance they deserve! A good power supply can be the difference maker when it comes to stable performance, we would always recommend giving your system a good amount of headroom with the power that can be supplied and stump for a gold rated supply or higher to maintain efficient power delivery. The Prime 850w PSU meets our needs for this build for rating and maximum power delivery with room to spare!
The unit comes with dual bearing fans to keep noise to a minimum, is fully modular to keep cable management minimal, ATX 3.0 compatibility so it will work with RTX 40 series graphics cards, and one very unique feature which ASUS label as ‘style your way’. This signifies the colour (yes we’re British) of the PSU - it is half white and half black. It can then be placed with either side visible in the case depending on the colour scheme. It is worth bearing in mind that the fan is on the white side, so whether it is truly reversible will depend entirely on the airflow design of your system.
We found the cables supplied with the unit to be high quality but not braided and the flex seems good They were of standard length for an ATX build - as we are using them for a M-ATX build we’ll have to manage them.
Prime LC 360 ARGB All in One
Good all in one coolers are pretty common, there are many companies doing them well. One of the market leaders just so happened to be ASUS, with fantastic performers across their different ecosystems. This has given us high hope for the Prime LC 360.
Looking at the tech specs for the cooler, it boasts ‘a specially designed CPU contact area’ which ‘provides powerful heat dissipation performance’. Having had a look at the contact area I can’t see any major differences to what I would normally expect, but the proof of this will come in testing. There is an RGB infinity mirror, with 2 designs in the box, one showing the ASUS logo, the other showing the Prime Logo - options are always nice! To change the design just pull the front of the pump the housing is magnetic.
Attached to the radiator is an unusual fan setup, 3 x 120mm ARGB fans, all built into a single housing. To power the fans there are just 2 cables, an RGB header and a fan header. This is something we love to see! Daisy chaining radiator fans and disguising the evidence is not our idea of a good time - good to know it’s not necessary here. We have taken the fan housing off the radiator to discover there is mounting for 3 x 120mm should you wish to change the fans out, it’s nice to know if a fan dies that you can replace the unit.
Prime GeForce RTX 4070 Super
The unboxing experience of the Prime 4070 Super is very reminiscent of its bigger brothers, the box materials and design feels similar, and is a very pleasant experience. We were devastated to find there was no top trumps card in the box though! We hope this was just because we received an early unit to look at.
Once we had the graphics card freed from its box, it struck us just how small and light it is. It’s a 3 fan unit with a well designed plastic housing. It seems perfect for small form factor builds with dimensions of: 269x120x50mm. We were shocked to find that it is shorter than the equivalent offering from ProArt - which we often consider the perfect option 3 fan for small form factor building. With that in mind performance will be key to how well adopted this card is for compact builds. More on that later!
Parts List
Case Overview
We wanted to keep this project as Prime as possible, which leaves 2 options: the AP201 and the A21.There isn’t a wrong answer so we left it to chance, a game of spin the bottle. The first spin landed perfectly in the middle - typical! On the second attempt we had a winner, the AP201, perfect. We love the case and have built with it many times. It is compact but will house a MATX motherboard, ATX power supplies (180mm max), a 360 AIO and graphics cards up to 338mm. Full tech specs can be found by clicking here. As for connectivity at the front of the case, we have a USB-C, 2 x USB-A, a headphone input and a mic input. Included at the rear of the case is 1 x 120mm Prim PWM fan set as exhaust.
What Was It Like to Build?
It’s easy enough to strip the case, the front top and side panels all pop off, there is a panel covering the PSU and the PSU bracket to unscrew and it’s ready to build. There is a cable channel with velcro strapping points for cable management and a plenty of small strapping points adorn the back on the case. It is worth noting that the strapping points are very small - too small for our velcro so we had to use cable ties.
Everything fit in as expected, we decided to use 2 fans on the bottom of the case leaving plenty of space for cable management. We feel this setup should be sufficient for cooling, but testing will give us a clearer picture. Once the power supply was fitted we were happy with the look through the tempered glass panel as the black side was showing through, but from the front of the case you can see the white side of the power supply, though you do have to be looking for it.
Airflow and Performance
We’ve done airflow visualisations on this case before, and feel we already know what to expect. The difference from last time is there wasn’t space with the larger power supply to mount a 120mm fan to the front of the case but we’re using a 360mm radiator - up from a 240mm, but have these changes had any noticeable effect on the airflow?
The answer is yes, but only technically, the case is still taking in and exhausting air at an expected rate, which should be more than sufficient for cooling but having 2 intake and 4 exhaust fans will create negative pressure and mean some air will be pulled in the mesh side panels too. We’re happy that the airflow is sufficient to keep the components cool, but proof comes through testing:
For performance testing we ran it through a few games, just to make sure the system is meeting expectations.
Spider-Man Remastered
3440x1440 Very High
99 - 145 FPS
55°C max CPU temp
66°C max GPU temp
Forza Horizon
3440x1440 Extreme
107 - 132fps
54°C max CPU temp
66°C max GPU temp
Furmark 1440p
1 minute test
Max temp 68°C
Hotspot 78°C
166 fps
Score 9998
CPU-Z Stress Test
1 min
Temp 58°C
Looking at the results the build is performing as we would expect, the RTX 4070 is a good option for 1440p gaming and it stayed cool under pressure. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D was also kept chilled by the Prime LC 360 AIO under load.
Roundup
Do we need another ASUS ecosystem? There is already ROG, ROG Strix, TUF and ProArt, it seems a lot already! We do however love the build quality of ASUS products, so an entry level is always welcome. The build we have put together using Prime has given us exactly what we would expect, really strong performance - in line with the specs, fantastic cooling and stable power delivery under load. We had wondered if the entry level motherboard would nerf the performance, but there were no signs of that! The 4070 Super and AIO are very easy to recommend; whereas the two tone power supply is more about build specifics. We can see the perks of having options, but whether those options work in your set-up depends on the chassis. We will be looking at this PSU for other builds to see how useful it truly is, we suspect it will be better suited to white builds, and having a well priced white biassed PSU is a benefit in itself.
Prime is looking to be an excellent gateway into PC gaming, but it’s also far more than that: it offers a wider array of products that all gamers can look to when upgrading or tinkering with their rig.
As for pricing:
The PRIME RTX 4070 Super will be one of the lowest price triple fan GPU's falling at Nvidia MSRP (£605 in the UK for the non overclocked version) which is amazing to see considering the performance and cooling potential this card brings to the table.
The Prime LC 360 is priced at [price TBC].
The Prime 850w Gold PSU is currently with system integrators to be included in the Prime ecosystem and isn't yet available, we're hoping this to change very soon.
Watch the full video here:
Blog written by Sam Thwaytes
I will choose the mesh version.