Everybody needs a bit of downtime in their day to unwind, but life as a professional athlete doesn’t always afford those opportunities. Scotty Pippen Jr., son of former NBA player Scottie Pippen and a pro basketball player himself with the South Bay Lakers, found that he wasn’t getting as much use out of his console gaming system as he thought he would. He asked for help, and we were ready to answer the call. We recruited Stuart Tonks, manager of GGF and a professional case modder, to help us build Scotty a custom gaming PC.
Crushing Call of Duty with premium ROG components
Scotty’s favorite game is Call of Duty. To give him an experience in this game like he’d never had before, we set him up with a cutting-edge selection of ROG hardware. Headlining the list is none other than the mighty ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090. At the very top of NVIDIA’s 40 Series graphics card lineup, this beastly GPU is poised to give Scotty excellent frame rates in any game on the market. A custom liquid cooling loop with parts from EK and Singularity Computers, including a special block for the GPU, keeps the high-performance parts in this rig cool and comfortable under pressure.
A high-performance processor helps make sure that Scotty gets the most out of his new graphics card. We opted for the Intel Core i9-14900K CPU, and gave it a home in one of our latest Z790 motherboards: the ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WiFi. Armed with a robust VRM ready for overclocking, DDR5 RAM support, and a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot ready for the best graphics cards of today and tomorrow, this motherboard has everything Stuart was looking for in a high-end gaming build, and it’ll look the part, too, with its white and silver heatsinks and I/O shroud.
2TB of fast storage from XPG will give him a spacious and speedy gaming library, and a 32GB kit of XPG Lancer RGB ROG Certified DDR5 RAM will let him multitask with ease. The mirrored finish on the sides of this memory can’t be beat — and we know that Stuart appreciated how this memory has undergone extensive testing by ROG for compatibility with ROG Intel DDR5 series motherboards. The “ROG Certified” mode in BIOS allowed him to fire up optimized memory overclocking settings with just one click.
For the power supply for this build, we needed a high-wattage unit with an aesthetic that fit the white theme of the rest of the parts. The ROG Thor 1000W Platinum II fits that bill nicely. It wields cooling and component upgrades that make it remarkably quiet, and exceptionally efficient, as well, as attested by its 80 Plus Platinum certification.
White-themed peripherals courtesy of ROG
All put together, this build has real character and a unique look. Stuart did a fantastic job reproducing the colors of Scotty’s basketball team into the RGB LED lighting and the custom paint work.
To help extend the color theme to Scotty’s peripherals, we set him up with a premium selection of Moonlight White gear. Our award-winning ROG Azoth gaming keyboard is now available in a white colorway, making it a natural fit for this gaming rig. Its 75% form factor makes it a great fit for gamers who don’t need a numpad, as it leaves more of your desk space open for your mousing hand while keeping full-size keys and a complete function row.
The ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition gaming mouse makes a dynamic duo with the ROG Azoth. Atop the tempered glass surface of the ROG Moonstone Ace L gaming mouse pad, the Harpe will give Scotty exceptional accuracy and precision in a lightweight shell that’s easy to move rapidly in the heat of battle. For audio, we provided Scotty with the comfortable, high-quality ROG Delta S Wireless. This wireless gaming headset offers both 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connectivity, so it’s easy to connect to a wide range of gaming gear.
For Scotty’s monitor, we hooked him up with one our latest OLED gaming displays: the ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM. This 27-inch display has exceptional contrast and colors that leap off the screen thanks to its OLED panel, and since it’s armed with a 240Hz refresh rate and an insanely fast 0.03ms response time, it’ll allow Scotty to track the fast-paced action in Call of Duty with uncanny accuracy.
PC gaming at home and on the go
Since Scotty does most of his gaming at the end of his day, Stuart set up his new ROG-powered battle station right inside his bedroom. When he’s relaxing at home, his gaming PC will always be handy.
But Scotty’s also interested in gaming outside of his home, too. When asked if he ever games when he’s on the move, Scotty said, “I really haven’t had the chance to. Having a console and having to pack it has been a lot of work.” Certainly, it would be a bother to pack up a console when his team is traveling for a road game.
We gave Scotty a much cleaner solution with the ROG Ally. This handheld will let him play the games from his Windows 11 gaming libraries, but in a compact device that he can just pick up and take with him. Equipped with a powerful AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU and a fast 120Hz display, it’s ready to give a great gaming experience on the go.
| Model | Availability (US) |
|---|---|
| ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics card | ASUS Amazon |
| ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WiFi Gaming motherboard | ASUS Newegg Amazon |
| ROG Thor 1000W Platinum II Power supply | ASUS Newegg Amazon |
| ROG Azoth Gaming keyboard | ASUS Newegg |
| ROG Harpe Ace Aim Lab Edition Gaming mouse | ASUS Newegg |
| ROG Moonstone Ace L Mouse pad | ASUS |
| ROG Delta S Wireless Gaming headset | ASUS |
| ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM OLED gaming monitor | ASUS B&H |
| ROG Ally Gaming handheld | ASUS Best Buy |
Learn more about building your own PC
Stuart is a talented PC builder with a lot of experience modding gear for custom builds. It doesn’t take a professional to build a gaming PC, though. It’s never been easier to put together a powerful, stylish PC that fits your personality.
Need some help getting started — or some fresh ideas for your next build? We have a special event coming up just for you. Please join us on December 3rd, 2023 for ASUS PC DIY Day. We’re hosting a special event at our ASUS Experience Center in Fremont, California to celebrate all things PC building. Bring your friends and family to learn how to build with our experts, get inspired, and win some awesome prizes. Even if you can’t make it in person, check out our event page to connect with us.
Additionally, we encourage you to stay tuned as we approach the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At this yearly event, we unveil many of our most exciting new products. We’re not ready to share the details today, but we will say this: you won’t want to miss this year’s announcements. To make sure that you hear the latest news on ASUS products the moment that it’s available, use the “Subscribe to Our Newsletter” tool in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen to get quick email notifications when we post a new article here on Edge Up.