….
It was 10:30 PM on a brisk Thursday night in the Hollywood Hills.
Down in the city the theatrical run of [Train To Catch] was continuing. But inside Regal Seraphsail's minimalist residence, the entertainment industry did not exist.
Instead, the ten foot kitchen dining table looked like an electronics staging depot.
Neatly aligned tables were over a dozen unopened retail boxes.
They all have various logos: Corsair, ASUS Republic of Gamers, EVGA, Samsung, and Intel.
Standing behind the table with a pair of fine point needle nose pliers tucked into the pocket was–
Henry Cavill.
Beside him, Keanu Reeves was leaning against the counter, while Regal stood with his sleeves rolled up, holding an anti-static wrist strap.
"Henry." Regal held up the elastic wrist strap, turning it over in his hands. "Be honest with me. Do I actually need to clip this thing to a radiator, or are you checking how easily I can be bullied in my own house?"
"Neither. I am trying to stop you from frying a very expensive computer." Henry kept ticking items off his checklist. "That little chip in the Intel box has over three billion transistors packed into it. One static discharge from that wool carpet could damage a component before you even realize what you've done."
Regal glanced down at the rug beneath his feet. "So the carpet is the enemy now?"
"It has always been. Clip the strap to the bare metal casing of the power supply, or keep your hands away from the table."
Keanu snorted from the sofa. "You heard him. When Superman tells you not to touch the motherboard, you listen."
Regal turned to him. "You're enjoying this far too much for a man who couldn't tell a motherboard from a chopping board."
"I know enough to recognize a disaster when I see one. Besides, I didn't spend the last twenty minutes listening to Henry explain microscopic transistors just to watch you kill them with your socks."
"Fine." Regal clipped the strap to the casing with an exaggerated sigh. "There. Happy?"
Henry finally looked up. "I will be happy when you've finished building the computer and it actually turns on."
"Wonderful. Nothing like a little faith from the people I invited into my home."
Keanu glanced at the parts scattered across the table. "To be fair, you do look a little like a caveman trying to figure out fire."
"I am a console gamer, Keanu." Regal sighed, holding up both hands. "For seven years, my relationship with gaming hardware has been pretty straightforward. Slide a blue disc into a slot, pick up a DualShock controller, press Start. Now I am sitting here afraid to touch a piece of plastic because Henry says my socks might murder it. This feels less like a hobby and more like open-heart surgery."
"That's because a console is designed to make everything easy for you." Henry explained, returning to his checklist. "You buy the box, plug it in, and play. A PC is different. You choose the components, make sure they're compatible, and put the whole thing together yourself."
"So I am paying more money to do the manufacturer's job for them?"
Keanu burst out laughing.
Henry paused, pencil hovering over the checklist. "When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous."
"Thank you. Finally, someone in this room understands me."
"I didn't say you were right."
The whole gathering had been months in the making.
Back during the screen tests for [Superman: Man of Tomorrow], Regal and Keanu had discovered Henry's passion for PC hardware.
And even between the most intense filming sessions, while other actors were checking trade reviews or speaking to their publicists, Henry had been enthusiastically explaining clock frequencies, GPU architectures, and the nuances of frame timings.
When Regal and Keanu admitted that their entire off-set downtime was spent huddled over PlayStations, Henry had looked at them with sorrow.
As if discovering two close friends were reading books through cloudy sunglasses.
A pact was forged: the moment [Train To Catch] was delivered to theaters and their schedules aligned, Henry would personally supervise the assembly of the ultimate late-2016 desktop.
"Here we go, baby!" Henry clapped his hands together, looking far more excited than anyone had a right to be over a pile of computer parts. "Right, should I explain what everything does before we start?"
Regal glanced at Keanu. Keanu glanced back.
Neither of them looked particularly eager, but Henry was already reaching for the first box, so they nodded.
"Excellent!"
Henry began laying out the components one by one, handling each box with the care of a museum curator preparing to unveil a priceless artifact.
"First, the brain." He held up a small blue box. "Intel Core i7-6700K."
"Sixth-generation Skylake." Regal recited. "Four cores, eight threads, four gigahertz base clock, boosts to 4.2, and an unlocked multiplier for overclocking."
Henry stopped and stared at him. "You memorized all that?"
"You emailed me the specifications two weeks ago. So yes I did."
Henry looked delighted.
Keanu leaned toward Regal. "He's proud of you. I think you've just become his favorite child."
"Don't encourage him."
"I am serious!" Henry continued, barely listening. "The 6700K is a fantastic gaming processor. Strong single-core performance, good clock speeds, and without the extra heat and power demands of the larger enthusiast platforms. It's a very sensible choice."
"I am glad one of us knows what we're doing." Regal muttered.
Henry either didn't hear him or chose to ignore it.
He reached for the large, blood-red box at the center of the table and carefully opened it.
"Now, the foundation. The ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha."
Inside, the motherboard rested in its anti-static tray, its dark circuit board covered in rows of connectors, slots, and components that meant absolutely nothing to Keanu.
He leaned closer anyway.
"That's actually pretty nice." he said, studying the board. "All those little solder joints remind me of the connections on a racing engine. Everything has to fit together perfectly, doesn't it?"
Henry's face lit up. "Absolutely! The Z170 chipset, dual M.2 slots, integrated Wi-Fi…"
Keanu's attention had already wandered.
He nodded along, though somewhere around Wi-Fi, eight-phase, Henry might as well have switched to another language.
"Right. I understood about half of that."
"That's more than Regal understood when we started."
"Hey!"
Henry moved on before Regal could defend himself, picking up a black box calling it a cooling system.
"So it's a tiny radiator for a tiny engine." Keanu said.
Henry considered that for a moment.
"Don't get too comfortable." Henry replied, setting the cooler aside. "You still have to install it."
Regal's arms unfolded. "Of course I do."
Next came four gleaming memory sticks, which Henry arranged in a neat row.
"Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4. Four eight-gigabyte modules, thirty-two gigabytes in total, rated for 3200 megahertz."
"Thirty-two gigs?" Keanu whistled. "The PlayStation has eight gigs of shared memory, doesn't it? So this thing has four times as much just sitting here?"
Regal looked at the four sticks again. "Still sounds like overkill."
"For gaming, thirty-two gigabytes is generous." Henry admitted. "Sixteen would have been perfectly reasonable. But we have the budget, and I'd rather leave room for whatever Regal decides to do with this machine."
"Play games?" Regal said.
Henry looked at him. "Only games?"
"Games, films, maybe some editing."
"And that is why we have thirty-two gigabytes."
"I am beginning to suspect you could justify buying anything if you talked long enough."
"Now you're learning."
Keanu laughed as Henry reached for a tiny rectangular package.
"Storage." Henry announced, holding up a tiny Samsung 960 Pro SSD. "Five hundred and twelve gigabytes."
Keanu leaned over to inspect the tiny chip. "Does it actually make games load faster?"
"Up to 3,500 megabytes per second." Henry explained, launching into another technical explanation.
Regal handed the package back. "Fine. I admit it. That's impressive."
Henry looked almost moved. "Thank you."
"And now, the component that will do most of the heavy lifting in games."
Keanu's attention sharpened as Henry lifted the lid.
"ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080."
He drew the graphics card from its foam packaging with both hands. It was enormous compared with the other components, with three fans across its shroud and a thick heatsink extending along its length.
Regal took the GTX 1080 from Henry, surprised by its weight. "Good Lord. It's a brick with fans."
"It's art." Henry corrected, carefully returning it to its packaging. "Now, let's build this thing."
He had them assemble the core components on the motherboard's cardboard box first, explaining that an out-of-case POST test would reveal any faulty parts before they installed everything inside the chassis.
"Regal, the honors are yours. Start with the processor."
Regal opened the LGA 1151 socket, exposing the delicate pins beneath the retention bracket.
Henry walked him through aligning the gold triangle on the Core i7-6700K with the matching mark on the socket, reminding him to handle the chip by its edges.
Regal lowered it into place.
"Now close the bracket and push the arm down."
He pressed the lever.
Halfway through, a sharp SCREEE-CRUNCH came from beneath the retention plate.
Regal froze. "Henry. I just cracked the die."
Keanu winced. "That sounded like a femur snapping, man."
Henry burst out laughing. "It's normal! The socket is clamping the processor into place. Keep pushing."
"You could have mentioned that before I heard the sound of my financial ruin."
Regal forced the lever beneath the hook. It clicked into place, and Henry gave him an approving pat on the shoulder.
"Clean."
Keanu took over the RAM installation, lining up the four Corsair sticks and pressing them into the slots until the retention clips snapped shut.
"Man, that's satisfying."
While Keanu admired his handiwork, Regal secured the tiny Samsung SSD to the motherboard.
They then fitted the board into the NZXT case, installed the liquid cooler and mounted the EVGA power supply.
Henry supervised every step, particularly the cable management, where his patience vanished completely.
"No rat's nests in this house." he muttered, routing the power cables behind the motherboard tray and fastening them with zip ties.
Regal soon found himself staring at a cluster of tiny front-panel connectors marked POWER SW, RESET SW, and various LED labels.
"Who designed this? We can send rovers to Mars, but I still have to connect individual wires to make a power button work?"
Henry handed him the ASUS Q-Connector. "Here. Plug them into this first, then attach the whole thing to the motherboard."
Regal accepted it. "I take back everything I said about the SSD. This is the best invention I have seen all day."
Finally, Keanu lifted the enormous GTX 1080 into the PCIe slot, secured it with screws, and connected its power cables.
Henry finished the wiring, checked every connection, and slid the side panel into place.
The completed machine sat on Regal's desk beside an ultrawide monitor, a mechanical keyboard, and a gaming mouse.
Keanu folded his arms. "All right. This is the part where something sparks, right?"
"Check the power supply switch." Henry instructed, sounding confident enough, though his posture had grown noticeably tense.
Regal reached behind the case and flicked it on, and red LEDs illuminated the motherboard.
"Power's live."
The three men gathered around the front panel.
"Go ahead." Henry said. "Awaken the beast."
Regal pressed the button.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then the fans spun up, the pump lit, and green lighting illuminated the graphics card.
The motherboard's debug display cycled through a series of codes while the monitor remained stubbornly black.
Keanu leaned closer. "Come on, give us a picture."
A beep sounded.
The monitor flickered to life, displaying the ASUS ROG BIOS screen with the processor, all thirty-two gigabytes of memory, the Samsung SSD, and the GTX 1080 correctly detected.
Henry stared at the screen before throwing both arms into the air. "First try! POST on the first attempt!"
Keanu slapped him on the back, laughing. "Superman delivers!!"
Regal watched the system information settle on the screen, an unexpectedly satisfying sense of accomplishment washing over him.
Making a film required hundreds of people, months of planning, and endless compromises.
Here, he had helped assemble something with his own hands, pressed a button, and watched it work.
"There's only one thing left." Henry announced.
Regal followed his gaze to the small blue pull-tab on the tempered glass panel.
Keanu immediately raised both hands. "Your house, your rig. You take the peel."
Regal pinched the tab and slowly pulled the protective film away in one continuous sheet.
"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-POP"
The long, crisp peeling sound filled the room.
All three men sighed in unison.
Keanu shook his head, grinning. "That might be the greatest sound in modern technology."
Henry pulled a USB drive from his pocket. "Right. Windows 10 first, then the drivers. After that, we can install a game and see what this thing can do."
Regal pulled up three chairs and tossed a bag of pretzels onto the desk.
.
….
[To be continued…]
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