Table of contents for March 2017 in Custom PC UK

Scan is even offering a Kaby Lake system that’s pre-overclocked to 5GHz Five thousand megahertz. In fact, if we’re going to be accurate, the best figure is 5,100MHz. That’s the clock speed we got out of our Core i5-7600K review sample (see p20). We’ve occasionally seen clock speeds over 5GHz before, of course, but usually only on very specific chips with extreme cooling and expert overclockers at the EFI helm. We’ve managed to get 5.1GHz out of a circa-£200 chip with a basic all-in-one liquid cooler, and adjusting the multiplier and vcore. That’s it. Of course,overclocking is always a bit of a lottery,and not every CPU in a range always overclocks as well as another one, but Kaby Lake is currently looking like a generous gift to overclockers from Intel.…

Corsair unveils M.2 SSDs Corsair has finally broken its silence on the M.2 SSD front, and announced a new line-up of M.2 SSDs, which use the NVMe protocol and 4x PCI-E 3 interface. The new Force MP500 drives come in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities, and feature a Phison PS5007-E7 controller. Corsair quotes maximum performance speeds of 3,000MB/sec for reads and 2,400MB/sec for writes. The drives are available to buy now, with the 480GB flavour costing £299 inc VAT from www.scan.co.uk Crytek closes five studios Crysis developer Crytek, the best-known game developer for pushing PC hardware to the limit, has shut five of its seven studios amid reports of financial trouble and staff being unpaid for several months. Only the Frankfurt and Kiev studios will remain, with staff being laid…

Motherboard manufacturers have raised their game with Windows-based overclocking tools supplied with the latest boards, plus we now have Intel’s Extreme tuning Utility as well, so there isn’t necessarily a need to make repeated visits to the EFI for fine-tuning your overclock – you can find limits of your setup within the comfort of the Windows desktop. However, in this guide, we’ll be covering both methods so that you can get the most out of your Kaby Lake CPU and overclock it safely. You can apply the methods used in this guide to any Intel CPU, but we’ll be looking specifically at how to overclock the Core i7-7700K, which is also very similar to the Core i7-7600K. Of course, the results will ultimately depend on your own CPU, as not…

The chrome version seems to melt into your motherboard SUPPLIER www.corsair.com/en-gb /SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3200MHz Timings 14-16-16-36 Voltage 1.35V Height (from base) 54mm Lighting Yes (white) It isn’t often you see PC components launched in limited, numbered quantities, but there are only a few hundred samples of Corsair’s Dominator Platinum Special Edition memory kits available. In fact, you can currently only purchase a maximum of two kits, so what’s all the fuss about? Corsair’s Dominator memory has always been at the premium end of the spectrum, but we’ve often recommended it, with its chunky heatsinks that genuinely work, and the more recent Light Bar versions too. With the advent of Corsair’s new Vengeance LED range, though, the Dominator started to look a little dated, even if you swapped out the…

What’s remarkable about the Merge VR isn’t its shape or size but the construction material. While most smartphone VR goggles are either made from cardboard at the low end or plastic at the high end, the Merge VR is made mostly of foam. That might sound odd, but it means the Merge is lightweight, extremely comfortable and agreeably squashy. No part of the exterior is pointy, hard or otherwise unyielding, so it’s easy to set up the goggles for a comfortable fit, even if you wear glasses. The drawback is that cramming your phone into the viewing window doesn’t feel particularly elegant, but it still snugly accommodates any smartphone measuring between 123mm and 158mm long. The capabilities of the Merge are the same as other smartphone VR systems; you have…

The Crab Multi-Tool is a sort of Swiss Army crustacean. It folds up into a compact but chunky body when not in use, and various tools can be folded out. There are two knives, a bottle opener, a can opener and scissors. The crab has a rather awkward shape for carrying in a pocket because of its thickness, but it does have little fold-out feet, so it stands neatly on a desk. With the blunt bottle and can openers folded out to look like pincers, it looks properly crablike, which is great if you happen to like crabs, and who doesn’t? The tools also work well enough to make the Crab handy whenever a letter or a beer needs to be opened. It could just do with being a little…

The result is the best, albeit fairly small, light show we’ve seen on a motherboard SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z270 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3866MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, four 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 40-600MHz, CPU Multiplier 8-83x; max voltages, CPU 2.1V, RAM 2V Ports 6x SATA 6Gbps (Z270), 2 x M.2, 6 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 4 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, DisplayPort, HDMI Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 Asus’ ROG line-up of motherboards has received a shakeup this time around, with two board series we’ve known and loved…

Gigabyte’s latest EFI system improves on those supplied with its Z170 boards SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z270 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3866MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 80-500MHz, CPU Multiplier 8-120x; max voltages, CPU 1.8V, RAM 2V Ports 6xSATA6Gbps(Z270),2xSATAExpress 6Gbps, 1 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 8 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, HDMI, DVI Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 With a price tag of £170 inc VAT, there’s very little cost difference between the Gigabyte Z270X-Ultra Gaming, Asus Strix Z270F Gaming…

How we test Ultra-widescreen and 100Hz+ gaming monitors may get all the fanfare, but not everyone has £500+ to spend on a monitor. Moreover, if you’re simply after a good-quality display, or want a multi-monitor setup, a 24in model is the way to go. Great-quality 24in displays can be bought for under £150, while professional level models cost under £250, so we’ve gathered together five of the latest examples to show what’s available. We’re not looking for high resolutions or fancy features here, so all the displays are 60Hz and have either a 1,920 x 1,080 or 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, while all use either IPS or an IPS-equivalent technology, such as Samsung’s PLS. As such, they should all deliver great viewing angles and accurate colours, making them ideal for…

The IPS panel delivers a punchy image with good contrast and decent viewing angles SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk Like the BenQ BL2411PT (see p57), the Iiyama ProLite XB2485WSU-B3 is a perfunctory display that eschews elegance for the sake of features and performance. It has the same 16:10 aspect ratio and 1,920 x 1,200 resolution as the BenQ, making it better suited to everyday work than 16:9 screens. However, it is getting a little long in the tooth now, so it’s lacking when it comes to the finer features. Most obviously, the display’s frame is seriously chunky, measuring 20mm around the top and sides, and 32mm along the bottom. As a result, the whole unit looks far more dated than its age should suggest – it’s been out for a couple of…

Build a quiet performance PC The parts you’ll need to build a very quiet PC that doesn’t compromise on performance. Not only does this PC feature an Intel Kaby Lake CPU and an Nvidia Pascal GPU, but it also uses a massive CPU heatsink and a fanless PSU to eliminate fan noise, while the graphics card fans only spin up under heavy loads. You can see our full guide to building this PC in Issue 160, p84. Build a budget gaming PC The parts you’ll need to build a budget machine capable of playing the latest games at decent settings on a 1080p monitor. The machine has a discrete graphics card, a Skylake dual-core CPU and DDR4 memory. The ASRock Extreme4 motherboard is also capable of base clock overclocking via…

AMD claims it will compete with the £1,000 Core i7-6900K AMD recently lifted the lid on its new Zen CPUs, which are now branded ‘Ryzen’. It’s pronounced ‘Rye-zen’ rather than ‘Rizzen’, and while it isn’t phonetically easy, it’s a more distinctive brand name than Phenom. After dragging the once grand FX brand through the mud with its Bulldozer chips,it remains to be seen whether AMD will continue to use the FX moniker on its high-end chips too. The Ryzen line-up will offer CPUs with up to eight cores and 16 threads, along with clock frequencies of 3.4GHz and above. The chips will also support AMD’s SenseMI power managing and frequency boosting technologies, which include Pure Power,Precision Boot and Extended Frequency Range (XFR) among other features. Information about AM4 motherboard details…

Memory saw some significant price fluctuations in 2016, and you’ll currently be hard-pressed to find a 16GB DDR4 kit costing under £100 at a reasonably high frequency. However, just what frequency memory should you be considering? Is there a significant difference between a 2133MHz kit and a 3200MHz kit, for example? It’s a key question because the price difference can be quite small. For example, when we wrote this piece, a 2133MHz 16GB dual-channel kit of Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX RAM cost £92 inc VAT, the same kit at 2666MHz cost £101 inc VAT and the 3200MHz version was only £105 inc VAT. The price difference between kits was just £13, despite them being set apart by 1000MHz. However, the price rises dramatically once you get beyond 3200MHz, with 3333MHz…

There are two 4-pin RGB LED headers at the top and bottom of the board SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z270 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 4000MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 40-650MHz, CPU Multiplier 8-83x; max voltages, CPU 2.15V, RAM 2.4V Ports 6x SATA 6Gbps (Z270), 2 x M.2, 6 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C (additional ports via header), 2 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, DisplayPort, HDMI Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 With the demise of Asus’ Maximus Ranger in its ROG form, the Maximus IX Hero is…

Our Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD ran 10°C cooler with the MSI M.2 Shield heatsink SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z270 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3800MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 98-538MHz, CPU Multiplier 8-81x; max voltages, CPU 1.52V, RAM 2.2V Ports 6x SATA 6Gbps (Z270), 2 x M.2, 8 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 6 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, HDMI, DVI Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 MSI’s Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon offers a plethora of RGB lighting effects, with several areas of the PCB, including the…

The motion and ambient light sensor can automatically adjust brightness SUPPLIER www.can.co.uk The BenQ BL2411PT is a professional monitor. Staid of design but packed with features and boasting excellent image quality, it makes no concessions for the sake of fashion but delivers where it counts. It’s an IPS display with a 16:10 aspect ratio and 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, making it a little more practical for work than standard 16:9 1080pscreens, as the extra vertical resolution gives you more room for reading documents. The panel sits on a fully articulated stand with a plentiful 130mm of height adjustment, 90 degrees of pivot, 45 degrees of rotation on both sides and -5/20 degrees of tilt. Plus you get a 100 x 100mm VESA mount if you’d rather use an alternative…

It has a tight pixel pitch of 0.2652mm, making for a noticeably crisper-looking image SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com The LG 23MP68VQ is a little different to the other monitors on test this month. While it houses a 1080p IPS panel, it forgoes extras such as a height-adjustable stand. Instead, this monitor’s mission is to offer great image quality for a rock-bottom price. What’s more, just to sweeten the deal, it includes support for AMD FreeSync too, enabling you to reduce tearing artefacts in games by syncing the monitor’s refresh rate with the frame rate from an AMD GPU, provided the latter can keep up. It’s a great-looking display. With slim bezels, an impressively thin profile and an elegantly curved base, it’s the epitome of modern monitor design. You don’t get any…

The investigation relied on game footage provided by Hello Games itself A few months back, I wrote about the possibility that Hello Games had breached advertising regulations with its advertised depictions of No Man’s Sky compared to the final product. It turns out that I wasn’t the only person with questions.After several complaints,the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which regulates marketing in the UK across all media, decided to investigate how No Man’s Sky was marketed on Steam by Hello Games and Valve Corporation. In December 2016, the ASA returned its verdict, concluding that Hello Games did not breach advertising regulations in the depiction of the game on Steam. Normally, I’d consider this verdict to be good news. However, upon closer inspection of exactly h ow the…

JANUARY Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Since Resident Evil 4, the eminent horror series has struggled to find its feet, relying on the mechanical glories of Shinji Mikami’s masterpiece without understanding why that game was so strange and terrifying. So, for the seventh canonical entry, Capcom has boldly ditched Mikami’s template, abandoning the action-focus and camp storytelling of 5 and 6, switching instead to a slower-paced, first-person horror designed to take advantage of VR. Players assume the role of new protagonist Ethan, who is searching for his missing wife. The trail leads him to a dilapidated mansion in the fictional Louisiana town of Dulvey, home to the mysterious Baker family. The game offers a fascinating mix of old and new ideas, returning much of the emphasis to puzzle solving and navigating…

Gimp We use Gimp to open and edit large images. Unlike our previous Gimp test, this one uses more than one CPU core, although it’s still more sensitive to clock speed increases than more CPU cores. Handbrake H.264 video encoding Our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake H.264 video encoding test takes full advantage of many CPU cores, pushing them to 100 per cent load. LuxMark OpenCL This GPU compute test is the only synthetic part of our suite, although the renderer is based on the real LuxRender physically based rendering software. As 3D rendering is a specific workload that not everyone will use, and because OpenCL support isn’t standard in most software, this section is given just a quarter of the weighting of the other tests in the final score. Heavy multi-tasking…

Both headsets operate in an exclusive mode, so it’s impossible to use them for any task other than VR After many years of false starts, I think it’s fair to say that 2016 was the year that VR finally arrived, with the first truly usable headsets, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, and graphics cards that were powerful enough to deliver smooth enough frame rates. However, for all the back slapping that the engineers at HTC and Oculus undoubtedly deserve, I still find myself playing games on a monitor more often than in VR. It’s a massive disappointment for me, as I’ve been fantasising about VR for decades. The Vive and Rift suffer from the same two fundamental problems – control and usability. Control is a big issue, as you…

If you don’t cheat, you throw the Monopoly board in the air instead If cheaters never prosper then why do people cheat? The answer is that cheaters do in fact prosper, psychologically and sometimes financially. Because competitive gaming is such huge business, the rewards for cheating are also high, and exploits such as aimbots or hacking programs are increasingly popular. Governments of countries that take gaming very seriously are starting to take notice of fraud-via-cheating and amending the law accordingly. South Korea just passed an amendment that bans ‘manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service’, with the explicit aim of stopping eSports fraud. That this amendment appears to ban all forms of mod is an issue for lawyers and courts…

It never dropped below 60fps in our demanding test games SUPPLIER www.laptopsdirect.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS CPU 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-6820HK Memory 64GB 2400MHz DDR4 Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Screen 17.3in 1,920 x 1,080 Nvidia G-Sync IPS Storage 2 x 512GB Toshiba XG3 SSDs in RAID 0 Weight 3.8kg Networking Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi Ports 3 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x audio, SD card slot, HDMI, mini-DisplayPort, 1 x Thunderbolt Dimensions (mm) 429 x 309 x 35(WxDxH) Operating system Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Warranty Two years parts and labour return to base The G701VI packs top-tier hardware inside a17.3in machine with the outlandish design we expect from the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) range. The 6mm-thin lid is a striking introduction to the machine,…

The Mocoro Robot Cleaner is essentially a cross between a Tribble and R2-D2. It’s a cute, round furry robot that rolls around the floor making little blooping noises and being adorable. The first sentient AI machines will probably spend hours on YouTube watching videos of them. The Mocoro has a practical purpose too – it cleans, sort of. As cleaning robots go, the Mocoro is about as impractical as it gets – it picks up dust and grot from the floor as it pootles around, but in order to get said grot into the bin, you have to chase down the robot and brush it over a dustbin. That said, if you’re shopping for a little furry pink robot to clean your house, you may well not be considering optimal…

How we test We test each motherboard with a Core i7-7700K CPU , 16GB of Corsair Vengeance LED 3200MHz DDR4 RAM and an XFX Radeon R9 390X graphics card. We use a 512GB 960 Evo M.2 SSD and a Samsung 850 Pro SSD, along with CrystalDiskMark’s 32 queue depth storage test to record sequential speeds. To measure on-board audio performance, we run RightMark’s Audio Analyzer software using 24-bit/192KHz settings, with the line-out connected to the line in-jack to obtain noise and dynamic range levels. We load optimised default settings and set the XMP profile in the EFI for stock-speed tests, but touch no other settings, which sets the correct memory speed and timings and ensures the board is set up for the best stock-speed performance. When overclocking, we find the…

The Creative quad-core audio processor managed epic results in the audio tests SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z270 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3866MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Creative Sound Core 3D Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 80-500MHz, CPU Multiplier 8-120x; max voltages, CPU 1.8V, RAM 2V Ports 6xSATA6Gbps(Z270),2xSATAExpress 6Gbps, 2 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 9 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 4 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, DisplayPort, HDMI Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 With the launch of the Z270 chipset, Gigabyte has rebranded many of its premium motherboards under the Aorus brand, which…

MSI has gone all-out with the latest Titanium board, which sports three M.2 ports SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z270 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 4000MHz) Expansion slots Four 16x PCI-E 3, two 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking 2 x Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 70-655MHz, CPU Multiplier 8-81x; max voltages, CPU 2.155V, RAM 2.2V Ports 6xSATA6Gbps(Z270),2xSATA6Gbps (ASMedia), 3 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 8 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 7 x USB 2, 2 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, DisplayPort, HDMI Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 MSI’s on its own in the £300 price bracket this month, with the luscious Z270 Xpower Gaming Titanium…

Setting up the U2417H is a cinch, thanks to excellent out-of-the-box image quality SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com It must be tough being a monitor maker in a world where you’re up against Dell. The company consistently pushes out great-looking displays with good image quality and competitive prices. In fact, the Dell U2414H has been our top-choice 24in monitor for nearly three years. We’re now taking a look at the latest update to that monitor in the shape of the U2417H. Glancing at its spec sheet, it largely looks identical to its predecessor, but this display uses a different panel, with Dell opting for PLS rather than IPS technology. The design has also been tweaked. You still get slim, low-profiles bezels but now they’re even thinner, measuring just 5.3mm on the top…

The input lag is impressively low for an IPS display, at just 10.2ms SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk ViewSonic VP2468’s sports a sleek design with slim bezels, claims of professional-grade colour accuracy and plenty of features. However, it’s seriously let down by a couple of key flaws. Let’s start with the good stuff though. For starters, VP2468 really is a great-looking bit of kit. The panel has a bezel that’s only 4mm wide and most of that bezel sits below the top surface of panel, with just 1mm of plastic protecting the very edge. This super-slim bezel is complemented by an elegantly curved, slender stand, and generally tidy black and silver colour scheme. The only aesthetic slight slip-up is the section of glossy plastic in the centre of the stand’s base. This…

When virtual reality hit the virtual shelves last year, my immediate reaction was probably the same as yours – a combination of pure technological lust and price-related shock. There was a note of scepticism mixed in there too, though, as I thought back to hazy memories of mid-1990s devices such as the Nintendo Virtual Boy and Virtuality arcade games, which helped me put my wallet away. For a bit. Once I saw the HTC Vive, with its full room-scale capabilities that enable you to actually walk around simulated environments rather than just circle your head while standing still, my opinion changed. I’d never seen that before and, as I’m a committed neophile, my wallet came back out with a semi-regrettable vengeance. Normally that would be the end of my story…

REVIEW Kano Complete Computer Kit Before reviewing the Kano Complete Computer Kit, it’s necessary to address the elephant in the room: Kano’s breathless marketing notwithstanding, this kit is in no way a computer that you ‘make’. You won’t find any individual components such as processors or memory inside the admittedly extremely attractive box; instead, you’ll find a Raspberry Pi 3 microcomputer, a three-part plastic housing with a surprisingly beefy speaker in the lid, a wireless keyboard, a guidebook, stickers, a micro-SD card and the cables you need to get it all up and running. When Kano says you ‘make’ the computer, it really means you ‘plug it in’. The full-colour guidebook, filled with cartoonish illustrations, walks the reader through inserting the micro-SD into the Raspberry Pi, snapping the case together…

My favourite PC mods of 2016 This year has been an odd experience to say the least, with plenty going on in political landscapes to raise eyebrows, the passing of seemingly too many great personalities and a personally challenging year for myself too. Thankfully, this year is nearly over, but there’s one final task I’m enjoying, which is creating a roundup of the best PC modding projects I’ve seen throughout this year, and the standard is exceptional. Whatever anyone says about the PC industry, modding, water cooling and general interest in high-end systems seem to be exploding right now, and while we don’t all have the money or skill to build these lavish projects (sadly, even the Dream PC I built last month has already been dismantled, with its parts…

MILESTONES THIS MONTH TOP 20 OVERALL TOP 20 PRODUCERS WHAT IS FOLDING? Folding@home uses the spare processing cycles from your PC’s CPU and graphics cards for medical research. You can download the client from http://folding.stanford.edu and our team’s ID is 35947. Once you pass a significant milestone, you’ll get your name in the mag. You can also discuss folding with us and other readers online at the www.bit-tech.net forums.…