Table of contents for June 2017 in Custom PC UK

Motherboard makers had very little time with samples to get their EFIs finished in time The fruits of AMD’s labours are finally here, and as a range of CPUs, Ryzen 7 (see p19) is an amazing achievement. Despite several years of financial difficulties, AMD has pulled out all the stops and produced a series of 8-core CPUs that cost around half the price of the Intel equivalent, yet outperform them in several heavily multi-threaded tests. Sadly, though, AMD isn’t quite ready to start pointing and laughing at Intel, while raking in the cash. We’ve reviewed all three of the new Ryzen 7 CPUs,and there’s some award-winning hardware among them, but further into this magazine, you’ll notice there’s a notable lack of a Ryzen system on the Elite list, which brings…

Corsair makes full PC Not content with merely branching out into cases, PSUs, coolers and peripherals, Corsair has now set its sights on the system builders market, producing a whole, fully built PC called the One. Designed to be small, quiet and fast, the One measures 200 x 176 x 380mm and features an integrated, convection-assisted cooling system that incorporates up to two 240mm passively cooled radiators and a 140mm Corsair ML-140 fan in the roof. Two main configurations will be available, with the vanilla One featuring a single radiator, a Core i7-7700CPU and an air-cooled GeForce GTX 1070 card. The next step up is the Corsair One Pro, which features two radiators in order to liquid-cool a GeForce GTX 1080 card. Several storage options are available, with a choice…

We managed to overclock it to 4.05GHz, using a 1.425V vcore SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3GHz Turbo frequency 3.7GHz Core architecture Zen Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 8 x physical (16 threads) Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) Yes Cache 16MB L3 cache, 4MB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2400MHz Packaging AMD Socket AM4 Thermal design power (TDP) 65W Features Precision Boost, SMT, SMEP, AMD64, FMA3, F16C, SHA, BMI / BMI1 + BMI2, AVX2, AVX, AES, SSE4a, SSE4, SSSE3, SSE3, SSE2, SSE, MMX The comparatively cheap Ryzen 7 1700 has slower stock frequencies than the Ryzen 7 1700X and 1800X, and the lack of an ‘X’ in its name signifies that it’s been less favourably binned in terms of overclocking too. Thankfully, it not only costs £170 less…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, 1480MHz base clock, 1582MHz boost clock Pipeline 3,584 stream processors, 88 ROPs Memory 11GB GDDR5X, 11010MHz effective Memory interface 352-bit Bandwidth 484GB/sec Compatibility DirectX 12 (feature level 12.1), OpenGL 4.5 Outputs/inputs 3 x DisplayPort 1.4, 1 x HDMI 2b Power connections 1 x 8-pin, 1 x 6-pin Size 266mm long, dual-slot If you spent over a grand on a Titan X card a few months ago then you might want to flip through the next couple of pages and pretend you haven’t seen them. We knew there would be a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, of course – we carried this very warning at the end of our Titan X review, as Nvidia has undermined its Titan cards a few…

The Booqpad is a magnetically closing case for a 9.7in iPad Pro, which pairs your tablet with a paper pad. It feels satisfyingly solid to use, and there’s a decent amount of protection for your tablet between the case and the paper. You can also fold the outer casing and use it as a stand. The only flaw is that the design is perhaps too sleek – there’s only space inside the case to carry either one pen or one stylus, so either the iPad or the paper pad is going to need its writing implement of choice carried elsewhere. That isn’t a serious flaw, of course, but a £50 tablet case shouldn’t have any flaws at all. SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk…

How we test AM4 motherboard samples are in short supply at the moment, so gathering enough boards for this Labs test involved spanning both the X370 and B350 chipsets. Sadly, MSI couldn’t get us an AM4 motherboard in time for this test, but we’ll hopefully look at one next month. We tested each motherboard with a Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance 3000MHz DDR4 memory and an XFX Radeon R9 390X graphics card. We run the memory at 2933MHz, which is the only memory divider setting south of 3200MHz. We use a Samsung 850 Pro SSD and a 512GB 960 Evo M.2 SSD, along with CrystalDiskMark’s 32-queue-depth storage test to record sequential storage speeds. To measure performance of the on-board audio codec, we use RightMark’s Audio Analyzer software…

B350 is much more affordable for an overclockingfriendly chipset SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset AMD B350 CPU socket AMD AM4 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3200MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, two 1x PCI-E Sound Realtek ALC1220 Networking Realtek Gigabit LAN Overclocking No base clock adjustment, no custom CPU core ratio, maximum CPU multiplier 63x, CPU +0.3V, DRAM 2V Ports 6 x SATA 6Gbps (X370), 1 x M.2, 2 x USB 3 Gen 2 Type-A, 4 x USB 3, 1 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 With a severe shortage of AM4 boards currently sitting on etailers’ shelves, we’ve dipped into AMD’s budget overclocking chipset for one motherboard this month. The Gigabyte…

The keys are mounted on a metal plate, which gives the keyboard a reassuring weight SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk Every keyboard in this test has had to compromise in one way or another to keep down costs, and the MasterKeys Pro L White is no exception. However, it cuts the fewest corners of all the models on test, at least in terms of features. You get a full count of 105 regular keys plus four extra programmable keys, giving it the joint highest number of keys, along with the Roccat Suora (see p60). The other keyboards on test are either tenkeyless models or miss out on extra keys. The MasterKeys Pro L also has a fuller design than the Roccat Suora. Whereas the Suora has a bare bones design, with the…

SUPPLIER www.currys.co.uk Razer’s most affordable mechanical keyboard achieves its price by losing its ten-key numeric keypad. It otherwise boasts a similar feature set to most of the other keyboards on test, but misses out on one crucial factor: full backlighting. You can normally rely on Razer to produce stylish-looking kit, but the BlackWidow Tournament Edition doesn’t quite live up to its usual standard. The illuminated logo on the front look as if it’s been tacked onto the unit as an afterthought, while the angular, rough black plastic base, lack of consistent backlighting and oversized multimedia logos on the keys make this keyboard’s design look a little clunky. It isn’t ugly, but it’s not the sleek appearance we normally expect from Razer. Otherwise, it’s well built, with the base feeling…

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 Kaby Lake dual-core CPU and DDR4 memory. The Core i3-7350K also has an unlocked multiplier, so it can…

Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a cooperative, pseudo-tactical shooter that sees up to four players exploring a gargantuan open world stuffed with probably hundreds of hours of missions and activities. It’s big, beautiful and utterly bland. Wildlands is set in Bolivia in 2019, and sets your special operatives team on a mission to take down the Santa Blanca Cartel – a criminal organisation that has essentially overtaken the government as the default power base and turned the country into a big cocaine production line. By liaising with rebel forces inside the country, you must gather intel about the bosses and underbosses controlling different regions of the country, then sneak, sabotage and assassinate your way up the ranks. The game minimises storytelling and strict mission structures in favour of numerous, quick-fire missions…

Of all the gaming genres, simulations are perhaps the most technologically dependent. It doesn’t matter if your laser rifle in Mass Effect is realistic, as long as it looks and feels satisfying to shoot. However, a simulation needs to offer a precise depiction of a gun or car’s performance to maintain realism. As a result, simulation games are very closely related to their engines, because aiming for a high level of realism requires constant tweaking and adjusting of your tech. Bohemia Interactive went a large step further than simulating guns and cars, though, with Take on Mars aiming to simulate an accurately mapped Red planet. Take on Mars runs on the Enforce engine. Enforce was acquired by Bohemia Interactive in the mid-2000s and used to develop games such as Alpha…

PC games uniquely offer a huge amount of control over how they look when we play them. From adjusting the resolution to enabling post-process effects, we can adjust our playing experience to suit our rig perfectly, down to the finest detail. What’s more, new options are being introduced all the time, with types of lighting, more advanced ambient occlusion and all sorts of post-processing effects constantly changing how games look. But what do all the different graphics settings in your games actually do? If you’ve looked at your settings and had no idea which type of ambient occlusion setting you should use, or whether or not you should enable motion blur then we’re here to help you tune your playing experience to your PC. This month, we’ve compiled a complete…

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…

A 6-core mobile option would give AMD a market niche Now we’ve seen the Ryzen 8-core CPU benchmarks (see p28) and basked in the warm glow of healthy CPU competition once again, let’s look towards the rest of the year. AMD has already confirmed that Ryzen R5 desktop parts are due to be released in the second quarter of this year, with entry-level Ryzen 3 chips and APUs following in the second half of 2017. From this information, many people have inferred that laptop Ryzen chips are also due in the second half of this year. With the 8-core Ryzen 7 1700 having a TDP of just 65W, I’m surprised niche mobile workstation brands haven’t yet tried to squeeze one into a 17in desktop replacement. If the recent gushing release…

After unleashing its top-end 8-core CPUs (see p19), AMD has outlined its plans to release mainstream Ryzen CPUs that will take on Intel’s current Kaby Lake chips. AMD’s new Ryzen 5 chips will feature the same Precision Boost, Smart Prefetch, Neural Net Prediction and XFR technologies as the Ryzen 7 CPUs, but will come in 6-core and quad-core flavours. All the Ryzen 5 CPUs will also be unlocked for overclocking, and will feature AMD’s SMT technology, which is the company’s equivalent of Intel’s Hyper-Threading tech. At the top of the Ryzen 5 pile is the 6-core 1600X, which has a 3.6GHz base clock and 4GHz boost clock. The next step down is the 6-core 1600, which is clocked at 3.2GHz with a 3.6GHz boost clock. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 1500X…

Memory compatibility has dogged early Ryzen benchmarks and we, like many reviewers, have seen some very mixed results when using high-frequency memory. Specifically, we simply weren’t able to run memory at frequencies higher than 2933MHz. There are straps to alter the speed of the memory on most boards, though, which currently appears to sit at a limit of 3200MHz on all the boards we’ve tried. However, our Asus Crosshair VI Hero board wouldn’t boot properly with any of the 3200MHz kits we tried, despite manually entering the voltage and timings in the EFI. Manual entry is often necessary, depending on the board you use. The Asus Crosshair VI Hero, for example, uses DOCP instead of XMP (the latter is an Intel feature) to identify the memory, but its assessment often…

The Smartphone Magnifier is a cardboard box shaped like an old TV, with a magnifying 8in panel on the front and a tray at the back with a sticky pad to which you can affix your phone. This strange arrangement allows you to watch videos on your phone as if it’s a small TV, albeit one that only has the speakers of a phone. Loading the phone into the box takes no time at all, and the same goes for removing it in case some inconsiderate person decides to try to call you. There’s also a flap in the back of the tray so you can charge your phone while you watch TV. It all works surprisingly well, and while a phone in a box isn’t an awe-inspiring media centre,…

The Rhino Hammer is a small rhinoceros ornament, the head of which is attached to a short telescopic handle so you can use it as a hammer. The head and handle are sturdy, and although it lacks a claw to remove nails, it can drive them into place just fine, with the size and weight providing a good level of precision. The question you have to ask, of course, is how often you need to hammer things at your desk, and whether you’re prepared to spend £30 for the privilege. If you fit into that niche, though, the Rhino Hammer does the job well and looks great. SUPPLIER www.firebox.co.uk…

PROCESSORS TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015, Cinebench and a variety of games. We also test the power draw of the test PC with the CPU installed. These tests reveal a broad range of performance characteristics, from image editing to gaming and video encoding to 3D rendering. We run all tests at stock speed and again when overclocked to its highest frequency. GRAPHICS CARDS Graphics cards are mainly evaluated on how fast they are for their price. However, we also consider the efficacy and quietness of the cooler. Every graphics card is tested in the same PC, so all results are directly comparable. TESTS : By using the fast PC detailed on the left, we can be sure that any limitations are due to the graphics card on test,…

It’s the only board on test to offer both AM3 and AM4 cooler mounting holes SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset AMD X370 CPU socket AMD AM4 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 2666 MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E Sound Asus SupremeFX SLC1220 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Custom CPU core ratio, base clock adjustment, maximum CPU multiplier 63x, CPU 1.7V, DRAM 2.15V Ports 8 x SATA 6Gbps (X370), 1 x M.2, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A. 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, 8 x USB 3, 4 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 It’s been six years since Asus released the Crosshair V Formula – the…

There are two RGB LED headers, including one that supports RGBW LED strips SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset AMD X370 CPU socket AMD AM4 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3200MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E Sound Realtek ALC1220 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN, Realtek Gigabit LAN Overclocking No custom CPU core ratio, no base clock adjustment, maximum CPU multiplier 63x, CPU 1.8V, DRAM 2V Ports 8 x SATA 6Gbps (X370), 1 x M.2, 1 x USB 3 Gen 2 Type-C, 7 x USB 3, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 We loved Gigabyte’s Aorus Z270 Gaming motherboards in our recent reviews, and the AM4 equivalent, the Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 looks every bit as…

It’s used an oversized font that makes it really easy to see the keys at a glance SUPPLIER www.corsair.com Corsair has become a dominant force in the PC peripherals market in the past few years, but while the K70 has sat on our Elite list in some form for years, the Corsair Strafe K63 isn’t another instant classic. It has a lot going for it though. It’s a tenkeyless board, so you don’t get a numeric keypad, but this omission also keeps down costs and makes for a neat, compact keyboard that’s great if you have limited desk space. It isn’t the smallest mechanical keyboard you can buy either. The keys are slightly sunk into a surround section that projects around 15mm forwards, 7mm to the sides and another…

The top surface of the base is made from metal, which gives the whole unit a surprising amount of rigidity SUPPLIER www.currys.co.uk Roccat pitches the Suora as the ultimate pure, undiluted performance keyboard for people who don’t care about extra bells and whistles. The design is indeed comparatively light on frills when sitting next to premium keyboards, but when pitted against other keyboards at the same price, it’s surprisingly one of the more feature-rich offerings you can buy. As with the Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L (see p55), you get the full complement of conventional keys, with the addition of four keys above the numeric keypad. Rather than simply being programmable gaming keys, by default, these extra keys provide volume up and down, mute and a Game Mode functions.…

Such a curation system would be antithetical to Valve’s philosophy In February, Valve announced it would shut Steam Greenlight. The service allowed Steam users to ‘vote’ for small indie developers’ games, but was frequently criticised for essentially being a giant gaming logjam. Not only do hundreds of games hang in virtual purgatory subject to the whims of the Steam community, but even green-lit games then have to wait for the Valve bigwigs to hit the red button. Greenlight made development unpredictable for some studios, as they couldn’t be sure how long the green-lighting process would take, or if it would happen at all. Also, the system failed to prevent Steam from being inundated with poor-quality releases designed to make a quick buck. From spring 2017, Valve will replace Greenlight with…

R EVI EW Ryanteck RTk.GPIO When the original Raspberry Pi launched, its critics offered up some valid concerns as to the likelihood of its success. Chief among them was the fact that you could easily run the same Debian Linux distribution on your existing PC, and in doing so, enjoy considerably improved performance while also saving yourself £30. Pi proponents were quick to counter with the Pi’s real killer feature, beyond its size and cost: the 26-pin general-purpose input-output (GPIO) header, later upgraded to 40 pins, which enables you to easily connect components to the system for programmatic control. That feature, though, is now available to any Linux, Windows or Mac OS machine with a free USB port, courtesy of Ryanteck’s RTk. GPIO. The brainchild of Ryan Walmsley – interviewed…

Not all PCI-E riser cables are equal Being able to show off your graphics card by rotating it, so the cooler or waterblock are visible, is becoming increasingly popular with new case designs and modders’ projects. This side of a gaming-orientated component often looks far better than the edge and rear side of the card, and with waterblocks, you get a great view of the coolant too. There are several cases that allow you to rotate the graphics card in this way, with modified rear panels to allow your card to sit upright, such as Thermaltake’s Core G3 and wall-mountable P-series cases. Plenty of modders have used this technique too, either to show off a graphics card or simply to create an extremely thin PC, with the graphics card laid…

/MEET THY MAKER Name Peter Brands Age 36 Location The Netherlands Occupation Ship electrician Main uses for PC HTPC, gaming on TV Likes Spending time with family and friends, watching movies and TV series, listening to music Dislikes Nagging people CPC: What originally inspired you to build L3p Steigerwood, and how did you hear about the Steiger case? Peter: A few years before I got into modding in 2009, my hobby was building HTPCs. I’m quite a movie fan, but HTPCs are also a little different from normal PCs when it comes to hardware and software. I built L3p L4n back then, which was my first liquid-cooled gaming HTPC, with a 12in touch-screen in the front and an Asus MARS II graphics card. Since then, I’ve always thought about building…

We have very strict libel laws and very severe gagging orders Oh those pesky YouTubers, what have they been up to now? No sooner had Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg lost Disney sponsorship because of Nazi jokes that backfired, than Jon‘JonTron’Jafari went ahead and made some negative claims about immigrants that turned out to be less than factual. Jafari lost subscribers and was cut from his voice role in the forthcoming Playtonic game, Yooka-Laylee. The rights and wrongs of each event aren’t going to be discussed here, however. I want to discuss the reaction whenever a popular personality encounters repercussions for their content: free speech. Free speech is probably the most misunderstood and misused phrase – nay,defence – on the Internet. The perception is that free speech means you can say anything…

Ryzen APUs I’ve just read your Ryzen previews with much excitement. Like you I was a huge fan of the Athlon 64, but I’ve been an Intel customer in recent years. What I’m most excited about, though, is Ryzen’s potential for APUs in gaming systems. For years, gamers wanting a good CPU for low or mid-range gaming desktops and laptops have had to put up with dreadful Intel graphics, or splash out on a good GPU (budget GPUs being useless). Now, though, there’s the potential for a good CPU and GPU in a single package. The potential for small custom gaming PCs and laptops is huge. I for one can’t wait to see if this potential can be realised. ANDREW LEVICK Ben: I’ll be very interested to see where AMD…

The Zen architecture behind Ryzen CPUs has been in the works for a number of years and was first revealed in 2015, but work really began on it in 2012 when AMD re-hired Jim Keller, the microarchitecture engineer behind AMD’s pre-Phenom success over a decade ago. Several barriers prevented AMD from clawing back performance compared with Intel’s efforts – instructions per clock cycle (IPC), power efficiency and an equivalent of Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology. The latter was particularly important, seeing as the Ryzen7 CPUs would clearly be aimed at taking on Intel’s high-end desktop CPUs, all of which currently support Hyper-Threading. Bigger, faster cache At face value, there’s a number of big changes with Summit Ridge – the core name of the Zen microarchitecture deployed with Ryzen, compared with the Pile…

XFR can provide an additional 100MHz to two cores SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3.4GHz Turbo frequency 3.8GHz Core architecture Zen Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 8 x physical (16 threads) Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) Yes Cache 16MB L3 cache, 4MB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2400MHz Packaging AMD Socket AM4 Thermal design power (TDP) 95W Features Precision Boost, XFR, SMT, SMEP, AMD64, FMA3, F16C, SHA, BMI / BMI1 + BMI2, AVX2, AVX, AES, SSE4a, SSE4, SSSE3, SSE3, SSE2, SSE, MMX You’d expect the Ryzen 7 1700X to sit firmly in the sweet spot of AMD’s 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 range, given that it’s around £130 cheaper than the flagship Ryzen 1800X, yet lacks little in terms of specifications. You get the same cache amounts, with 16MB L3…

Before you start Whether you opt for an X-series Ryzen CPU, or a standard model such as the Ryzen 7 1700, overclocking these CPUs is most easily performed using the multiplier to boost the CPU frequency. Sadly, you won’t be reaching the same lofty frequencies as an Intel Core i7-7700K, but there’s still plenty of headroom available. In terms of targets, most CPU samples we’ve tried have limits in the region of 4-4.1GHz. For the Ryzen 7 1700, this frequency represents a significant overclock from its base frequency of 3GHz, and that’s with all eight cores operating at the maximum frequency too, which massively boosts performance in multi-threaded applications. AMD has recently responded to temperature reporting worries with its X-series CPUs – the Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X – saying…

Their pumps are equipped with 4-pin PWM power connectors SUPPLIER www.novatech.co.uk (120) / www.scan.co.uk (240) /SPECIFICATIONS Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x; AMD: Socket AM4, AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2+, FM2, FM1 Heatsink size with fans (mm) 120 x 52 x 150 (W x D x H) (120) / 120 x 52 x 277 (W x D x H) (240) Fans 2 x 120mm Stated noise Up to 30dBA Most case manufacturers have ventured into the cooling arena these days, as well as the PSU and peripherals markets. Cooler Master has been around longer than most of them, but its all-in-one liquid coolers haven’t taken off or grabbed as many headlines as the likes of NZXT or Corsair. The latter both have software control now, which may be one reason,…

The Icy Box IB-AC7032-U3 is a plastic, lightweight USB 3 hard drive enclosure that’s held together by clips. Unlike your average external hard drive box, this case can also hold two 2.5in SATA drives, rather than just one drive. Disappointingly, though, it’s only supplied with a single SATA to USB adaptor, so you’ll only be able to use one of the installed drives at a time. Swapping the adaptor between the two installed drives isn’t difficult, but it does make the ability to store two drives in the first place a little redundant. SUPPLIER www.novatech.co.uk…

The Icy Box IB-AC614a is a simple 1x PCI-E 2 card that provides four additional USB 3 ports. Installation is simple enough, with each port providing 5V at 900mA as standard, and you can also connect a Molex cable to it if your devices need more power. If you have loads of USB 3 devices, this card provides a tidier alternative to using external USB hubs or clogging up your front ports, with the added benefit of not having to split one port’s bandwidth over several devices. SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk Seen something worthy of appearing in Custom Kit? Send your suggestions to editor@custompcmag.org.uk…

It managed to get all eight of our Ryzen 7 1700’s CPU cores to 4.025GHz SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset AMD X370 CPU socket AMD AM4 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 2666 MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E Sound Realtek SLC1220 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN Overclocking Custom CPU core ratio, no base clock adjustment, maximum CPU multiplier 63x, CPU 2V, DRAM 1.8V Ports 8 x SATA 6Gbps (X370), 1 x M.2, 1 x USB 3 Gen 2 Type-C, 7 x USB 3, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 The Asus Prime X370-Pro is one of the cheapest X370 chipset motherboards available, and if you dip much lower, you’ll end up with a…

How we test Mechanical key switches may not be new but all the very best keyboards you can buy include these hard-wearing, satisfyingly tactile and responsive press-registering devices. However, mechanical switches are expensive and not everyone has over £150 to spend on a keyboard, especially if you’re not interested in RGB lighting or the other extras most premium keyboards provide. So, for this group test, we’re looking exclusively at the simpler, more affordable end of the mechanical keyboard market. You still need to pay a premium for mechanical switches, of course, but we’ve rounded up five mechanical keyboards that cost £80 or less, so you’re still making a decent saving over the most premium models. You’ll get few extra features, and some models only hit this price range by dropping…

The Force K85 is the only keyboard in this Labs test to feature RGB backlighting SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk The Gigabyte Force K85 is the cheapest keyboard on test, but it loses out on very little compared with its more expensive competitors. In fact, it’s the only keyboard in this Labs test to feature RGB backlighting. That lighting is a significant boon, as RGB keyboards generally demand a premium of at least £20 on top of the standard price. What you don’t get, though, is full control over the backlighting. You can choose from any static RGB colour for the whole keyboard, or select one of two lighting effects. The pulse effect slowly dims and brightens the lighting, and lets you choose up to two colours between which it can cycle.…

Corsair K70 LUX RGB keyboard with your choice of switches TOTAL VALUE £160 inc VAT / MANUFACTURER www.corsair.com The K70 LUX RGB is a part of Corsair’s LUX flagship line of gaming keyboards, featuring Cherry MX key switches backed by a lightweight, durable aluminium frame and dynamic, multi-colour lighting. The USB pass-through port is positioned for uninterrupted gameplay and ready for your mouse or wireless headset adaptor. You can also harness the power of CUE for sophisticated macro programming and dramatic lighting effects and animations. Meanwhile, 100 per cent anti-ghosting with full key rollover on USB helps to ensure accuracy, so every keystroke translates directly into accurate gameplay. The contoured, textured FPS and MOBA keycap sets keep you in control, while the Cherry MX key switches give you a linear…

Along with the majority of PC hardware, we import the GTX 1080 Ti from Asia and pay for it in US dollars Unlike the last few graphics card launches, which have all been affordable mid-range models, Nvidia’s new GTX 1080 Ti is a little different. Spec-wise, the GTX 1080 Ti is an absolute beast. With the same 3,584 stream processors as the 2016 version of Titan X, and a higher clock speed, it motors through games, delivering silky-smooth frame rates all the way to 4K, a feat that the GTX 1080 can’t manage in demanding games. Even the downsides compared with Titan X are very minor. For instance, dropping the RAM from 12GB to 11GB is neither here nor there for current games, and even the related drop in memory…