Table of contents for September 2018 in Custom PC UK

With no compelling competition, Nvidia thinks it can have a break from GeForce As you may have guessed from the fiery Ethereum coin emblazoned on the front cover, this issue of Custom PC is all about currency mining. It’s a subject that’s given the world of PC enthusiasm a proper wobble, with a few hobbyists suddenly becoming super-rich and the price of gaming graphics cards rocketing over the last few months. Thankfully,supplies have now been replenished,and graphics card prices are approaching normality again. However, there are rumours online that Nvidia has overestimated the demand for these GPUs, with reports of OEMs returning large amounts of stock. As always,you need to take any stories from the online rumour mill with a healthy fist of salt, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated…

Intel releases new ‘8086’ CPU Celebrating the 40th birthday of its original 8086 CPU, Intel has released a top-end Core i7 chip with the 8086 moniker at the end of the name. The new limited-edition 6-core CPU has a turbo frequency of 5GHz, with a base clock speed of 4GHz, compared with 4.7GHz and 3.7GHz respectively for the Core i7-8700K. The new CPU is currently available for £380 inc VAT from www.scan.co.uk, but Intel gave away limited quantities of the chip in an online sweepstake when the chip first launched. Never missing an opportunity to piggyback on an Intel announcement, AMD also announced that it would offer the first 40 winners of the Intel CPU to swap their win for a Threadripper chip instead. Intel returned fire on Twitter in…

One area where MSI definitely has an advantage is with its EFI SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com We’re a few months down the line from AMD’s 2nd generation Ryzen launch and the introduction of its X470 chipset, and there’s already a good selection of motherboards for all sizes and budgets. If you’re aiming for the lower end of the budget scale, there are more chipsets to consider too, but the MSI X470 Gaming Plus sports AMD’s latest top-end X470 chipset for just £120 inc VAT. This board’s main nemesis is likely its predecessor, the X370 Gaming Plus, which has just seen a price cut to a super-low £70 inc VAT, so what do you gain from the new chipset? The extra £50 gets you AMD’s new StoreMI technology, which can combine a…

PROCESSORS TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015, Cinebench and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, installed on Windows 10 Home 64-bit, and record the power draw of the test PC. These tests cover a broad range of performance characteristics, including image editing, gaming, video encoding and 3D rendering. We run all tests at stock speed and at the CPU’s highest overclocked 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. CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015  Our benchmark suite, co-developed with Asus, simulates how people really use PCs – a higher score is better. You can download them from…

This panel supports AMD FreeSync as well, although it tops out at 75Hz SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com The LG 34WK650 is the cheapest monitor on test, by a long way, which inevitably means its specification will be compromised when compared with the HP, Acer and AOC products. For starters, its 34in diagonal makes it smaller than rivals. It doesn’t look like much on paper, but you certainly notice the difference in use. More importantly, the LG isn’t curved, and its lesser price also means a lower resolution of 2,560 x 1,080. That means you get a pixel density of 82ppi – below the 107ppi delivered by the 3,440 x 1,440 panels elsewhere in the group. That’s a double-edged sword. It means games won’t look as sharp, but it also means you…

DEVELOPER Endnight Games/ PUBLISHER Endnight Games/ WEBSITE www.endnightgames.com Few survival horror games combine those two genres as well as The Forest. You play a plane crash survivor whose son is abducted by a mysterious tribe of humans living deep in the wilderness. After crawling out of the wreckage, you need to establish a camp, find food and drinkable water, and then venture into the woods to find your son. Much of your time is spent hunting and foraging for food, as well as gathering resources to craft new tools, weapons and structures such as campfires and shelter. It’s The Forest’s strength of presentation that stands out – it looks and feels fantastic. The titular forest is dense with foliage and abundant with life, while movement and actions such as chopping…

You might think that remaking or reimagining a game from 20 years ago would be a relatively straightforward process. Today’s computers are vastly more powerful than those of the 1990s, while modern game engines and developer tools are also much more user-friendly. However, as the potential of computer graphics rendering has expanded, so have the challenges that come with them. Player expectation is much higher than 20 years ago, meaning that bugs or other flaws, which might have been glossed over in the 1990s, would be deemed unacceptable today. In addition, having all that extra power available to you is one thing, but knowing how to use it is quite another. Such is the case with Overload, the spiritual successor to Descent, made by the creators of that original series.‘We…

The ideal home server is quiet, reliable and not too power-hungry, just like the Raspberry Pi. Better yet, the Raspberry Pi is cheap. The board itself costs under £40 and the Raspbian operating system is free. If you have an old monitor, keyboard and mouse spare, you can usually power it using a regular USB power supply, so you just need a microSD card from which to boot. Over the next few pages, we’ll show you how to quickly turn a regular Raspberry Pi into a fully fledged home server for photos, storage and media streaming. We’re using the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, but the instructions are the same if you’re using one of its predecessors. The benefit of the Pi 3 B is that it has a…

Hands on with Alphacool’s Eisblock GPX GPU block There’s a huge range of full-cover GPU waterblocks from which to choose these days, but the company that probably offers the largest selection that’s compatible with less popular cards is Alphacool. I’ll be the first to admit that some of its waterblocks don’t look as sexy as the models from XSPC or EK Water Blocks, but the fact remains that Alphacool produces waterblocks for more graphics card models than any other manufacturer. It also has models such as the GPX Pro, which has a built-in pump and a pre-filled, expandable liquid-cooling system, allowing you to do away with separate pumps and reservoirs – a potentially great space-saving idea. Thankfully, the company has now seen fit to spruce up its standard GPU waterblocks…

Asus launches everything except the kitchen sink As usual, Computex saw a load of announcements from Asus this year. In addition to the new Ryujin and Ryuo ROG AIO CPU coolers, with OLED displays on the waterblock/pump units, it also showed off the ROG Delta USB-C headset and Thor 1,200W, 80 Plus Platinum PSU. The ‘Asus TUF Gaming Alliance’ showed off a lot of collaborating partners with TUF-branded kit, including PSUs, cases and memory. This means, like ‘ROG Certified’, you can now build a fully TUF-styled rig (if that’s your thing). Asus ROG also launched its new Strix Scar II and Hero II laptops, sporting ultra-slim bezels and 144Hz 1080p displays with 3ms response times. Like the Zephyrus last year, they’re focused on providing slim bodies and low noise, opting…

MSI’s EFI has a great layout and fan control section SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk Cheaper chipsets for Coffee Lake CPUs have finally landed, with MSI’s micro-ATX B360M Mortar retailing for £91 inc VAT. Back in October 2017, Intel launched a trio of CPUs with locked multipliers as well as its three fantastic K-series Coffee Lake CPUs. The Core i3-8100, Core i5-8400 and Core i7-8700 were set to battle AMD’s Ryzen CPUs. However, AMD had a distinct advantage when it came to the whole platform cost, as Intel had only released its expensive Z370 chipset, with no cheaper option for people who weren’t bothered about overclocking. Now, though, the combined CPU and motherboard cost is at least £30 less. There are several Z370 motherboards that cost under £100 too, but they’re far…

IR sensors synchronise the lighting between modules SUPPLI ER www.cclonline.com / MODEL number HX429C15PB3AK2/ 16 (dual-channel); HX429C15PB3AK4/32 (quad-channel) It wasn’t long ago that memory with RGB lighting was practically nonexistent. We now not only have addressable lighting where individual LEDs can be controlled, but HyperX has gone one step further with its Predator RGB memory. It sports IR sensors, which work to synchronise the lighting effects and colours between memory modules. The reasoning, HyperX claims, is that some motherboard and software combinations result in these features causing modules to illuminate out of sync with nearby modules. It’s even possible to see the sensors in action by placing a piece of paper between them, which sees one module’s colour stay static until it receives a signal from the other module…

It delivers plenty of depth in darker areas and accurate, vivid colour in lighter parts SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk The AG352UCG6 is a huge monitor from AOC’s gaming brand, AGON. Its 35in diagonal positions it alongside the biggest screens on test, and its £744 price gets you an ample set of features. The AOC includes G-Sync at a peak rate of 120Hz, which is 20Hz more than the HP Omen X. The 3,440 x 1,440 resolution delivers a density level of 107ppi too – matching the HP and Acer – and its quoted response time of 4ms also lines up with its rivals. The panel inside this screen uses MVA technology – so, in other words, it’s VA. That means you’re getting good viewing angles and great contrast. That’s another area…

Copyright law protects intellectual property rather than ideas For most of last year, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) was the most popular new game in the world. Pitting 100 players against one another in open-ended combat until only one remains, it became the flagship title of the battle royale genre. Then along came Fortnite. Developed by Epic, Fortnite was originally a construction and survival game in the vein of Minecraft. After the astonishing success of Battlegrounds, however, in September last year, Epic added a separate battle royale mode to its game. Structurally similar to PUBG’s game mode, Fortnite brought its simple but powerful building construction system to the proceedings, and draped the experience in a colourful, child-friendly aesthetic. Ten months on, Fortnite is even more popular than Battlegrounds, with a revenue stream…

DEVELOPER Uppercut Games/ PUBLISHER Uppercut Games/ WEBSITE www.cityofbrassgame.com With a setting ripped from the pages of 1,001 Arabian Nights, Uppercut’s rogue-like City of Brass puts you in the turned-up shoes of an adventurer exploring a mysterious city in search of treasures to plunder. Think Aladdin’s cave, only instead of singing songs with a genie voiced by Robin Williams, you’re carving your way through hordes of undead warriors who want to use your head as a fez. The game comprises 15 short levels, which propel you from the city’s outskirts into the heart of its sandblasted metropolis. From the moment you unwittingly trigger your first spike trap, however, the challenge is fearsome. Each time you die (and you will), you’re thrown back to the city gates, and the streets and buildings…

REVIEW TheC64 Mini TheC64 Mini is the result of a rift between the founders of Retro Computers Limited, alleged creator of the Sinclair ZX Vega+ handheld Spectrum emulator. That product is now two years late, with still no proof it exists beyond a handful of prototypes for its since-abandoned design. It’s a situation that gave birth to the rival Retro Games Limited (RGL), which beat its predecessor to market with TheC64 Mini. Unpacking the surprisingly small box reveals two main components: a small plastic Commodore 64 ‘breadbin’ replica, which has surprising attention to detail, and a joystick that looks for all the world like an upgraded version of Jeri Ellsworth’s C64DTV. That’s perhaps not surprising, given RGL’s boasts of having some of the C64DTV’s designers on board, which was itself…

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, multicoloured 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…

Before Fortnite, it was Pokémon Go and the risk of kids walking into traffic You know when you get that feeling that the entire world has gone silly and only you can see the truth? The whole of last month has been like that for me. If I could shout one thing from a helicopter, it would be ‘calm the hell down about Fortnite’, because what on earth has got into everyone? I don’t mean the game itself. Fortnite is fun. Battle royale is fun, although every developer suddenly shoehorning a battle royale mode into their game as a cash grab never ends well. Heck, I’m even finding children fun, and that never happens. Just last week I had a conversation with my next-door neighbour’s kids about Fortnite, and how…

République VR both looks gorgeous and feels slick to play SUPPLIER www.oculus.com One argument why VR hasn’t hit the big leagues is hassle: people don’t want the faff of setting up cables and trackers, while using smartphone add-ons can be awkward. Oculus Go solves these problems by bundling the whole caboodle into one device. Gone is the Oculus Rift’s fabric-wrapped shell, with an understated matt plastic casing in its place. The Go also trades the Rift’s built-in headphones and hard, baseball cap-style headband for a soft-strapped design more akin to ski goggles, with audio integrated into the headset itself. A power button and volume rocker sit on the top of the headset, with a headphone jack and micro-USB charging slot on the left side. It’s all been designed to…

Animal Army Knife/ £17.99 inc VAT The Animal Army Knife is a twist on the idea of having a tool that mimics the shape of an animal, except this multi-tool/knife combination mimics several animals at once. The result is a mixed bag. There’s a giraffe-looking blade that works as a file, and a rhino that opens bottles, but the various legs and most of the other blades aren’t up to much and can be awkward to access. A big redeeming quality is that there’s no messing around when it comes to the knife blade, unless it’s supposed to be an unknown and conveniently knife-headed species of cat. The knife is short, sharp and easy to access, which makes it great for opening boxes and so on. SUPPLIER www.firebox.co.uk Novoo…

How we test We use real, overclocked hardware in a standard system to compare the cooling prowess of cases. Our test gear comprises an Intel Core i7-875K overclocked to 3.4GHz using a vcore of 1.175V and CPU PLL of 1.86V, plus a Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB graphics card. This gear is installed in a Gigabyte GA-H55M0UD2R motherboard with 2GB of PNY DDR3 memory, a Corsair Force GT SSD and Seasonic M12D DD-850EM PSU. The CPU cooler is a modest Gelid Tranquillo, and we’ve replaced the fan with a slow-spinning Noctua NF-S12B ULN to highlight the poorest and best-performing cases. It’s an old setup, but it’s ideal for testing the thermal performance of cases. The graphics card’s heatsink and fan are also quite paltry, and dish some heat into the…

How we test To test monitors, we use specialist instruments alongside real-world tests using the latest games and movies. We use an X-Rite i1 Display Pro colorimeter to evaluate the contrast ratio, brightness levels, black point and colour accuracy of every screen at its factory settings, and we also use the i1 Display Pro to run those same tests on each panel’s different screen modes. The i1 Display Pro enables us to find out how much of the sRGB and Adobe RGB gamut that each screen can render. We also dial the brightness down to 150cd/m² to find out how quality is affected by reducing the backlight to the kind of level that most people will use on an everyday basis. We test each screen’s uniformity using the i1 Display…

The HP Omen X is the most striking and dramatic-looking panel on test SUPPLIER www.hp.co.uk The HP Omen X 35 is the most expensive 35in panel on test by some distance. It will cost you a quid shy of £900, while its rivals from Acer and AOC cost around £750 inc VAT. The high price gets you an attractive, sleek design though. The wide panel sits on a stylish square of machined metal embellished with an Omen logo. It looks markedly different from the wide stands included on the other panels in this test, and it’s smaller too. The downside is the Omen’s 12kg weight, which makes it one of the heaviest screens on test, but you shouldn’t need to lift it often. Meanwhile, the stand is a monolithic…

DEVELOPER ObsidianEntertainment/ PUBLISHER VersusEvil/ WEBSITE http://eternity.obsidian.net Pillars of Eternity successfully brought the isometric RPG into the modern age, telling a rich fantasy tale in the classic style of Baldur’s Gate. Yet it was also forced to compromise in certain areas. Primarily, it lacked the scope of the classic RPGs of yore, with a relatively limited amount of exploring available beyond its strong central plot. Moreover, because it harked back to a perceived golden age, it presented us with a rather conservative fantasy. Well drawn, certainly, but also not vastly surprising. It’s in these two areas where Deadfire differentiates itself most. Obsidian’s sequel adapts the isometric role playing of its predecessor into a very different and far more distinctive setting. It’s also a much larger and more open setting, offering a…

DEVELOPER WeatherFactory/ PUBLISHER WeatherFactory/ WEBSITE http://weatherfactory.biz/cultist-simulator Cultist Simulator is a single-player card game designed to produce Lovecraftian tales of mystery and horror, as your character attempts to establish a supernatural cult and perform an occult ritual while evading detection from the authorities. You combine cards with ‘verbs’ to produce actions, which in turn create new cards with which to play. For example, your starting hand includes cards such as Health, Reason and Passion, each of which can be combined with the Work verb to produce Funds, which your character uses to survive. Using Health with Work will cause you to perform manual labour, while Passion will spur you to paint a picture that, if good enough, you can sell for money. Eventually, other verbs become available, such as Explore, which…

For the past few weeks I’ve been playing with a Circumference C25, a cluster computer designed by my friend and colleague Andrew Back at Ground Electronics. The smaller brother of the C100, the Circumference C25 packs eight Raspberry Pi single-board computers (SBCs) and network hardware alongside a single UDOO x86 SBC. It’s all placed in an acrylic and wood housing inspired by the best of the Digital Equipment Corporation. My chosen workload: GNU Parallel. Written by Ole Tange, it has an interesting licence twist, requiring you to cite his original paper, ‘O. Tange (2011): GNU Parallel - The Command-Line Power Tool,;login: The USENIX Magazine, February 2011:42-47,’ if you publish anything that uses it. GNU Parallel is a remarkable tool, which allows you to take a heavily serial workload and parallelise…

This month, believe it or not, Custom PC turns 15 years old. It’s a remarkable achievement for a niche magazine in the digital age. This month also marks a far more notable anniversary, the 40th year since the release of the Intel 8086 processor. Designed in just two years, a fraction of the time it takes to design modern CPUs, the first 8086s hummed along at 5MHz, with later versions buzzing along at a sprightly 10MHz. It seems amazing now, but Intel even traded the licence to allow other manufacturers to make their own 8086 clones. While the 8086 in itself wasn’t remarkable – it certainly wasn’t the fastest or most efficient CPU of its time – it’s arguably the most influential PC processor of all time. That’s because it…