Table of contents for August 2022 in Custom PC UK

SUPPLIER cclonline.com Cooler Master’s MasterLiquid PL240 Flux costs a good £60 more than the Antec Symphony 240 we’ve also reviewed in this issue (see over), and it also doesn’t come with a fancy LCD, so what exactly do you get for that extra cash? At first glance, it looks good for justifying the extra premium. The fans included with the Cooler Master are much more powerful than the 1,600rpm fans on the Antec cooler, peaking instead at 2,300rpm, meaning they’re likely to provide enough airflow for the 240mm radiator to cope with any desktop CPU. The RGB lighting on the fans is also far more evenly spread and vivid than the lighting on the Antec Symphony 240’s fans too, spanning out over the entire fan blades, and looking as vibrant…

SUPPLIER ao.com While the Asus PG279QM (opposite) feels a little lacking in meaningful features for its high price, the same can’t be said of the MSI MPG321UR-QD. As well as an extra 5in of screen real estate, this 32in bruiser packs in a 4K resolution with a 144Hz refresh rate, quantum dot filter technology for boosted brightness and colour range, plus it has a built-in KVM and even a mouse bungee. This versatility is directly aimed at people who want to connect their PC and games consoles through a single big screen, with the KVM feature enabling you to easily switch between devices. The USB Type-C connection can also be used for video, making it easy to connect a laptop via a single cable. It’s fantastic if you use so…

SUPPLIER custompc.co.uk/AlienwareX17 The x17 is the biggest expression of Alienware’s Legend 2 design language we’ve seen, and it’s an imposing beast. The white body shines, the distinctive x17 logo dominates the lid and the familiar ring of RGB LEDs glows at the rear. Build quality is impeccable, and the Alienware is only 21mm thick – a slim figure for a high-end gaming laptop. Bear in mind, though, that this laptop weighs 3.2kg and measures 399mm wide, so it will weigh down your bag and occupy a large area of your desk. Happily, Alienware has filled the sizeable body with good features. There’s a Thunderbolt 4 connection and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, both of which offer power delivery, alongside two full-sized USB ports. The laptop has a microSD…

SUPPLIER uk.jbl.com The JBL Reflect Flow Pro is a set of surprisingly comfy earbuds. Beneath their sleek exterior, they pack extremely effective noise cancelling, and enough clarity and power to deliver all the good noises and none of the bad ones with substantial force. A comfortable fit is provided by not only being able to swap the ear tips, but also with JBL’s ‘Powerfins’ – squashy rubber fins that helps the buds to fit to your outer ears. The noise-cancelling system has two modes, one that does what you’d expect (actively cancels noise), while the second is adaptive, allowing you to hear some background noise and making it safer for situations where you might need more of your wits about you. Being designed with exercise in mind, the buds are…

SUPPLIER westerndigital.com The long-named SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 is a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 SSD that’s available in a range of capacities. Like most SSDs using the latest USB technology, it’s extremely fast, boasting a read speed of 1,089MB/sec and a write speed of 1,070MB/sec when tested with CrystalDiskMark. This isn’t nearly as fast the peak speeds you can get from a PCI-E M.2 motherboard-mounted SSD, but for an external drive, it’s fast enough to juggle huge amounts of data relatively quickly. As well as being fast, the SanDisk is also small and surprisingly tough. Measuring 11cm long, 6cm wide and 1cm deep, it’s relatively small compared with a smartphone. It’s rated for a 2m drop height, which should be enough for most use situations outside of using…

SUPPLIER cclonline.com In previous CPU generations, Intel’s Core i5 CPUs have usually had the same underpinnings, just with different frequencies and cache amounts, but the Core i5-12400F is a very different CPU to the Core i5-12600K. The 12400F sticks to the familiar 6-core design, while the more expensive Core i5-12600K adds four E-Cores into the mix for a total of ten cores and 16 threads, compared to six cores and 12 threads for the CPU on review here. Thankfully, the Core i5-12400F is also significantly cheaper, retailing for just £165, which is £100 less than its Core i5 sibling. The F in its name denotes the fact it has no on-board GPU, and it costs a little less than the standard model as a result. This price also makes it…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Unlike the Ryzen 5 5600, the second new AMD CPU to land in this Labs test isn’t aiming to battle Intel at the budget end of the market, but instead trade blows with the similarly priced Core i5-12600K, while offering a cheaper 8-core AM4 option than the Ryzen 7 5800X. That said, there’s barely £20 between the two Ryzen 7 chips. Plus, as we saw with the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X, there are slim pickings when identifying the spec differences between the two chips. Both the Ryzen 7 5700X and 5800X have eight cores and 16 threads via SMT. They also both use AMD’s 7nm Zen 3 architecture and have 32MB of L3 cache. Despite being a new model, the Ryzen 7 5700X lacks the 3D V-Cache…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk We doubt many CPUs have changed the desktop market more than AMD’s 16-core mainstream monsters, forcing Intel to drastically cut the prices of its high-end desktop CPUs and ushering previously unheard-of numbers of cores into the home computing market. The Ryzen 9 5950X built on the success of the Ryzen 9 3950X, made large swathes of the high-end desktop CPU market obsolete in the process, and is now available for just £500. A year ago it was still the most powerful mainstream desktop CPU by far, but Intel has now finally responded, both in terms of single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. The Core i9-12900K also cost less than the 5900X at launch, so AMD’s mainstream desktop flagship now sits at £500, which is just below the price of the…

DEVELOPER Gearbox Software/PUBLISHER Finji Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a sequel to the Borderlands 2 DLC, Assault on Dragon Keep. Arguably the best bit of the entire Borderlands series, Dragon Keep was a playful send-up of tabletop RPGs that explored themes of loneliness and friendship. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands takes this core concept and massively expands upon it. Players assume the role of a custom hero inside Tiny Tina’s homebrew D&D campaign ‘Bunkers and Badasses’ – a parody fantasy world given a Borderlands spin (it has guns in it). Here, you embark on a quest to defeat the evil Dragon Lord, in a story heavily subject to the whims of your Dungeon Master, Tiny Tina herself. The premise is as tantalising as it was ten years ago, and Wonderlands quickly reveals itself…

DEVELOPER WolfEye Studios/PUBLISHER Devolver Digital Weird West is a fascinating yet flawed attempt to merge the dynamic systems of an immersive sim with the CRPG structure of a game such as Baldur’s Gate. Its most distinctive feature is its unique approach to storytelling. Rather than playing as one character, you assume the roles of five difference characters in a predetermined sequence. Starting as a vengeful bounty hunter named Jane, your adventure will see you assume the roles of a native American warrior, an occult wizard and, er, a mutant pigman. Each of these stories plays out as its own mini-RPG, with you exploring a wide variety of locations connected by an overworld map, complete with side quests and randomly occurring events. While each character’s story is separate, they interlink via…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk Determined to squeeze every last drop of performance from its RDNA2 GPU architecture before it disappears over the horizon, AMD has introduced some ‘new’ GPUs that add a 50 to their predecessors’ model names. At the top of the line is the Radeon RX 6950 XT (see over), while in the mid-range sits the Radeon RX 6750 XT. Don’t get too excited here – these aren’t new GPUs by any stretch of the imagination. They’re not even old GPUs with a couple more Compute Units enabled. The Radeon RX 6750 XT is basically exactly the same as the Radeon RX 6700 XT that came before it. There are 2,560 stream processors, 40 Ray Accelerators and 12GB of GDDR6 memory attached to a 192-bit wide interface. The only differences…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk If you’ve scoffed at the prices of some AIO liquid coolers recently, then you’re not alone, as fancy features such as software control, RGB lighting and LCDs all bump up the price. In some situations, a custom water-cooling kit would be cheaper, but thankfully, there are still ways to own a 240mm AIO liquid cooler and get plenty of change from £100. One example is Antec’s new £70 Symphony 240, which has to live up to some expectations, being the successor to the excellent Neptune 240. At £70, the price is very reasonable indeed, especially as the Symphony 240 sports digital RGB lighting not only on its fans, but on the pump as well. The colours on the fans’ lights don’t quite pop as vividly as the photos…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Logitech Lift is a new, more compact variant of the company’s MX Vertical mouse, designed for users with smaller hands or smaller wallets – the MX Vertical costs £25 more than the Lift. The idea behind both these ergonomic mice is that they tilt your hand into a much more upright angle than typical mice, in order to reduce wrist and forearm pain. Conventional mice typically set your wrist at an angle of around ten degrees from your desk, while some slightly more ergonomic mice, such as the Logitech MX Master, might open this angle up to around 25 degrees. However, the Lift goes all the way to 57 degrees. The effectiveness of this change is immediately apparent but not all positive. Your wrist angle does indeed…

SUPPLIER custompc.co.uk/AsusScar15 Asus’ ROG Strix laptops are some of the most gregarious machines around, and that’s not changed for 2022 – this rig is still littered with RGB LEDs and big logos, with translucent plastic on the wrist rest and a trio of interchangeable panels that add some customisation to the area behind the display. It shouts about its gaming ambitions, but this machine also offers substance alongside style. Build quality is good, with only a little movement in its panels, and its 2.3kg weight is comparatively light for a powerful 15.6in machine. The only minor physical issue is the 27mm-thick body, which makes the Asus feel chunky. On the left-hand edge, you’ll find two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and a headphone jack, while the rest of the connections…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk The Ryzen 5 5600 is designed for one purpose – to make AMD more competitive at the low end. The company has struggled to appeal to budget gamers with the Ryzen 5 5600X which, while brilliant, still set you back £300 until very recently, yet has been the cheapest Zen 3 Ryzen CPU. AMD has instead relied on its aging Zen 2 CPUs to cater for those on lower budgets. This means that Intel has enjoyed some success here, given that Zen 2’s now mediocre performance in games means even low-end Intel CPUs were comparatively decent budget gaming chips. It’s another reason why the Core i5-12600K was such a great choice too, costing significantly less than the Ryzen 5 5600X, but matching it in most tasks, with no…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk Historically, Intel’s Core i5 CPUs were usually the best bang-per-buck options for building an affordable, but still powerful PC, but the situation has been quite different since AMD’s Ryzen 5 chips came on the scene. Thankfully, the Core i5-12600K brought that status back to Intel, and with some considerable style too. It cost far less than AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X at launch, while also being faster in most areas. A lot has already changed since then, though, as AMD has drastically cut its Zen 3 CPU prices, with the Ryzen 5 5600X now undercutting the Core i5-12600K by around £60. The question now is whether Intel’s best Core i5 CPU in years is still worth buying for £270. In terms of spec, you get a total of ten…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk With the advent of Intel’s Core i9 brand, Intel’s Core i7 CPUs have often struggled to find their place, and we initially thought the Core i7-12700K would find this tricky, given the awesome performance of the cheaper Core i5-12600K. With its various mixes of performance-focused P-Cores and energy-efficient E-Cores, though, Intel has more ways to differentiate its product stack, and here there are eight of the former in this CPU, plus four of the latter. This gives it more raw clout than the Core i5-12600K, which only has six P-Cores, but curtails its performance enough compared with the Core i9-12900K, which has an extra four E-Cores. The result is a 12-core Alder Lake CPU with 20 threads and a peak boost frequency of 5GHz, so it’s certainly no…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk It’s no secret that Intel struggled to match AMD’s 16-core mainstream desktop CPUs with its previous mainstream offerings, and had to completely rethink its approach to CPU design to beat the likes of the Ryzen 9 5950X. The answer was to mix different types of cores to boost lightly threaded and multi-threaded performance. By combining this approach with a move from 14nm to a smaller 10nm manufacturing process, plus a new architecture, Intel finally regained its performance lead with the Core i9-12900K. It has eight performance-orientated P-Cores and eight power-efficient E-Cores, with the latter being four more than the Core i7-12700K. These four extra cores also give it four more threads than the Core i7, at 24 versus 20, plus it has an extra 5MB of L3 cache…

Core component bundles The fundamental specifications we recommend for various types of PC. Just add your preferred case and power supply, and double-check there’s room in your case for your chosen components, especially the GPU cooler and graphics card. We’ve largely stopped reviewing power supplies, as the 80 Plus certification scheme has now effectively eliminated unstable PSUs. Instead, we’ve recommended the wattage and minimum 80 Plus certification you should consider for each component bundle. You can then choose whether you want a PSU with modular or captive cables. 8-core system with integrated graphics 8-core CPU, basic gaming Needs a micro-ATX or ATX case. We recommend a 450W 80 Plus Bronze power supply. See Issue 218, p76 for an example build guide. 1,920 x 1,080 gaming 6-core CPU, 1080p gaming Needs…

DEVELOPER Tango Gameworks/PUBLISHER Bethesda Ghostwire Tokyo isn’t the game it initially seems. Developed by Tango Gameworks, whose heritage includes Resident Evil 4 and The Evil Within, Ghostwire Tokyo at first resembles a survival horror experience similar to the studio’s previous work. But it slowly reveals itself to be lighter, breezier action-adventure set in an open world. You play as Akito, a young Japanese man who crashes his car in Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing, moments before a rapture-style event causes almost everyone in the city centre to vanish. Akito is rescued from this fate by KK, the spirit of a police detective who was investigating this paranormal phenomenon before his own body was stolen from him. Together, Akito and KK journey across abandoned Tokyo trying to unravel the mystery behind the supernatural…

The response time of a screen is the average time it takes for a pixel to change from one colour to another. In an ideal world, a pixel would change colour the instant it receives a signal. However, the way display technologies work means there can be vast differences in how quickly this change happens. Back in the days of CRTs, response time wasn’t a consideration, as the phosphor coating on the back of the screen that would glow in response to the electron beam being fired at it responded very quickly – in the order of 0.01ms or faster. Meanwhile, technologies such as plasma and OLED can have similarly rapid sub-0.01ms response times. However, the liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that dominate the computer display market – and most of…

TheA500 Mini is not, as you might expect, a typo, but the follow-up to Retro Games Limited’s equally oddly styled TheC64 Mini (reviewed in Issue 180) – a miniature Commodore Amiga 500. Designed as a mostly fully functional scale replica, TheA500 Mini sits comfortably on the very back corner of a real Amiga 500. The keyboard is present, but only for show, and there’s a moulded fake floppy drive to the side, but no effort has been made to create a fake expansion trapdoor or expansion port. The classic Commodore ‘chicken-head’ logo is also missing, replaced by a boing ball. You’ll find no mention of Commodore anywhere on the box either, nor in the quick-start guide – and only once in the downloadable full manual. Despite lack of approval from…

Corsair has revealed that it’s branching out into the laptop market, with a new portable machine that’s aimed at streamers. The Voyager a1600 is based on all-AMD core silicon, including a Radeon RX6800M GPU and a choice of two 8-core CPUs – the Ryzen 7 6800HS and Ryzen 9 6900HS. The laptop also comes with either 1TB or 2TB of PCI-E 4 storage, 32GB or 64GB of DDR5 memory, Cherry MX Ultra-Low Profile mechanical key switches and a row of ten Elgato Stream Deck keys at the edge below the screen. Meanwhile, that screen has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600, giving it a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a super-fast 240Hz refresh rate. Corsair has also kitted out the keyboard with Capellix LEDs on a perkey basis, and there are…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Ah, remember those halcyon days when a £1,200 graphics card price tag seemed extortionately expensive, rather than comparatively good value after two years of chaos? While Nvidia’s all-out Ampere swansong, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (see Issue 226, p19) will set you back at least £1,879 inc VAT, AMD is hoping to tempt 4K gamers its way with the much cheaper Radeon RX 6950 XT. Of course, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti isn’t just a speedbinned RTX 3090 with higher clock speeds – it also has two extra Streaming Multiprocessors enabled, giving it a (very slight) advantage in parallel shading power. Comparatively, the Radeon RX 6950 XT’s Navi 21 GPU is the same as that of the Radeon RX 6900 XT – it just has faster clock speeds.…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk For several years, 144Hz and 165Hzdisplays with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 (1440p) have been commonplace. However, it’s only recently that displays of this resolution have stepped up to 240Hz, and the Asus PG279QM is one of those select few. This 27in, IPS panel also includes support for G-Sync Ultimate (complete with dedicated hardware) across its full 1-240Hz range and includes Nvidia’s Reflex Analyzer. This tech lets you connect your mice via the monitor’s USB hub, and then uses a builtin detection tool to work out the latency between clicking a mouse button and the effect being shown on screen. It’s an interesting addition but requires specific game support and has limited use. Your old wireless mouse may cause significant input lag, rather than your monitor. You…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Despite sharing the same name, shape and overarching feature set, Asus’ new M4 Air and M4 Wireless are quite different mice. One is an ultralight, wired-only option that’s covered in weight-saving holes, while the other is a wireless-only model that runs on conventional AA or AAA batteries. Their shared M4 shape is reminiscent of the likes of the Glorious Model O, with a only on the left sides of the mice, so they’re not ambidextrous. With dimensions of sized mouse design that’s ideally suited to fingertip grip for medium to large hands, for medium to smaller hand sizes. There’s become so prevalent – it’s so versatile. Both M4s have just five main buttons – left, right, middle, back, forward and a topmounted DPI button, and use a lightweight…

How we test With AMD’s Socket AM5 and Zen 4 CPUs still some way off, and its current Zen 3 CPUs having received substantial price cuts, the CPU market has changed significantly in the past six months. Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs have also been well received for the most part, offering compelling performance, especially below the £400 mark. However, there are some newcomers from AMD as well; when combined with some price cuts, these could put Intel on the back foot. We’ve picked 12 of the latest CPUs to put them through our usual mix of game and application benchmarks, to see where you should put your cash, whether you have £170 to spend or £500. Our CPU test systems include an Asus Maximus Z690 Apex for Intel 12th-gen CPUs, and…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk Like most original Ryzen 5000-series CPUs, the Ryzen 5 5600X has recently enjoyed a significant price cut, thanks to Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs being rather good. Significantly, the Core i5-12600K substantially undercut the AMD chip, but was just as fast. As we went to the printers this month, though, the Ryzen 5 5600X had become cheaper still, retailing for just £210 inc VAT, which is £100 less than when we first reviewed it. This means it now undercuts Intel’s Core i5-12600K by quite a margin, but with the latest drivers, Windows updates and BIOS versions installed in our test systems, performance can swing either way. Still, you get a lot of CPU for money. It has the latest 7nm Zen 3 architecture and, being a 65W CPU, it’s particularly…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk When we initially reviewed the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, we were hoping for a price closer to £400 or maybe a little below, but when it’s currently retailing for £430, which is nearly £150 more than the Ryzen 7 5800X. That’s a serious amount of cash and it not only pushes the price of the 5800X3D close to the cost of the mighty 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X, but it’s much more expensive than the Ryzen 9 5900X and Core i7-12700K too. That’s a lot of money for an 8-core, 16-thread CPU based on an aging architecture, but the Ryzen 7 5800X3D isn’t any old Zen 3 CPU. It sports a massive 96MB L3 cache, two thirds of which is made up of 3D V-Cache. This is stacked directly…

DEVELOPER Blazing Bit Games/PUBLISHER Blazing Bit Games Nightmare Reaper is a volatile blend of FPS and procedural rogue-like elements. Its slightly unsavoury premise sees you play a woman in a psychiatric ward who, when she goes to sleep, descends into a terrifying world of demonic creatures. Here, she must blast her way through monstrous hordes with a wide array of weapons, in a gleefully violent throwback to the shooters of yore. Nightmare Reaper’s key feature is its emphasis on randomness. Not only are its Doom-like levels procedurally generated every time you play, but weapons are also randomly distributed throughout its pixelated labyrinths. Whereas most shooters give you ten to 15 weapons, Nightmare Reaper has 80, ranging from trusty pistols and shotguns through to nailguns, spellbooks, cluster-rocket launchers and Hellraiser-style tesseracts…

Meta recently unveiled its 2022 Quest Gaming Showcase, revealing a bunch of exciting VR games that are coming to the platform. This includes sequels to some of the very best VR games, and at least one huge surprise. Most of these games will release in the next year, some as soon as the summer. So here’s a quick rundown of the highlights coming to the Quest 2 in the coming months. Ghostbusters VR By far the most surprising announcement of the showcase, Ghostbusters VR is a whole new adventure that will see players solving a ‘deep mystery’ in the Ghostbusters universe. Developed by N-Dreams, it’s designed to be played both solo and with up to three other players in cooperative multiplayer. More specific details on how the game will play…

REVIEW Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin Nvidia’s embedded Jetson family continues to grow, and its latest entry, the Jetson AGX Orin Developer’s Kit, is one for the most well heeled of machine learning enthusiasts. Designed as the successor to the Jetson AGX Xavier Developer’s Kit (reviewed in Issue 190), the AGX Orin is a powerful system-on-module (SOM) wrapped in a reference carrier board design with an attractive, actively cooled chassis. When Nvidia says the machine is powerful, it’s not kidding. The AGX Orin is built around the company’s Ampere GPU architecture and includes, in Developer’s Kit form, 2,048 CUDA cores and 64 Tensor cores with a 1.3GHz GPU clock speed. On top are a pair of Nvidia Deep Learning Accelerator v2 (NVDLA v2) coprocessors, each running at up to 1.6GHz, a…

EK’s ROG Strix X570-I Gaming monoblock It’s been a long time coming, but EK’s monoblock for Asus’ ROG Strix X570-I Gaming mini-ITX motherboard is finally here. If you’re not familiar with monoblocks, imagine a large waterblock that not only cools your CPU, but other hotspots on the motherboard too. This is especially useful in stuffy mini-ITX systems, as it means VRMs, and in some cases, chipsets and M.2 SSDs, are effectively water-cooled, taking some pressure off the often limited airflow in these cases. I say it’s been a long time because this motherboard is nearly two years old, being released shortly after Asus’ other X570 motherboards. However, it’s taken a while for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a highly complex waterblock. EK has decided to not just water-cool the…

If you walked into a shop that sells video games today, you’d be forgiven for thinking that PC gaming didn’t exist. In 2021, less than one per cent of global PC gaming revenue stemmed from sales of physical copies. Nearly all PC games were sold on digital distribution services or funded themselves through free-to-play models. Nowadays, the closest you can get to a physical PC game purchase is to buy a gift card for Steam or the Epic Store. Go back 25 years, however, and the situation couldn’t be more different. Not only would you find PC games in shops, but they would also dominate the shelves, because of the gigantic cardboard boxes in which they were packaged. These so-called ‘big boxes’ were the face of the hobby throughout the…