Table of contents for November 2022 in Custom PC UK

SUPPLIER cclonline.com Thermaltake’s SWAFAN 14 RGB comes in a triple pack of digital RGB-enabled fans, including a speed and lighting controller, for £89 Inc VAT. The latter allows for software control courtesy of a motherboard USB 2 header. The software allows you to alter the speed and lighting, which extends to the base of the fan hub and rings on both sides of the frame. The blades don’t have their own LEDs, though, as they’re removable, allowing you to switch between standard and reversed blades – great if you want your fans to be visible in all their RGB glory, but with the exhaust side facing you. The lighting looks fantastic and is easily tweakable in the software, while speed control is either done manually or using a PWM signal…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk FORM FROM FUNCTION + Great overall build quality+ Comparatively quiet+Hot-swappable switches+ Wide range of sizes and colours FORM OVER FUNCTION - Yellow colour option lacks key backlighting- No Home or End keys- Not cheap Ducky has been making great quality mechanical keyboards for years, and the One 3 is the company’s latest main keyboard line-up, coming in all manner of sizes, layouts, colours and hot-swappable switch options. The variant on test is the SF (65 per cent layout), which drops the entire top row of Esc and F keys, the numpad area and most of the Home/End cluster of keys. However, unlike 60 per cent keyboards, it retains dedicated cursor keys and a small cluster of Del, PgUp and PgDn keys, putting that crucial handful of keys at your disposal.…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk Asus’ ROG products are rarely shy, retiring or affordable, but the ROG Strix Scar SE ups the ante by several notches, with benchmark-breaking internals and a vast £3,999 price. That hugecost is partly justified by the core components. Graphics come from Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Ti mobile GPU, for example, which has 7,424 CUDA cores, and it runs at this GPU’s peak power level of 150W, hitting 175W using Dynamic Boost. Likewise, the Core i9-12950HX is Intel’s most powerful mobile CPU, with eight Hyper-Threaded P-Cores that peak at 5GHz and eight E-Cores to bolster multi-threading performance. Support comes from 32GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory and two Samsung PM9A1 SSDs in a RAID 0 array. Networking is similarly high-end, with 2.5Gbps Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ax Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.2,…

GEEKEY MULTI-TOOL/£17.43 inc VAT SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The quest for a multi-tool that can be seamlessly fitted into the cluster of items folks take with them when they leave the house continues with the Geekey. It’s shaped like a big key made of steel – it’s chunkier than a regular key but thankfully lacking any pointy bits, so it’s perfectly at home on a keychain. The array of tools features some well implemented stalwarts – there’s a screwdriver head that can’t get into any hard-to-reach places but will work in a pinch on flat or cross-head screws. There’s also a rudimentary (but functional) closed wrench on which it isn’t easy to get leverage, but could tide you over until a real wrench arrives. There’s a bottle opener too, because you have…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Lazy Readers are glasses that have a prism lens, tilting your viewpoint 90 degrees downwards. This sounds like a strange idea in theory, and it’s weird in practice too. There are some benefits offered by having this new angle available to your eyes. For example, you can watch TV lying on your back without having to raise your head, or you can read a book in your lap without having to look down at it, which can be better for your posture. The Lazy Readers are pretty sturdy and big enough for you to just about be able to wear them with glasses if you want. Prison Prism…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk When RGB lighting was first introduced, Corsair was one of the first manufacturers to offer high-speed kits, thanks to its low-power Capellix LEDs, providing more grunt for the memory to hit higher frequencies, while still driving LEDs from DIMM slots with limited power. The Dominator Platinum RGB models are now fairly old, but they remain available in a huge range of speeds and timings, as well as gorgeous white models too. Here, we’re reviewing a 3600MHz kit and, like other modules at the moment, you’ll pay a very high price for kits with lower timings. You can get a good compromise, though, with our test kit coming with timings of 18-19-19-39 courtesy of Samsung B-die chips, with the frequency hovering around the sweet spot for AMD Ryzen systems…

SUPPLIER watercoolinguk.co.uk The king of bling is still going strong, and the shiniest, flashiest memory out there, also known as G.Skill’s Trident Z Royal, is now available with a huge range of timings, as well as both chrome and gold finishes. Sadly, though, any kits with a CAS latency under 18 sees the price skyrocket, with even our 17-18-18-38 kit on test here going for £148 inc VAT at the time of writing. Thankfully, there are cheaper options, even for a 3600MHz kit. For instance, with 18-22-22-42 timings, the same kit costs just over £110, so we can’t be too harsh when making conclusions, especially when latency timings generally make so little difference to real-world performance. Under the hood of these modules, you’ll find Samsung B-die memory chips, and as…

SUPPLIER memoryc.co.uk A DATA has received a few awards in the past for both its memory and SSDs, and we’re hoping for more of the same value mixed with decent aesthetics and features with its latest XPG Lancer RGB DDR5 memory too. Under the hood, the kit appears to be identical to the Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 RGB, with both using SK Hynix memory chips, which seem to be the top pick at the moment for 2nd-generation DDR5 modules. The 6000MHz frequency is also identical, as are the timings of 40-40-40-76, but the ADATA kit’s larger heatsinks kept the memory a couple of degrees cooler under load. That said, the heatsinks aren’t actually that tall, sitting at a surprisingly low height of 43mm, which is significantly shallower than Corsair’s Dominator…

SUPPLIER cclonline.com This speedy kit sits at the top of Kingston’s range and has the looks, frequency, timings and price to match. With a price of £305 inc VAT for 32GB (two 16GB modules) running at 6400MHz, this is hugely expensive, but it’s worth remembering that many 1st-generation kits cost this much or more when they were first released at the end of last year. Here, though, you’re getting seriously fast SK Hynix memory chips and some of the lowest timings we’ve seen on a DDR5 memory kit of 32-39-39-80. Despite offering 1200MHz more frequency than many older kits, such as Corsair’s 5200MHz Dominator Platinum RGB, the 6400MHz Renegade Fury has similarly tight timings. The heatsink design is very attractive too, with one black layer sitting on the memory chips…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk From its photos, the Kensington Expert looks like a distinctly modest device, but looks can be deceiving and the Expert is in fact a monster of a trackball. The ball itself has a diameter of 55mm, while the buttons surrounding it are massively oversized, giving the lie to the optical illusion. But what else does the Expert have going for it, other than size? Well, it’s an ambidextrous design, like most of Kensington’s extensive trackball range, so it’s open for left and right-handed users to adopt. What’s more, the Expert includes the company’s patented Scroll Ring, which replaces the scroll wheel of most other mice or trackballs. It surrounds the ball, and rotates clockwise and anti-clockwise around the ball to provide down and up scrolling respectively (although this…

DEVELOPER Tribute Games Inc/PUBLISHER Domeru, Gamera Games Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is a throwback to the beloved Turtles games of the SNES and MegaDrive era, with players smacking colour-coded ninjas and classic villains from the TV show in chaotic, colourful 2D arcade combat. The game lets up to six players join forces on a pugilistic foot-chase across New York City, as the Turtles’ nemesis Shredder attempts to reassemble the robotic body of another villain named Krang. Players can battle through the game’s 16 levels as any of the four Ninja Turtles, plus Master Splinter and the Turtle’s dogged journalist companion, April O’Neill. The breezy pixel graphics pop with vibrant colours, while levels and combat animations have detail that would have been impossible 30 years ago. Perhaps the most…

Microsoft’s relationship with PC gaming over the past couple of decades has been turbulent. Windows has been the default base platform for PC gaming since the late 1990s, offering both the broadest support for PC games and the easiest way to access them. In the late 2000s, though, Microsoft seriously damaged its reputation with PC gamers through Games For Windows Live, an intrusive and obnoxious DRM platform that treated the PC as an offshoot of the Xbox. Since then, Microsoft has struggled to grapple with PC gaming, with its Microsoft Store struggling to compete with the likes of Steam and the Epic Store. PC Game Pass could change that. A Netflix style subscription service, it provides access to all of Microsoft’s contemporary first-party games, plus a wide range of third-party…

GARETH HALFACREE’S REVIEW StarFive VisionFive In the beginning, there was the BeagleV (see Issue 212). Developed in a partnership between BeagleBoard.org, Seeed Studio, and StarFive, it was to be an open-hardware single-board computer built around the free and open-source RISC-V architecture. While beta boards were produced, the project was cancelled (see Issue 219) before it could receive a general release. Then came the VisionFive. Built around the same StarFive JH7100 system-on-chip, it’s the BeagleV that never was – for better or worse. Looking like a chunky Raspberry Pi, largely thanks to the familiar (though handily colour-coded) 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header to the top-left, the VisionFive ticks all the usual boxes for a single-board computer. There’s a set of four USB 3 ports, a USB Type-C port for power, a Gigabit…

Here’s an awesome opportunity to gear up for Intel and AMD’s forthcoming CPU launches, or to give a boost to an existing Intel 12th-gen system. Kingston is offering one lucky Custom PC reader a high-speed Fury Renegade DDR5 RGB memory kit, which picked up an Extreme Ultra award in our Labs test this month. Game in style with Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 RGB memory, designed for extreme performance on next-gen DDR5 platforms. Give your system the performance boost and flair needed to stay on top, with ultra-fast memory running at up to 6400MT/sec and, using Fury CTRL, 16 customisable RGB lighting effects on each memory module. Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 RGB modules feature a sleek, newly designed black and silver heatspreader, with a dynamic LED light bar, which also uses…

With so much of this issue dedicated to memory and exploring what all the specs mean, I thought it would be interesting to look beyond the tech and see how PC buyers have reacted to the choice between DDR4 and DDR5 memory over the past year. This is particularly interesting to me, having been involved in the design of multiple PC systems, including some that ended up being sent out for review in publications such as Custom PC. Let’s start by taking a look at standalone memory sales from retail customers. Before we dive into the numbers, it’s worth bearing in mind that the memory sales data I’m going to share will include some people upgrading older systems, which will invariably be based on DDR4 memory, although the majority of…

SUPPLIER cclonline.com Like it’s smaller sibling that stormed our Labs in Issue 229, the Silent Wings 4 140mm comes with push-pin fittings that allow it to be installed in seconds with no tools, but also has replacement corner sections for the included fan screws or radiator screws. The Silent Wings 4 140mm uses a 6-pole fan motor and fluid-dynamic bearing, and its corner sections all have antivibration mounts. Noise quality is superb, with no whine or tone noticeable at any speed. At its maximum speed of 1,100rpm, the airflow of 0.7m/sec was less than half that of the Thermaltake SWAFAN 14 RGB, but the latter was also spinning twice as fast and was significantly louder. THE BEATLES + Great airflow to noise ratio + Good sound quality + Tool-free fittings WINGS…

SUPPLIER keyboardco.com FLORIDA KEYS + Amazing build quality+ Marvellous typing experience+ High-quality dye-sub PBT keycaps+ 75 per cent layout offers good balance CAR KEYS - Expensive with the best configurations- Weight means it’s not particularly portable- RGB doesn’t work well with all switches Keychron is targeting both enthusiasts and prospective keyboard builders with the Q1 V2. You can either purchase it as a preconfigured keyboard with keycaps and switches, or buy it in a barebones form, sourcing the switches and keycaps yourself. The latter option provides immense versatility, with our sample coming with a set of Cherry MX Clears and Keychron’s own Mac-Inspired keycaps, which make it look like an old Apple Extended Keyboard from the late 1980s. The high-quality dye-sub PBT keycaps are superb, and the switches are also hot-swappable, although we recommend…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Kensington Combination Lock is a security device for laptops, specifically ones which have a Kensington Security Slot in the case. While it’s quite possible to have never heard of this feature, a great many laptops do have one, so it’s worth checking. You loop the cable around a solid table leg, or some other immovable object if you can find one, pull the lock through the hoop on the opposite end of the cable, then plug the lock into the slot in the laptop case. Once the lock is properly attached, it can’t easily be removed without causing damage, making your laptop safe. The lock is very slim, so it doesn’t cause any disruption to the use of the laptop, and it’s padded too, so it won’t…

How we test Computer memory is in a state of flux at the moment, with DDR5 memory now becoming mainstream thanks to Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs, but venerable DDR4 memory is still supported by plenty of B660 and Z690 motherboards, as well as being the mainstay of AMD’s current platforms. While AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs, which are due later this year, will support DDR5, the low price of DDR4 memory still makes it an appealing alternative. With this in mind, this month’s memory Labs test had to include both types of memory, as they’re equally current and supported by Intel’s current platform, while being relevant for AMD’s current and future platforms too. We’ll be checking the height of modules for those space-restricted situations with large air coolers or small form factor…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk We’ve used Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro modules in features and systems more times than we’ve had hot dinners and for good reasons. They’re always very well priced, look fantastic and have other benefits too. We’re still big fans, and these modules still appear to be good value, with our 16GB (2 x 8gB) 3600MHz test kit retailing for just £74 inc VAT. It doesn’t come with the tightest timings, though, which sit at 18-22-22-42, but other timing options are available, as is a huge range of frequencies. The Vengeance RGB Pro modules look good too, with their towering heatsinks, and they’re even more visually appealing once illuminated. The lighting is the Vengeance RGB Pro’s party piece, as it’s as vibrant and accurate as any other modules on test,…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk There have been a few DDR4 sweet spots over recent years with regards to frequency, and a lot depends on price and availability too. Both of these factors have been impacted by the pandemic, but Kingston has found a way to offer one of the faster speeds in this month’s group test for under £100. This Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 RGB kits offers a frequency of 3733MHz, which is an easy target for most motherboards if you want to run the memory in a 1:1 ratio with AMD’s Infinity Fabric clock. This can vary from between motherboards, and not all of them are happy run at this speed or faster, but 3733MHz is considered to be the sweet spot in terms of achievability and performance. The Kingston Fury…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk When it comes to DDR5 memory, Corsair seems to be a little off the pace these days, despite being one of the first manufacturers to have DDR5 products at the start. It’s now struggling to offer any products to compete with the likes of Kingston’s 6400MHz Fury Renegade DDR5 RGB. Even its slower 5200MHz kits, such as the one on test here, retail for several tenners more than faster competition, such as the ADATA XPG Lancer RGB and Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 RGB. What’s more, it does so with latency timings that are barely any tighter than the higher-clocked competition, at 38-38-38 compared to 40-40-40. The swagger of Corsair’s Dominator kits has always demanded a premium, though, and thankfully for Corsair, its DDR5 Vengeance kits are a bit…

How we test Once a staple alternative to standard mice, trackballs have largely fallen out of favour for average PC users over the past couple of decades. However, with concerns over repetitive strain injuries (RSI) from using mice every day, and ever more of us working from home, they’ve had a resurgence, offering a more relaxed hand position and less reliance on finger bending and dexterity than normal mice. Trackballs are also ideal to use if you have a cramped desk space, as you don’t need to move the whole unit around a large mat – just 3-4in of desk space is ample to accommodate the width of most trackball pointing devices. There are two main types of trackball – finger-operated and thumb-operated. The former use a flatter layout with…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk With its much more modest price than the Kensington Expert, the Orbit is understandably a smaller unit with a modest feature list. However, it’s still a very capable and comfortable device. Like the Expert, the Orbit’s most prominent feature is its ambidextrous central ball design. Here, though, instead of four buttons flanking the ball, there are just two, representing the traditional left and right-click functions. They’re just as oversized as on the Expert, making them very easy to hit, even for those with limited individual finger dexterity. However, having just two buttons feels limiting. After all, you’re already missing out on the middle button you’d normally get with a scroll wheel, and you can’t even have the back/forward functions for navigating webpages that are now standard. Having to…

DEVELOPER Redbeet Interactive/PUBLISHER Axolot Games Like an improvised sailing vessel on a stormy ocean, Raft has its ups and downs. It starts out as a typically structured survival game with a novel twist, then morphs into a difficult and at times frustrating battle against its own systems, before finally emerging as a surprisingly compelling ocean-going adventure. A game of Raft starts out with your character floating in a vast, empty-seeming ocean on a small square of wood. You’re apparently a scout searching for other surviving humans on Earth after a climate catastrophe, although you’ll only learn this by consulting your character’s handbook. Even then, the handbook fails to explain why you’ve been sent on this journey with nothing but a plastic hook and some rope. Luckily, a plastic hook is…

Game Pass already offers an alluring collection of games, but the service is still far from reaching full maturation. Here’s a rundown of the biggest games coming to Microsoft’s service in the next year, all of which will be available to play from day one of launch. A PLAGUE TALE: REQUIEM DEVELOPER Asobo Studio/RELEASE October 2022 A Plague Tale: Innocence was a sleeper hit of 2019. Putting you in the shoes of a 14th-century French noble’s daughter named Amicia, the Uncharted style action-adventure saw Amicia and her brother Hugo embark upon a dangerous journey across war-torn Medieval France, hunted by soldiers and stalked by a relentless, hostile swarm of rats. With stunning visuals and a touching story of companionship in the face of adversity, the original game fell just short…

The Flipper Zero, the first product from Flipper Devices, is an unusual beast. At first glance, it’s a surprisingly chunky Tamagotchi-style virtual pet, with a monochrome display showing off a series of animations lit in a pleasing orange glow. That pet, though, is a cyber-dolphin – inspired by Jones from William Gibson’s 1986 short story Johnny Mnemonic and the 1995 film of the same name. The dolphin, given a random per-device l33t speak name as a unique identifier, reveals the device’s target audience – cyberpunk-style hackers. Billed as a ‘multi-tool device,’ the Flipper Zero comes equipped with a range of inputs – not just the four-way direction pad, action button and back button on the front. There’s a sub-gigahertz radio, a 125kHz radio frequency identification (RFID) radio, a Near Field…

ANTONY LEATHER’S Noctua’s NF-A12x25 is still the fan to beat In last month’s 120mm fan Labs, we were keen to test as many new fans as possible. For that reason, we weren’t able to revisit some models we included last time in order to fit some newcomers into the mix. We did manage to retest one previously well reviewed model, though, which was Noctua’s NF-P12 redux, and for a very good reason. It costs less than £15, making it much more affordable than a lot of premium fans, and it’s one of our top picks for radiators, cases and coolers. Thankfully, despite some stiff competition, it still did very well in last month’s Labs test. However, as we wanted to stick to a price limit in the group test, we…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk As with its 140mm sibling, the 120mm Thermaltake SWAFAN 12 RGB features a clever reversible fan blade design, as well as software-controlled RGB lighting with the ability to tweak the speed. The latter can be done using preset profiles, or with the discrete controller’s PWM signal based on CPU temperature. However, you can only tweak this slider in increments of ten, with no fan curve adjustment. The lighting control is comprehensive, though, with all the essentials. Like their larger siblings, these 120mm fans exhibited slightly lower airflow in reverse mode than standard mode, where they were a tad louder too. SWAN + Innovative reversible blades+ Snazzy RGB lighting+ Software controlled speed and lighting SWAB - Below-par airflow- Reversed blades reduce noise quality- Poor efficiency When running at 2,000rpm, the…

SUPPLIER box.co.uk AOC’s Agon Pro AG274QG is one of a handful of new gaming monitors that push the limits of current LCD panel technology, combining a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution with a whopping 240Hz refresh rate. As they use the very latest in panel technology, most of these screens demand quite high prices, but even then, this AOC is particularly expensive. With its DisplayHDR 600 certification, built-in Nvidia Reflex Analyzer, wired remote control for its on-screen display (OSD) and lots of RGB lights on the back, it certainly does its best to justify its high price though. AOC has seemingly taken a leaf out of Asus’ book with the AG274QG. For several years that company’s high-end monitors have included RGB lighting on the back and a logo projector in the…

SUPPLIER roccat.com BUTTONED UP + Masses of easily reachable buttons+ Convenient charging dock+ Excellent gaming performance HANGING LOOSE - No rubber to aid grip- Comparatively heavy- High price Roccat’s Kone XP Air sets aside the current trend for ultra-lightweight mouse design and minimal features, and instead packs in just about every feature you could imagine, including a charging dock, 13 buttons and plenty of RGB lighting. The regular Kone XP is our Elite-listed multi-button mouse of choice, thanks to the ingenious way it packs in so many buttons without them becoming difficult to hit and without the mouse being unwieldy. Joining the Air’s conventional left and right-click buttons is a scroll wheel that tilts left and right and presses down, and behind it is a button that defaults to switching the…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk When it comes to memory, ADATA rarely makes an ugly module and the same is true for all its entries this month. The XPG Spectrix D45G uses a large diffusing bar across its RGB LEDs to present a seamless band of colour that’s vibrant and produces accurate colours. However, the lighting here doesn’t quite have the punch of the illumination on Corsair and Kingston’s modules. There’s no in-house software either, as offered by Corsair, Kingston and G.Skill, but you can control the ADATA’s lighting using ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte or MSI motherboard RGB lighting software. They’re available in black or white, with the latter being a good match for similar-coloured motherboards, such as Gigabyte’s Vision series. Plus, unlike Corsair’s towering Dominator modules that also come in white, the XPG…

SUPPLIER watercoolinguk.co.uk When AMD’s first Ryzen CPUs launched in 2017, there was a scramble for compatible memory modules, and any DIMMs based on Samsung’s B-die memory chips sold like hot cakes thanks to their enhanced compatibility at speeds beyond 2933MHz. One company rubbing its hands was G.Skill, as its Trident Z memory used these chips, unlike many other memory makers’ kits at the time, including those from Corsair. G.Skill is continuing to sell its new Trident Z Neo modules as Ryzen-optimised now, although Ryzen memory compatibility has since been much improved. Again, the Trident Z Neo modules mainly use Samsung B-die memory chips, although there’s no guarantee here – sometimes you get chips from SK Hynix, depending on the date of manufacture and the latency timings you choose. They’re not…

SUPPLIER buykingston.co.uk We’ve been impressed with Kingston’s offerings this month, especially when it comes to its DDR5 kits, but its high-speed Renegade kits actually started in the DDR4 era, and the Kingston Fury Renegade DDR4 RGB kit here can run at 4600MHz straight out of the box. However, it does have to slacken the latency timings of its SK Hynix D-die memory chips to get there. Our kit used 19-26-26-45 timings, which were the loosest on test, and in an AMD system, you’ll either need to make sure this frequency is paired with the fabric clock, or gun for maximum performance in benchmarking with Intel systems, otherwise the extra cash won’t be well spent. This high-speed kit will also set you back £153 inc VAT, which is double the price…

SUPPLIER cclonline.com One manufacturer to step up its DDR5 frequencies rapidly, while offering reasonable prices and plenty of stock, is Kingston, and its Fury Beast 6000MHz RGB-enabled kit, comprising a pair of 16GB modules, is available for a little over £220 inc VAT for 32GB. Thankfully, in a rather rare move, Kingston also offers a more affordable way to jump onto the DDR5 bandwagon, with a 16GB kit available too for just £141 inc VAT. That’s still pricier than DDR4 kits, but the 6000MHz modules doing the rounds now might soon be pretty popular, as this frequency is rumoured to be the new sweet spot for AMD’s forthcoming Socket AM5 systems. If the rumours are to be believed, these modules would then sit at a 1:1 ratio with Infinity Fabric,…

DEVELOPER The Aristocrats/PUBLISHER Slitherine Ltd BEE + Great mission design+ Interesting tactical systems+ True to Verhoeven’s film WASP - Visually staid- Not much replay value Areal-time strategy based on Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film, Starship Troopers: Terran Command offers 19 missions through which you battle the film’s iconic alien Arachnids for control over the planet Kwalasha, a barren desert world where the hostile surface conceals abundant resources beneath. The game is set almost entirely on this single planet; combined with the generally plain presentation, this makes the game look like a product from ten years ago. Don’t let that put you off. Terran Command demonstrates its aptitude early on, with some clever twists on the usual RTS formula. Although the game’s structure is superficially similar to other build-and-rush strategy games, there’s very…

In its current form, Game Pass offers a compelling deal for gamers, letting them play a large library of games (many of which are brand-new) for a relatively low monthly fee. But what does this mean for the people who make and sell those games? How do games end up on Game Pass in the first place, and how does a game on the service affect a developer’s bottom line? Moreover, as Game Pass grows, what does the shift from game sales to Game Pass subscriptions mean for developers and the industry as a whole? ‘The majority of our games have broken even before launch day, because of Game Pass,’ says Mike Rose, founder and director of indie game publishing label No More Robots. ‘We’ve got games that, before we…

Zach Barth, founder of games studio Zachtronics, is the designer of some of the most addictive and original games around – to the point they sit in a genre of their own dubbed ‘Zachlikes.’ Unfortunately, Barth is retiring from the industry and closing down Zachtronics – Last Call BBS is his swansong. Designed to evoke nostalgia for the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s, Last Call BBS gives the player control of a fictional home computer dubbed the Sawayama Z5 Powerlance. Using its built-in modem, you dial up to the titular bulletin board system – complete with touch-tone dialling and the familiar screech of a modem handshake – to download a selection of small ‘pirated’ games. Barth has gone fully immersive here. Each download takes a couple of minutes, although…

Look at the Pentium Pro as Intel’s ugly duckling: the CPU that launched to little serious acclaim and suffered a whole lot of criticism in its early years, but slowly transformed into something incredible. The first CPU based on Intel’s P6 architecture, it was arguably the biggest step forward in Intel’s architecture since the original 8086, with Intel’s engineers making big, risky bets on where mainstream computing was headed, and most of those bets paying off in the long term. When it appeared in November 1995, many saw it as a failure. Nearly 27 years later, it’s still a huge influence on Intel’s CPU design today. Pentium Pro was launched at a weird time for Intel. On one level, it dominated the hardware side of personal computing. The 486 had…