Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2019 in Custom PC UK

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk If you took a fancy to BitFenix’s Enso case when we reviewed it last year, but its mediocre thermals put you off, then you’ll be interested to know that the company has improved it over the past few months and responded with the Enso Mesh. Not surprisingly, the new case sports a much-needed mesh front panel, which will hopefully boost that lacklustre cooling ability. The upper filter is magnetic and can be easily removed Much of the case remains the same, and the white model we received for review looks far more striking than the black sample we received last time. The pure white colour scheme extends to practically the whole case, and the attention to detail extends to the side panel thumbscrews, which have white caps,…

The H200i is the smallest case in NZXT’s H-range and the ‘i’ means it links to NZXT’s CAM software. There’s a three-port fan and LED lighting hub that connects to your motherboard using a spare USB 2 header, allowing you to control your fans and lighting using NZXT’s software. Each fan channel offers up to 10W of power and you get a single RGB LED light strip included too. If you prefer not to install your motherboard’s software to control your lighting then it’s a handy option. However, buying the standard version will save you over £30. With similar dimensions to Fractal Design’s Define Nano S, the H200i isn’t exactly small and many mini-ITX fans will likely scoff at its size, stretching to 35cm tall and 37cm deep. The size…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk If your next PC idea is leaning towards the unique and flamboyant end of the spectrum, Thermaltake’s Core P1 might be just what you want. It’s an open-air case that has one goal in mind – showing off your PC hardware, preferably with water cooling. Despite being an extremely solid steel chassis with a huge tempered glass panel, the Core P1 costs just £80 inc VAT. However, it’s not exactly heavy on features. There are no fans included as standard, with the idea being you don’t really need any fans for air-cooled systems here, as the case is essentially a glorified test bench. Any air-cooled components will be at the mercy of dust though – your system will need a good vacuum every few months. Even if…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk AOC’s AGON AG251FZ was the original budget option for 240Hz displays, with it being the first model not to include G-Sync. For Nvidia gamers, that meant you lost out on adaptive sync, but this was a small price to pay considering the significant cost saving. Meanwhile, the inclusion of FreeSync meant that owners of high-spec AMD GPUs could still play games free from image tearing and stuttering. A year or two later, though, and the range of 240Hz monitors has widened, with most major monitor manufacturers now offering 240Hz FreeSync displays. So how does the AG251FZ hold up? Pretty well, actually. For a start, it’s still a great-looking screen. You don’t get the slim, low-profile bezels of the Acer, but the simple silver stand and black frame…

SUPPLIER w ww.cyberpowersystem.co.uk CyberPower’s Infinity X99 Hyper Liquid II is a vast machine that towers over its rivals, thanks to its In Win 915 chassis. It measures 570mm tall and 590mm deep, and weighs 16kg before any components have been added. It’s built from rock-solid anodised aluminium, and the dominating dimensions are paired with some bold design choices. The front and back panels are curved, and both ends of the machine are hinged –opening the front allows access to the three RGB intake fans, while the rear I/O panel hides behind the rear door. A motorised tempered glass panel rises when the PC is booted The curved motif is repeated on the top panel, where you’ll find the case’s most surprising feature: a motorised tempered glass panel that rises…

CPU 3.7GHz AMD Ryzen 7 2700X overclocked to 4.1GHz on all cores Motherboard Asus TUF X470-Plus Gaming Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2999MHz DDR4 Graphics Palit GeForce RTX 2060 6GB Storage 256GB Intel 760p M.2 SSD, 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard disk Case Thermaltake V200 Cooling CPU: Corsair Hydro H100x with x 2 x 120mm fans, GPU: 2 x 90mm fans, front: 3 x 120mm fan; rear: 1 x 120mm fan PSU Corsair TX550M 550W Ports Front: 1 x USB 3, 2 x USB 2, 2 x audio; rear: 4 x USB 3.1, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x PS/2, 3 x audio Operating system Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit Warranty One year parts and labour with first month collect and return,…

DEVELOPER AvalancheStudios/ PUBLISHER SquareEnix/ WEBSITE https://justcause.square-enix-games.com There’s no greater pleasure in Just Cause than parachuting into an enemy base, planting enough plastic explosive to knock the moon from its orbit and then triggering a massive, synchronised explosion as you walk away from the chaos. Sadly, you can’t do this in Just Cause 4, because plastic explosive has been removed from the game – a baffling decision that encapsulates Avalanche’s approach to designing this game. Just Cause 4 sees Rico Rodriguez, regime-toppler extraordinaire, seeking to remove another dictator from another oppressed island nation, only this time you need to grow your revolution from its grass-roots. As in previous games, blowing up stuff earns you Chaos points. However, these points now unlock revolutionary Squads, which can be deployed to secure new regions…

Occasionally, if you push your overclock too far, your motherboard can fail to boot, resulting in a continuous boot cycle or black screen. Don’t panic if that happens. To reset the BIOS, see if your motherboard has a clear-CMOS button on the PCB or I/O panel. If not, use the manual to locate the two clear-CMOS pins and use a small metal object such as a screwdriver to short them for three seconds. Or if there are three pins with a two-pin jumper, move the jumper to the other two pins and back again. You’ll need to remove your PSU’s mains power cable for ten seconds before attempting this. Now try rebooting. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get back into the EFI and try again with less lavish settings. If…

There’s a lot of variation in core counts with Intel’s HEDT CPUs. For the flagship Core i9-9980XE, we needed just 1.15V to reach the maximum all-core overclock to 4.5GHz, while 1.22V saw us push the Core i9-7900X to its 4.6GHz limit. As such, we suggest starting with a vcore of 1.25V for 12-core CPUs and below, and 1.2V for CPUs with 14-18 cores, raising those voltages (if your cooling is powerful enough) to try to reach higher frequencies. We recommend starting with a multiplier of 43x in order to begin your exploits at 4.3GHz.…

Designer Rocky Bergen is releasing a series of papercraft templates that reproduce classic computers and consoles from bygone eras, ready for printing onto cardstock and sticking together. Bergen’s current template selection includes a Commodore 64, Apple II, Amstrad CPC 6454 and IBM 5100. There are also some non-computing devices, including a Conion C-100F boombox. Each full-colour template is ready to be printed, and many come with accessory devices, including printers, disks and tapes. All Rocky’s templates are available for free from http://rockybergen.com…

SYSTEM 1 CPU AMD Threadripper 2950X Graphics cards 3 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition Storage 3 x 480GB Corsair MP500 NVMe Memory 64GB Corsair Vengeance RGB White 3,200MHz DDR4 Motherboard MSI X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC PSU Corsair AX1600i SYSTEM 2 CPU AMD Ryzen 7 2700X GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition Storage 480GB Corsair MP500 NVMe Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB White 3200MHz DDR4 Motherboard MSI B350I Pro AC ITX PSU Corsair SF600 Cooling for both systems 5 x 480mm Alphacool NexXxos XT45 radiators with 20 x Corsair LL120 RGB fans; 3 x separate cooling loops for the TR4 CPU, GPUs and mini-ITX system; Watercool Heatkiller TR4, AM4 and 4 x GPU blocks; 3 x Watercool Heatkiller Tube glass reservoirs; Alphacool Eiszapfen fittings and…

In a highly unexpected turn of events, Nvidia has allowed its graphics cards to synchronise their frame rates with the refresh rates of adaptive sync monitors. Adaptive sync is integrated into the DisplayPort standard 1.2a by the VESA standards body; it’s the same technology that’s branded as FreeSync by AMD. It’s better to aim for quality over a free-for-all Nvidia has already tested a number of adaptive sync displays to check if they are as good as its G-Sync-only monitors, and the ones that make the grade have been given ‘G-Sync Certified’ stamps of approval. Currently, only 12 of 400 (3 per cent) of adaptive sync-enabled displays have yet made the Nvidia-approving grade, although this number may grow in due course. The low figure is at least partly because Nvidia’s…

Which year are we in? I’m sat here on the throne reading the March 2019 edition of Custom PC. Today is 7 January, 2019. The last paragraph of the Hitman 2 review on p72 reads, ‘Mechanically, Hitman 2 is one of the best games released this year.’ Oh really? No kidding! JULIAN VICARI Ben: Heh, Rick means last year, obviously – the games reviews usually come in at the beginning of the schedule, so he’d have written that review in early December. You’re right that we should have spotted it though! Where’s Wendel? I’ve been a subscriber for several years, but it now feels as though everything that attracted me to CPC in the first place is gradually being dropped from the magazine. First you ditched the ‘Where’s Wendel’ game…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk With the Enthoo Evolv X, Phanteks has dialled up the refinement a notch, and not just in terms of cooling. The hefty £200 price tag implies that the Evolv X is a serious case, and it backs up that impression by standing 52cm tall – it’s an imposing look, especially in the gunmetal grey sample we received. The huge glass side panels sit flush with the edge of the case The huge top-to-bottom tempered glass side panels sits flush with the edge of the case, and has no visible screws or pins either. To stay shut, thumbscrews located behind the front panel lock the panels in place, but you need to remove the front panel in order to swing out the side panels to reach the case’s…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk Our original Kolink Rocket review described it as a supremely small case that’s clearly inspired by the Dan Case A4-SFX, which is made in cooperation with Lian Li. In fact, it’s still one of the smallest cases (if not the smallest) we’ve reviewed that can house a graphics card, and is certainly the smallest case in our line-up of premium mini-ITX cases this month. In direct comparison with the latest competition, though, the Rocket’s high price does raise a few eyebrows. Unlike the Slightly larger Raijintek Ophion Evo (see p44), there are no dust filters at all. For a case that relies heavily on ventilation to produce some fairly decent cooling ability, that’s a bit of an issue. Only the Lian Li PC-Q50 (see p40) is similarly…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk The Phanteks Shift minimises its footprint, but not its internal space, by mimicking a skyscraper. Stretching to 47cm tall, the Shift has a similar height to some ATX cases, but its footprint isn’t much larger than that of the tiny Kolink Rocket (see p39), meaning it takes up far less desk space than the likes of the NZXT H200i. It’s arguably the best-looking case on test too, with tall steel and tinted tempered glass panels, and an innovative pop-open roof that exposes the motherboard I/O panel. The motherboard is rotated by 90 degrees from the standard orientation, and a small hole at the top of one of the aluminium panels allows cables to feed into it. The metal panels simply lock in place using pins, and the…

SUPPLIER w ww.wired2fire.co.uk The Wired2Fire Diablo Reactor II is the first system we’ve seen with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 (see p20) – the most affordable GPU with the might of Nvidia’s Turing architecture. The new GPU is based on the same chip found in the RTX 2070, but it’s scaled down to 1,920 stream processors and cards only come with 6GB of GDDR6 memory. You also get 30 ray-tracing cores – six fewer than the RTX 2070 – and a narrower memory bus. Wired2Fire has chosen a Palit GamingPro OC model for the Diablo. It’s a small card with a modest design, but it tweaks the GPU boost clock from 1680MHz to 1830MHz. The RTX 2060 is cut back compared with pricier cards, but it’s still an excellent inclusion in…

CPU 3.6GHz Intel Core i9-9900K overclocked to 4.6GHz Motherboard MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro Black 3200MHz DDR4 Graphics MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB Storage 500GB Samsung 970 Evo SSD, 4TB Seagate Barracuda hard disk Case In Win 915 Cooling CPU: EK-CoolStream PE 360 radiator with 3 x 120mm fans, EX-XRES 140 Revo D5 RGB PWM reservoir/pump, EK Velocity RGB waterblock; GPU: EK-Vector RTX 2080 Ti waterblock; rear: 1 x 120mm fan, front: 3 x 120mm fans; top: 3 x 120mm fans PSU Corsair RM750x 750W Ports Front: 2 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x audio; rear: 3 x USB 3.1, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x PS/2, 1 x Optical…

Eastshade DEVELOPER Eastshade Studios / RELEASE February 2019 Eastshade is a first-person RPG in which you play a travelling artist exploring an idyllic fantasy land. It sounds twee, but there’s a surprising amount of mechanical depth to Eastshade Studios’ premise. Basically, it’s a combination of Skyrim and Pokémon Snap. The game features a massive, verdant open world to explore, complete with lush forests, sparkling coastlines, spooky caves, and settlements ranging from picturesque villages to grand cities. As an artist, you’re able to ‘paint’ pictures of any given scene, essentially by framing the scene in your monitor and taking an in-game screenshot. You can sell any painting to an interested NPC, but you can also pick up commissions to paint a specific scene, such as a forest, building, vista and so…

From the Ryzen 3 2200G to the Ryzen 7 2700X, the way you overclock AMD mainstream CPUs is the same. Start by setting a 1.425V vcore and a 36x multiplier to give you a frequency of 3.6GHz. We’ve managed to hit at least 3.8GHz on every Ryzen CPU we’ve tested, so 3.6GHz is a safe starting point. If you have a top-spec Ryzen CPU with X suffix, you can also consider going the stock speed route and enabling Precision Boost Overdrive in the EFI. This technology overclocks the CPU according to your motherboard and cooling capabilities, and its lightly threaded boost frequencies are often higher than the all-core manual overclock it’s possible to achieve.…

Commodore enthusiast Fred Bowen has discovered what may be the rarest machine yet – a prototype of a device dubbed the Commodore 65 Classroom Computer (C65CC). The Commodore 65, a refresh of the Commodore 64 using a similar design to the Amiga A500, is already a rare machine, having been created only in prototype form. The Commodore 65 CC, however, appears to be unique. Based on the C65, the C65CC uses a smaller, Amiga A600-style case with no built-in floppy drive to keep down costs and make it suitable for full-classroom deployment. Images of the C65 Classroom can be found on https://tinyurl.com/C65Classroom…

To enter your machine for possible inclusion in Readers’ Drives, your mod needs to be fully working and, ideally, finished based in the UK. Simply log on to www.bit-tech.net and head over to the forums. Once you’re there, post a write-up of your mod, along with some pics, in the Project Logs forum. Make sure you read the relevant rules and advice sticky threads before you post. The best entrant each month will be featured here, where we’ll print your photos of your project and also interview you about the build process. Fame isn’t the only prize; you’ll also get your hands on a fabulous selection of prizes – see the opposite page for details.…

Dimensions (mm) 240 x 520 x 520 (W x D x H) Material Aluminium, steel, tempered glass Available colours Gunmetal grey, black, silver Weight 11kg Front panel Power, 2 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, headphone, mic, RGB lighting Drive bays 4 x 2.5in/3.5in, 6 x 2.5 Form factor(s) E-ATX (up to 272mm wide) ATX , micro-ATX, mini-ITX Cooling 3 x 120/140mm front fan mounts (2 x 140mm fans included), 3 x 120mm/2 x 140mm roof fan mounts (fan not included) 1 x 120/140mm rear fan mount (fan included), CPU cooler clearance 190mm Maximum graphics card length 435mm…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk Razer’s Huntsman Elite brought us our first glimpse of Razer’s new opto-mechanical switch – a new key design that mixes conventional mechanical hardware and futuristic electronics. Instead of relying on conventional keycaps that compress complete circuits, this new switch uses lasers. Each key has its own horizontal laser that sits alongside the keycap and the spring. When the key is pushed down, the keycap breaks the beam – and that interruption registers a keypress. Razer pairs its laser technology with a familiar mechanical feel. The Huntsman’s buttons have a 45g actuation force, a 1.5mm actuation point and a 3.5mm travel distance. There’s also a small tactile bump in the middle of the action. They feel similar to Cherry MX Blue switches, albeit with less force required to…

EXTREME ULTRA Some products are gloriously over the top. These items of excellent overkill earn our Extreme Ultra award. PREM IUM GRADE Premium Grade products are utterly desirable – we’d eat nothing but beans until we could afford them. PROFESSIONAL Products worthy of the Professional award make you and your business appear even more awesome. APPROVED Approved products are those that do a great job for the money; they’re the canny purchase for a great PC. CUSTOM KIT For those gadgets and gizmos that really impress us, or that we can’t live without, there’s the Custom Kit award.…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk Lian Li’s aluminium PC-Q5 has a no-expense spared approach to build quality, and it only weighs 4kg, making it ideal for creating a portable gaming rig. It’s also one of several cases this month that’s equally at home on its side as in a traditional vertical tower position. It’s reasonably small, although not as dinky as the Kolink Rocket (see p39) or Raijintek Ophion Evo (see p44). Unlike those cases, Lian Li has opted for a traditional layout, with the graphics card connected directly to the motherboard, without a PCI-E riser or dual-chamber design. As a result, the CPU cooler clearance stands at a healthy 150mm, although this height still limits you to mid-range tower coolers, such as Arctic’s Freezer 7 Pro or Cooler Master’s MasterAir Pro…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk We recently showed how to build a monster PC inside the Raijintek Ophion Evo (see Issue 185, p82), including a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, Core i9-9900K and 240mm all-in-one liquid cooler. However, we were interested to see how it performed against the best of the competition with its out-of-the-box cooling setup. There are two versions of the Ophion, with the Evo model we’re reviewing here offering slightly more vertical space to house a 240mm radiator in the roof, as well as a pair of 120mm fans – it’s one of the smallest cases in which you can do so. It measures under 30cm tall and it’s just 17cm wide, but that also means CPU cooler support is very limited at just 90mm, if you won’t be using…

SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk The big selling point of BenQ’s XL2546 over all the other displays in this group test is the inclusion of backlight strobing. Basically, the backlight of the LCD flashes off momentarily between each refresh of the LCD, causing the eye to be tricked into seeing a clearer picture. It works on two levels. Firstly, it reduces the effect of eye-tracking motion blur, where the eye follows the movement on-screen and essentially blurs the image in your head. It’s like trying to take a picture of an F1 car whizzing past you while using a relatively slow shutter speed. As you track the camera with the car, the background ends up blurry. By flashing off the light, you’re reducing the effective exposure time of the image, making it…

CPU 3.7GHz Intel Core i5-9600K overclocked to 4.7GHz Motherboard Asus Prime Z370-P II Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2400MHz DDR4 Graphics Palit GeForce RTX 2060 Storage 250GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD Case Phanteks Eclipse P350X Cooling CPU: ID-Cooling SE-214X with 1 x 120mm fan, GPU: 2 x 90mm fans, front: 1 x 120mm fan; rear: 1 x 120mm fan PSU Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite 500W Ports Front: 2 x USB 3, 2 x audio; rear: 4 x USB 3.1, 2 x USB 2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x PS/2, 3 x audio Operating system Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit Warranty Two years parts, third year labour only, return to base…

SUPPLIER www.pcspecialist.co.uk The Magma RTX is the more expensive of the two GeForce RTX 2060 machines this issue. At £1,299, the PC Specialist Magma RTX is £125 more than the Wired2Fire Diablo RTX. The relatively affordable new card has 1,920 stream processors, 6GB of GDDR6 memory and 30 ray-tracing cores. The PC Specialist’s card is a Palit GamingPro model – just like the card inside the Wired2Fire. However, the PC Specialist’s GPU runs at its standard boost clock 1680MHz, while the Wired2Fire’s card boosts to 1830MHz. Thermaltake’s V200 ticks the right boxes for a PC case in 2019 The two machines mainly differ when it comes to processing. PC Specialist deploys an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 2700X that’s been overclocked to 4.1GHz across all cores. That gives it two…

WHAT IS OVERCLOCKING? As a simple definition, overclocking is increasing the clock speed (measured in MHz or GHz) of your CPU beyond its usual speed, effectively giving you a faster chip for free. If you’re new to overclocking, it might seem bizarre that you can do this in the first place, but it’s allowed by the ways in which CPUs work, and how they’re made. Firstly, while AMD and Intel have various CPU models in their current stacks – many of them are practically the same under the heatspreader. At a silicon chip fabrication plant (fab), CPU dies (the raw chip that sits under the metal heatspreader on to top of the CPU) are produced on large, circular wafers, which contain many CPU dies. So, imagine you’ve got a wafer…

We’re using the same 1.425V vcore for Threadripper as mainstream Ryzen CPUs, and the same 36x multiplier. The lowest Threadripper overclock we’ve achieved was getting the Threadripper 1950X to 3.85GHz, so any clock speed south of this figure is a good place to start. The only exceptions here are the Threadripper 2970WX and 2990WX, where we found that only 1.4V was needed to get to the maximum overclocked frequencies without them overheating. Unrelated to overclocking, you can also use AMD’s Ryzen Master software to set the correct memory access mode, which can result in sizeable performance boosts.…

CPC: Why did you use the Corsair 1000D for this build? Alexander: Corsair approached us with the idea of building a showstopping rig for use at events such as iSeries and EGX, naturally in its new 1000D super-tower chassis. I’ve never really built an extreme machine in terms of both scale and specs before, and certainly not with the fabrication techniques to which I now have access, so it was quite an exciting proposition. CPC: What specs did you choose, and why? Alexander: The main purpose of this build is a showcase. In other words, overkill in as many areas as possible. The 1000D is a dual-system chassis, so it was important to retain that feature, even in a heavily modified form. We used a Threadripper main system, so we…