Table of contents for September 2017 in Custom PC UK

Retailers talk about AMD GPUs massively outselling Nvidia GPUs recently If you’ve tried to follow our recommendation, and buy a Radeon RX 580 card, you’ve probably found yourself up against buttons saying a variation of ‘pre-order’, ‘notify me’ or pretty much anything that isn’t a simple ‘Buy’ button. The RX 580 wasn’t a paper launch – there was plenty of stock when we first reviewed the card. But all of that stock has now been sold in a frenzied whirlwind of buying activity, and it has nothing to do with games. In a world where exchange rates are uncertain, people are looking for currencies that will make them money, and there’s been a sudden boom in the popularity of cryptocurrency. The biggest name, of course, is Bitcoin, but there are…

Gigabyte announces mini-ITX Ryzen board Gigabyte has just announced a new mini-ITX board that uses AMD’s new AM4 socket, introducing AMD’s Ryzen chips to the world of mini PCs. The AB350N-Gaming WIFI is based on AMD’s overclocking-friendly B350 chipset and features a steel-reinforced 16x PCI-E 3 slot, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, an M.2 SSD slot and Fusion RGB lighting on the edge, which will be controllable via Gigabyte’s software. The company also says that the board can accommodate AMD’s top-down Wraith cooler without limiting the height of memory modules you can install. Asus releases all-AMD laptops Asus has just announced its very first gaming laptop to feature an AMD CPU. The top-end ROG Strix GL702ZC uses a full-fat 8-core Ryzen 7 1700 chip, which the company says is based on the same…

There’s a more efficient 14nm manufacturing process in play When Intel’s Broadwell-E CPUs were released a year ago, they didn’t offer anything particularly new, aside from the 10-core Core i7-6950X, along with its ridiculously expensive price that broke the £1,500 barrier. Charging that much money for a 10-core desktop CPU isn’t wise now though. This year, March saw the introduction of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, which were not only just as quick clock-for-clock as their Intel counterparts in many tests, but also offered more cores for the same or less money. Now it’s Intel’s turn to hit back, with its brand-new Skylake-X range of chips, starting with the sub-£1,000, 10-core Core i9-7900X. That 50 per cent drop in price could be due to several reasons. There’s competition from AMD, of course,…

We certainly haven’t had as many niggles with the X299 platform as with AMD’s X399 motherboards with the launch of Ryzen, but some of the early EFI systems with the X299 boards we  tested did have a few niggles. There was high power consumption, poor M.2 speeds, although the latter seems to be a Skylake-X issue, and not motherboard-related, plus some random stability issues. The latest batch of EFI systems are already much better, although the ability to handle big overclocks will be down to individual motherboards. Thankfully, in some ways, overclocking Skylake-X is even easier than Broadwell-E and Haswell-E. There’s no need to fiddle around with CPU straps, for example, as the 100MHz strap is loaded by default, no matter which memory frequency you use. On a basic level,…

It’s one of the best laptop screens we’ve ever used Razer calls it the ‘Ultimate Ultrabook’, and it certainly looks like an Ultrabook, with a depth of just 18mm and featherlight 1.28kg weight. The well-built and stylish chassis is made from dark aluminium that tapers to a slim edge, and sports smartly implemented RGB LEDs and an illuminated Razer logo on the lid. Of course, you sacrifice computing power to get such a svelte machine. The low-power dual-core Kaby Lake i7-7500U CPU runs at just 2.7GHz. It only has 4MB of L3 cache, and you only get Intel’s HD Graphics 620 for graphics too. Likewise, the 16GB of DDR3L RAM in this machine runs at just 1866MHz. On the plus side, the 256GB Samsung SM951 NVMe SSD is faster than a…

CABLE TIDY Quirky Cordies Desktop Cord Clip / £7.99 inc VAT The Quirky Cordies Desktop Clip is a weighty rubbery block that sits on your desk – you can clip cables into it, anchoring them so that they don’t writhe all over the place. The clip itself is small and neat, with four gaps into which cables can be threaded, although you could potentially cram more than four wires into it, depending on their size. There’s enough heft to the clip to ensure that it won’t be displaced too easily, and the rubbery texture gives it a bit of grip to both the cables and the surface on which it’s placed. The Quirky Cordies is a genuinely useful helper for people who plug a lot of USB devices into a…

How we test Barely a year after Broadwell-E hit the shelves, Intel is back and looking to secure its defences against the imminent arrival of AMD’s Threadripper CPUs. The latest Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs are cheaper than their equivalent predecessors, and early indications are that 4.6GHz is an easy overclocking target too. First, though, there are a few issues to discuss, as it’s not all plain sailing with the supporting X299 motherboards in these early days. While we experienced far fewer issues  with LGA2066 boards than with AMD’s AM4 launch in March, high power consumption, toasty temperatures, stability issues and slow PCI-E M.2 speeds have been experienced with boards from every manufacturer we’ve tested so far. The lower  M.2 speeds compared with Z270 motherboards are reportedly a potential issue…

The jet-black colour scheme and steel-plated DIMM and PCI-E slots look great When it comes to early optimisation for new platforms, Gigabyte was on the ball with its AM4 motherboards and the same appears to be true for its X299 efforts if the X299 Aorus Gaming 3 is at all representative. After a BIOS revision or two, the Asus boards started to behave, but the X299 Aorus Gaming 3 was fine out of the box. The only niggle we found during testing was that the RGB Fusion software was a little temperamental and didn’t seem to like our Corsair Vengeance RGB memory, despite Corsair and Gigabyte teaming up a few months ago to enable the two technologies to talk to each other. The rest of its software was problem-free, and we’re…

SOME OF THE world's largest technology companies reside in Taiwan, so it's not surprising that Computex - Asia's biggest computer trade show, which takes place in the capital Taipei every June - is a springboard for the latest and most innovative tech. Rolling into its 37th year, Computex 2017 was no exception. Welcoming the usual swarm of hardware exhibitors, partners, visitors, and of course press from across the world, this year's show had its fair share of announcements, with the bulk of them coming from some of the world's biggest names in tech, including hometown OEMs Asus and Acer, old-timers Dell, and a few newcomers. Lee Bell rounds up the highlights, hot off the show floor. Return of the lap One of this year's most noticeable trends was the return…

Crucial to the PNY CS2030’s high level of performance is the Phison PS5007-E7 controller that takes charge of  this drive The PNY CS2030 is a no-holds-barred attempt by PNY to create a high-performance PCI-E SSD for use in desktop PCs. Why desktop PCs specifically? Well, most M.2 SSDs are designed with components on one side of the  PCB to maximise compatibility with laptops. However, the CS2030 is crammed with chips on both sides. It will still fit in some laptops but you’ll have to double check if yours is compatible. As for it being a high-performance drive, PNY claims some impressive numbers. It’s maximum sequential read speed is quoted at 2,750MB/sec, while its claimed sequential write speed comes in at 1,500MB/sec. Both figures would comfortably make the PNY CS2030 the…

Unlike Samsung’s V-NAND, all the memory cells in the WD Black are on a single layer, which greatly reduces the data density of the chips Western Digital is a bit of a latecomer to the consumer solid state drive market, despite having bought SSD pioneer Silicon Systems back in 2009. It was only with its purchase of SanDisk in 2016 that WD finally released conventional consumer SSDs. Just as with its hard drives, the company offers two product ranges: the WD Black drives are the performance-orientated models, while the WD Blue line-up is more of  a budget option. The SATA-based WD Blue drives are available in both 2.5in and M.2 form factors, while the NVMe-based M.2 PCI-E WD Black is the fastest range of drives the company currently offers. That…

I’d much rather pay for a few excellent hours than 30 mediocre ones, especially when I have limited time Have you ever noticed that games are a little shy about announcing how long they’ll take to finish? Films openly state their running time on the box, and while books don’t have a set reading time, you can easily estimate it by glancing at the spine. With games, though, you jump into a time commitment with no idea how much of your life it will consume. It will almost certainly be at least four hours, probably longer, but the tail of a game can stretch to 30, 40 or well over 100 hours. Seasoned players will be able to make a decent estimate. They’ll know a shooter will generally require fewer…

Most horror games like to keep you in the dark, but Perception takes the dark to another level. You play a blind woman named Cassie, who explores a colonial manor house in the US state of Massachusetts, a place that’s the subject of frequent, recurring nightmares. It’s both a fascinating experiment in exploring disability in games and a genuinely spooky experience. Although the protagonist is technically blind, that doesn’t mean you spend the game looking at a completely black screen. Cassie is able to ‘echolocate’, using sound to visualise her surroundings. Tap Cassie’s cane against the floor or an object and the surrounding area lights up in a ghostly blue glow. Cassie’s footsteps also create small pools of illumination, while environment sound sources such as radios or televisions provide a…

Buying a VR headset is much like buying your first PC – you think the journey ends when you get the receipt, but it’s just the beginning. As soon as you finish the initial setup, there’s all manner of upgrades, add-ons, peripherals and modifications waiting to drain the contents of your wallet. When I first bought an HTC Vive, I intended to draw a line under my gaming expenses for the rest of the year, because my finances needed to recover, I told myself. But no sooner had I unpacked the sensors than I realised I needed support rods on which to mount them, clamps to hold them and decorating supplies to disguise them. Next, after some long sessions of Arizona Sunshine, I realised I needed a soft anti-fatigue mat…

A sound causes the nearby area to by outlined in a ghostly, blueish light In some ways Perception represents the end of a road that horror games have been traversing for a long time. Darkness is the horror genre’s most useful tool, as we rely on sight more than any other sense. Our fear of the dark is as much a fear of disempowerment as of any monsters lurking in the shadows. It was inevitable that eventually a game would come swipe away our sight completely. But Perception isn’t just about not being able to see – it’s about blindness, and that’s different. Few games explore disability. It’s a complex and sometimes sensitive subject, and most games prioritise fun over nuance. Perception is one of a handful of games that attempts…

Every X399 board will be able to use every slot, unlike X299 The respective announcements of Intel’s X299/Core i9 platform and AMD’s X399 / Threadripper platform at Computex couldn’t have been more different. Intel’s Core i9 announcement dropped a surprise, with the promise of Skylake-X CPUs with up to 18 cores and 36 threads. There was no information about the 12, 14, 16 or 18-core processors’ clock speeds, TDP, cache structure or PCI-E lanes, though, adding to the confusion about an already complicated platform. With X299 handling all Skylake-X CPUs with various core counts, between 16 and 44 PCI-E lanes and both dual and quad-channel memory, Intel seems to simply be throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. AMD’s 6-core and 8-core Ryzen CPUs met market demands perfectly,…

Why are some CPU ranges cooler than others? Here’s a question for Antony. How does the same cooler perform differently depending on the CPU or system on which it’s installed? If I simplify it to ‘heat source > metal block > heat transfer material > radiator’, only the heat source is changing. Does an AMD AM4 CPU heat differently to an Intel LGA115x CPU, and differently again to an LGA2011 CPU? Why would an all-in-one cooler handle one better than the others? Could it be that some coolers’ fitting mechanisms have better designs than others? Could we see an all-in-one liquid cooler designed with single socket compatibility, which would be able to get every CPU over 10°C cooler than other multi-socket compatible coolers? JON LANG Antony: It’s a combination of…

From Core i5 to Core i9 There are nine new CPUs in total, although the Core i7-7740X and Core i5-7640X are Kaby Lake quad-core CPUs in LGA2066 packages. The idea is that they offer better overclocking potential than their mainstream counterparts, thanks to the added CPU power circuitry prowess from X299 motherboards. However, they lack quad-channel memory support, only have 16 PCI-E lanes and don’t support Turbo Boost Max 3. The logical choices, then, are the CPUs based on the Skylake-X architecture. These chips start with the Core i7-7800X, which offers six cores and 12 threads and, like its predecessor, the Core i7-6800K, it only has 28 PCI-E lanes. However, it lacks Turbo Boost Max 3 support. The next step up is an 8-core CPU – the Core i7-7820X, which…

While the world’s supply of reasonably priced graphics cards appears to have been carted off to the great cryptocurrency mine in the cloud, there still seems to be a reasonable stock of GTX 1080 Ti GPUs lurking in the shops. They might not provide the same bang per buck as Radeon RX 580 cards for currency mining, but they’re capable of playing games at 4K, and that’s what counts in Custom PC. We’ve already been blown away by the Founders Edition version of the card, and now Asus has sent us its ROG Strix version. It’s a massive slab. Its 298mm length makes it almost a foot long (30mm longer than the Founder’s Edition), and we had to carefully insert it at an angle in our NZXT H440 test rig to…

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. TESTS : By using the fast PC detailed on the left, we can be sure that any limitations are due to the graphics card on test, rather…

Amazingly, it includes the full complement of overclocking and testing tools As with the other motherboard manufacturers this month, MSI has a number of other boards available, but the 299 SLI Plus is the first one to enter our lab, and it’s also the cheapest board on test. The X299 SLI Plus retails for just £260 inc VAT, which is noticeably cheaper than the competition, but it’s actually better equipped in a number of areas. It has an M.2 heatsink, which is lacking on the Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 3. Amazingly, it also includes the full complement of overclocking and testing tools, sporting power and reset buttons, a clear-CMOS switch, LED POST code display and a USB BIOS flashback button. In addition, it even offers a dual BIOS switch. The extravagance…

The lighting centrepiece is a mirrored ROG logo with RGB lighting If spending £400 on the Prime X299 Deluxe tips you over your budget then Asus’ might be your next best choice, coming in at £400 inc VAT. The cash saving has come from fairly predictable cuts in the accessory box, but thankfully, it still sports many of the Deluxe’s same on-board features. It’s the only other board on test to include Wi-Fi, although it’s only 802.11ac and not the new 802.11ad standard of the Deluxe. However, unlike the Gigabyte board, you get an M.2 heatsink, which cut our Samsung SSD’s running temperature from 67°C to 50°C. You also get a dedicated M.2 fan header should you need additional cooling, plus mounts for a 3D printable 40mm fan holder. Every…

How we test The first phase of world domination for solid state drives came in the form of 2.5in SATA drives. A simple drop-in replacement for hard disks, they provided a decent performance boost with minimum hassle. As SSD performance has pushed on, however, the limitations of SATA have been exposed. Plus, it’s become obvious that there’s no need for us to stick to the old 2.5in form factor anymore – we’ve entered the age of M.2 drives and the NVMe protocol. These incredibly small slivers of circuitboard and silicon can be mounted directly to your motherboard, and provide capacities up to 2TB, all while delivering performance that’s multiple times faster than any SATA drive. With these drives, the connection standard is PCI-E – electronically, these drives are the equivalent of plugging…

The 960 Evo’s massive sequential read speed of 3,364 MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark is the standout figure The second-tier model in Samsung’s consumer M.2 SSD line-up, the 960 Evo can’t quite match the 960 Pro’s performance or warranty, but it’s still an amazingly fast solid state drive for a reasonable price. Along with its flashier Pro sibling, Samsung’s 960 Evo has held its status since it launched last year, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to let go any time soon. With claimed sequential read speeds of up to 3,200MB/sec and claimed write speeds that top out at 1,800MB/sec, on paper, the 960 Evo 500GB is still the second fastest drive on test by a clear margin. The Evo range differs from the Pro range in several key areas. The first…

CPC: What are the main advantages of VR face covers? Ryan: The main benefit and reason we started VR Cover is the improvement in hygiene. If you ever share your headset with friends and play quite intense or active games, it’s not a pleasant experience to push some damp foam full of sweat onto your face. We’re based in Thailand (where it’s hot most of the year) and found sharing sweat disgusting. You can also achieve marginal improvements in FOV by bringing your eyes closer to the lenses. Some users prefer a thicker foam that offers more comfort, but thinner is usually more popular. Gamers are always interested in trying to push the FOV a little further. CPC: If a major benefit is it makes it more comfortable for multiple…

REVIEW Mooltipass Mini Security in the modern, ubiquitously connected modern world is an absolute pain in the proverbial. A  common solution to the problem, and one I’ve previously used myself, is a password manager. Local software such as KeePass, and cloud-powered software such as LastPass, make it easy to have a strong, unique password for every website. However, they also introduce their own issues, as we saw when LastPass warned earlier this year of a bug in its browser extensions, which could allow malicious websites to steal passwords in their unencrypted form. The Mooltipass Mini was designed to solve this problem. It’s an entirely open-source device, so if inventor Mathieu Stephan’s company goes down the toilet, there’s little other than minimum order quantities preventing people from building spares and replacements…

It’s getting hot in here – again Ever since I got into water cooling around 14 years ago, I’ve experimented with ways to cut the noise and heat created by a high-end PC. However, that heat still has to go somewhere; usually your house. In the summer, that can lead to uncomfortable gaming sessions and, in the rare moments when the UK tops 25°C, and without space for an air-conditioning unit, the heat generated by my PC can be a real problem in my home office. One solution to this problem is to use an external radiator to dump the heat straight outside. I experimented with this idea a few years ago, and last year, I refined it with quick-release fittings, enabling me to close the window out of which…

The same charity has linked online bullying to self-harm or suicide Whatever gamers might think about the concept of ‘safe spaces’, gaming often represents a space that’s, well, safe – not the game’s content, but the act of absorbing yourself in a virtual space. It’s an escape from garbage in the real world, or a place to express yourself in a way that’s not possible elsewhere. I play for fun and escapism. Being bullied is anathema to escapism, particularly if you’re young and bullied at school, but that sort of bullying is the result of forced proximity. Online, you should be able to escape a bully quickly. But equally, one abusive commenter can just merge into the next one until online anonymous bullies are a single blobby entity with a…

We’re now seeing big improvements to AMD’s previously poor memory compatibility with its Ryzen CPUs. Most X399 motherboards now support a mix of kits with frequencies of 3000MHz and higher. However, Intel has nailed memory support with the X299 launch straightaway. The XMP profile worked on every board we used this month, with all of them heading straight into Windows at 3200MHz with four DIMMs in quad-channel mode. But what speed of memory should you choose for your X299 system? Unlike X99, the X299 chipset supports up to 2666MHz DDR4 memory as standard, although there may still be a few cheap 2133MHz kits lying around that could save you some cash. If you shop around, though, you’ll find that 3000MHz and even 3200MHz kits are often not that much more…

The block has integrated RGB lighting, as well as a flow meter We’re usually fond of Asus’ flagship motherboards, but while they’re usually dripping with features to make any enthusiast drool, very few people can afford them. Imagine, then, that both of those factors were multiplied several times over and combined in a wallet-crushing feature-fest of a motherboard. That’s essentially what Asus has done with the Maximus IX Extreme, its most feature-laden and expensive mainstream Z270 motherboard. It’s so expensive, in fact, that it outstrips the mighty X99-based ROG Rampage V Edition 10, which costs around £515 inc VAT. Why on earth would you spend over £500 on a mainstream motherboard when a board such as the Rog Strix Z270-F Gaming costs £350 less? The answer comes down to features.…

It’s near-silent when idle, and not loud when running games Alienware’s big-selling machines are often criticised for being garish, heavy and expensive, but while the firm’s latest 13in model isn’t cheap, Alienware has reined in the excess. Its exterior is hewn from anodised aluminium and magnesium alloy in black and a shade of gunmetal grey that Alienware describes, with hubris, as ‘Epic Silver’. Metal covers the lid and underside, and the lid has an illuminated Alienware logo and some subtle slashes. Matt material surrounds the keyboard, while the screen has a glossy finish. Meanwhile, the cooling gear is shoved into a large section at the rear that rises with industrial-looking vats. This design pushes the screen forwards, closer to the keyboard, making the 13.3in panel appear larger in front of…

You get seven fan headers, including a 3A water-cooling pump header Despite being the second cheapest board on test, the Asus Prime X299-A doesn’t lack many features compared with the likes of Asus’ ROG Strix X299-E Gaming or even the Prime X299 Deluxe. As with the former, there’s not a lot in the box by way of accessories – the extra £100 you’ll spend on the Prime X299 Deluxe nets you all the trimmings. However, apart from the lack of Wi-Fi, there’s really not that much missing compared with the ROG Strix X299-E Gaming. You get seven fan headers, including Asus’ 3A water-cooling pump header, and a dedicated header for all-in-one liquid cooler pumps. There are the same M.2 cooling arrangements as on the Prime X299 Deluxe, with an identical-looking…

The Wi-Fi, not only supports 802.11ac, but also the new 802.11ad 60GHz standard If you want a motherboard that adds all the bells and whistles to the latest technology, Asus’ mainstream Deluxe models have usually made great choices. You get a Molexpowered fan hub that provides four additional 4-pin fan headers and three 2-pin thermal probe headers, all of which can be controlled and accessed via the EFI or FanXpert 4 software. There are also 3-way and 2-way SLI bridges, a Thunderbolt 3 PCI-E card, along with a mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable, and two hefty aerials for the on-board Wi-Fi, which not only supports 802.11ac and previous standards, but also the new 802.11ad  60GHz standard. All these bits and bobs clearly add to the price tag, though, as the Prime…

Unlike Crucial’s MX300 drives, Intel hasn’t chosen to use this significant overcapacity to offer the 600P in  odd sizes Intel was one of the first companies to really showcase the potential of the NVMe protocol and PCI-E interface when it launched its 750 Series of SSDs. Launching just before the industry seemed to settle on M.2 as the format of the future, they were available in the rather oddball form factors of a PCI-E card and a 2.5in drive with an SFF-8643 connector. Those drives are still available and still competitive when it comes to performance, so it would be reasonable to hope that an Intel M.2 SSD, such as the 600P, would offer similar performance. However, while the Intel 600P can just about match the sequential read speeds of the…

The memory cells in Samsung’s V-NAND flash memory aren’t created in a single layer, but rather stacked layer upon layer Samsung has been ruling the solid state drive roost for years now. Thanks to it producing its own NAND flash memory, and its manufacturing techniques being ahead of everyone else in the SSD business, it has consistently produced fast, capacious and reasonably priced drives. The 960 Pro was the ultimate demonstration of this dominance when it launched last year, and it remains the flagship of the M.2 NVMe SSD market. Available in capacities of up to 2TB, the whole 960 Pro range offers blisteringly fast speeds right across the board. The maximum sequential read speed is quoted at a whopping 3,500MB/sec, while the maximum sequential write speed is claimed to…

You don’t need a vast selection of tools to get into PC modding. A few select items will enable you to do the basics, such as cutting side-panel windows, adding radiator blow holes and dealing with rigid tubing, but you’ll find that having exactly the right gear really helps with more complicated jobs. Over the next few pages, we’ll look at the gear you need to perform specific tasks, as well as more involved ones such as extensively modding your case, or even building your own one. We’ve also added a couple of water-cooling essential tools, but omitted the obvious tools such as screwdrivers, Allen key sets, files and Stanley knives, as they’re commonplace in your average toolbox. You should also wear eye protection and face masks where appropriate, and…

AMD is only beginning to gear up with Ryzen, and is about to take on Intel where it could really hurt It’s taken just over a decade, and I’ve grown some grey hairs in the intervening period, but there’s finally serious competition in the x86 CPU market again. After a shaky start in March, with concerns around game performance and memory frequency, AMD’s Ryzen 5 and 7 processors have proven to offer serious alternatives to Intel’s Core i5 and i7 processors. As a result, they’re being bought by consumers in sufficient numbers, growing AMD’s desktop CPU market share for the first time in years. This trend took a few months to emerge, as the take-up of any new desktop CPU is much slower than in the past. The performance gains…