Indice dei contenuti per February 2017 in Custom PC UK

Why would you spend several days building and painting a model tank when you could buy a ready-made one? We might get the very latest tech and gaming graphics, but being a PC enthusiast is also a right faff sometimes, especially if your rig is water-cooled. My last graphics card upgrade involved draining and flushing out all the coolant from my system, dismantling my new card’s cooler, installing a new waterblock and then refilling and leak-testing the loop. Then, as if my PC decided to just have a laugh, it refused to fire up, and I had to reinstall my old card so I could flash my motherboard’s EFI. The whole process took around half a day. YoumightwonderwhyIputmyselfthrough this ordeal,I know my console-owning mates think it’s all a little silly,…

A touch of glass Corsair has jumped headfirst into the new tempered glass trend, launching a brand-new range of Crystal-branded cases, featuring glass panels. Rather than just having a tempered glass side panel to show off the motherboard, the new Crystal cases have several glass panels, covering the front and top as well as the sides. The new Crystal 570X (pictured) has four tempered glass panels, while the cheaper Crystal 460X has two. Both cases also come with three Corsair SP120 fans with RGB LEDs as standard. The Crystal 570X also features room for 360mm and 280mm radiators, with mounts for up to six fans, plus removable fan trays in the front and top of the case to aid installation. As an extra flashy touch, the 570X also has a…

The 960 Evo drives are distinguished from their faster siblings by the use of TLC NAND SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com Last issue we looked at Samsung’s new 960 Pro drives and concluded they were amazingly fast, but overkill for most people, especially for the price. However, Samsung’s new 960 Evo looks set to provide very similar performance for a far more sensible price. Like the 960 Pro drives, the Evo drives are M.2 NVMe drives, and they’re also small, black and covered by two smart-looking stickers. Available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB versions, you miss out on the 2TB model of the 960 Pro, but you get a far lower price of entry – the 500GB 960 Evo costs £213 while the equivalent Pro drive costs around £330. However, like previous…

Pie tasters: Antony Leather, Ben Hardwidge, Edward Chester, Matthew Lambert (editor of bit-tech), Paul Goodhead, Phil Hartup and Tracy King Morrison’s Cake Shop/£1 for six Morrison’s Cake Shop mince pies are odd-looking contenders, being distinctly flatter than the rest of the pies on test, looking more like biscuits than pies. The benefit is that they’re made fresh in the shop, which results in some tasty pastry, although they won’t keep for long. The pies hold together well and taste pretty good, but there could be more filling. Costing £1 for six pies, they’re a good budget buy. Marks and Spencer All Butter/£1.80 for six These pies are as buttery as you’d expect from a pie claiming to be ‘all butter’, with a delicious pastry that has just the right texture.…

How we test There are surprisingly few 140mm AIO liquid coolers available, as many manufacturers focus on popular 120mm models. However, with more cases offering large 140mm fan mounts now, it makes more sense to opt for a 140mm cooler if your case permits it. We’ve sourced some old classics and some modern monsters for you in this month’s group test, which will suit a range of budgets. Our LGA1150 test system uses an Intel Core i7-4790K overclocked to 4.4GHz with a 1.275V vcore, a Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H motherboard and 4GB of 1600MHz Crucial Ballistix DDR3 memory. Alongside these components sit a 240GB Intel SSD 730 and an AMD Radeon HD 5770 1GB. Meanwhile, our LGA2011 system sports an Intel Core i7-3960X, overclocked to 4.2GHz using a 1.275V vcore, an MSI…

We particularly love the infinite mirror lighting effect you can achieve on the CPU block SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x; AMD: Socket AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2+, FM2, FM1 Radiator size with fans (mm) 143 x 175 x 56 (WxDxH) Fans 1 x 140mm Stated noise Up to 38dB(A) Last month’s 280mm all-in-one liquid cooler (AIO) Labs test winner was the Kraken X42’s big sibling, the humongous X62, so with a small price dip and smaller radiator, the 140mm model could well hit the sweet spot. The Kraken X42 is very compact and doesn’t have protruding pumps and reservoirs, unlike the EKWB Predator 140 and Swiftech H140-X, so it could be ideal for installation in a rear 140mm fan mount. It sports the same RGB lighting-equipped…

The middle button glows different colours depending on the DPI setting you’ve chosen SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 12,000dpi optical Buttons Eight Sniper button Yes Weight 118g Weight management Yes Extras Balanced weight system The Corsair M65 Pro packs in an aluminium frame, sniper button, RGB lighting and a clever weights system all for just £55, making it one of the best-value mice in its class in terms of features. It looks great too. There’s an aggressive, robotic vibe to the way the plastic outer sections are bolted to the inner aluminium core, with the whole back open to the elements. On the flip side, the lighting could be better implemented. There are three lighting zones: one under the scroll wheel, one between the DPI-adjustment buttons and one under the…

Remove a circular panel from the base and you can add four 5g weights SUPPLIER www.currys.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 8,200 dpi laser Buttons Eight Sniper button No Weight 118g Weight management Yes Extras None The Kone XTD is a relatively no-frills mouse, with just a couple of extras that put it above the most basic rodents. Put simply, it’s a good choice for gamers who just want the core performance of a top gaming mouse but don’t want to spend money on the extras. It’s quite large, being a little longer and wider than most of the other models on test. This shape would normally make it better suited to palm-grip users, but we found the shape of the mouse and position of the finger and thumb grips made it…

Gears of War’s tome-like Wiki is a symptom of a disease that’s reaching pandemic levels When I reviewed Gears of War 4 last month, I looked up the game’s online Wiki to do a spot of fact checking about the story’s central faction. I figured it would be straightforward, since Gears of War 4’s story is about as complicated as an episode of Timmy Time. I was wrong. It took me half an hour to find what I was seeking, because the Wiki entry for the COG (Coalition of Ordered Governments) is 12,000 words long. Twelve thousand words! That’s longer than my undergraduate dissertation. And that’s just for the COG. There’s probably enough information on Marcus Fenix to fill a trilogy of novels. Gears of War’s…

REVIEW FORMcard The ability to quickly fashion a repair – or build an entirely new product – is one of the many reasons I love Sugru, as proven by my review of the Sugru Rebel Tech Kit back in Issue 159. Formable by hand and setting to a firm yet flexible rubber, Sugru has only two major drawbacks: the 24-hour-plus curing period and its finite shelf life. FORMcard neatly solves both these problems. When the material hit crowdfunding site Indiegogo, there was a fair bit of confusion over what exactly inventor Peter Marigold was offering: £5 for a trio of thick, credit card-sized slabs of plastic is, after all, excessive, even if they come in a range of attractive colours. Marigold’s demonstration video soon cleared up any confusion: the specially…

Is your Dremel no longer cutting it? I usually use a Dremel in Custom PC’s modding guides, and indeed in my own personal modding exploits, for a few good reasons. I don’t have a large workshed to house lots of tools, particularly tools that can deal with large sections of material, plus I love the Dremel’s versatility – you can deal with sizeable lengths of aluminium and steel once you’re familiar with it, as well as performing loads of other jobs. In my experience, a Dremel can deal with lengths of material measuring up to 18in, but you invariably need to spend a long time filing and sanding the edges smooth afterwards. It also takes a long time to cut these lengths, especially if you’re dealing with steel. What are…

AMD’s Zen is reportedly having a troubled birth I am reliably told by multiple channel partners in Taiwan that we’re now mere weeks away from Intel’s Kaby Lake desktop launch.However,after getting only minor, iterative improvements to its last few chipsets, I hear the next Z-series chipset offers little more than an extra M.2 slot/U.2 port over the current Z170 chipset. Add in some higher-clocked, but samey CPUs to the Skylake ones, and the overwhelming feeling will be ‘meh’. Meanwhile, AMD’s Zen is reportedly having a troubled birth, so we’ll be impressed if it scrapes into its launch window at the beginning of 2017. Recent Zen chipset revelations have also shown us that AMD’s transition from CPUs to APUs to full system-on-chips (SoC) is almost complete, as a part of the…

Shopping excuses I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read about James and his new wooden floor being a reason for changing his PC setup. Come on, really? The urge to change is surely nothing to do with the noise reflections from the intake fans on his case. If that was true then the answer was staring him in the face – cut up a square from his old carpet and put it between the PC and his wooden floor (problem solved). Better still, get an acoustic barrier mat, cut some of it up and stick it under the PC. That setup would probably be even quieter than before he changed to a wood floor, and would be much cheaper than buying some lovely shiny kit. However, if all this…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk / CARD TESTED Asus Strix Gaming GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB (£185 inc VAT from www.scan.co.uk) SPECIFICATIONS Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Core frequency 1290MHz base clock, 1392MHz boost Pipeline 768 stream processors, 32 ROPS Memory 4GB GDDR5, 3504MHz (7008MHz effective) Memory interface 128-bit Bandwidth 112GB/sec Compatibility DirectX 12 (feature level 12.1), OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan Outputs/inputs DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2b, 2 x DVI-D DL (Asus Strix card); DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2b, DL-DVI (standard stock card) Power connections One 6-pin (Asus Strix card); no power connectors on standard stock card Size 241mm long, dual-slot (Asus Strix card); 145mm long, dual-slot (standard stock card) According to the latest Steam hardware survey, the most popular PC gaming resolution (by far) is 1,920 x 1,080, accounting for 37.47 per…

The Ventura PB60 is a strange-looking device at first glance, but it makes more sense as you use it. Functioning as a portable USB recharging pack, the PB60 stores 10,400mAh of power, which is enough to fully charge an HTC 10 from empty with a little power to spare. So far, so ordinary, but what makes the PB60 stand out is the design, which makes it ideal for camping or travelling. The power cells are stored in a flexible material with a magnet at one end, meaning it can lie flat or be rolled up, making it very easy to store in a backpack pocket, or any other luggage for that matter, although it feels a shade cumbersome to carry around on your person. LIAR LIAR ACE VENTURA SUPPLIER…

The rubber tubing is flexible, and its mount is as straightforward as they come SUPPLIER www.corsair.com SPECIFICATIONS Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x, LGA1366; AMD: Socket AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2+, FM2, FM1 Radiator size with fans (mm) 140 x 170 x 52 (WxDxH) Fans 1 x 140mm Stated noise Up to 35dB(A) Despite its lack of software control and its rather aging design, Corsair’s H90 all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler has aged relatively well, thanks in part to its competitive performance when it was released three years ago. The H90 is Corsair’s only 140mm cooler, with the likes of the H75 and H80i GT v2 both being 120mm models, although it does have a modern double 140mm-fan cooler in the form of the H115i, which picked up an Approved award…

It does its best to mimic a custom water-cooling system on a budget SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x, LGA775; AMD: Socket AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2+, FM2, FM1 Radiator size with fans (mm) 140 x 177 x 55 (WxDxH) Fans 1 x 140mm Stated noise Up to 35dB(A) Like Corsair, Raijintek hasn’t updated its range of liquid coolers for quite a while. Its Triton series has been doing the rounds for several years, and for much of that time they’ve proved very competitive too. However, last month showed that, like many older coolers, they’re beginning to show their age as other companies invest more money in R&D, releasing coolers that offer better performance, lower noise levels and funkier aesthetics. The Triton 140mm is the smaller sibling…

How we test For a long while it seemed like laser sensors were set to take over from the optical sensors found in gaming mice; however, all but one of the mice on test this month use an optical sensor. This is primarily because optical sensors are better for use on soft mouse mats, where a laser’s light can get confused by the slightly hollow structure. Laser is still a superior tech for a larger variety of surfaces, though, particularly shiny ones. Mouse shapes have also evolved, and today’s gaming mice are more comfortable than ever to hold. Each mouse design tends to be better suited to a certain grip style, but several on test do a good job for all grips. Meanwhile, RGB lighting is the latest must-have, with…

Quite simply, the G403 is the most universally comfortable mouse we’ve ever used SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 12,000dpi optical Buttons Six Sniper button No Weight 90g Weight management Yes Extras None Logitech’s current flagship gaming mouse is the G502, but it’s the newer, cheaper simple G403 that’s the far better of the two. Available for just £60, the G403 is a bare bones proper gaming mouse. It has just six buttons and next to no extra features. In fact, it’s so basic that £60 almost seems like too much to ask, but then Razer’s DeathAdder Elite (see p54) offers only one extra button and costs £30 more. The first of this mouse’s assets that makes it so good is its shape. It’s shaped very similarly to the DeathAdder Elite,…

The OLED display can show animated GIFs, as well as in-game information SUPPLIER www.currys.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 16,000dpi optical Buttons Seven Sniper button Yes Weight 135g Weight management Yes Extras Haptic feedback, modular design The SteelSeries Rival 700 is packed with features but can be bought in some shops for just £60, while many shops are charging £80, making it perhaps the mouse bargain of the moment. For a start, the Rival 700 is modular. You can swap out the top plate, replacing the soft-touch mottled grey one with a variety of optional alternatives that have different finishes and colours. You can also tear out the whole optical sensor assembly and add in a laser sensor instead. The PixArt PMW3360 optical sensor is more advanced in terms of resolution (16,000dpi),…

Without these types of standards, we would see a return to the chaotic computing of the 1980s Industry standards such as PCI-E, USB and ATX are the foundation of what has kept the PC alive and, more importantly, still relevant for close to four decades. Without these types of standards, we would see a return to the chaotic computing of the 1980s, with competing companies producing incompatible hardware and software at inflated prices, due to the cost of every company developing its own unique designs. However, as I recently discovered when trying to connect two new devices to my PC, not every standard is as black and white as you’d think. The problem I’ve discovered is that many modern USB 3 devices don’t work with older USB 3 controllers, with…

Does this story neatly fit my bias? If yes, be suspicious Fake news is in the news and it’s our fault. You, me, someone we know. Facts have become disposable, and anything can be true if you want it to be true. It isn’t new, although it’s worse now. In 1993, Lisa Holst, a columnist for PC Professional, wrote an article about how easily fake facts are spread. To prove her point,she created a list of plausible-sounding but completely fake ‘facts’ from various reference books on hoaxes, one of which was that the average person swallows eight spiders per year. Holst’s point was proven a billionfold when her list of fake facts, and in particular, the spider statistic, became one of the most shared email lies on the Internet. The…

There are additional mounting points to install your own 3D-printed objects SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z170 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3466MHz) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, one 1x PCI-E 3 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel I219-V Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 40–650MHz, CPU multiplier 8-83x; max voltages, CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V Ports U.2, 2 x M.2 (4x PCI-E 3 and SATA 6Gbps support), 6 x SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.1 Type-C, USB 3.1 Type-A, 6 x USB 3 (2 via header), 8 x USB 2 (6 via header), Gigabit Ethernet, audio out, line in, mic, optical S/PDIF out, HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort, DVI-D, VGA Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 Creating your own objects by 3D-printing them can be fun as…

The Intel Core i7-6820HK is overclocked to a whopping 4GHz SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS CPU 4GHz Intel Core i7-6820HK Memory 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Screen 17.3in 2,560 x 1,440 Nvidia G-Sync IPS Storage 512GB Toshiba XG3 NVMe M.2 SSD, 1TB hard disk Networking Killer Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi Weight 3.2kg Ports 3 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x audio, SD card slot, HDMI, mini-DisplayPort Dimensions (mm) 428 x 305 x 25 (WxDxH) Operating system Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Warranty One year parts and labour return to base Aorus’ X7 v6 looks stunning, and it arrives with its CPU and GPU both overclocked. It’s an ambitious design. The mobile GTX 1070’s core runs at 1442MHz at stock speed, but the X7…

SUPPLIER www.watercoolinguk.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x; AMD: optional upgrade kit required Radiator size with fans (mm) 142 x 195 x 68 (WxDxH) Fans 1 x 140mm Stated noise Up to 32dB(A) The EK-XLC Predator 240 blitzed our cooling charts when we tested it, so we had big expectations from its smaller 140mm sibling. Spending over £188 inc VAT on a 140mm all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler might seem over the top, and you’d be right, but the Predator 140 isn’t your average AIO liquid cooler. It has a built-in quick disconnect fitting, which enables you to plug in one of EKWB’s GPU add-on waterblocks without needing to drain the loop. There’s a pre-fill fee of €30, but this setup means that any GPU waterblock can be bought to…

It’s expandable, with its threads conforming to the usual G1/4in standard SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x; AMD: Socket AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2+, FM2, FM1 Radiator size with fans (mm) 140 x 150 x 115 (WxDxH) Fans 1 x 140mm Stated noise Up to 28.8dB(A) Like EKWB, Swiftech made a name for itself in custom water cooling before entering the world of all-in-one (AIO) liquid coolers. It makes its own reservoirs, waterblocks and radiators and even the odd combined pump and waterblock too. The H140-X is bit of a bargain, though, as it sports a similar specification to the EKWB Predator 140, but at half the price. For starters, it has an integrated pump, which appears to be a very low-power version of the Laing DDC…

You can make your own alternative sides, as Cooler Master provides the 3D printer files SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com   SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 12,000dpi optical Buttons Eight Sniper button No Weight 127g Weight management No Extras Modular design Cooler Master’s MasterMouse Pro L is the cheapest mouse on test, and in many ways it shows, but it still has a few tricks up its sleeve, including a fully modular outer casing and RGB lighting. Its big standout feature is that the whole top plate and the two sides can be removed and swapped for alternative ones that are provided in the box. The top plate, which unscrews from the underside, offers a choice of a longer 130mm design for palm-grip users and a shorter 125mm one for fingertip users. Meanwhile, the sides…

The Omron switches used in the top two buttons have an astonishing lifetime of 50 million clicks SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 16,000dpi optical Buttons Seven Sniper button No Weight 105g Weight management No Extras None Razer has long gotten away with charging slightly higher prices than most of its competitors, partly thanks to brand loyalty,, but also thanks to some fantastic product design. However, the DeathAdder Elite pushes that premium right to the limit. The company wants £90 for its latest flagship gaming mouse, yet it offers a comparatively basic feature set for a modern mouse. Joining its admittedly very capable sensor and processing capabilities are just seven buttons and no extra features. There are no weight systems, adjustable grips or extra buttons. The only modern extra feature is…

Build a quiet performance PC The parts you’ll need to build a very quiet PC that doesn’t compromise on performance. Not only does this machine feature an Intel Skylake CPU and an Nvidia Pascal GPU, but it also makes use of a massive CPU heatsink and a fanless PSU to eliminate fan noise, while the graphics card fans only spin up under heavy loads. You can see our full guide to building this PC on p84 . Build a budget gaming PC The parts you’ll need to build a budget machine capable of playing the latest games at decent settings on a 1080p monitor. The machine has a discrete graphics card, a Skylake dual-core CPU and DDR4 memory. The ASRock Extreme4 motherboard is also capable of base clock overclocking…

While we usually try to assemble carefully balanced systems that give you the best bang per buck on a limited budget, if you want the best gear that money can buy, all wrapped up in a lustworthy package, then you’ll need to spend some more serious money, and dedicate serious time and thought as to how you’re going to assemble your future pride and joy. This month we’ve indulged in a little lavishness, and selected some of the most-wanted and drooled-over components, and built a PC that everyone on the Custom PC team would aspire to own. We’ve opted for two GTX 1080 cards in SLI, along with the king of motherboards and a 6-core CPU – all water-cooled and overclocked, of course. We’ve placed all the hardware in one…

Earlier this year, the archaeological world was rocked by news that a Canadian 14-year-old had discovered a lost Mayan City in Mexico. William Gadoury came up with a theory that the Mayans built their cities and pyramids on sites chosen according to the civilisation’s star constellations. While presenting his claims at a scientific conference in Quebec, Gadoury was overheard by members of the Canadian Space Agency.Intrigued,the CSA turned one of its satellites normally used for tracking sea-ice to the coordinates postulated by Gadoury. To the CSA’s astonishment, the images appeared to show man-made structures, straight lines and flat squares highly suggestive of a Mayan pyramid. For a few days,it appeared Gadoury had made the most significant archaeological discovery of the century. However, several archaeologists were doubtful about the claim, believing…

Gimp We use Gimp to open and edit large images. Unlike our previous Gimp test, this one uses more than one CPU core, although it’s still more sensitive to clock speed increases than more CPU cores. Handbrake H.264 video encoding Our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake H.264 video encoding test takes full advantage of many CPU cores, pushing them to 100 per cent load. LuxMark OpenCL This GPU compute test is the only synthetic part of our suite, although the renderer is based on the real LuxRender physically based rendering software. As 3D rendering is a specific workload that not everyone will use, and because OpenCL support isn’t standard in most software, this section is given just a quarter of the weighting of the other tests in the final score. Heavy multi-tasking…

MILESTONES THIS MONTH TOP 20 OVERALL TOP 20 PRODUCERS WHAT IS FOLDING? Folding@home uses the spare processing cycles from your PC’s CPU and graphics cards for medical research. You can download the client from http://folding.stanford.edu and our team’s ID is 35947. Once you pass a significant milestone, you’ll get your name in the mag. You can also discuss folding with us and other readers online at the www.bit-tech.net forums.…