Indice dei contenuti per August 2017 in Custom PC UK

What we didn’t expect was the total annihilation of Intel’s Core i3 and Core i5 processors Let’s do a CPU Labs! It feels like we haven’t done one since the Norman invasion, and now there’s some good competition, so it won’t just look like an Intel catalogue. It did indeed throw up some surprising results. So surprising, in fact, that we had to re-write various chunks of the magazine afterwards, including a complete revamp of the Elite list. I’ll explain the Elite changes in a minute, but I firstly want to discuss Ryzen’s impact. Before we started work on this issue, we knew that Ryzen 7 had knocked Intel’s Broadwell-E chips for six, and we’d had a taster of Ryzen 5, courtesy of the 1600X. I discussed the potential for…

Corsair unveils spill-resistant keyboard Cleaning out crumbs, dust and drink stains from under your keys to make them work again could become an activity of the past if Corsair’s latest idea catches on. The company claims that its new K68 mechanical gaming keyboard is dust and spill resistant, to an IP32 rating, meaning it’s officially protected from water if it’s sprayed less than 15 degrees from a vertical standpoint. All of the K68’s mechanical Cherry MX Red switches have individual silicon rubber shields, enabling liquids to flow straight past them, and keep any solid gubbins out of the switches too. The keys also feature a choice of red or blue backlighting. The Corsair K68 is available now for £99 inc VAT. Nvidia enables thin gaming laptops We’ve seen quite a…

It was inaudible from 12in away at any setting below full speed Unlike many all-in-one liquid coolers, Fractal’s Celsius S24 is expandable with the same G1/4in fittings used with custom water-cooling hardware, so you could add your own reservoir or GPU waterblock. Its pump is also PWM-controlled, and if you decide to add more components to the loop, both the radiator and waterblock are made from copper, so there’s no chance of galvanic corrosion appearing as a result of mixed metals. It employs a similar setup to EKWB’s Predator coolers, with a radiator-based fan hub to minimise cable clutter. The S24’s two 120mm GP-12 fans connect straight to the hub, so there’s no need to use any motherboard fan headers for them. That just leaves the pump cable, which connects…

Surprisingly, that 240Hz refresh rate does make a  difference SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk If you thought 144Hz was a high refresh rate then the Asus ROG Swift PG258Q points and laughs at you - its brand-new 25in 1080p TN LCD panel can refresh at a super-fast rate of 240Hz. While we’ve seen 165Hz and even 180Hz monitors before, this jump is the first real step-change since the industry settled on 144Hz being the standard for gaming displays. Of course, the key question is whether moving to  240Hz will have the same benefit as moving from 60Hz to 144Hz, or if it’s a case of diminishing returns. But let’s start by running through everything else this display has to offer. For a start, it packs in loads of features. It supports Nvidia…

SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3.5GHz (3.7GHz Precision Boost, 200MHz XFR) Core architecture Zen Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 4 x physical (8 threads) Simultaneous MultiThreading Yes Cache 16MB L3 cache, 4 x 512KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2667MHz Packaging AMD Socket AM4 Thermal design power (TDP) 65W Features Simultaneous MultiThreading, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, AMD Virtualisation Technology, MMX, AMD 64, AES, Idle states Our concerns over AMD’s pricing per core come to a head with the Ryzen 5 1500X; at £170 inc VAT, it costs only £25 less than the excellent Ryzen 5 1600, which has two more cores and four more threads. This might make the choice to buy the 1600 look like a  no-brainer, and in some ways that’s  true, but…

SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3.8GHz (4.2GHz turbo) Core architecture Kaby Lake Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 4 x physical (4 threads) Hyper-Threading No Cache 6MB L3 cache, 4 x 256KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2400MHz Packaging LGA1151 Thermal design power (TDP) 91W Features Turbo Boost, Virtualization (VT-x), Virtualization for Directed I/O (VT-d), VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT), Intel 64, Idle States, Enhanced SpeedStep, Smart Response, Intel AES If you want an overclocked system and have a reasonable budget, then the go-to CPUs for the past decade have been Intel’s K-series Core i5 chips. The current model is the Core i5-7600K, which uses Intel’s Kaby Lake 14nm architecture. Fast-forward to 2017, though, and there are some new kids on the block that sport more…

How we test The gaming monitor market has exploded recently, thanks to the arrival of adaptive refresh rates, super-wide and curved LCD panels, plus IPS displays with high refresh rates. Most of these features don’t come for free, though, putting many gaming monitors out of the price range of many people. What’s more, if you’re after pure gaming performance on a  tight budget, some of those features are superfluous to your requirements. Instead, a modest-sized panel with a relatively low resolution, but a fast 144Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time, is the key. One feature that does come for free, however, is AMD’s adaptive sync technology FreeSync. It enables your monitor to synchronise its refresh rate with your gaming frame rate, eliminating stuttering and tearing artefacts. In contrast, monitors with…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk Since it bought the gaming brand Zowie, BenQ has set about re-releasing almost its entire gaming monitor range with a few added Zowie tweaks. In several instances, these revisions have meant little more than spraying a Zowie logo onto the monitor and adding a new box, and such is the case with the BenQ XL2411. This monitor can trace its roots back to the XL2411T, a display that was released in 2013. It looks identical and has nearly the same feature set. This situation is evident in several areas, the most obvious of which is the slightly dated design. The bezel is chunky by modern standards, and although the extended section on the right that houses the OSD buttons has a  fun jauntiness to it, the overall…

Crusader Kings II proved that strategy gaming could be about individual people Character is the most important element of great storytelling. You can have a thrilling, twisty-turning plot, but if your characters are one-dimensional mannequins then your story will be a disposable potboiler. Similarly, a group of strong enough characters can form the entire basis of a plot, through forming relationships, enmities and bouncing off one another in interesting ways. That’s why so many games struggle with storytelling. Most games focus on giving you a clear plot to follow, while characters are often considered second, if at all. They’re the hardest part of game design to do well. They need to be well written, and modelled, animated, voiced and implemented in a way that the player can get to know…

Developed by four-man studio Big Robot, The Signal from Tölva is a remarkably ambitious open-world shooter, which aims to produce emergent combat situations inspired by Stalker: Shadow of  Chernobyl, but on a beautifully painted alien planet. The premise is intriguing, if a touch convoluted. You play a  client of an interstellar information broker, seeking the source of a mysterious signal on the planet Tölva, which is also the site of a ground war between three factions of robots. The broker arranges for you to hack into one of these drone armies, known as the Surveyors, so you can seek out the signal for yourself. However, the signal is garbled by noise emitting from many other strange objects on the planet, which you must investigate one by one, while dealing with…

When Elite Dangerous launched in December 2014, it supported an engine capable of rendering a procedurally generated galaxy populated by billions of star systems. With the aid of its Stellar Forge technology, these systems were simulated according to realistic physics, covering everything from the age and composition of stars to how the light from individual suns illuminates specific celestial spheres. Three years on, and much has changed at Frontier Developments. Not only has Elite Dangerous received a season of expansions that dramatically alter both the game and the underlying tech, but the Cambridge studio has released a new game with the Cobra engine that couldn’t be more different from its distinguished space simulator. Both projects necessitated the introduction of new features to Cobra – an interesting challenge considering just how…

Kate Stark was a bartender when she decided she wanted to turn her love of games into a living. For over a decade, she had been involved with the charity fundraising organisation Desert Bus for Hope. Created by the comedy troupe LoadingReadyRun, Desert Bus for Hope involves playing marathon sessions of the game Desert Bus, often regarded as the dullest video game ever made. It was through Desert Bus for Hope that Stark became acquainted with Twitch, the social media platform that enables users to stream live video of themselves to a worldwide audience. ‘I found this incredible community of kind, caring and compassionate people,’ Stark says, ‘so I decided after many years of doing this, and having friends and family streaming as well, that I would start up my…

Corsair K70 LUX RGB keyboard with your choice of switches TOTAL VALUE £160 inc VAT / MANUFACTURER www.corsair.com The K70 LUX RGB is a part of Corsair’s LUX flagship line of gaming keyboards, featuring Cherry MX key switches backed by a lightweight, durable aluminium frame and dynamic, multi-colour lighting. The USB pass-through port is positioned for uninterrupted gameplay and ready for your mouse or wireless headset adaptor. You can also harness the power of CUE for sophisticated macro programming and dramatic lighting effects and animations. Meanwhile, 100 per cent anti-ghosting with full key rollover on USB helps to ensure accuracy, so every keystroke translates directly into accurate gameplay. The contoured, textured FPS and MOBA keycap sets keep you in control, while the Cherry MX key switches give you a linear…

Intel X299 and Core i9 Intel announced its new Core i9 range of LGA-2066 socket CPUs at Computex, including the massive 18-core Core i9-7980XE, along with variants sporting ten,  12, 14 and 16 cores. In case you were wondering, Socket LGA2066 is compatible with all LGA2011-era coolers, although your cooler will need enough headroom for the chips’ higher thermal design power (TDP). Several supporting X299 motherboards were on show too, featuring all flavours of RGB bling. Asus launched a bevy of boards, including Prime (X299-A and Deluxe), Rampage VI (Apex and Extreme), Strix -E and TUF  Mark 1 and 2, while Gigabyte announced an X299 Gaming range. MSI also showed its X299 Gaming Pro with a carbon fibre effect, and I found the only public showing of the Gigabyte X299…

Upgrading from a Core 2 Quad Q6600 It’s done. I’ve finally taken the leap and upgraded my wife’s Core 2 Quad Q6600 to a brand new multi-threaded machine. In all honesty, I’m amazed that the Q6600 has lasted this long. Its longevity is in no small part due to Custom PC, as I was inspired and got all the information I needed for that very build when I was a subscriber back in 2008. Fast forward to now and I’m a subscriber again, as it’s your advice and honest reviews that I’ve come to trust. The reason for the upgrade is because my wife, Selina, is an animation director and switches from Adobe Animate to After Effects on a regular basis. Both pieces of software are demanding but have very…

We were immediately impressed by the cooling Asus’ new ROG Strix B350-F Gaming uses AMD’s B350 chipset, supporting the company’s new Ryzen processors, complete with overclocking, but at a cheaper price than X370 boards. In fact, the Strix B350-F Gaming retails for a similar price to Gigabyte’s excellent AB350-Gaming 3, which picked up an award in our recent Socket AM4 motherboard Labs test (see Issue165, p51). We were immediately impressed by the cooling on the Asus board’s PCB – it’s much more substantial than the Gigabyte board’s cooling, which only has a heatsink over one of the banks of CPU power circuitry. There’s an extra fan header too, with four headers located around the CPU socket, so powering dual-fan CPU coolers and case fans will be easy. There’s also a dedicated…

MOUSE PAD SteelSeries QCK Prism Mouse Pad / £64.99 inc VAT Given a price that would be more usual for a decent gaming mouse, rather than a mouse pad, expectations of the SteelSeries Prism mouse pad have to be high. In practical terms, the Prism measures 357 x 292 x 9mm, which is a pretty standard size, but that’s where the ‘standard’ description ends. There are two main elements –the base and the surfaces. The Prism has a reversible surface – one side is cloth and the other is smooth polymer. That’s a neat feature, with the cloth being better for precision, and the polymer for speed, and both of them are good. The base of the Prism is where the magic happens, however. It isn’t only rock solid, but…

How we test It’s been over half a decade since our last CPU group test, simply because AMD has been mainly playing catch-up since the launch of Intel’s Core architecture in 2006. In fact, the Phenom and FX CPUs that AMD churned out over the past ten years were generally poor, particularly in terms of instructions per clock, efficiency and single-threaded performance. Outside of a few multi-threaded benchmarks, Intel’s CPUs were massively faster, and AMD’s CPUs were also often very hot-running and power-hungry, especially when overclocked. But now that’s all changed with the introduction of AMD’s Ryzen CPU line-up. It’s had a rather bumpy ride at launch, as so much software is Intel-focused at the moment, plus there were stability and compatibility issues. However, Ryzen is now shaping up to…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 4.2GHz Core architecture Kaby Lake Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 2 x physical (4 threads) Hyper-Threading Yes Cache 4MB L3 cache, 2 x 256KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2400MHz Packaging LGA1151 Thermal design power (TDP) 60W Features Hyper-Threading, Virtualization (VT-x), Virtualization for Directed I/O (VT-d), VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT), Intel 64, Idle States, Enhanced SpeedStep, Smart Response, Intel AES Hopes were raised and then rather dashed when Intel first revealed its overclockable Core i3-7350K. Intel usually fences off its unlocked multipliers behind Core i5 and Core i7 K-series models, with some exceptions such as the Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition, meaning that overclockers had to spend more money to get a tweakable CPU. The G3258 was also lacking in…

SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3.6GHz (4GHz Precision Boost, 100MHz XFR) Core architecture Zen Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 6 x physical (12 threads) Simultaneous MultiThreading Yes Cache 16MB L3 cache, 6 x 512KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2667MHz Packaging AMD Socket AM4 Thermal design power (TDP) 95W Features Simultaneous MultiThreading, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, AMD Virtualisation Technology, MMX, AMD 64, AES, Idle states We were confused when we saw just how many Ryzen CPUs AMD was releasing, especially as many of them seemed to have very similar specifications. In addition, the fact they could all overclock meant the non-X-edition parts were singled out as potential bargains, offering the same cache and core counts for less money. The Ryzen 5 1600X costs £45 more than…

The stand offers height, tilt, rotation and pivot adjustment SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk The FreeSync-equipped AOC G2460PF and G-sync-touting AOC G2460PG perfectly exemplify the difference between FreeSync and G-Sync monitors. They’re all but identical, yet one costs £230 while the other costs £390. The G2460PG does also include Nvidia’s Ultra Low  Motion Blur (ULMB) technology and 3D Vision, but they’re very similar in terms of panel hardware. In fact, even when compared with the other non-G-Sync monitors on test this month, the AOC looks like good value for money. It’s among the cheapest panels in the Labs, yet it has a comprehensive set of features. Joining the 1080p TN panel is an ample selection of connections. For video output, there’s DisplayPort, DVI and HDMI, while for audio, you get built-in 2W…

Gaming performance is consistently good with FreeSync enabled  at 120Hz SUPPLIER www.novatech.co.uk Once the king of CRT monitors, Iiyama has struggled since LCD displays took over the market. However, the snappily titled G-Master GB2488HSU-B3 is in some ways a return to form. For a start, it’s a  decent-looking monitor. The silver of the stand is a little too reflective, but otherwise, the simple black and silver colour scheme makes the G-Master look better than several of the other monitors on test. You also get plenty of features. The stand can rotate and tilt, while also offering height adjustment and the screen can be pivoted by  90 degrees. The movements are reasonably smooth too, and the base stays secure, so you don’t need to support it while moving the screen.…

There can be no question now, Arkane Studios aspires to be a modern-day Looking Glass. Where Dishonored was Arkane’s reimagining of Thief, Prey is the studio’s reinterpretation of the almighty System Shock. It’s a sci-fi horror RPG with open-ended level design, deep emergent systems and a fearsome alien menace. Like System Shock, it’s intimidating and, at times, unforgiving, but learning to master its complex and dangerous environment is really satisfying. Forget the 2006 shooter of the same name; aside from featuring aliens, Arkane’s Prey has nothing to do with it. Instead, Prey is set aboard the space station Talos 1, which orbits the moon in the year 2032. Built by the TranStar corporation, Talos 1 is the centre for TranStar’s advanced and quasi-legal scientific research. You play Morgan Yu, a scientist…

The original Outlast was one of the most frightening horror games we’ve seen, with dynamic hide-and-seek mechanics seeing you evading psychopaths in an abandoned asylum. It balanced grisly jump-scares with emergent play, placing the onus on the player to stay alive in its elaborately constructed haunted house. Outlast II seeks to up the ante, increasing the intensity and doubling the shock value. You investigate the murder of a woman in a remote part of the Arizona desert, but the trail leads you into the middle of a bloody battle between two backwater Christian cults. One is an uber-righteous evangelical commune that believes the birth of the Antichrist can only be prevented by murdering their children; the other is a heretical cult seeking to trigger the apocalypse. If you think it already…

Unlike some members of the Custom PC crew, I can’t claim to be very knowledgeable about Rick and Morty. I know it’s an animated series for adults on Adult Swim, but that’s about it. I’ve never watched it. The recently released VR game, Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rickality, was my introduction to the series. What’s struck me most about Virtual Rickality, though, isn’t the game, but the impression it’s made on the wider VR community. It launched in the same week as Batman: Arkham VR and the excellent James Bond simulator I Expect You to Die, but Virtual Rickality seems to have cut through the noise more efficiently than those two games. Everyone was talking about it and it’s been a huge success. Or so it seems. The big…

TUTORIAL GCC optimisation In the world of enthusiast computing, it’s unusual to find anyone who hasn’t overclocked their system. There’s another way to get a  free performance increase from your applications, though, and in some cases it can have a dramatic effect: compiler optimisation. To demonstrate the performance gain from compiler optimisation, we’re going to need three items: an operating system with a readily accessible toolchain – in this case Ubuntu Linux; a compiler – in this case the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) that’s preinstalled with Ubuntu; and software to compile – again, in this case Google’s CPUheavy Guetzli JPEG compression tool (https://is.gd/guetzli). Guetzli is a natural choice for this; it’s open source, it’s a relatively simple program and it can eat up CPU time. Designed to cut the size…

Some of them even had Warcraftthemed weddings Are you lonely? Those words could be the opening to an agony aunt column, some terrible dating advice or hokey self-help. But it isn’t. It’s the opening to a piece that genuinely questions whether gamers are lonely and, possibly more importantly, whether that’s a worthwhile question to ask. One of the reasons gamer tropes are heavily associated with loneliness is that gamers can appear to be socially isolated. Headset on, door closed. Punchlines heavily rely on the stereotype of basement-dwelling, socially inept nerds. The stereotype is sometimes even true, but even when it’s untrue its existence speaks to a strange superiority of hobbies; that going to the pub or playing football with friends is somehow better than gaming. It’s an attitude that essentially…

As with AMD’s Radeon RX 580 (see Issue 166, p23), the Radeon RX 570 might have a new name, but it isn’t a new GPU. It’s based on the same Polaris architecture found in its immediate predecessor, the Radeon RX 470, but has the benefits of a tweaked FinFET 14nm manufacturing process, which enables AMD to reliably increase its clock speed further. While the basic underlying chip architecture is basically the same, however, these tweaks were enough to propel the RX 580 into the mid-range GPU winning spot last month. Sometimes all a GPU needs is a little tweaking and some faster clock speeds to push it in front of the competition, but is the same true of the RX 570? The RX 570 does indeed offer a healthy clock frequency…

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GPU is ideal for 1080p gaming With a price tag of just £1,137 inc VAT, MSI’s GE72 7RE Apache Pro is a breath of fresh air among the pricier laptops we’ve reviewed recently, and it balances its affordable price with solid components. The key component is the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. It’s one of Nvidia’s more modest Pascal GPUs, but don’t discount its 1080p abilities: it has 768 stream processors and 4GB of GDDR5 memory too. The GPU is bolstered by a Core i7-7700HQ CPU, with four Hyper-Threaded cores and a 2.8GHz frequency. Most games don’t need all that multi-threading power, but they’ll enable the MSI to handle heavily multi-threaded software, such as video editing packages. There’s also a solid 16GB stack of 2400MHz DDR4…

Despite not being an X-edition CPU, we managed to overclock the 1400 to 4GHz SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3.2GHz (3.4GHz Precision Boost, 50MHz XFR) Core architecture Zen Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 4 x physical (8 threads) Simultaneous MultiThreading Yes Cache 8MB L3 cache, 4 x 512KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2667MHz Packaging AMD Socket AM4 Thermal design power (TDP) 65W Features Simultaneous MultiThreading, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, AMD Virtualisation Technology, MMX, AMD 64, AES, Idle states An overclockable quad-core for £150 sounds like a dream come true, or maybe just a nostalgic look back to 2009 when the Core i5-750 was doing the rounds, but the Ryzen 5 1400 is just that. Not only does it offer four physical cores for £20…

SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 3.2GHz (3.6GHz Precision Boost, 50MHz XFR) Core architecture Zen Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 6 x physical (12 threads) Simultaneous MultiThreading Yes Cache 16MB L3 cache, 6 x 512KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2667MHz Packaging AMD Socket AM4 Thermal design power (TDP) 65W Features Simultaneous MultiThreading, Precision Boost, Extended Frequency Range, AMD Virtualisation Technology, MMX, AMD 64, AES, Idle states While the Ryzen 5 1600X takes the crown as the most powerful Ryzen 5 CPU, the sheer number of Ryzen CPUs on offer means there are plenty of sweet spots. The best choice depends on your needs, of course, and whether you’ll be overclocking, although all Ryzen CPUs sport unlocked multipliers so there’s less of a distinction here compared with…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Frequency 4.2GHz (4.5GHz turbo) Core architecture Kaby Lake Manufacturing process 14nm Number of cores 4 x physical (8 threads) Hyper-Threading Yes Cache 8MB L3 cache, 4 x 256KB L2 cache Memory controller Dual-channel DDR4, up to 2400MHz Packaging LGA1151 Thermal design power (TDP) 91W Features Hyper-Threading, Turbo Boost, Virtualization (VT-x), Virtualization for Directed I/O (VT-d), VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT), Intel 64, Idle States, Enhanced SpeedStep, Smart Response, Intel AES The Core i7-7700K is the fastest Intel CPU you can buy before leaving the mainstream and heading for the realm of high-end desktop (HEDT) LGA2011 models, such as the Core i7-6850K, which also require costly X99 motherboards and use quad-channel memory. The Core i7-7700K is also the clock speed king, with stock-speed frequencies hitting a lofty…

The low-profile bezel gives the MG248Q a premium look and feel SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk The Asus MG248Q is the most expensive monitor on test this month, and it matches its price with a low-profile bezel, which instantly gives this monitor a more premium feel over the other displays on test. This premium feel also carries over to the overall design. It’s not quite at the level of truly premium monitors, but there are little touches here and there that make a difference. The rear of the monitor has a circuitry pattern on it, for example, which manages to look just the right side of fun, rather than cheesy, while the base and stand continue the muted, angular theme to great effect. The stand also offers a  full range of adjustments,…

Colour temperature, gamma and contrast are all spot on SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com ViewSonic isn’t perhaps the first name that springs to mind when it comes to gaming monitors, but the XG2401 packs all the goodies into its shell. Like the other monitors on test this month, it  uses a 24in TN panel with a 1080p resolution, and it’s also joined by an adjustable  stand, FreeSync support and plenty of connection options. When it comes to looks, though, the XG2401 doesn’t make the best first impression. Its bezels are fairly chunky by modern standards, and the bottom one that accommodates the on-screen display (OSD) controls is considerably wider than most bezels we see now. Add in the token red stripes on the stand and base, and you end up with a…

STRAFE is a classic example of a game sidestepping before it can walk. This fast-paced, gleefully gory FPS is inspired by the hallmark shooters of the 1990s – Doom, Quake, Half-Life and so on. It appears to have it all: chunky visuals, mazy levels, scores of enemies and enough blood to fill a whole decade’s worth of shooters. But tragically, it makes a basic and crucial error – its guns are utterly dreadful. Although STRAFE may look like it stepped out of a time machine from 1996, it’s structurally surprisingly modern. STRAFE is designed as a mashup between a straightforward shooter and a roguelike, which means its levels are randomly generated each time you play, and if you die, you go right back to the start. Visually, STRAFE looks superb. Pixel…

Our good pals at Iiyama are offering a fantastic prize for a lucky Custom PC reader this month, with a 27in FreeSync gaming monitor up for grabs. Iiyama G-Master Red Eagle GB2760QSU-B1 Whether you’re already a hardcore gamer, or if you’re aiming to be one, the 27in G-Master GB2760QSU-B1, known as Red Eagle, provides the competitive edge you need to unleash your full gaming potential. Armed with FreeSync technology, a 144Hz refresh rate and a blistering 1ms response time, you can make split-second decisions and forget about ghosting effects or smearing issues. Meanwhile, the WQHD (2,560 x 1,440) display offers 77 per cent more on-screen pixels than a standard 1,920 x 1,080 full HD  monitor. Then there’s the ability to adjust  brightness and dark shades with the Black Tuner, delivering great…

Virtual Rickality bears a striking similarity to Job Simulator, which isn’t surprising given that both titles were created by Owlchemy Labs. Both games charge you with completing mostly menial tasks, and the real appeal lies in going off-mission to explore the environment. In Virtual Rickality, that means exploring Rick’s garage, which is stuffed with enough gizmos to keep you rummaging for hours. Probably two hours. You get a chance to explore outside the garage too, but most of the time you’re doing laundry and repairing engines. It’s a proven design. VR does object-oriented interactions well, but the characters are the main draw and it’s unlikely this game will hold anyone’s attention long without them. That means your mileage will vary based on your love of the show. Personally, I thought…

Who needs power buttons? Last month, SilverStone forwarded me a few of its latest press releases. Most of them covered the usual plethora of PCI-E cards and other accessories, such as SATA cables, that ended up in my deleted items folder fairly quickly. However, a couple of items caught my eye. The first one was an M.2 thermal pad, which I’ll discuss in a minute. The other was its ES02-USB wireless computer controller. If your PC is hidden under a desk, or several feet away from your chair – you’ll know that reaching for the power button can be a right pain. If you’ve modded your case, there’s another reason the power button might be an issue; you might not want it at all, as it sticks out in the middle…

In the high-end CPU market at least, AMD diminished into almost  irrelevance Although this is the 167th publicly published issue of Custom PC, did you know that there are actually 168 issues of the mag? Dennis produced a prototype Issue 0 to show to focus groups and potential advertisers before going ahead with the launch, back in 2003. In the intervening 14 years, the PC market and the players within it have changed significantly. For instance, the early issues of Custom PC were dominated by CPU reviews; with AMD’s then new K8 architecture running circles around Intel’s bloated Netburst architecture. That was big news then, as the CPU was far more important than now, with games and content creation applications still requiring a processor with high IPC (instructions per clock).…