Indice dei contenuti per February 2018 in Custom PC UK

In the 1980s, Intel and AMD collaborated on several products at the request of IBM A new exciting line-up of mobile CPUs with integrated AMD Radeon graphics has just been announced (see p14), but they’re not Ryzen APUs. In fact, the CPUs are made by Intel. Yep, Intel. In a move that’s taken the tech business by surprise, Intel and AMD have decided to put aside their differences and work on a product together. The result is a very interesting package that has the potential to really change mobile PC gaming. AMD’s original APUs had the potential to being proper gaming graphics to thin and light laptops, but the company’s CPU architecture at the time was so inefficient, in terms of heat, power consumption and performance, that the end results weren’t…

We managed to overclock it to 4.8GHz with a vcore of 1.28V SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk There’s a plethora of high-end desktop (HEDT) models for Intel’s X299 platform now, with the company aiming squarely at AMD’s Ryzen 7 and Threadripper CPUs. However, Intel is also in a tricky situation, given that several mainstream LGA1151-v2 processors now have the same core counts as some of its HEDT LGA2066 processors. The Core i7-7800X is in that grey area, with six cores and 12 threads – exactly the same specifications as the new Core i7-8700K. The latter costs around £400 inc VAT, although low stock levels continue to dog Intel with all its Coffee Lake CPUs. However, the Core i7-7800X costs a far more reasonable £320 inc VAT, which is barely any more than…

The M.2 heatsink cut our test SSD’s temperature by 10°C SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com While we’re still mourning the loss of Asus’ ROG Impact-series mini-ITX motherboards, there’s still plenty of get excited about with its new ROG Strix boards, and this mini-ITX X370 board looks particularly interesting. Aside from the premium chipset, the stand-out features are a combined board for the Realtek ALC 1220 audio codec, which also provides an M.2 slot with a large heatsink on top. The heatsink still stands shorter than low-profile memory, so there should be no issues with large CPU coolers. There’s another M.2 slot on the underside of the PCB too, although only the top slot supports SATA-based M.2 SSDs, with both slots also supporting PCI-E-based M.2 SSDs. That’s a bit of a shame; if…

The minimums blazed beyond 80fps in other games SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk The Aorus X9 is outrageous. It’s the first laptop we’ve seen with two GTX 1070 GPUs overclocked from 1442MHz to 1492MHz, and Gigabyte claims it’s the slimmest notebook to ever include these GPUs. It’s made from aluminium, inspired by super-cars and it has two subwoofers, four fans and loads of RGB LEDs. The keyboard and power button have LEDs, and a bar of lights above the power button indicate temperatures, battery level, speaker volume and more, plus you can program them with your own colours. There are RGB LED bars in the front, two more in the rear vents, and a final light in the lid’s Aorus logo. The lighting is paired with striking matt aluminium used throughout, and…

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

System Shock 3 is being overseen by none other than Warren Spector The immersive sim represents the Holy Grail of game design, a game that lets the player approach it however they please and react accordingly. The genre counts some of the most notable names in gaming franchises among its ranks, such as Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief and Dishonored, and it also features some of the best level and systems design in the game industry. The past few years have been surprisingly good for immersive sims. We’ve had two Deus Ex games, two Thief-inspired Dishonored games, a new series of Hitman and a spiritual successor to System Shock in the form of Prey. However, it looks as though the good times may be over. This year, Square Enix let…

With the exception of EA DICE’s Frostbite engine, Ubisoft’s Dunia is perhaps today’s most, visually impressive proprietary engine. It debuted with Far Cry 2 in 2008, wowing players with its dynamic lighting, realistic character rendering and fire simulation, and it’s remained the Far Cry series’ technological basis. Dunia’s roots lie in the technology developed by Crytek for the original Far Cry.‘The challenge was to take Far Cry’s impressive PC technology and create games that would run on Xbox,’ says Cedric Decelle, technical director of Far Cry 5.‘This was not a small task. By the time Far Cry Instincts: Predator shipped, our technology was pretty much a highly modified version of the original Crytek engine.’ When Ubisoft began work on Far Cry 2, the developers wanted to use a new engine.‘We…

Brutal Doom CREATOR Marcos Abenante / RELEASE 2011 (development ongoing) Brutal Doom is the undisputed ruler of the gore mod world, going far beyond the realms of a simple giblet enhancer. It takes the (now) simple death animations seen in the original Doom, picks up the bloody corpse and runs with it. It adds extensive decals for blood-spatter onto walls, limb amputations with ragdoll physics, a far more expansive range of death animations for every Doom enemy, and even execution animations that range from kerb-stomping to tearing enemies in half. What makes Brutal Doom so special, though, is that it also overhauls almost every other aspect of the game. It introduces new weapons such as a flamethrower and assault rifle, and massively enhances the old ones. It introduces free mouse-look,…

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.…

Its driver program is still a continual butt of jokes The recent news about Intel and AMD collaborating on a product has been a shocking shakeup to the PC industry. Not only will this new product feature an Intel CPU and AMD GPU in a single chip, but Intel has also just hired ex-AMD (and ex-Apple) graphics guru Raja Koduri and it’s making its own graphics cards! I’m going to start by setting the Intel and AMD collaboration aside for a moment, and focus on Intel getting (back into) the graphics card business. Intel has tried making its own graphics tech before and failed miserably. Long-term enthusiasts may remember Intel’s i740 AGP graphics card in 1998, which had lacklustre performance compared with the competition from ATI and 3dfx at the…

It beats the Core i7-7700K in any tasks that use its extra cores SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk The entire line-up of Intel mainstream CPUs shifted with the launch of Coffee Lake. For starters, the fantastic quad-core Core i3-8350K costs under £200, making it the new budget gaming king, but the Core i5-8600K shakes up the range too. While the Core i3-8350K is fine for most games as well as typical tasks such as web browsing and streaming video, increasing numbers of applications now make use of more than four cores, and that’s where the Core i5-8600K really shines, as it brings six overclockable cores to the Core i5 range for the first time. Its additional two cores effectively give it 50 per cent more multi-threaded grunt than both the new Core…

Your graphics card sits horizontally, with its cooler facing you SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk / MODEL NUMBER CA-1H9-00T1WN-00 We first got a glimpse of Thermaltake’s mini-ITX version of its Core-series open-air case last year, when a 3D-printed version sat next to much larger steel and tempered glass models, such as the Core P5. However, Thermaltake appears to have ditched the open source 3D-printable idea for that case, and instead simply offered a smaller version of its other open-air, wall-mountable cases. Aptly called the Core P1, this mini-ITX case still sports the same features of the larger open-air cases. For example, the only main parts are a large motherboard tray and a protective sheet of tempered glass – the hardware is otherwise completely exposed. The chassis is also water-cooling-friendly, with a pair…

Shadow of War is like a cake made by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of baking but lacking a basic grasp of maths. It has all the right ingredients to be the best open-world game in existence, but gets the amounts all wrong. The result is an open-world game with a delicious centre, but a messy exterior that tastes mostly of flour (yes, we’re aware that’s not how baking works). Shadow of War sees the grizzled and pathologically miserable ranger Talion on a quest to conquer Mordor province by province by bending its native orcs to his will. At the core of this premise is Monolith’s innovative Nemesis system. It’s a complex, two-tier mechanic that gives its orcs distinct, procedurally generated personalities, and places them within a political hierarchy that…

This Virtual World is going to be my last one, so I want to use it to tackle the question I think most non-VR gamers are still asking themselves: should you buy a VR headset now? The easy answer, of course, is a resounding yes – I love my VR adventures and there’s always a thrill from being on the cutting edge. If you can overcome the caveats of cost, physical space and supporting hardware then I can absolutely recommend VR. The more in-depth answers focus on the timing. Should you buy a VR headset now – or should you wait? That’s a much trickier question, because buying any new hardware isn’t ever just a matter of balancing performance with your budget. You also have to…

Chillblast Fusion Toro PC www.chillblast.com/toro £1149.00 Chillblast is renowned for producing high-spec gaming PCs and its new ultra-powerful Fusion Toro comes equipped with the latest top-notch components, including an Intel quad-core processor and GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. The bundled ASUS 24in 144Hz monitor will make your games dazzle, while Chillblast’s five-year warranty and award-winning customer service provide reliable backup and assistance. Get £150 off at www.chillblast.com/toro , or use the checkout code GIFTGUIDE17. Gamebuino META http://gamebuino.com/ € 79.00 (£70.00) Retro gaming is all the rage – with even Nintendo reproducing its classic consoles in affordable new formats. The Gamebuino META is based on the incredibly popular Arduino board, the starting point for many a DIY computing project, and lets you play games programmed by other enthusiasts,…

M.2 heatsinks; it’s all about location I’ve tested dozens of motherboards this year, and when you test a lot of components, you tend to pick up on certain performance traits and variations. One motherboard feature that has interested me since its introduction with Z270 motherboards earlier this year is the M.2 SSD heatsink. They’re great if you’re using NVMe PCE-E M.2 SSDs, as they can get quite hot. Of course, you’re unlikely to see any thermal throttling unless you’re moving terabytes of data every day or use your SSD heavily in other ways, but keeping your hardware cool is always a good idea – it can increase your hardware’s lifespan and also help prevent hotspots in your case. M.2 heatsinks certainly make a difference too, with sizeable drops in temperature,…

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…

Gamers aren’t the only people who enjoy fun. Everyone enjoys fun. That’s the point of fun When you work with scientists, you soon learn that science isn’t an exact science. That’s not a contradiction; science – and by extension, technology – is a bunch of people basically trying to disprove or improve on the theories, methods and results of the last bunch of people. It’s weird if you stop to think about it. If science was always right then it would just stop, job done. Science is often wrong, and proving it so is how you get more science. That’s partly why you get third-party debunkers such as myself – non-scientists who look at claims that affect our hobbies or interests, and say, ‘Hang on, you said “violent video game”…

We managed to clock the memory frequency all the way up to 8708MHz SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com With Nvidia’s new Volta GPU architecture looming on the horizon, Nvidia is clearly looking to squeeze as much mileage out of its ageing Pascal architecture as possible. The prices of the GTX 1070 and 1080 have been cut, and the GTX 1070 Ti has now been pushed out, acting as a halfway house. In terms of GPU structure, the GTX 1070 Ti is closer to the GTX 1080 than the 1070. It’s based on the same GP104 GPU, but with a single streaming multiprocessor (SM) disabled, giving the GTX 1070 Ti a total of 2,432 stream processors – not much below the count of 2,560 stream processors in the GTX 1080. As a point…

SUPPLIER www.very.co.uk Most gaming laptops cost more than £1,000, and sport components to rival desktop machines, but most gaming laptops aren’t like the MSI GV62 7RC – a gaming laptop that costs just £829 inc VAT. Inevitably, that price means some compromise, but MSI has been smart about this machine. Instead of aiming the GV62 at high-end games, this system is designed for eSports – one of the biggest growth areas in the tech industry. The eSports focus and low price mean an understandably muted specification. The key gaming component is the GeForce MX150 – a new GPU from Nvidia that’s designed for games such as League of Legends, DOTA 2, CS:GO and Rocket League. The MX150 retains the Pascal architecture found in the rest of Nvidia’s current GPUs,…

BassPal Shower Speaker / £79.99 inc VAT The BassPal is a waterproof Bluetooth speaker and FM radio. It looks like a hockey puck with a big suction cup foot, which enables it to stick to windows, tiles and so on. The sound quality is surprisingly good considering the size of the speaker and level of waterproofing. It’s also IPX7-rated, so it should be able to survive 1m underwater for 30 minutes. The interface consists of five big buttons, and it even has lights and a vocal announcement when it’s switching on or off, or when it’s paired to a device. All of this makes it easy to use, even in the midst of the worst kind of early-morning, barely-awake, soap-in-eyes, late-for-work shower-mare. The BassPal is fairly expensive, but it just…

How we test Find the right headset, and it can provide you with hours of music listening, video watching and gaming pleasure in comfort. However, the sky’s pretty much the limit when it comes to price and performance, with plenty of high-end headsets retailing for well over £200. In fact, if you buy a device such as the ModMic stick-on microphone, you can turn the most ludicrously expensive headphones into a headset. For most of us, though, we just want an affordable balance of sound quality and comfort. As such, we’ve dedicated this group test to the more affordable end of the scale. All the headsets on test cost under £100, and most of them are below £80. All of them use a standard analogue stereo jack connection, rather than…

The New Colossus sees rogue Aryan BJ Blazkowicz attempting to liberate Nazi-occupied America from the clutches of the psychopathic General Engel. MachineGames’ vision of the USA sees many of its worst nightmares realised. New York has been struck by an atom bomb, the Ku Klux Klan has wrested control of the South, there really is something suspicious going on in the town of Roswell, New Mexico, and the Man is most definitely inside his High Castle. You’re accompanied on this warped American road trip by a cast of characters normally reserved for role-playing games. From the dour Scot Fergus to the proto Black Panther Grace, the hijacked U-boat that serves as your home base feels like a fully fleshed-out little society, with relationships that spark and smoulder. Grim topics such…

HyperX – one name for ALL your gaming gear Whether you’re looking for a top-tier headset with award-winning comfort and amazing audio, or precision mice and keyboards designed for digital domination, HyperX has all the gear that a serious gamer needs. As the choice of pro, hardcore and casual gamers worldwide, we’re committed to providing the ultimate gaming experience and constantly implementing feedback to create the most refined gaming products possible. HyperX first ventured into the gaming peripheral space with headsets, and over the past few years we’ve expanded our offerings to include all elements of gaming gear. HyperX is honoured to count all gamers, including luminaries such as yourself, as part of the #HyperXFamily, and we’re humbled and thrilled by the love we get from our customers and the…

REVIEW Asus Tinker Board Regular readers are forgiven for being a little confused by this month’s first Hobby tech review. Yes, the Asus Tinker Board – an up-specced Raspberry Pi clone – was reviewed back in Issue 164. Yes, this is the same board, and no, Asus hasn’t made a single change to the hardware side of the package. What Asus has changed, and quite thoroughly, is the software. In my original look at the Tinker Board, I castigated the device on a number of fronts: poor software support, glitchy video playback, a lack of decent documentation and only the most basic of general-purpose input/output (GPIO) capabilities. What’s more, the latter only came courtesy of code ripped wholesale from the Raspberry Pi community. Shortly after the original review, Asus declared…

Despite all this research, the little demon sitting on my shoulder is still telling me I need a new SSD Over the past few months I’ve been evaluating some pre-production samples of Intel’s Optane 900p SSD. Optane is Intel’s market name for the 3D XPoint memory that it co-developed with Micron as a hopeful replacement for NAND. 3D XPoint has much lower latency than NAND, and it doesn’t wear out when you write to it, so it looks like a dream technology on paper. In reality, however, the 900p is a mixed beast that needs careful evaluation. Many of the storage benchmarks with which reviewers and PC enthusiasts are familiar are ideal for demonstrating the benefit of NAND-based SSDs over hard drives. For instance, many of these benchmarks run at…