Custom PC UK May 2016

Brrrrrr, bip. Brrrrrr, biddlybipbipscrawch. This month’s soundtrack to my life is currently coming from my newly repaired Sinclair ZX Spectrum, as it loads some of my old games. I’ve swapped the RF output for a composite output, replaced the keyboard membrane and resoldered the power connector. It all works perfectly again, and I’ve even managed to get it to speed-load Manic Miner from an iPod in 25 seconds, thanks to some speeded-up audio and a small headphone amplifier. It’s been fun. The games look terrible, of course, but what really struck me about playing with my old Spectrum again is that it’s a computer, rather than a games machine. On Pancake Day, I programmed in some BASIC code that a guy called Gary Plowman posted on Facebook, and it drew…

Many people will prefer to take the risk than lose their overclock As soon as news broke that Supermicro had made overclocking possible on Intel’s non-K series, sixth-generation (Skylake) processors via the base clock, the floodgates of BIOS updates opened and all motherboard makers enabled the same feature. Highly affordable Core i3 chips were getting excellent 40 per cent overclocks and, given the stagnation of PC sales, you’d think Intel wouldn’t mind – a sale is a sale, right? But no. In an act of anti-consumer, bean-counter cynicism, Intel has decided to take away this unofficial feature and replace it with, yep, nothing. There’s no Pentium Anniversary Edition or Core i3 K-series chip to plug the obvious gap in the market, just kthxbye. I’m mainly firing my forked tongue at…

Pushmi-pullyu I’ve been reading Issue 146, and I have a question about the Skylake build. In step 6 (titled ‘fit fans on cooler’) of the build guide, it says: ‘Most all-in-one liquid coolers require you to fit their fans, so go ahead and do this now before you install the radiator. In our case, we’ll be fitting the fan from the top, screwing the radiator into position at the same time.’ The supporting picture shows the fan being installed on the Kraken in a push configuration. However, steps 8 and 9 show the radiator being installed to the top of the case, and the fan being installed outside the case, in the roof mount, in a pull configuration. It’s slightly confusing. To me, it means that step 6 isn’t required,…

Pc_Shed Hooray! 100 Million points milestone reached in 57 days folding for @CustomPCMag & @bittech FT. Need more GPU’s!! Ben: Wow, that’s some seriously powerful computing in a short space of time – good work – glad to have you on our Folding@home team! We’ve interviewed Sergio Rodrigues (PcShedTV) about his Folding@home setup in this issue on p112. MeekDope_ How many gigabytes of VRAM does the AMD A10-7860 APU’s dedicated GPU have? Ben: AMD’s APUs share your system memory, rather than having their own dedicated memory. However, you won’t need to share loads of memory with the GPU for the resolutions and settings at which these integrated GPUs are capable of running games. The bigger issue is the speed of your memory – officially, AMD’s A10 7860 supports 2133MHz memory,…

The closest genre to ‘violent’ that Etchells could find was ‘shoot-em-ups’ It isn’t every day that a research paper lands on my desk that’s been written by friends, but I find myself in the interesting position of writing a column about the recent work of scientist Pete Etchells, who I know and respect. Bit awkward. You may have heard of the paper, or at least seen some of the headlines. It was on the Reddit front page for a while, and has attracted a lot of interest. ‘Is there an association between video games and aggression?’ asks The Guardian in a piece written by Etchells. The gist is that there was a longitudinal study (one that lasts years) undertaken by University of Bristol to ‘chart the health’ and lifestyles of…

Corsair launches VOID Surround headset Corsair has released a new surround-sound headset designed for PC gaming. The new VOID Surround has a standard 3.5mm jack output for connecting to consoles, but comes with a USB Dolby Headphone 7.1 adaptor for connecting to a Windows PC. According to Corsair, the VOID Surround is ‘built from the ground up to redefine comfort and enable marathon gaming sessions’, promising ‘a revolutionary new ear cup shape and top of the line microfibre fabrics and memory foam’. The Surround also has a cast aluminium construction, and features large 50mm neodymium drivers, as well as a unidirectional noise-cancelling microphone. The VOID Surround is available now for £80 inc VAT from www.corsair.com Valve releases VR test If you’re getting excited about VR gaming, Valve has released a…