Table of contents for March 2022 in Custom PC UK

Samsung has started sampling GDDR6 memory chips running at speeds of 2.5GHz (20GHz effective) and 3GHz (24GHz effective). The company’s GDDR6 product page (custompc.co.uk/GDDR6) lists the two new chips, with ‘Sample’ written in the ‘Product Status’ column. The two new chips have a density of 16Gb (2GB), and are organised into 32 512Mb blocks. These speeds are faster than the 1219MHz (19.5GHz effective) speed of the GeForce RTX 3090’s GDDR6X. As a point of comparison, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT’s GDDR6 memory runs at 2GHz (16GHz effective).…

Corsair has announced some new high-speed memory in its Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 line-up, with two 32GB (2 x 16GB) kits running at 6200MHz and 6400MHz frequencies. In addition to running at high speeds, the memory also supports Corsair’s XMP Manager software, which is part of its latest iCUE suite. The software enables you to tweak the XMP 3 profile of your memory and save your new latency settings to the module from Windows. Meanwhile, the lighting on the modules comes from 12 of Corsair’s individually addressable Capellix LEDs. As with most DDR5 memory modules at the moment, there’s no sign of stock as yet, but the 6200MHz kit is currently listed on Corsair’s website at £460 inc VAT, along with a ‘Notify me when in stock’ button.…

There’s a lot to like about the spec list attached to HP’s Omen 27c. This monitor’s 27in panel has a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate that’s compatible with both FreeSync and G-Sync, and a VA panel with a 1ms response time. It has a 1000R curve too, which does a great job at increasing immersion. The panel has slim bezels and a diamond-shaped base, and the diamond-shaped section on the rear means the ports don’t face downwards, so they’re easy to reach. In terms of ports, the HP is equipped with single HDMI and DisplayPort connections alongside a USB Type-C port and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 connectors. There’s also a robust joystick on the rear for controlling the responsive on-screen display. In other practical areas, though,…

The Razer Basilisk V3 is one of Team Green’s latest entries into its extensive line-up of gaming mice. Compared to its predecessor, this V3 variant is a bit heavier, with a total weight of 101g as opposed to the V2’s 92g. However, it retains the exact same shape and roughly similar design cues. Its shape is marvellously contoured and ideal for right-handed gamers who prefer a palm grip – you can drape your hand over the entire plastic frame, and also rest your thumb in its dedicated thumb rest. The Basilisk V3 is also decent if you use a fingertip grip and just want to opt for pure speed. Meanwhile, the hard plastic construction feels sturdy and hard-wearing. There are also some rubberised and padded side grips on the left…

How we test This month we’re taking a look at some shiny new Intel LGA1700 motherboards based on Intel’s Z690 chipset, covering a range of price points, so you can pick the best foundation for your choice of 12th-gen Intel CPU. Our test kit includes a Core i5-12600K CPU and either 16GB of 3466MHz Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 RAM or 32GB of 5200MHz DDR5 memory, as Z690 boards either support DDR4 or DDR5. We test using Windows 11 on a WD Red SN750 SSD, along with a WD Black SN850 SSD to test the speed of M.2 ports. The latter is also used to test heatsink performance – we tap into the SSD’s internal temperature sensor to see how well any M.2 heatsinks perform under load, using back-to-back runs…

While ASRock’s cut-price Z690 PG Riptide’s forces you to deal with a separate I/O shield, the Asus TUF Z690-Plus WiFi D4 offers a less potentially finger-dicing PC build experience, as its £260 price tag bags you an integrated shield and quite a bit more besides. You get 802.11ax Wi-Fi thrown into the bundle, along with an extra fan header over the ASRock (seven vs six), a better EFI and software suite, albeit with some issues with Windows 11 compatibility, plus four PCI-E 4 M.2 ports, three of which are covered with heatsinks. This Asus TUF model is a more premium-feeling, smarter-looking motherboard too, which help to justify its higher asking price over the ASRock. There are a few issues, though, especially when compared with the cheaper Gigabyte boards we’ve also…

Having picked up an Approved award in our recent standalone review, the MSI MAG Z690 Tomahawk WiFi DDR4 is certainly one of the better-looking sub-£300 DDR4 Z690 motherboards. It trades blows with the Asus TUF Gaming Z690 - Plus WiFi D4, which costs about the same, but there’s added competition in this Labs test. The Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X DDR4 has a similar feature set, with all four PCI-E 4 M.2 slots equipped with heatsinks, but for some reason, our SSD got pretty toasty on the MSI board, hitting 63°C, which was 10°C warmer than the Gigabyte board. There’s no way to see the VRM temperature in MSI’s software, but using our IR probe, we measured them at 56°C, which is on par with the Gigabyte board. However, the latter’s…

You only need to take a quick look at the Kolink Unity Code X to see that it’s modelling itself as a cheaper alternative to the Lian Li O11 Dynamic. However, at £108, it’s not that cheap compared to the O11’s £130 price. The Kolink does include a decent vertical GPU mount though. It’s hefty with very little flex to it, and the mounting for the riser has two long standoffs in inch-long slots, accounting for any riser you care to use. On a surface level, this case does look the part too, with its completely glass front and side panels meeting in a pillarless corner. Its twin-chamber design that has the motherboard and graphics card on show, and the PSU and drives mounted on the backside of the motherboard…

Phanteks has set up the P400A DRGB with a mesh front panel and no secondary filter, plus a trio of 120mm RGB fans mounted behind the front fan rails, giving them plenty of room to breathe, along with space for a 360mm radiator. The case includes a controller for the RGB fans, but they can also be hooked up to a motherboard or other RGB controller. On the right side, under the lip at the top of the case, you’ll find the reset button, with subtle markings, so you know where it’s located without being too obvious. There’s also a central power button on the top surface, with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and separate audio jacks on the left edge of the case. As all the front I/O…

Core component bundles The fundamental specifications we recommend for various types of PC. Just add your preferred case and power supply, and double-check there’s room in your case for your chosen components, especially the GPU cooler and graphics card. We’ve largely stopped reviewing power supplies, as the 80 Plus certification scheme has now effectively eliminated unstable PSUs. Instead, we’ve recommended the wattage and minimum 80 Plus certification you should consider for each component bundle. You can then choose whether you want a PSU with modular or captive cables. 8-core system with integrated graphics 8-core CPU, basic gaming Needs a micro-ATX or ATX case. We recommend a 450W 80 Plus Bronze power supply. See Issue 218, p76 for an example build guide. 1,920 x 1,080 gaming 6-core CPU, 1080p gaming Needs…

Intel’s 12th-gen Core CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake, have dominated the pages of Custom PC for the past three issues. This shouldn’t come as a surprise really, as the CPUs received such positive reviews in Issue 220. Their combination of brutal multi-threaded power, along with strong single-threaded and gaming performance, makes them a top upgrade at the moment. There’s going to be more Alder Lake gear coming too, with more CPUs and additional motherboard chipsets. It wouldn’t normally be worth pontificating about Intel fleshing out the rest of its CPU range. After all, we’re already well aware of how the new hybrid architecture performs, how much power the chips draw and how much they cost. And while none of these fundamental elements has changed in the second wave of Alder Lake…

This year, for the first time in years, we’ll have three companies – AMD, Intel and Nvidia – vying for space in the low-end graphics card market. Nvidia already has its GeForce GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 variants, while Intel will be launching its Arc A380 and AMD will bring out the Radeon RX 6500 and 6400. The performance of the Nvidia cards is well known, and none of the Intel and AMD GPUs are expected to set performance records, even at this level. However, for gamers who play at 1,920 x 1,080, the expanding competitive options could at least result in dropped prices. These cards will also offer a solid step up for anyone stuck using very old GPUs or integrated graphics. If we purely consider the leaked specs…

MSI has given us a teaser of what’s to come from its forthcoming MEG Z690 Godlike motherboard – a detachable touch-screen. In a video, MSI has shown off the screen sitting in a shroud next to the motherboard’s DIMM slots. The screen shows off some MSI logos, and then goes into the menus. Among the screen’s features demonstrated in the video are a clear-CMOS button, along with plus and minus buttons for the CPU clock, and options for a safe boot and retrying an overclock, plus power and reset buttons. While the bling factor is clearly a large part of the screen’s appeal, we wonder if it might enable you to set up your PC, and check its status, without needing a monitor and GPU, which could be handy in…

It’s always worth checking out the latest mini-ITX hardware, for the simple reason that manufacturers often take different approaches to solving the usual issues of limited space, whether they’re dealing with motherboards or cases. Every now and then a really interesting design turns up, such as Lian Li’s new Q58 case. It comes in black or white, and it’s a sandwichstyle mini-ITX case that uses riser cables to connect the motherboard and graphics card, which sit back to back. In addition to the colour options, you can also choose to have PCI-E 3 or PCI-E 4 riser cables, with the cheapest option being £120 and the most expensive one costing £155. This price range means the Q58 offers reasonable value compared with the likes of the NZXT H1 and Streacom…

In our recent gaming chair Labs, the noblechairs Hero Black Edition came out on top, earning points for its smart styling, build quality and features, but that prowess came at a high price of £420 inc VAT. That was down to its optional ‘high-tech’ faux leather upholstery, but also because it’s a fairly large chair. The Icon, though, is a slightly more compact model and the new TX fabric option is cheaper too, resulting in this version coming in at £340. The TX fabric might be cheaper than high-tech faux leather, or the real leather option, but in many ways, it’s a better choice. It’s soft and warm to the touch, and it looks superb in this anthracite grey colour, which is currently the only option. The fabric also offers…

As its name suggests, CyberPower’s Hyper Liquid Infinity comes in a huge case filled with an ambitious custom water-cooling setup. Two EK Quantum Kinetic pump/reservoir combo units dominate the front of the Corsair 7000D chassis, one of which is hooked up to a 240mm radiator in the roof, while the other flows into a 360mm unit behind those reservoirs. The 240mm unit cools the GPU via an EK Quantum Vector Trio waterblock, while the 360mm radiator chills the processor with a Quantum Velocity2 waterblock. Smartly, CyberPower has also chosen to cool the CPU with blue coolant and the GPU with green liquid, all with hard tubing. Those colours indicate which components this machine uses. The CPU is Intel’s latest Core i9-12900K, which has eight high-power P-Cores with base and boost…

The Unigear is a hand warmer that doubles as a power bank, which feels like a natural pairing given the propensity of power banks to run warm anyway. The device has a squashed-egg shape, is comfortably palm-sized and sits in a soft cloth bag, which makes it even comfier to use to fend off the cold. One button on the side tells you how much charge is left, while another adjusts the heat level, which goes from 35°C-55°C – the temperature and remaining capacity are shown on a clearly readable digital display. The overall capacity of the Unigear is 5,200mAh, which is enough to recharge an average smartphone a couple of times, and translates to about eight hours of toasty hands. As a power bank, however, the Unigear is limited…

If you’ve been put off an Alder Lake upgrade by the eye-watering prices of Z690 motherboards, then the cheapest example in this month’s Labs test costs £199, which is certainly far cheaper than most examples we’ve seen. However, ASRock has had to cut back the Z690 PG Riptide’s features significantly to hit this price. It’s a reasonable-looking board, but the Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X is certainly more attractive. The latter has a large array of M.2 heatsinks, while the ASRock board only has one. Our PCI-E 4 SSD ran noticeably cooler in the Gigabyte board too, thanks to its larger heatsinks, peaking at 53°C instead of instead of the ASRock’s 60°C. The VRMs were cooler too, at 55°C compared to 59°C for the ASRock board. For us, though, the biggest…

As one of several Z690 boards available that comes in both DDR4 and DDR5 flavours, the Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X gives you the option of jumping on either bandwagon, albeit with specific versions of the board supporting one memory type or the other. We’ve got the DDR4 version in for review here, but if you’re looking to go the DDR5 route for as little cash as possible, then that version actually costs about the same amount of money. It’s a good price too, with our DDR4 model retailing for £50 less than the Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WiFi D4. What’s more, we’d pick this board over the pricier Asus model for a few reasons. Firstly, we love the look of its hefty gunmetal grey heatsinks, which are also both large…

MSI’s MPG Gaming Carbon range of motherboards has proved pretty popular among PC enthusiasts, with EK even teaming up with MSI to water-cool them for the Carbon EK X range of motherboards. As with many Z690 boards, though, while it looks like another solid effort on paper, the DDR5-based MPG Z690 Gaming Carbon WiFi will also set you back over £400, which isn’t a small sum of money. Thankfully, it does look fantastic, with a splash of RGB lighting on the I/O shroud and PCH heatsink, full M.2 port heatsink covers and some substantial VRM heatsinks too. You get a total of five PCI-E 4 M.2 ports as well and, just like the MSI MEG Z690 Unify, the Gaming Carbon WiFi kept our M.2 SSD at a chilly 52°C under…

When we first tested the 500DX back in Issue 202, we were impressed by its styling, features and performance. Armed with our new much more demanding test rig, though, does it still hold up? Well, we’re still fans of the design, especially when it comes to this white version with orange lighting. There are three LED strips, with two running down the front with an opaque acrylic panel diffusing the light. The LED strips are connected through a ‘pin-to-pad’ mechanism, so the front panel isn’t caught up on cables. The third strip is in the main chamber, casting light across all the components below. The lights can be controlled by the on-board controller, or via a standard 3-pin 5V ARGB header. A black panel at the top houses one Type-A…

The Lancool II Mesh looks like the offspring of the P400A and H510, with its angled nose and split side panels. It looks massive among the other cases on test. That’s not because it’s particularly big by usual standards – it’s just that the size of mid-tower cases has generally shrunk elsewhere since the demise of the 5.25in bay. The Lancool has glass panels on both sides, with the lower quarter being a separate steel panel, and the front is a ventilated panel. To open the glass panels, you have to open the lower ones first. With all the doors open, it looks a bit like a Lamborghini with its ‘scissor doors’ open, which is cool, but having to open the lower section every time you want to access the…

The Divider 300 looks like a stylistic head scratcher at first, thanks to its angled side panel. However, once it’s set up, you realise the line of sight from where you’d usually be ogling your expensive new hardware is through that clear front corner. It’s odd, but a bit of variety is very much welcome in a sea of similar squares. The triangular side panel comprises two separate pieces. They can be removed independently, although it’s recommended that you remove the steel first, as the glass has a tendency to spring off. The steel section also slopes inwards, as though it’s struck in the centre. This has allowed Thermaltake to add a small vent for additional fresh air. It does cut into CPU cooler clearance, with official support for air…

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (see p72) is a spectacular, story-driven sci-fi adventure that’s not unlike an Uncharted game on PC. Indeed, its commitment to linearity is unusual in a time when nearly every major singleplayer game has an open world in some form, funnelling the player along a strict and definitive path for the duration of its 20-hour story. This may seem like an odd structural choice for a game set in space, not least when games such as Elite Dangerous and No Man’s Sky have made open-ended space simulators more popular than ever. Yet rather than feeling like a shortcoming, this game’s linearity was one of its features that I enjoyed the most. Go back 20 years and I would have killed to have single-player games with the…

Whether you like your PC to only ever been seen and not heard, or if you’re just hoping to stop your PC drowning out your gaming sessions, there’s plenty of reason to want to reduce the noise emanating from your machine, and there are many ways to achieve just that. In this guide, we’ll take you through the main causes of PC noise and how to reduce them. From the blast of fast fans to the rattle and hum of hard drives, all PC noise can be curtailed, taking your PC from a cacophonous case to a whispering wonder. THE TEST SETUP To highlight the difference made by various methods of sound reduction, we’ve taken a fairly standard modern PC to use as our benchmark. Housed in a mid-sized Corsair…

RGB lighting finally gets easier It’s amazing to think that RGB lighting didn’t exist in the PC ecosystem just a few years ago. If you wanted to add some illumination to your PC before then, you’d need to use external kits powered directly from your PSU, usually comprising LED strips. If you’re as old as I am, you might even remember cathode lighting too. Single-colour LED strips were revolutionary when it came to lighting up your PC, and I still use them often. However, they’re not very flexible in terms of colour matching and can often be a shade out compared with the rest of the hardware or lighting I’m using. That’s where RGB lighting comes in handy, as you have millions of colours from which to choose. For me,…

TOTAL PROJECT TIME / 30 MINUTES While many motherboards include heatsinks for M.2 SSDs as standard these days, there are plenty that don’t have them. You don’t always find heatsinks on current boards at the budget end of the scale, and high-end older boards often don’t have them either, as they came out before the latest high-speed drives started getting toasty. Some of the latest PCI-E 4 SSDs, such as Samsung’s 980 Pro, don’t come with heatsinks as standard either. Of course, if you’re using an older motherboard that only supports PCI-E 3, then adding a heatsink to your drive will largely be an aesthetic choice. However, a heatsink can still help to prevent your drive from throttling under heavy sustained loads if there’s not much airflow in your system.…

I love writing the New Year column, it gives me a chance to look back on 12 months of opinions – overall, things change a lot while staying much the same. I’ve been a PC user since the early 1980s thanks to my dad’s career in computing, and a proud gamer since I was old enough to press the BREAK key. I’ve seen controversies come and go, debates about the influence or importance of technology and gaming in particular debated in Parliament, newspapers and by concerned parents everywhere. I’ve always felt grateful for having parents who could see that a child who can code, type and knows how computers work will always find employment, and a child who has access to video games will never be bored. In this column…

GEFORCE RTX 3090 Ti INCOMING According to various online sources, including videocardz.com, Nvidia is planning to launch a new top-end GPU, called the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, in early 2022, with availability expected on 27 January. According to the rumours, RTX 3090 Ti cards will have 10,752 CUDA cores (compared to 10,496 on the standard RTX 3090), while its 24GB of GDDR6X memory will run at 21GHz (effective) – a boost over the 19.5GHz (effective) memory used on the standard RTX 3090. CHEAPER AMPERE GPUS COMING According to regular tech leaker @kopite7kimi on Twitter, Nvidia has two new low-end GPUs based on its Ampere architecture in the pipeline. Apparently based on the same GA106 GPU as the RTX 3060, the new GPUs are said to come in both 4GB and…

When’s the next issue out? custom pc Issue 223 On sale on Thursday, 3 February You call a pie a pie Congratulations on Issue 221! You have truly hit the jackpot in my opinion. I’ve been a subscriber of your fine magazine since the very first issue and your latest edition is probably the best ever. Every month, after receiving the latest edition of the magazine, I go through it and dog-ear all the pages I want to read in depth. After going through the latest issue, I found there were dog ears on most of the pages – truly remarkable! Every year, I base my mince pie purchase on your megatest, and I just love that you take mince pies as seriously as your computer hardware. I particularly liked…

Wired2Fire’s Ultima Ryzen Gamestation is the most ambitious system we’ve seen with an AMD Cezanne APU so far, because the Surrey-based firm has applied some judicious overclocking to attempt to boost the Ryzen 5 5600G’s performance. The tweak is applied to the GPU’s integrated graphics core, and sees its clock speed increase from 1900MHz to 2300MHz. Elsewhere, the graphics core is based on AMD’s aging Radeon RX Vega architecture, rather than RDNA, with seven Vega compute units, equating to 448 stream processors. It’s business as usual on the CPU side too – the 5600G has six SMT-enabled Zen 3 cores with base and boost speeds of 3.9GHz and 4.4GHz. With no graphics memory, AMD’s APUs have to use system memory, so Wired2Fire has sensibly paired this APU with fast dual-channel…

It’s not easy to define the Newseego External Hard Drive Case – you could call it a laptop pocket, or a pocket for a laptop, but both imply that you’re putting the laptop in the pocket, but in this case, the reverse is true. The Newseego is a pocket that attaches to the back of the screen on a laptop. Ostensibly (as implied by the name), this is a good place to store an external drive, so it isn’t in the way, but it also works fine for cables, pens, earbuds or any of the other small items that might otherwise need to be stored elsewhere. It’s handy for a laptop that doesn’t travel far, but for a laptop that’s usually folded up in a regular bag for all its…

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While the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Apex has an eye-watering price tag, it’s beautifully crafted and dripping with features. The most prominent of them is an extruded aluminium heatsink spelling ROG on the bottom-right corner of the PCB. This section forms part of a massive heatsink that, rather strangely, only cools one PCI-E 4 M.2 port, and there are just two of these ports on the PCB in total. While they sport Asus’ new tool-free latches, which remove the need to deal with tiny, fiddly screws, the other boards have more M.2 ports on their PCBs. Thankfully, Asus also includes a dual M.2 port expansion card with an even bigger heatsink and a PCI-E 5 M.2 port, albeit with no PCI-E 5 SSDs available yet to enable it to stretch…

While DDR5 memory doesn’t make a huge overall difference to performance, and is more expensive than DDR4 even if you can find it in stock, we can sympathise with anyone wanting to jump on that bandwagon for futureproofing. Cheaper Z690 offerings often cater for DDR4, but you don’t need to spend big to get DDR5 support. In fact, the Gigabyte Z690 UD AX comes in both DDR4 and DDR5 flavours, with the latter costing only just over £200. That’s around £30 more than the DDR4 version, but around the same price as the Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X DDR4, so should you save some cash with the DDR4 version or even opt for the latter board instead? The Z690 UD AX is certainly fairly plain-looking, with none of gunmetal heatsinks found…

If you prefer your motherboard to be free from RGB bling, and with a decidedly dark and moody theme, then you’re in luck, as there’s not an ounce of built-in lighting on the MEG Z690 Unify. You do get some RGB headers, including two 3-pin, one 4-pin and a single Corsair connector for hooking up that company’s proprietary RGB hardware, such as waterblocks and pumps. Most of the PCB is covered in heatsinks too, including all five of its M.2 ports. This cooling extends to both sides of the PCB, so it was no surprise to see the MEG Z690 Unify offer one of the lowest M.2 temperatures on test, with our PCI-E 4 M.2 SSD hitting 52°C. The VRMs couldn’t be measured using MSI’s software, but our IR probe…

We were previously a smidge underwhelmed by the 4000D Airflow (see Issue 207) thanks to its modest design and features. However, its true capabilities have come to light with our new test rig inside it. First, though, what’s immediately striking about this case is the colour matching between the plastics and painted steel, which is exceptional. In our white review sample, the white with grey accents and the odd little flourish of Corsair yellow go so well together, and there are little details all over the case that make it feel a cut above the competition. Less class-leading is the front panel, with just single Type-A and Type-C USB ports, and a combined audio jack, with no adaptor provided to split the latter. The power button has a satisfying resistance…

Although we only looked at the H510 Flow last issue, our new test setup warrants an immediate reassessment to see if it still holds up. Ever popular thanks to its swish styling, the H510 is back with a ventilated front panel to give its airflow a boost. The new panel’s ventilation comes in large round holes in a steel panel, with a fine plastic mesh immediately behind. It should provide plenty of airflow and it doesn’t dull the looks of the H510. The plastic-framed mesh can also be removed for cleaning. The glass side panel sits with its lower edge inside the lower quarter panel, with two push pins along the top edge and a thumbscrew at the rear to keep it firmly in place. This allows the glass to…

MOTHERBOARDS TEST PROCESSORS > Intel LGA1700 Intel Core i5-12600K> Intel LGA1200 Intel Core i9-11900K> AMD AM4 AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Common test hardware between our CPU test rigs includes a WD Red SN750 SSD, along with a WD Black SN850 SSD to test the speed of M.2 ports, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070. We use 16GB (2 x 8GB) of Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3466MHz DDR4 RAM, or 32GB (2 x 16GB) of Kingston Fury 5200MHz DDR5 RAM. All CPUs are cooled by a Corsair Hydro-X water-cooling loop with two XR5 240mm radiators, an XD3 RGB reservoir and an XC7 RGB waterblock. We test with our RealBench suite and Far Cry 6 on Windows 11. We also test each board’s M.2 ports, and record the noise level and dynamic…

INTEL GRAPHICS 2022 is set to be a year of big hardware launches, with all the major component players releasing significant new upgrades. However, potentially the biggest of the lot is the entrance of Intel into the discrete graphics card market, with its Intel Arc product line. Having tried and failed several times to step into the space before, this latest attempt finally looks like it’s set to offer a genuinely competitive product, even if rumours suggest it won’t topple Nvidia from the gaming performance top spot. We went into as much detail as we know at this point regarding Intel Arc in Issue 219, but the short version is that the brand-new Xe architecture on which it’s based will support the same core features as modern Nvidia cards. As…

It’s hardly rare to see a piece of media receive a tie-in game, but a ZX Spectrum tie-in is more unusual these days. For Hex Loader, though, it’s very much on-brand. Written by Dan Whitehead, illustrated by Conor Boyle, and lettered by Jim Campbell, it’s the story of a struggling game developer set in the mid-1980s, and it rapidly shifts into the supernatural in a wholly original story that intertwines science and magic. Presented in greyscale, bar the covers, the book builds a world that will be familiar to readers of a certain vintage, where kids barely out of school toil away in bedrooms and offices above kebab shops, with dreams of being the next Matthew Smith and making a fortune from a successful game such as Manic Miner. A…

TOTAL PROJECT TIME / 3 HOURS G raphics card coolers are far better than they were a few years ago, with powerful fans and large heatsinks used to beat the heat in those lengthy gaming sessions. They ensure your graphics card can run cool and quiet, even under heavy sustained loads. However, while the cooler might be up to scratch, cheap thermal paste and thermal pads have regularly been found to hinder cooling, and haven’t even been installed properly at the factory. This can see your graphics card run much hotter and prevent the cooler from doing its job as well as seeing its fans spin up to higher speeds. Using high-performance thermal paste and thermal pads can dramatically cut temperatures and as long as you’re comfortable to dismantle your…

We’ve got a brilliant super-fast gaming display up for grabs this month, thanks to the monitor gurus at iiyama. The iiyama Gold Phoenix G-Master GB2590HSU-B1 is packed with the latest technologies, including FreeSync Premium. Its 24in IPS panel features a 240Hz refresh rate and a stunning 0.4ms MPRT response time, making sure your equipment will never hold you back. The fast IPS panel guarantees highfidelity and displays vivid battleground scenes with outstanding colour accuracy, all while providing a stunning 0.4ms moving picture response time (MPRT). With its support for FreeSync Premium, the Gold Phoenix can also synchronise its fast refresh rate with your graphics card’s frame rate. It guarantees low input latency and low frame rate compensation, putting an end to any tearing or stuttering issues at virtually any frame…

/MEET THY MAKER Name Eric Montalvo Age 56 Occupation Building automation systems specialist Location Williamsburg VA, USA Main uses for PC Gaming and home use Likes Gaming, playing my guitars and fishing, plus Marvel movies and comics Dislikes Politics, aubergines, yoghurt and people who talk too much CPG: So how did this project start? What inspired you to make an Avengersthemed PC? Eric: I needed a new PC, as my old one was slowly going out of date – it worked but I wanted something faster. I’m a Big Marvel and Avengers fan, and everything in my room and in my life is about Iron Man and The Avengers. I even have a huge Avengers sticker on the rear window of my truck – everyone knows me as the Iron…

Corsair Hydro X Series XD3 RGB Pump/Reservoir C The Corsair Hydro X Series XD3 RGB Pump/Reservoir Combo features a high-performance DDC PWM pump, integrated RGB lighting and in-loop temperature sensor to drive even the most compact custom cooling systems. It has a high-performance Xylem DDC PWM pump controlled via PWM to deliver the perfect flow balance for your loop. There are also 16 individually addressable RGB LEDs, which light up the pump head to produce stunning, customisable lighting effects to match your build. Corsair Hydro X Series XC7 RGB CPU Water Block The Corsair Hydro X Series XC7 RGB CPU Water Block combines premium construction, vivid RGB lighting and extreme cooling performance to become the centrepiece of your water-cooling loop. It has a nickel-plated copper cold plate and more than…