Table of contents for July 2022 in Custom PC UK

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk We’re still some way off the launch of AMD’s Zen 4 architecture, and with Zen 3 being 18 months old and Intel having decimated its ranks, a refresh was expected. Rather than simply offering a speed boost or manufacturing process change as it did with Zen+, though, AMD has taken a more interesting approach with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. It’s the first desktop CPU to feature 3D chip stacking, specifically 3D V-Cache. AMD has thinned down the Core Complex Dies (CCD) in its Ryzen CPUs to allow it to stack extra cache directly on top of them. It’s had to increase the interconnect density by over 200 times compared with how a standard chipset is constructed, which also has the benefit of reducing the power delivered over each…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk If there’s one criticism we can aim at Intel’s new Z690 platform for its 12th-gen CPUs, it’s the price and availability of DDR5 memory. For the first few weeks after the CPUs launched, DDR5 memory was out of stock everywhere, and when it did turn up, the prices were ridiculous. Thankfully, the situation is now gradually improving, making the more lustworthy Z690 motherboards available a little more accessible, and there are DDR5 modules with even faster speeds inbound too. Thermaltake’s entry into the DDR5 market isn’t exactly cheap, though, and with a price of £350 for a dual-channel 32GB (2 x 16GB) 4800MHz kit, the Toughram RC DDR5 is much more expensive than the competition too. The Toughram RC modules also lack RGB lighting, but they look extremely…

SUPPLIER dell.com Alienware isn’t the first company to build a small and light gaming laptop, but the x14’s 14.5mm-thick chassis undercuts every rival in this respect. It also looks fantastic, with a machined aluminium design that mimics Alienware’s larger machines, and its 1.79kg body is light and robust. The Alienware impresses in practical areas too. Around the rear you’ll find a futureproof HDMI 2.1 port, two Thunderbolt 4 connections and a micro-SD slot. There’s also a USB Type-C port that doubles as the power socket, plus one full-sized USB port. Unlike Alienware’s larger machines, the rear isn’t ringed with RGB LEDs, so the ports are easier to see. All of the ports are at the rear, so you’ll have a tidy desk, but you also miss the easy access of…

SUPPLIER chillblast.com Chillblast’s latest small form factor system uses the Fractal Design Torrent Mini, and that’s a brilliant start – it looks fantastic with its white 180mm intake fan glowing through the front panel’s deep slats. The good looks continue elsewhere, thanks to the Torrent’s dark glass side panels, and build quality is consistently excellent. Measuring 374mm tall and 417mm long, the Nano isn’t the smallest mini-ITX case, but it’s still compact enough to fit into tight spaces, such as a cramped desk setup. On the inside, the 2.5-slot graphics card dominates the bottom of the chassis, while above it, you’ll find a Noctua NH-U12S CPU cooler with two 120mm fans. The interior is cramped, but Chillblast has done a brilliant job of keeping cables tidy, and you can still…

SUPPLIER corsair.com/uk Science hasn’t yet discovered the point at which it can be said a PC has too many lights, although the Corsair iCUE LC100 Lighting Panels look potentially push the limit. The iCUE LC100 system is built around triangular RGB panels, each one containing nine RGB LEDs. You get nine panels in the Starter Kit, one of which is a main panel, which is the point of connection for the power and control wires, then you get eight other panels to attach to it with magnetic connectors. The magnets enable the panels to easily attach to any steel surface inside your case. In addition to the regular connectors, you also get two slightly larger versions of the connector on each panel, which allow you to hinge a pattern of…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk It’s been a while since we’ve looked at an ARCTIC all-in-one liquid cooler, but we’re quite glad the venerable PC cooling manufacturer sent the Liquid Freezer II 240 RGB in for review this month, and for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s the cheapest AIO liquid cooler on test this month, and one of the more affordable 240mm coolers available right now as well. As with the standard Liquid Freezer II 240 model we reviewed a while ago, we love the fact that the fan PWM cables run through the tubes and down to the pump, giving you just a single cable that powers both pump the pump and the fans, with no cables trailing off the radiator itself. What’s more, with the RGB and A-RGB versions of…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk The original Lian Li Galahad AIO liquid cooler was a favourite from our last 240mm cooler group test, thanks to its stunning appearance, decent performance and reasonable price, but a lot has changed with the latest version. The Galahad SL 240mm now costs £30 more than the original Galahad, which puts it at a distinct disadvantage when it’s up against the Corsair iCUE H100i Elite Capellix, which has received a sizeable price cut and retails for £30 less. However, the Galahad SL 240mm sports a number of upgrades this time. Its trump cards are its Uni Fan SL120 fans, which offer stunning RGB lighting, and their slot-together design that means only one PWM and RGB cable is required for both fans. The pump has both power and RGB…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Sapphire is a brand that we normally associate with graphics cards, but the innovative AMD GPU partner is now branching out into the liquid cooler scene, and the Nitro S240 seems like a decent first effort, featuring an attractive RGB-enabled pump and powerful 2,400rpm RGB fans. The pump is the same 7th-generation Asetek design as we’ve seen on other coolers this month, such as the Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30, but we’re happy to report that, unlike Phanteks, Sapphire includes LGA1700 mounting components in the box. Sapphire also offers useful measurements for the waterblock/pump section, which is quite hefty, and the company's web page (sapphiretech.com) needs to be a first port of call for anyone with a mini-ITX motherboard, so you can make sure it fits, as its…

SUPPLIER box.co.uk The TP-Link Deco X50 has an intriguing Wi-Fi setup that combines a single 2,400Mbps 5GHz band and a 600Mbps 2.4GHz band, rather than the 1,200Mbps 5GHz and 600Mbps 2.4GHz combination we often see on mid-range, dual-band mesh systems. This means you should get high peak performance up close, but performance won’t hold up as well as tri-band systems once you get further away with multiple nodes daisy-chained together. That’s the theory, and it was our experience in practice too. Setting up our three-node system initially with just one node, in test location one we saw chart-topping speeds of 775Mbps (although all routers were limited by our test laptop’s Wi-Fi adaptor at this range) and average speeds of 331Mbps in location two. Pings were more inconsistent (regularly jumping to…

DEVELOPER Andrew Shouldice/PUBLISHER Finji At first glance, Tunic resembles homage to classic Zelda, from its miniaturised, isometric world, to its cute fox protagonist dressed in a ragged green shirt. But Tunic’s divergence from Nintendo’s second-best mascot becomes clear when you first meet one of its bullish soldiers, and get the soul literally beaten out of you in three hits. Tunic might look like Zelda, but it feels like Dark Souls, combining the former’s presentation and spatial puzzling with the latter’s brutal combat and, er, spatial puzzling. Developer Andrew Shouldice has cleverly latched on to the crosspollination of ideas between Nintendo and From Software, delivering a captivating adventure pointed at the intersection between the two studios’ design philosophies. The game sees our nameless vulpine hero awaken on the shore of some…

DEVELOPER Smilegate/ PUBLISHER Amazon Games Lost Ark is a sprawling MMO and ARPG hybrid, essentially World of Warcraft meets Diablo. The game sees you pick one of eight classes as you search for seven fabled ‘Arks’, artefacts of enormous power that could turn the tide in humanity’s war against the demonic hordes. These classes range from warriors and mages to gunslingers and martial arts specialists. However, they’re all built to look spectacular and feel powerful, able to blow away crowds of enemies with rays of holy light, devastating meteor showers and massive artillery bombardments. Using these powers, you carve a path through Lost Ark’s fantasy world, which is split into around a dozen different continents, each of which is completely different. One might see you explore the miniature civilisation of…

DEVELOPER M-Theory, Oddboy / PUBLISHER M-Theory, Oddboy Wanderer is a rare VR title with a premise that goes further than ‘experience X, but in VR’. A time-travelling extravaganza, M-Theory’s game puts you in the role of a young man named Asher Neumann, who begins the game searching for his grandfather’s Boston apartment in the year 2061. The city is flooded and overrun by hostile gangs after an unspecified disaster in the past. Upon reaching the apartment, Asher discovers what’s essentially a talking watch that lets him travel to different time periods, along with a message from his grandfather tasking him with ‘fixing’ the timeline, so the apocalypse never happens. It’s a slightly convoluted premise, but Wanderer quickly gets you on board with both its fiction and puzzling. You approach your…

Start by installing the CPU in the motherboard. Press on the handle next to the CPU socket and lift it up, along with the socket lid. The CPU can only fit in the socket one way around, but be extremely careful with the CPU socket pins as these are easily damaged. Don’t lower the CPU down into the socket from a height. Instead, move it over from the side an inch or so above the socket and gently lower it into place 1. When it’s in place, gently place the lid over the top of the CPU and slide down the handle. Next, install the memory modules and Light Enhancement modules into the motherboard, placing the actual memory modules into slots two and four away from the CPU socket 2.…

FreeDOS, the open-source alternative to MS-DOS, has hit version 1.3 – a release that brings support for FAT32 storage devices on 8086 hardware, new networking support, updated packages and a floppy disk installer that requires around half as many disks as MS-DOS. ‘The new FreeDOS 1.3 reflects all the hard work of everyone who wrote code, translated messages, edited documentation, tested new versions, offered support,’ says project maintainer Jim Hall, ‘and all the other things that go into a new version.’ FreeDOS is available to download from freedos.org now.…

The Colouring Book of Retro Computers, by Neil Thomas, host of the ‘RMC’ YouTube channel, is on the surface a similar tome to the Retro Computer Colouring Book (see Issue 214). It’s aimed at adults and packed with nostalgia-tinged line-art illustrations of vintage computers. While the Retro Computer Colouring Book had 15 entries, though, Thomas’ version of the idea packs a grand total of 31. Every machine pictured is found in Thomas’ collection, housed in an old mill dubbed The Cave, which Thomas is opening to the public as a museum of classic computing – complete with a mock-up shop where users can browse, but not buy, old games and software. While Thomas took the reference photos, though, the line-art illustrations were created by Stuart ‘Stoo’ Cambridge, a former Sensible…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk We might have become accustomed to graphics card prices that bear no relation to reality over the past couple of years, but the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti doesn’t even need a cryptocurrency mining boom, a relentless army of eBay scalpers or a silicon shortage to get an unashamedly silly price attached it, because Nvidia has actually done it for us this time. Yep, that price up there is the one Nvidia came up with all on its own, and that’s just the starting price for the Founders Edition. What does nearly two grand buy you in terms of GPU horsepower then? The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti represents the all-out last gasp for Nvidia’s Ampere architecture before the GeForce 4000 series turns up at the end of the year.…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk Famed for its cases and coolers, NZXT has recently branched out into PC peripherals with the launch of a mechanical keyboard and gaming mouse (see opposite). The Function keyboard range is available in three main variants: full-size, tenkeyless (TKL) and the MiniTKL we’re reviewing here. All versions sport the same core features, but the TKL models lose the numberpads to make them more compact, while the MiniTKL compresses its layout even more, although it retains the same number of buttons as the TKL. The full-size and TKL versions also come with a wrist rest. Available in black, grey (only via NZXT’s BLD custom build service – nzxt.com/build/keyboard) or white colour options, all have a distinct minimalist sleekness, with the MiniTKL adding further to the effect with its compact…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk There are several different approaches to simulate a person using a computer when nobody is really there, from securing a control pad stick with a rubber band (don’t do that, it’s bad for the pad), weighing down keyboard keys and sitting your mouse on a device that literally jiggles it about. The Rii USB Mouse Jiggler takes a much subtler and sophisticated approach, with a USB device that’s smaller than its own plug. The Rii moves the mouse cursor on its own, so there’s no need to move the mouse or have the mouse moved for you when you’re absent. What makes this much subtler than traditional methods is that it doesn’t use continuous inputs – you get a tiny, almost imperceptible flicker of movement once every two…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Auskang power bank attempts to cram as much battery capacity into the most efficient shape possible. As such, what you get is a flat rectangular device roughly the same width as a smartphone, but slightly shorter and narrower – an ideal size to share a pocket with one in fact. With a capacity of 5,000mAh, the Auskang carries enough charge to refill a Galaxy S21 or Google Pixel 5 with around 20 per cent left over. One of the ways the Auskang saves space is that, unlike more versatile self-contained power banks, it only has one connector, in this case a USB Type-C port, although different versions with different connections are also available. This is a limiting factor, but it also streamlines the design. There also isn’t…

SUPPLIER ebuyer.com Corsair is the latest firm to jump on the integrated display bandwagon, with its latest iCUE H100i Elite LCD cooler sporting a screen on the waterblock/pump unit. What’s more, you can also buy this feature as an optional upgrade kit (£90 inc VAT from corsair.com) for the H100i Elite Capellix we’re reviewing here. That gives you room to upgrade at a later date and, what’s more, the H100i Elite Capellix has had a recent price drop, with units now going for £110 inc VAT from ebuyer.com Corsair’s Capellix RGB LEDs occupy the fans and waterblock/pump unit, making for an exceptionally vivid lighting display, while the pump speed is slightly faster than the pumps on Corsair’s previous 240mm models, and the fans are extremely powerful too, peaking at 2,400rpm.…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk While Corsair’s iCUE H100i Elite Capellix flagship 240mm AIO liquid cooler has seen a hefty price cut, the same can’t be said for NZXT’s Kraken Z53 RGB White, which is currently the company’s priciest 240mm model. As a result, it will set you back over £200 and cost nearly three times as much as the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 RGB or the EK EK-AIO 240 Basic. NZXT hasn’t just slapped a randomly high price on the box though – it's an extremely good-looking cooler that’s packed with the latest tech. Its 120mm AER RGB fans sport amazing lighting arrays and can be software-controlled using NZXT’s CAM software, as can the 7th-gen Asetek-derived pump. We haven’t had any issues with the latest version of this software, but we’ve…

How we test Mesh Wi-Fi routers are the best choice for getting a reliable Wi-Fi signal across a wide area, but the top-end systems can get very expensive, while the budget systems often lack the latest Wi-Fi standards. So, to find out how to get high speeds without breaking the bank, we’ve grabbed a selection of the latest mid-range offerings that include Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) but still all cost under £350 – believe it or not, the top-of-the-range two-node systems cost double that figure. All the systems on test consist of either two or three units, or nodes, one of which plugs directly into your broadband modem or ISPprovided router, and the other units can then be placed throughout your home, where they can pick up the original Wi-Fi signal…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk Netgear’s Nighthawk Mesh system is a bit of an oddity, as the company normally reserves its Nighthawk brand for its performance-orientated, gamer-centric products. This system, though, is decidedly basic and includes three units rather than two for its relatively modest asking price. Each node of this kit features a dualband Wi-Fi configuration that tops out at 1,200Mbps for the 5GHz band and 600Mbps for the 2.4GHz band. Not only does that mean its peak performance isn’t as high as some other routers on test, but also that performance at range will be limited by the lack of an extra Wi-Fi band, especially if you’re daisy-chaining all three nodes in a row. Also, while we say ‘nodes’, this system doesn’t have identical, multipurpose nodes but instead has a dedicated…

DEVELOPER Creative Assembly / PUBLISHER SEGA Total War: Warhammer III can’t be faulted for ambition. This wild and spectacular finale sees Warhammer’s armies of Chaos battling across reality to claim the power of a giant bear god. You’ll field armies of plague-spreading monsters, watch elemental polar bears battle woolly mammoths, and send out your hellish minions to collect skulls for the skull throne. It’s a game filled with amazing units and silly, enticing concepts. However, within its maelstrom of ideas, the core appeal of both Total War and Warhammer – conquering the world with your army of choice – gets rather lost. It pulls in too many different directions while pushing all its cool ideas at you too hard, too soon. The result is that the most exciting entry in…

The world of PC audio has gone through all manner of shifts in trends when it comes to device capabilities over the years. A decade or two ago, a quality gaming sound card was a must-have, along with a surround sound speaker setup. These days, though, built-in motherboard audio is greatly improved and most 3D effects and other gaming features are handled in software by your CPU, negating the need for fancy gaming features in sound cards. Meanwhile, headphones with virtual surround sound have well and truly taken over from surround sound speakers, and external headphone amps are all the rage instead of internal sound cards. All of which begs the question of just what is the overall situation with PC audio these days – are you better off with…

Designed by self-described ‘DIY enthusiast’ Om Singh, and produced by SB Components, the Roundy family consists of a pair of development boards with a difference – the fronts feature surprisingly high-resolution colour displays shaped as perfect circles. The two devices use identical displays, but different microcontrollers. The RoundyPi is based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, offering a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor running at 133MHz, with 264KB of static RAM, an eight-statemachine programmable input/output (PIO) block, 1MB of external SPI flash memory and a micro-SD slot for local storage. The RoundyFi, by contrast, has an Espressif ESP-12E, one of the company’s ESP8266 range, running its single Tensilica L106 core at up to 160MHz. It also has 128KB of static RAM, 4MB of flash memory and its key feature, 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n…

AN NZXT GAMING PERIPHERALS BUNDLE Fresh off the launch of its new award-winning mechanical keyboard and gaming mouse (see p32-33), NZXT has partnered with Custom PC to give away a cracking bundle of peripheral goodies in this month’s competition. One winner will bag a Function full-sized mechanical keyboard, Lift gaming mouse, Capsule USB microphone with matching boom arm and an extra-large mousepad. NZXT FUNCTION The Function keyboard features hot-swappable Gateron key switches, per-key RGB backlighting and a slick black or white design (winner’s choice). With its handy USB Type-C socket, you can also swap out the main cable or easily replace it if it ever gets broken. NZXT LIFT The Lift mouse weighs just 67g and sports a comfortable symmetrical design that we found to suit all grip types. Again…

A couple of years ago I remember saying (after several new CPU launches) that boosting algorithms would have a huge impact in the future, and that they could even make overclocking only worthwhile on a select few CPUs. In fact, this situation has changed even more than I predicted. Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs don’t just rely on boosting to optimise performance in varying workloads, but dynamic clock speed adjustment also has an impact on features such as Intel’s thread director, which divvies up work across a CPU’s P-Cores and E-Cores. The result is that most mid-range and high-end CPUs are now hitting frequencies at stock speed that are too difficult, time-consuming or power hungry to better achieve with a manual all-core overclock. As usual, all-core frequencies can usually be bettered…

Windows 3.1 is arguably the most crucial Windows ever – the Windows that defined how PC computing looked just as it was beginning to take off. Before version 3.1, Windows was a successful operating system, but one that looked and felt like a GUI shell perched precariously on DOS. With the launch of Windows 3.1 in April 1992, Windows finally looked and felt like the real deal. What’s more, it was a sales phenomenon, shipping over 3 million copies in its first six weeks on the market and 25 million within the first year. Windows was already big, but 3.1 put Windows in the lead. How did Windows 3.1 do this? That’s not something you can nail down to any one factor. It was partly a question of stability, partly…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk How do you offer PC enthusiasts a faster CPU when you don’t have any major architectural changes, and you’re planning to introduce a new range of CPUs in the near future? Well, we have two very different approaches this month, and Intel has taken the speed-binning approach, creating a CPU that can hit even higher frequencies than the previous Alder Lake flagship, the Core i9-12900K. The resulting Core i9-12900KS has a peak boost frequency of 5.5GHz, which is a sizeable 300MHz higher than the Core i9-12900K’s peak boost clock, and 600MHz higher than the Core i5-12600K’s top boost frequency. During testing, we saw the Core i9-12900KS hit 5.4GHz on its P-Cores regularly on a single core, although Intel’s specifications reveal that 5.5GHz will only be achieved via…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk MSI is clearly targeting stereotypical gamers with the styling of its Optix MPG321QRFQD. Its plastic rear mimics brushed metal and carbon fibre, it sits on a dramatically angled base and around the back you’ll find RGB LEDs. Happily, the Optix backs up the dramatic design with practical features. The stand offers 100mm of height adjustment alongside swivel and tilt movement, as well as a cable-routing cut-out. Around the back there are two HDMI 2 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4 input and a USB Type-C connection that also handles DisplayPort. There are also three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, two of which are helpfully located on the left-hand bezel. Meanwhile, a handy joystick navigates an excellent on-screen display – it’s fast, well organised and clearly displays key information and the…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk With its debut keyboard (opposite) proving such a success, can NZXT’s first mouse also make a positive first impression? Well, on paper, there’s not much that makes this mouse stand apart from its peers. Its feature set is basic and its shape is fairly unremarkable. However, in use it delivers all you would expect from a modern, simple and performance-orientated gaming mouse. The most successful aspect of the Lift is its symmetrical shape. It has a gently sloped back that comfortably supports the palm for palm-grip use but stays out the way enough for claw and fingertip grips too. The sides move from an outward slope at the rear to a slightly inward slope at the front, providing an ideal middle section just under the thumb buttons and…

SUPPLIER mobvoi.com Mobvoi’s ANC earbuds are relatively large, and as such, are easy to fit without accidentally pressing buttons or knocking them loose, making them comfortable as a result. Their active noise cancelling itself isn’t as aggressive as that of some earbuds – even on its highest setting (called Quiet), there’s no problem hearing cars, people, alarms and so on. This means the earbuds are fine for use out and about, where completely negating your sense of hearing for the sake of your tunes might be risky, but it also means you don’t have the option to just drown out all the noise around you. There’s also a sound pass-through mode, which allows you to hear every sound around you, almost as clearly as if you didn’t have earbuds in…

How we test 240mm all-in-one units are de facto standard for sealedloop liquid cooling these days, and for good reason. Their large radiators offer ample cooling for any mainstream desktop CPU, and usually enough cooling headroom to allow its fans to spin at lower speeds than 140mm or 120mm AIO liquid coolers. As a result, there’s a lot of variation in terms of pumps and fans between models, as manufacturers make use of this headroom to offer either better cooling or lower noise levels. To differentiate products, RGB lighting, software control and snazzy designs are all in the mix, but this month we have a bunch of coolers all vying for your wallet in different ways at a variety of prices. We’ll be putting them to the test on both…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Custom water-cooling hardware manufacturer EK has dabbled in the AIO liquid cooler market for a few years, and has now settled on a traditional design with a sealed loop, which comes in either plain black design or with an RGBenabled pump and fans. It’s the former that we’re reviewing here in the form of the EK-AIO 240 Basic; if you’re not fussed at all by multi-coloured flashing lights, this is the cooler to buy this month. At a price of £83 inc VAT, it’s very reasonably priced too, shaving over £25 off the price of the Corsair iCUE H100i Elite Capellix, although it does lack software control and a fan hub. On the other side of the pricing fence, the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 RGB is actually…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk As its name suggests, the Phanteks Glacier One 240 T30 comes with Phanteks’ new T30 120mm fans, which have received rave reviews and we can see why. They’re fantastically well made and they shift a huge amount of air, not only for the amount of noise produced, but also in absolute terms. While there’s no software control for the pump or fans, each fan has a switch to toggle between Advanced, Performance and Hybrid modes. The latter cuts the rpm to zero until a 50 per cent PWM signal is applied, before spinning up to a lowly peak of 1,200rpm. Performance mode raises the speed steadily to 2,000rpm and Advanced mode peaks at an unpleasantly noisy 3,000rpm, but this gives you a huge range of speeds with which…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk Netgear’s Orbi systems have long held the performance crown for twonode mesh router systems, with its flagship RBK852 system currently topping our overall test charts. However, with that system costing £700, it’s rather out of contention of most buyers. This cheaper RBK752 system, though, sits on the next rung down and still sports impressive specs. This tri-band system can simultaneously handle one 600Mbps 2.4GHz stream, a 1,200Mbps 5GHz stream and a 2,400Mbps 5GHz stream. Like other Orbi systems, though, one of the 5GHz streams is dedicated to being a wireless backhaul. Netgear’s theory is that this dedicated approach allows for the system to best optimise that single connection (with technologies such as beam-forming), increasing peak performance and reducing the chance of signal drops from having the router constantly…

DEVELOPER Flying Wild Hog/ PUBLISHER Devolver Digital Since the surprisingly decent reboot in 2013, the Shadow Warrior series has opted to parody other shooters, with the latest one picking Doom Eternal as its target for inspiration/mockery. It wholesale borrows the mechanics from id Software’s excellent FPS, as protagonist Lo Wang embarks on an adventure to save the world from a giant, planet-eating dragon. Killing enemies with guns makes them drop health, while killing enemies with your katana makes them drop ammo. It even has a grappling hook because, as Lo Wang put it, ‘everybody is doing it these days’. Flying Wild Hog clearly aims to replicate the brutality and intensity of Doom Eternal’s combat, but it’s a clumsy imitation. The grappling hook, for example, is locked into specific animations, meaning…

Although there are several decent Star Wars games on VR now, such as the excellent Star Wars: Squadrons and the (slightly less) excellent Vader Immortal trilogy, this hasn’t prevented the VR modding community from adding their contributions to the VR sector of Disney’s sci-fi universe. Indeed, two separate projects were recently announced that both focus on remaking games from the Dark Forces series into VR. First up is Dark Forces VR. Developed by small UK studio Shadow Art Games, it attempts to recreate the 1996 FPS in Unreal Engine 4. Funded via Patreon, there’s already a demo that lets players don their headsets and blast stormtroopers in a segment of the original game’s first level. Arguably even more ambitious is Jedi Knight II VR Remaster, which strives to recreate the…

CPU Intel Core i7-12700K £377 inc VAT cclonline.com Intel’s current stack of 12th-generation CPUs are fantastic, but it still pays to do a little digging into the specifications and prices, so you’re not wasting hundreds of pounds on a pointlessly powerful processor. For starters, while the Core i9-12900K and more recent Core i9-12900KS are the flagship models, they won’t leave you with any change from £500. There’s also the fact that, at our target resolution of 4K, the graphics card will be the bottleneck in terms of gaming performance. It has to deal with a huge amount of pixel pushing power, and it’s only really at 1,920 x 1,080 and 2,560 x 1,440 that bottlenecking could result from a poor choice of CPU. We’ve opted for the Core i7-12700K, as…

REVIEW Argon Eon Argon40 is no stranger to building boxes in which you can nestle a Raspberry Pi computer. Its first design, the Argon One (see Issue 188) launched in late 2018, and was updated for the latest Raspberry Pi 4 in 2019 (see Issue 197). 2021’s Argon One M.2 (see Issue 213) added a neat new feature in the form of an M.2 slot connected to a USB-to-SATA adaptor for highspeed storage, but the Argon Eon is a different beast entirely. Produced following a highly successful crowdfunding campaign, the Argon Eon is a case that turns any Raspberry Pi 4 model into a four-bay network attached storage (NAS) system. Like its predecessors, it has a near-full-metal construction (the two magnetically attached side panels are made of thin acrylic), with…

Last month I wrote about my experience with NZXT’s original H1 case, and its included AIO liquid cooler filling up with gunk. This gunk ended up clogging the copper contact plate and saw my CPU temperatures skyrocket – only extensive flushing ridded the loop of the gunk that kept blocking it. It seems this issue is more widespread than you might suspect too, according to a well-researched article I found after writing last month’s column. I found an article on igorslab.de looking at this exact issue, posted after I wrote my article last month, and the issue seems to be related to comparatively cheap AIO liquid coolers that use aluminium radiators. These aren’t uncommon, of course, but they skip one or two steps of the manufacturing process. To achieve lower…