Table of contents for October 2015 in Custom PC UK

Windows 10 is out. Yay! It has DirectX 12. Yay! It doesn’t have the horrific, jarring jumps between the Windows and Metro Start screen when you hit the Start key any more. Yay! It looks as if Windows is appropriate to use on a desktop PC again. Yay! Windows Media Center has been discontinued. Ya … wait, hang on, I still use Media Center, what’s going on? I understand why Microsoft isn’t bothering with Media Center any more. It never really took off in the mainstream, and it had some weird quirks too – I particularly like the one where sometimes the sound is completely out of sync with the video and you have to restart your programme. Yet Media Center arguably had the best remote-control TV interface ever devised…

EVGA has just revealed a new micro-ATX board based on Intel’s top-end X99 chipset for Haswell-E processors, which also supports USB 3.1, complete with a Type-C connector, promising data transfer speeds of 10Gb/sec. Despite its modest dimensions, the EVGA X99 Micro 2 also supports three-way SLI via its three 16x PCI-E slots, and also includes an M.2 connector, and on-board power and reset buttons. Meanwhile, the ten SATA 6Gbps ports will accommodate loads of storage devices. UK pricing and availability for the Micro 2 have yet to be confirmed.…

New memory standards are launched far less frequently than new microprocessors, graphics cards or chipsets, so the use of DDR4 with 100-series chipsets and the Skylake platform is a milestone, being the first time a consumer chipset has used this type of memory. DDR3 has been around since 2007, where support for it debuted with Intel’s P35 chipset. With speeds ranging from 1333MHz up to over 2000MHz, the standard was a faster, more efficient evolution from DDR2 rather than a brand-new technology. SDRAM itself has been around for decades, with only relatively minor tweaks along the way. DDR3 runs at 1.5v or 1.35v in its ‘DDR3L’ guise, while CAS latency times range between 7ns and 10ns depending on the module speed. A general rule is that faster memory has a…

PROCESSORS We judge CPUs on whether they offer sufficient speed for the price. Part of a CPU’s speed score comes from how overclockable it is. Every type of CPU is tested in the same PC, so all results are directly comparable. TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015, Cinebench R11.5 and a variety of games. We also test the power draw of the test PC with the CPU installed. These tests reveal a broad range of performance characteristics, from image editing to gaming and video encoding to 3D rendering. We run all tests at stock speed and again when overclocked to its highest frequency. *Please note: We test AMD FM2+ APUs using the on-board graphics, not the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB GRAPHICS CARDS Graphics cards are mainly evaluated on…

Keeping all your devices charged can often feel like an incessant battle with a group of hungry, angry infants, especially if they’re all waiting to use a single mains adaptor. You could install USB wall sockets (see opposite), but the Smart Charger 8000 is a neat option too. Sized like a hockey puck, it plugs into the wall (with a 1m cable) and provides five high-speed 2.9A charging ports – enough for any bedside table. While the 2.9A output is impressive (and makes for very quick charging), the overall unit output maxes out at 8A, so connecting more than three devices will slow charging times overall. Still, it looks good, works well and is a great deal for £19 too – just what you need to satisfy all those hungry…

SUPPLIER www.chillblast.com /SPECIFICATIONS CPU Intel Core i7-5960X overclocked to 4.2GHz Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X99M-Gaming 5 Memory 32GB 2666MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR4 Graphics 2 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Storage 512GB Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD, 4TB Seagate Hybrid hard disk Case Custom Parvum Cooling XSPC RayStorm CPU waterblock, XSPC DDC Photon 170 reservoir and pump, EXPS EX360 triple 120mm-fan radiator, XSPC AX240 double 120mm-fan radiator, XSPC and EK fittings, clear tubing, yellow Mayhems Pastel coolant, 5 x Corsair SP120 fans. PSU Corsair AX1200i Ports Front: None; Rear: 8 x USB 3, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 2 x PS/2, 6 x audio Operating system Windows 8.1 64-bit Warranty Two years collect and return parts and labour, plus three years return to base labour only The Arkham…

Build a mini APU PC The parts you’ll need to build an affordable, general-purpose mini PC that’s ideal for putting in the lounge, based on an AMD APU. This machine will handle general computing and media tasks with no trouble, as well as basic gaming, although you’ll have to lower the detail settings. Build a budget gaming PC The parts you’ll need to build a budget machine capable of playing the latest games at maximum settings on a 1080p monitor. The machine has a discrete graphics card, a highly overclockable dual-core CPU and high-speed memory. Meanwhile, the Z97 motherboard gives you headroom to upgrade to a faster CPU later. Build a mid-range PC Work PC The parts you’ll need to build a solid quad-core PC with plenty of upgrade potential.…

RONIN is essentially Kill Bill: The Video game, if Uma Thurman’s Bride was repeatedly thwarted on her mission of vengeance by a spotty geek wearing glasses and a starched shirt, shouting ‘Mr Henchman! Mr Henchman! It’s that girl with the sword again and she’s bullying me!’ Seconds later, a dozen armed guards would then barge through the door and fill our heroine with more lead than a Tudor face cream. Don’t get us wrong, RONIN does have plenty going for it. It’s effortlessly stylish and elegantly simple, focusing mainly on one ingenious system, but it’s held back by a couple of immensely irritating flaws. It’s a 2D side-scrolling game in which you play an anonymous vigilante who breaks into a corporation’s high-security buildings to track down its leaders’ business and…

Does SCUMM need any introduction? The Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion became the basis for all but two of LucasArts’ adventure games, including The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road and Full Throttle. During its 12-year existence, SCUMM’s 2D side-scrolling graphics and verb-based interface established the basic framework for the adventure gaming genre, variations of which are still used by many adventure games today. SCUMM was a constant presence during LucasArts’ golden years, so much so that its importance wasn’t always recognised, and during its later years, the tech was rather taken for granted as prettier technology danced before the studio’s eyes. But what made SCUMM so enduring within the studio? How exactly did it function, and in what ways did…

The big event of this past month was Liverpool MakeFest, the first of what promises to be an annual event for the Merseyside area based loosely on the Maker Faire format. Having got up at an ungodly time of day to get there in time, I found my way to Liverpool’s Central Library to find out what was going on. ‘It’s a fun, free, family festival of everything “makey”, so it’s science, technology, engineering and creative arts all coming together, and looking at how they’re shaping our world,’ explains Mark Feltham, who had been working with partner Caroline Keep since February to organise the event. ‘Along with a lot of pop-culture based ideas, such as making Daleks, and anything people really want to see in physical form,’ adds Keep, taking…

1 / BARE METAL PANELS If you have bare metal case panels, such as those on some Lian Li cases, your job will be a fair bit easier. They’re paint-free and brushed to a fairly high standard already, meaning you just need to start with high-grit sandpaper. 2 / SAND USING HIGH-GRIT SANDPAPER Start with 1,000-grit sandpaper, adding water to create a smooth sanding paste. Continue with this sandpaper until the brushed surface has been removed, then move on to higher-grit numbers. 3 / BUFF TO A SHINE You’ll eventually have a smooth surface, and can then move on to using Autosol as you would elsewhere in this guide. Apply it to a cloth and rub in circular motions, using more paste when needed.…

One of the joys of working at Scan is getting to test (also known as ‘play with’) samples of new products, often months before their general release. This month, two major new products have been released – Microsoft Windows 10 and the Intel Skylake platform. Windows 10 is a massive improvement compared with Windows 8, ditching the horrific Metro interface in favour of a redesigned Start menu, coupled with other notable improvements such as Task View, multiple desktops and the ability to snap applications into the corner of your screen. However, the biggest potential improvement of Windows 10 – DirectX12 – has yet to prove itself; apart from a few tech demos such as Square Enix’s The Witch, no games use the new API yet. On the other hand, upgrading…

In its recent Q2 earnings statement, Intel confirmed troubles with its most recent 14nm manufacturing process. We’ve known about this situation for a while, as it was confirmed by the delay and subsequent nonevent of Broadwell for desktop enthusiasts (C-suffix CPUs have all gone to system builders rather than retailers). However, these problems have also had a knock-on effect on the forthcoming 10nm upgrade, which has been delayed a year from 2016 to the second half of 2017. In that gap, Intel will release a third 14nm architecture (where Broadwell was the first and Skylake is second). This change in schedule effectively marks the end of the two-year, tick-tock era, although to be honest, in the face of ever-increasing technological challenges, it’s remarkable that Intel sustained this strategy for so…

‘Men who harass women online are quite literally losers, new study finds.’ Amazing! The basic gist is that in one study, using Halo 3, men who were game were men were to female players. Men who were good at the game were nice to everyone. The Washington Post summarised this study by saying that ‘in other words, sexist dudes are literally losers’. Well, Washington Post, that’s a stretch, or at least, a reversal of what’s most likely happening, which is that players who are losing act antisocially. Rather than sexist men being bad at games, it’s that losing at a one specific game correlates with sexist behaviour (specifically related to the gaming environment). That isn’t such a snappy claim though. Nonetheless, this sort of research is progress because it adds…

Radeon R9 380 / £176 inc VAT SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk Radeon R9 390 / £300 inc VAT SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk Radeon R9 390X / £396 inc VAT SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk Radeon R9 Fury / £450 inc VAT SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk Over 3.5 years ago AMD hit back at Nvidia with its killer GPU architecture, Graphics Core Next, with the Radeon HD 7900 series, and it seems to have been stuck in that time warp ever since. Since then, we’ve seen the Radeon R9 200-series and now the 300-series, but despite a few tweaks here and there, they still use the same fundamental GPU architecture. In terms of features, all of the current range support Vulkan, OpenCL 2, DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5, Mantle and FreeSync. Is this enough to compete with…

Given USB’s omnipresence, it seems silly to be using bulky adaptors to charge our devices from the wall. Hallelujah, then, that we’re now seeing wall sockets with USB ports. At £20, the metal-faced BG Nexus costs several times the price of a non-USB socket, so you’ll want to install them in key areas, rather than littering them all over the house. On the plus side, they come in several flashy finishes, including brushed metal and various colours, rather than just white plastic. It’s also annoying that the two ports share only 2.1A of output (so adding a second device reduces the charging speed of the first), but at least it’s easy to fit, being the same shape and size as a normal 25mm plug socket fascia, and you wire it…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS CPU Intel Core i7-5960X overclocked to 4.5GHz Motherboard Asus X99 Deluxe Memory 16GB 2666MHz Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 Graphics 2 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Storage 512GB Samsung SM951 SSD, 512GB Samsung 850 Evo, 3TB Hard disk Case Lian Li PC-D600 Cooling EK Supremacy Evo CPU waterblock, 2 x EK FC titan X waterblocks, EK D5 pump and top, EK reservoir, Coolgate triple 140mm-fan radiator, Coolgate triple 120mm-fan radiator, Noiseblocker e-Loop fans, Mayhems coolant, EK fittings, Monsoon clear acrylic tubing PSU Superflower 1600W Ports Front: 4 x USB 3; Rear: 8x USB 3, 2 x USB 2, 2 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 6 x audio Operating system Windows 8.1 64-bit Warranty Two years collect and return parts and labour, plus three…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS CPU Intel Core i7-5960X overclocked to 4.625GHz Motherboard Asus Rampage V Extreme Memory 32GB 2666MHz Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 Graphics 4 x Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Storage 2 x 1TB Samsung 850 Pro in RAID 0 configuration Case Custom Lian Li PC-D600 series Cooling EK GPU and CPU waterblocks, 1 x XSPX triple 120mm-fan half-height radiator, 1 x Coolgate triple 120mm-fan full-height radiator, 1 x Coolgate double 120mm fan full-height radiator, Overclockers UK custom SilverStone fans, EK fittings, 2 x Laing D5 pumps, EK Reservoir, chrome-plated copper tubing PSU Super Flower 2000W Ports Front: 4 x USB 3, 2 x audio; Rear: 10 x USB 3, 2 x USB 2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 1 x PS/2, 6 x audio…

Remember when PC gaming was dead? It wasn’t, of course, but the major publishers’ attitude towards that box underneath your desk suggested it had kicked the bucket. Between 2008 and 2010, when the Xbox 360 and PS3 were at their most popular, the likes of Microsoft, Ubisoft and EA were looking at the PC like a teacher watching that one kid in class who just won’t sit down and do as he’s told. Microsoft tried and failed to turn the PC into an Xbox-style platform with the atrocious Games For Windows Live, while a slew of shoddy ports, delayed releases and DRM scandals suggested that EA and Ubisoft had given up on the PC. Then, as PC power started rocketing away from the consoles’ aging hardware, publishers realised that their…

fitting alternative title to Feist would be Bullying Simulator 2015. Not only does everything in Feist’s murky forests hate you with a passion usually reserved for Ebola-infected traffic wardens, but certain creatures seem to actively enjoy inflicting pain and misery upon you. Feist may look cute and pretty, but it will soon have you weeping in the school toilets as it tries to kick down the cubicle door to give you a swirly. In terms of aesthetics and tone, Feist owes a lot to Limbo. The silhouetted visuals, physics-based puzzles and general hideousness of the world around you are major components of both games. Add some brightly coloured backgrounds and replace the little boy with a huffing fur-ball, and you have Feist’s basic framework. Despite the similarities, Feist is a…

Somewhere in the dark recesses of your brain, you might have heard of Deus Ex: Insurrection, Shadow Realms and Mission to Nexus Prime, but you’ll have never played them. Welcome to the world of gaming archaeology, dedicated to curating the growing archive of cancelled games, and preserving the games of yesteryear. It’s no big news that games get cancelled, especially in today’s saturated gaming market, but how do games that seem to disappear get preserved, and what happens to them? At www.unseen64.net, a site to which I contribute, we collect design and concept documents, talk to developers and use tools such as the Internet Wayback machine to collect as much information about cancelled games as possible. Shadow Realms Let’s start by taking a look at some of the cancelled games…

Hands on with Hex Gear’s R40 I wrote recently about a newcomer to the case market called Hex Gear, and this month I was sent the first retail final sample of its new micro-ATX case, the R40. As this month is stacked full of Dream PCs and new Skylake kit, we didn’t quite get around to looking at it, but I’ve already built the case and I’m mightily impressed – we hope to do a full review soon. It’s quite large for a micro-ATX case, but then so are most cases that are built with water cooling in mind. You can use a double 120mm-fan radiator in the roof, a triple 120mm-fan radiator in the base and there are custom mounts available for pumps and reservoirs too. The case arrives…

Gimp We use Gimp to open and edit large images. Unlike our previous Gimp test, this one uses more than one CPU core, although it’s still more sensitive to clock speed increases than to more CPU cores. Handbrake H.264 video encoding Our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake video encoding takes full advantage of many CPU cores, pushing them to 100 per cent load. LuxMark OpenCL This GPU compute test is the only synthetic part of our suite, although the renderer is based on the real LuxRender physically based rendering software. As 3D rendering is a specific workload that not everyone will use, and because OpenCL support isn’t standard in most software, this section is given just a quarter of the weighting of the other tests in the final score. Heavy multi-tasking Our…

Open door First off, I love the magazine, especially the mods section, which has come in handy plenty of times! The reason I’m mailing you guys, however, is because I’m stuck with a dilemma. Courtesy of Gumtree, I find myself the proud owner of a near-mint CM Stacker 830 Nvidia Edition case, which is all well and good, but it did come with a downside – the aluminium front door is missing! That’s not a big deal – unlike my old Thermaltake Xaser II case, it doesn’t look overly ugly without the door, but the more I look at it the more it bugs me. Is there a way to easily find spares for cases no longer under manufacturer support? And if not, is it possible to make a new…

Windows 10 released Just as we went to press, Microsoft officially released Windows 10, aiming to unify the Windows OS across various platforms, but without mucking up the desktop experience in the same way as Windows 8. The new OS sees the welcome return of the Start menu as standard, and also introduces DirectX 12, which aims to reduce Windows overheads in games to improve performance, enabling developers to get closer to the silicon, as you would with a console. We’ve been playing around with Windows 10, and first impressions look good, but we’ll reserve judgement until we’ve properly tried out the final version. In the meantime, most users of Windows 7 and 8 can get a free upgrade to the new OS anyway. Look out for a full analysis…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel Z170 CPU socket Intel LGA1151 Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR4 (3466MHz OC) Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, four 1x PCI-E 3 Sound Asus Crystal Sound 3 Networking 2 x Intel Gigabit LAN, 3x3 802.11ac Wi-Fi Overclocking Base clock 40–400MHz, CPU multiplier 8–33x; max voltages, CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V Ports 6 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 2 x SATA 6Gps (third-party controller) 1 x SATA Express, 1 x M.2, 1 x USB 2, 1 x USB 3, 6 x USB 3.1 (ASMedia ASM1142 controller), 2 x Gigabit LAN, surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 As with nearly every other modern Intel processor launch, a new architecture introduces a new socket type, breaking compatibility with existing motherboards, and making…

SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk / MODEL NUMBER CH-9000088-UK /SPECIFICATIONS Connection Wired, USB Cable 1.8m, non-braided Materials Plastic USB ports Yes Backlighting Red Switch type Cherry MX Red Extras Cherry MX Key puller, replacement tactile QWERDF keys Corsair Gaming’s new Strafe is the first totally new design to come out of Corsair’s peripheral arm for a few years, and it takes quite a different approach to features than the classic K-series keyboards. For a start, while the plastic construction is solid, it’s a far cry from the aluminium used in several of Corsair’s previous efforts, including the K70 and K65. There are also no dedicated media controls – instead you use a combination of a function key and the F keys. That’s a bit of a shame given the price – at…

If you’re thinking about blinging up your build, adding some Antec TrueQuiet 120 UFO fans to your rig will definitely add a touch of colour. Available in four colours (white, blue, green and red), the fans have a clear plastic ring on their intake side, which is illuminated by four LEDs. The effect is pretty, if a little uneven, and the lights are powered from a 3-pin motherboard header, rather than needing a Molex connection. The fans proved quiet too, partly thanks to the huge marshmallowy rubber grommets that cover each of the four mounting points. There’s even a built-in speed switch that spins the fan at high or low speeds. You can’t turn off the LEDs, which could be annoying in some situations, but the overall the effect is…

Let’s be clear – a few sheets of cardboard and a cheap lens won’t magically turn your phone into a projector. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Brightness is the main issue. Even the most modern smartphone screen simply isn’t designed to push out enough light to project a sharp image over a useful distance. We could only move the unit about 30-50cm away from a wall before the image quality fell off a cliff. Below these distances, the image quality made movies watchable, but the projection was barely bigger than the screen itself. It isn’t entirely without merit though. It’s fun and easy to assemble, and it would provide an interesting way to teach a child how a home projector or cinema screen works.…

Customisation, extreme hardware, epic performance and gorgeous looks are all what the next few pages of the magazine is all about. We’ve asked several of the UK’s leading PC manufacturers to enter systems they consider worthy of being called Dream PCs – the ultimate gaming desktop rigs, with multiple graphics cards, intricate water-cooling systems and extensive modding. In a new take on our usual Dream PC format, to cater for different budgets and to entice some more system builders to join the fun, we have two price tiers this year. We start proceedings at a modest, but still lavish price limit of £6,000, with three systems entering this group from Scan, Overclockers UK and Chillblast. We then have the true extreme machines, which hover around the £10,000 mark. Here, multi-Dream…

A day after its release, the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight was withdrawn from sale due to widespread complaints about severe performance issues on all but the highest-end machines. Our own experience of Rocksteady’s latest game was relatively stable, though, so we’re able to discuss what the game itself is like, and whether it will be worth picking up when the technical problems have been addressed and the game re-released. The short answer to that question is, yes. Arkham Knight is Rocksteady’s most complete Batman simulator yet. A larger and truly open Gotham City provides the backdrop to an action-packed yet surprisingly introspective finale to the Arkham series. As with Arkham City, however, the grander scope also lets more flaws creep into the game, and there are times when…

Velleman REVIEW 3D Printing Pen Three-dimensional printers are a big deal at the moment, with every technology company – including outfits such as Arduino, better known for low-cost educational microcontrollers – looking to stick their fingers in the pie. There’s no doubt that they’re handy devices, but they’re still prohibitively expensive; even the cheapest hobby model imported from China will set you back at least £300, and building your own 3D printer – while possible – is technical and fiddly. There’s a gap in the market, then, for an absolute entry-level device – and it’s a gap that toolmaker Velleman is looking to fill with its 3D printing pen. It isn’t the first such device, of course – 3Doodler, from the wonderfully named WobbleWorks, hit Kickstarter back in 2013 with…

It’s not every day that I get my hands on a device that acts as both a microcontroller platform and a kid’s toy, but this month Matt Brailsford decided to break the pattern. Known in maker circles as ‘Circuitbeard’, Brailsford has been designing a virtual pet with which to gently steer the next generation of tinkerers. Brailsford tells me that the prototype he’s given to me is identical in most ways to the finished design, except that it’s slightly bulkier and has the button assignments backwards. Designed as a standalone device that can be connected to a PC for programming, I supply power to the prototype and it loads the default sketch: a Tamagotchi-inspired virtual pet. A face appears on the 8x8 LED grid that takes up the front of…