Table of contents for Special 2 2016 in PC Powerplay

Though Gigabyte doesn’t like to promote its Aorus brand closely with its parent company, the Aorus laptops were nonetheless hosted on the same sprawling conference table as Gigabyte’s other laptops. The focus for this year seems to be gaming on the go – laptops that have the grunt to run with decent performance but without breaking your back. The highlight of their range had to be the new Aero 14, which measures just 19.9mm in depth. Yet Aorus has managed to pack in some powerful hardware into this 1.9kg notebook, with the Nvidia GTX 970M delivering most of the punch to the beautiful 14-inch screen, which has a 3K resolution. There’s also an Intel 6th Gen Core i7 processor, suggesting this thing will chew through batteries with ease. Yet it…

Building on last year’s Mastercase concept, which allowed users to modify and upgrade a single model of Cooler Master chassis with various optional extras, this year Cooler Master launched a much expanded variant of the programme. Called MasterConcept, the aim is to allow a vast variety of different computer users to build exactly the right case for them. Whether it’s a VR developer who needs a compact system they can take to client demos, to a video content creator who needs a giant workstation packing quad graphics cards, MasterConcept now allows users to alter a wide variety of different cases. The main version is the Master Case 5 series, an ATX sized case designed for regular PC users such as gamers and office workers. A special T version of this…

Roccat didn’t have a whole lot to show off that we haven’t seen already, but one product did stand out – the Roccat Suora. Yep, we don’t know how to pronounce it either. At first glance it looks like a relatively standard entry-level product, until we noticed the frameless design. The aluminium alloy housing has no palm rest, and no border around the keys. What good is that, we hear you ask? The answer is simple – cleaning out the keys on this sucker will be a breeze. Simply grab a can of compressed air and spray away, and all that dirt and dust will come flying out. It’s fully mechanical, but rather than use Cherry MX switches it instead comes with TTC Brown, which have a feel very similar…

OCZ only had one major new product to show off this year, but it was a ripper. The RD400 is one of the latest crop of NVMe SSD drives to hit the market, and uses a PCIe Gen3 x4 lane to deliver earth-shattering speeds. OCZ claims it can hit up to 2600MB/sec read and 1600MB/sec write performance. It’s actually an M.2 SSD attached to a PCIe board, so we’re guessing it can probably be detached and used as an M.2 drive if necessary, like Kingston’s similar product. The product uses Toshiba’s 15nm MLC NAND flash memory with an endurance rating of up to 592TBW (Terabytes Written). But what is even more impressive is the company’s amazing warranty policy, which it calls the Advanced Warranty Programme. If a user finds their…

“With duo fans we use the ten centimetre fans for the cooling solution. They can go slower so the noise level will be more quiet” Q: So you’re the guy in charge of coming up with these custom cooling solutions for MSI GPUs? Vincent: Yes When I was outside it was explained to me that twin fans is a better choice than three fans for reliability but also offers the same cooling. Can you explain more about that? The duo fan is more stable because if we put a three fan the fans have to be smaller because of the size of the system so the noise level will be higher. For cooling three fans need lots of RPM, so the noise levels will be higher. With duo fans we…

Asus VivoStick PC TS10 A PC the size of a pen PRICE $249 www.asus.com.au It’s hard to believe that we can now buy what is basically a full-featured PC that is only slightly larger than a high-lighter, but that’s exactly what the TS10 is. It may not have the fastest specs around, but when it comes to a simple PC to plug into the side of your TV for basic media streaming duties, this thing is magic. Tucked away inside this tiny stick is Intel’s Atom x5-Z8350 extreme low-power CPU, along with 2GB of LPDDR3 at 1666MHz. There’s only 32GB of eMMC storage for long-term file storage, but this thing is designed to stream thanks to the 802.11ac Wi-Fi that’s built in. It plugs directly into your TV via a…

 PRICE $4999 www.scorptec.com.au ‘‘Where this machine really shines though is the use of dual Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Editions’’ The differences between the Scorptec and PLE systems could not be more profound. PLE has delivered a system that has had maximum care and attention put into the build quality of the interior, creating a piece of art that any case modder would be proud to show off. On the other hand, Scorptec has focused on pure power, with a relatively simple interior. It’s well-built, but not in the same league as the PLE when it comes to sheer bling. And yet the Scorptec system is the only one of the two that is truly capable of 60Hz minimum Ultra gaming at 4K, because of their clever component choices. They’ve…

When it comes to gaming, there is one component that takes precedence when it comes to power – your graphics card. With most CPUs now hovering around the 3.5GHz to 4GHz range, and system memory between 8GB and 16GB, your graphics card is arguably the single most important piece of the pie for game performance. We’ve taken a look at six different price points, all the way from $1139 down to $175 to see just what you get for your money. Unfortunately AMD’s new RX400 series couldn’t make it in time, but we’ll be doing a full roundup of them in the next issue of PC PowerPlay’s standard edition. In the meantime, let’s see just how far your dollar will stretch, starting all the way at the top of the…

PRICE $779 www.msi.com Welcome to the best value mainstream card on the planet, Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 1070. The 670 and 970 were both our favourites in the last two product lines, offering much of the performance of the more expensive 680 and 980 but with a considerable price saving, and the new GTX 1070 is no different. Priced at just $779 yet delivering performance that outstrips a Titan X, this is the card to buy if you’ve got $700 waiting for a GPU upgrade. As expected, this is simply a cut-back 1080. The total number of CUDA cores drops from 2560 in the GTX 1080 to 1920 in the 1070, while the number of Texture Units takes a dive from 160 to 120. Surprisingly the number of ROPs remains…

01 In Win Aurora fans Price: TBA • Distributor: In Win www.inwin-style.com Case fans aren’t the most exciting thing in the world, but In Win has announced what could be the smartest fan solution we’ve seen in a long time. The Aurora fan itself isn’t that mind blowing – it’s a 120mm, 800-2000 RPM spinner, but the way it’s connected and controlled is genius. Rather than having to use separate fan controllers, the Aurora fans can be daisy chained together so one input can be used for multiple fans. The daisy chaining cables feature LEDs for extra lighting and the whole thing can be controlled via wireless remote. 02 EVGA DG-87 Price: $299.99 • Distributor: EVGA www.evga.com EVGA is promoting the new DG-8 range of cases as being designed as…

Rather than have a booth at the show, Crucial chose to demo its new range of products at a relatively quiet dinner and drinks night at a hotel. The main message is that it is now going to aggressively target gamers, mainly by building products that fit the performance needs of us high-end users. It’s now moving the Ballistix brand into its own category, aimed at gamers, and there were several products carrying this name. A series of high end DDR4 modules were on show, but it’s obvious the company sees the 2666MHz frequency as being the most popular amongst its target market. It will carry speeds up to 3400MHz, but a company rep claimed this would probably make up about 1% of all DDR4 sales for Ballistix. These DDR4…

The GPU industry has been constrained by a key technology for almost half a decade, which has forced it to make hotter, bigger and more expensive products. The size of the transistors used in the last few generations of GPUs was stuck at 28nm for over four years, with several delays holding back the move to a smaller process. These transistors are designed by the folks at TSMC, which stands for the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The original plan was to move to a 20nm process, then down from there, but it turned out to be a much harder task than anybody could have imagined. As a result, when NVIDIA released new products, which generally required more transistors to improve performance, the silicon die had to grow in size. This…

 PCPP: How did you first get involved in modding? What drew you to it in the first place? “As much as I admire those who do scratch builds. I feel scratch builds won’t introduce newcomers to modding” Tonks: Funnily enough I never actually set out in case modding from the start. I first took over GGF Lan Party about 6 years ago. I ran the event with a bunch of friends for about a year but decided I wanted to offer more at each event. This is when I had the idea to have a few systems on display. The next event saw a budget and extreme rig on display for gamers to test out and play around with. Then from there on it grew. Each event having more systems…

‘‘You’re talking over $3000 in GPU hardware just to enable 4K, and that doesn’t include the cost of the larger power supply, motherboard and case’’ 4K gaming has been the buzzword in the gaming hardware sector for over a year now, and it’s obvious why. Throwing so many pixels on screen at once needs an awful lot of hardware performance, and manufacturers are always keen to get people to buy the most expensive hardware possible. We’ve been hearing claims of 4K-ready gaming machines for a while now, but in reality most struggle to maintain playable framerates, especially when the action gets hot and heavy. So what do you really need for 4K gaming, and what are some of the standards surrounding this ultra-high resolution gaming? WHAT IS 4K? The exact…

To be frank, this is one of the most exciting years in PC hardware history in recent memory, and it’s been driven by two major product announcements. In case you hadn’t noticed, the PC gaming industry has gone Virtual Reality crazy, with the launch of two successful VR kits in the form of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. It turns out these are just two of many – at Computex, I discovered there are over 100 new Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) in development in China. Sure, most of these will probably suck, but there’s real potential here for some killer products to land soon. The other major new product launches are two new GPU architectures from AMD and Nvidia, both driven by TSMC finally being able to hit their…

PRICE $1139 www.gigabyte.com.au Welcome to the current king of GPUs, Nvidia’s brand new GeForce GTX 1080. Based on its new Pascal architecture, it’s actually quite similar to the older Maxwell architecture in many ways. The main difference is a process shrink; whereas the 980 Ti was stuck on a 28nm process, the new Pascal chips are being built on TSMC’s long overdue 16nm FinFET process. This reduction in transistor size brings several advantages. For starters, Nvidia can cram more transistors into a smaller piece of silicon, making it cheaper to produce (eventually). Secondly, they require less power to run, by about half in fact. But where these transistors really shine is in their speed, as you’ll see in a moment. As far as specs go, compared to the 980 Ti,…

PRICE $540 www.asus.com.au It’s very hard to recommend a product when a replacement series is just around the corner, but when it comes to the R9 390X, we think it’s probably going to outdo the new RX 480, albeit it at a slightly higher price. This is because the R9 390X has 44 Compute Units compared to the 480’s 36, and AMD doesn’t seem to be able to manage the same incredible frequency increases as Nvidia’s new Pascal range. We’re expecting to see the RX 480 with a Core clock speed of just 1266MHz, which has a boost speed of 1050MHz. The RX 480 also only has memory bus of 256-bits, compared to the ultra-wide bus of 512-bits on the R9 390X. On the other hand, the RX 480’s memory…

PRICE $175 www.powercolor.com Sometimes you just can’t afford the best, and the games you play don’t need all that much power. This is where sub-$200 cards are extremely popular, especially amongst e-Sports players and those on a budget. However, once again we’re forced to gaze into our crystal ball to see how AMD’s old R7 series will compare with its new RX400 range, but unlike the R9 390X, we think the R7 360 is probably going to be decimated by the new competition. It has but a mere 12 Compute Units within, with a Turbo speed of just 1050MHz. Compare this to AMD’s new entry-level card, the RX 460. It has 14 Compute units, which has a base clock of 1000MHz. The memory bus width is identical, at 128-bits, but…

The highlight of last year’s Corsair booth was definitely the Bulldog, a mini-PC designed to fit inside an AV rack below your TV with ease. Sadly it still hasn’t launched yet, but Corsair did show off version 2.0 this year, and it’s definitely changed somewhat. The new version doesn’t quite have the squat, doggy-looking exterior of the original, and has grown slightly in size; apparently it no longer fits inside a standard AV shelf, which is a bit of a shame. Apparently Corsair weren’t happy with the thermal design of the original, so the new version should run cooler and quieter, so we’re happy to compromise on space. We were initially informed that the Bulldog should hit the Australian market in the next few months for a price of $2999,…

It’s not often a booth tour commences at the exact same moment as a 6.1 magnitude earthquake, but that’s how this year’s Gigabyte tour kicked off. Their booth is held on the 37th floor of Taipei’s 101 tower, the 4th tallest building in the world, but thankfully it’s built to handle these types of events. It was certainly an interesting start to a booth tour that was absolutely jam packed with new products. The massive booth in the 101 was divided into several key areas – laptops, motherboards, mini-PCs, workstations, while another booth in a different building highlighted more of their peripherals and notebooks. Our tour commenced with the laptop section, an area where Gigabyte seems to have more products than ever before. As expected, many of these were product…

Zotac’s focus this year seemed to be mini-PCs, as it had a plethora on display. The Zbox Magnus EN980 is arguably the smallest VR-ready PC we’ve seen, only slightly larger than an ITX motherboard. It’s able to cool the GTX 980 inside by using a custom waterblock connected to a 120mm radiator, an impressive feat for such a tiny gaming machine. As one of Nvidia’s biggest partners, it was no surprise to see Zotac’s version of the GTX 1080 on display, which is called the Amp Extreme. This massive slab of a video card uses a huge triple slot cooler with three fans (yep, RGB lighting and all) along with juiced up power circuitry. A smaller Amp edition was also on show, which uses a two-slot cooler with twin fans,…

There’s no denying that Valve’s Steam Link is a fantastic little device for the price, but it doesn’t actually do a whole lot more than stream your PC games from your main PC to the TV. And even then, it has some serious issues with playback at high detail and framerates, especially when trying to render better visuals. Still, for the price it’s hard to beat, but if you want a tiny PC for the living room for media and Steam game streaming, you’re going to have to pay a little bit more. Notice we said a little bit, as it should be possible to build something for around $500 or so, and it’ll do a heck of a lot more than the Steam Link. What follows is our guide…

4K Benchmarks PLE Overt Beautiful build, but where’s the SLI? PRICE $6499 www.ple.com.au We’d just returned from Computex when writing this article, and had seen some incredibly beautiful builds during our week there. So when we slid open the right side of this case and saw a tastily hand-crafted water cooling loop and custom-build that was on par with some of the best of Computex, we couldn’t help but be impressed. The good folks at PLE certainly know how to build with the best of them, which helps justify the rather stratospheric price point of this PC… and yet it’s missing one crucial element that we think true 4K gaming needs. PLE has chosen to use Corsair’s excellent Carbide 600C case. This uses a unique inverse design that places the…

‘‘the cap of 40Mbps upload that is currently available, this greatly limits the maximum capacity of player slots we can offer’’ It’s possible to hire a game server from one of many companies in Australia, but it can cost big bucks depending on how many players are going to be using it. Also, you lose a lot of control when doing so. So why not host your own? We spoke to Ryan Psaila and Jason Harp, both company directors at Supremacy Gaming, an organisation which runs their own server farm, to find out just how to go about it. What servers do you run? Supremacy: We run 6 x Hardcore BF4 servers on a commercial dedicated server host, but we privately host 1 x ARK Evolved, 1 x CS:GO and…

PRICE $899 www.asus.com.au When this card was first introduced, it simply blew the competition away. Offering most of the performance of a GeForce GTX Titan X, it shaved a solid $500 off the price point. Sadly it’s now basically obsolete thanks to the introduction of Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 1070, which can be bought for just $769, a solid saving of $120. The good news is that Nvidia has announced price drops for the GTX 900 series, so we should see the price of this card drop in the near future… hopefully. At the time this card came out, it was the fastest GTX 980 Ti product on the planet. Asus had endowed it with 14-phase Super Alloy Power II, which apparently delivers 30% power noise and 5 times greater…

PRICE $249 www.msi.com It’s probably going to be quite some time until Nvidia releases its GeForce GTX 1050, so in the meantime the older GeForce GTX 950 is the sweet spot for gamers. Yet, this version is hard to comprehend – with other GTX 950 cards selling for $210, the extra $40 doesn’t really get you a whole lot. And at this price, $40 extra is definitely something buyers are conscious of. Compared to other cards in Nvidia’s range, this thing has quite a low count of CUDA cores, at just 768. It’s also only got 48 Texture Units, with another 32 ROPs. There’s only 2GB of onboard memory, with runs at 6.6GHz over a 128-bit memory bus. Galax has given this card a decent factory overclocking, increasing the Core…

In case you hadn’t noticed, the PC hardware industry has gone nuts for Virtual Reality. It’s banking massive amounts of marketing money behind the concept, not to mention a bit of R&D, in the hope that it will finally give everybody a reason to upgrade their PC hardware. This year’s Computex was absolutely dominated by VR-ready signs, with every single major vendor pushing the message that their gear is the best for VR. More importantly, there’s also the fact that the release of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift have proven that VR is finally a viable concept. Both excellent VR kits in their own right, they’ve shown that when done well, VR can deliver an incredible experience, exponentially more impressive than the entertainment experiences of the past. It really…