Innehållsförteckning för December 2017 från Custom PC UK

The GPU is where you should allocate your budget if gaming is your top priority Amid all the clamour about 18-core and 16-core CPUs, Intel has just announced what it describes as its ‘best gaming desktop processor ever’. It doesn’t have 18 cores. It doesn’t even have eight cores. It has six cores, and two of them aren’t likely to get used in most games. What’s more, the main reason it’s Intel’s best ever gaming CPU isn’t because it has six cores, but because one of its cores can boost to 4.7GHz. Just one of them. That’s how many cores get really stressed by most games, even today. I say this because, while plenty of enthusiasts know what sort of spec you need for gaming, the comments I’ve seen in…

Intel Coffee Lake announced In what’s been a bumper year for CPU releases, Intel has responded to the threat from AMD’s Ryzen range by lifting the lid on its latest mainstream CPU range. Codenamed Coffee Lake, the new CPUs marks the eighth generation of Intel’s Core architecture. The new range sees more cores being added to the unlocked K-series chips, with the arrival of the first quad-core Core i3 CPU and the first 6-core Core i5 chip. Meanwhile, the top-end Core i7-8700K CPU will have a single-core turbo frequency of 4.7GHz – the highest yet. Intel describes the CPU as its ‘best gaming desktop processor ever’, and it will also offer up to 40 PCI-E 3 lanes when used with a motherboard based on Intel’s new Z370 chipset. Intel also…

 ASRock X299 Killer SLI / £220 inc VAT It has an attractive PCB and there’s a minimum of RGB lighting SUPPLIER www.morecomputers.com Owning a high-end desktop system is rarely cheap, but one advantage of Intel’s X299 high-end desktop platform over AMD’s equivalent is that motherboards can be bought for noticeably lower prices. It’s been around for a bit longer, but they were also a little cheaper to start. Of course, the much cheaper price of AMD’s CPUs means that, overall, Threadripper offers better value, but the price of X299 boards is dropping further now, as demonstrated by ASRock’s new X299 Killer SLI, which at just £220 inc VAT, is the cheapest X299 board we’ve seen. It’s still a full-fat X299 board, though, with a trio of M.2 PCI-E ports,…

DEVELOPER SloClap / PUBLISHER Devolver Digital / WEBSITE http://absolver.com Absolver is an intricate multiplayer fighting game that makes a half-baked attempt at being grand, resulting in a lesser game. It casts the player as a Prospect, a neophyte fighter who must explore the ancient and decaying world of Adal, challenging other Prospects to battle in order to become an Absolver – a master fighter. Not surprisingly, Absolver’s strongest asset it its combat system. It’s a slick and detailed representation of hand-to-hand martial arts, distilled into a simple yet flexible control scheme that includes all the familiar basics – light and heavy attacks, blocks and dodges. Meanwhile, Absolver’s innovative ‘stance’ system enables your avatar to assume one of four stances, each of which changes your starting light and heavy attacks. The…

As games have become more advanced, so too has their capacity to react. Games such as Elite Dangerous or Civilization VI react not only to the player, but to events that occur within its own code autonomously of the player. When this happens, reaction becomes simulation. In the extreme, it’s possible to imagine a game that simulates not just spaceships moving around a galaxy, or nation states moving armies, but also every drop of water, grain of sand, spark and spot of dust. That’s essentially Noita’s aim. Noita is a fantasy roguelike (dungeon crawler RPG) that sees players assume the role of a witch (Noita being the Finnish word for witch) who traverses a series of underground caverns, fighting monsters and dealing with hazards such as water, lava and flammable…

Water-cooling Threadripper People water-cool their PCs for all sorts of reasons. For me, it’s more for the noise reduction than cooling, at least with my current rig, although my long-awaited case mod will soon add some aesthetic flare to the equation when it’s eventually finished. However, there are still a few areas where you see some big gains in cooling, and maybe even higher overclocks as a result. Your graphics card, for example, will run considerably cooler under water, and the same goes for most processors too. However, I found that the lack of solder between the CPU and heatspreader on Intel’s latest CPUs has resulted in limited gains from water cooling, especially in terms of maximum overclocks. So, with Threadripper really pushing the limits of desktop CPU cooling, but…

The Z370 chipset has literally no new features apart from supporting the new CPUs After nine years of comparative stagnation, Intel has at long last deemed that it’s worth building CPUs with more than four cores for its mainstream Z-series platforms. The first Coffee Lake CPUs are here, known as the 8th-generation Core family, with even the most basic Core i3 CPUs having four cores, while Core i5 and i7 chips have six cores (Ed: look out for full reviews in the next issue!). I’d argue in some ways that such a move still isn’t really necessary, given that most games aren’t particularly heavily multithreaded. However, increased competition from AMD for the first time in more than a decade means Intel can’t afford to sit on its laurels and keep…

The graphics card will face upwards, meaning you can properly see your GPU cooler I always read the Custom PC letters pages, and one letter from a reader in Issue 169 particularly struck me recently. It was about the design of some desks forcing you to put your case on the left, and then being unable to see the efforts of your labour inside the case. It’s a situation that hits my rant button, as I also like to see my PC’s interior, but my options are limited, and not just when it comes to the desk design. Not everyone wants to put their PC in the same place, after all. It’s not just a case (ahem) of left or right; some of us must put our PC on the…

Why no Linux? I really wouldn’t want to scare you guys (not too much, anyway), but having just absorbed the contents of the latest mag (169), I’m worried that you maybe should really change the cover name to Custom (M$ OS games only) PC. If you want to Truly be a ‘custom’ PC mag you should at least try to mention the existence of Linus Torvalds. I built my current PC a couple of years back, using a guide published by yourselves, and good it was too. It has a BitFenix case, mini-ITX motherboard, Core i5 CPU and so on. However, I didn’t pay the customary £100 for the ‘obligatory’ M$ OS. I run Linux Mint (free download). I haven’t entertained Mr Gates at all in my humble abode for…

It’s now seven months since the launch of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, and much has changed in terms of stability and memory compatibility – all for the better. Motherboard manufacturers have released several high-profile BIOS revisions for their AM4 motherboards, which have improved memory compatibility, so most kits now work at 3000MHz, and memory manufacturers are responding well too. One memory company that has offered excellent support with AM4 motherboards at high frequencies is G.Skill, and it’s now even making Ryzenspecific kits, such as the Flare X, which offer lower timings. G.Skill was already off to a good start with its Trident Z RGB dual-channel kit, which worked fine on all the AM4 motherboards we tried at its rated 3200MHz frequency, but it only offered timings of 16-18-18-38. The Flare X…

Tile Mate / £23 inc VAT The Tile Mate is a small Bluetooth tracking device that can be looped onto key rings and, as you‘d expect from the name, is shaped like a tile. The accompanying app is easy to set up, and has the expected features of a tracking device, such as an alarm so that you can find whatever you’ve attached to the Tile, assuming it’s within Bluetooth range and earshot. You can also flip the settings around, so if you can find your keys but not your phone, double pressing the Tile button makes your phone play a tune. In the event that whatever you’ve attached to the Tile goes on a proper adventure then the map mode can also help you get within a range for…

How we test For many gamers, the absolute reliability of a wired gaming mouse is essential, but if you’re happy to risk the (very) occasional dropped connection or slight signal delay then the convenience of a wireless mouse can’t be understated. Whether it’s just to avoid the extra tangle and desk clutter, or to use as a handy remote when sitting back from your PC, they’re eminently useful. Of course, the manufacturers would insist you never get a dropped connection or signal delay anyway, and for the most part that’s true. The latest wireless technologies are incredibly fast, and in normal operation, there’s almost no perceptible delay between you moving the mouse and seeing the cursor move. The latest high-end wireless gaming mice also have ways to carry on gaming…

How we test We’ve included both vacant and occupied NAS enclosures in this month’s group test, depending on which setup the manufacturer sent for review, although there will likely be a variety of setups of some models available. Where a NAS enclosure is diskless, we set up a 4TB WD Red hard disk with the enclosure’s default settings. Otherwise, we used the hard disk included with the enclosure, which in both cases this month was a 3TB model. To test each NAS, we used Intel’s NAS Performance Toolkit software, which tests the enclosures in a number of areas. The video playback test mimics four concurrent video streams, and is a good indicator of maximum speed, as well as a NAS box’s ability to deal with multiple users streaming media at…

The beauty is that you need to do very little to get the basics up and running While Synology and QNAP have opted for feature-rich operating systems and a vacant drive bay, the Seagate Personal Cloud forsakes some of the bells and whistles, but is equipped with a 3TB hard disk. Seeing as these drives retail for around £80 on their own, the Personal Cloud’s Ethernet and USB port-equipped enclosure effectively costs a fraction of the others on test. As with the Buffalo LinkStation 210, the question is whether it’s worth saving money by sacrificing features and speed. The chassis is extremely compact, and only a little thicker than the hard disk itself. It’s also quite attractive, looking a little like the black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sadly,…

Id Software made five Commander Keen games between 1990 and 1991 The game industry has always been shameless when cashing in on a successful franchise. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Sierra Entertainment published eight King’s Quest games, and goodness knows how many Mario games have been published now. Look at the release list between now and Christmas, however, and it’s quite astonishing to see that nearly every release by a mainstream publisher is some form of sequel. You may think the reason for this sequel overload comes down to good old-fashioned greed, but the situation is a little more complex. Whereas in the early days sequels just provided a good way of making a profit, these days major publishers are r e li ant upon…

DEVELOPER Bloober Team / PUBLISHER Aspyr / WEBSITE www.observer-game.com Observer is a horror game dressed up as a cyberpunk detective story, which is unfortunate because it would be much better the other way around. The year is 2084, and Rutger Hauer voices Dan Lazarski, a specialist police officer equipped with the ability to ‘jack’ into people’s minds and explore their memories for clues. However, it’s a torturous process that has caused many Observers to go insane; consequently, Observers are feared and despised throughout the game’s dystopian society. When we meet Lazarski, he receives a mysterious message from his estranged son Adam, and resolves to investigate. Initially, Observer shows promise. Its cyberpunk world is a gorgeous mixture of gaudy neon signage and crumbling architecture. The majority of the action takes place…

Forgive me if I already sound like an old man, but back when I bought my first VR headset, it all seemed so simple. VR’s target audience was widely understood to be early adopters, and VR was a gaming platform, plain and simple. Both HTC and Oculus seemed aligned to this purpose from the start, with HTC forming an early alliance with Valve and Oculus poaching John Carmack from id Software. Fast forward to now and VR’s purpose is a little less clear. VR is still widely seen as a gaming platform, but maybe not just a gaming platform. That’s what happens when John Carmack’s boss is Mark Zuckerberg and Half-Life 3 takes the place of Duke Nukem Forever. It’s not just an issue about how VR is marketed. It’s…

These technologies are essential for participation in 21st century society It used to be that games made you into a school shooter or serial killer, but now there’s a subtler bogeyman in town: bratty kids. No one wants them, everyone hates them, yet some kids are still really annoying, and apparently it may be the fault of video games. Okay, ‘bratty’ is a bit unfair. What I’m actually referring to is the ‘social and emotional development’ of children, which every single one of us has experienced, probably as a gamer. We were all kids, we played games, we still do, society hasn’t collapsed. Some headlines have recently been grabbed by a longitudinal study (that’s good – it means studying people over a really long time), which claims that too much…

PROCESSORS TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015, Cinebench and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, installed on Windows 10 Home 64-bit, and record the power draw of the test PC. These tests cover a broad range of performance characteristics, including image editing, gaming, video encoding and 3D rendering. We run all tests at stock speed and at the CPU’s highest overclocked frequency. GRAPHICS CARDS Graphics cards are mainly evaluated on how fast they are for their price. However, we also consider the efficacy and quietness of the cooler. Every graphics card is tested in the same PC, so all results are directly comparable. TESTS : By using the fast PC detailed on the left, we can be sure that any limitations are due to the graphics card on test, rather…

 SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk The thick and large slabs of rubber down the sides provide plenty of grip The Razer Mamba has been one of the most popular wireless gaming mice for years now, but it was last updated a couple of years ago. Instead, the company’s latest wireless offering is the new Razer Lancehead RGB Wireless. It offers an ambidextrous design and Razer claims it has the most advanced wireless connection yet, but it loses some features too. The big feature that’s missing is a dock/ wireless receiver in which you can nestle the mouse to charge it. Instead, you have to connect the mouse to a micro-USB cable to charge it. This system works well, and still allows you to play games while the mouse is plugged in, but it’s…

DEVELOPER Messhof / PUBLISHER Messhof / WEBSITE http://nidhogggame.com It’s a peculiar decision to make your sequel uglier and more unpredictable than the original game, but Nidhogg was so slick and precise that developer Messhof didn’t have much of an alternative apart from not making a sequel, of course. Importantly, though, it works. The setup is the same as before: two players armed with rapiers attempt to run each other through as they compete an opposing race to either end of the screen. Kill your opponent and you’ll free up a few seconds to rush forwards before they respawn. Push them back through enough screens, and you’ll be rewarded by being consumed by a giant worm (hooray!) The most obvious change is the art style. Whereas Nidhogg was stripped back and…

TUTORIAL Syncthing on Raspberry Pi Use your Raspberry Pi as a remote backup server When cloud backup service CrashPlan abandoned home users, I took it as an opportunity to save the monthly fee in favour of a Syncthing setup. To build your own one, you’ll need a Raspberry Pi or other low-power microcomputer, a USB hard drive, power supply, network cable and 8GB micro-SD card. 1 Plug the USB hard drive into one of the Raspberry Pi’s USB ports and connect the network cable. Head to www.raspberrypi.org/ downloads and grab the latest Raspbian Lite image, and flash it to the micro-SD card. You then need to configure it for remote access by creating a file in the /boot partition called ssh. On Linux, just eject and reinsert the micro-SD card,…

MILESTONES THIS MONTH TOP 20 OVERALL TOP 20 PRODUCERS WHAT IS FOLDING? Folding@home uses the spare processing cycles from your PC’s CPU and graphics cards for medical research. You can download the client from http://folding.stanford.edu and our team’s ID is 35947. Once you pass a significant milestone, you’ll get your name in the mag. You can also discuss folding with us and other readers online at the www.bit-tech.net forums.…

Corsair K70 LUX RGB keyboard with your choice of switches TOTAL VALUE £160 inc VAT / MANUFACTURER www.corsair.com The K70 LUX RGB is a part of Corsair’s LUX flagship line of gaming keyboards, featuring Cherry MX key switches backed by a lightweight, durable aluminium frame and dynamic, multi-colour lighting. The USB pass-through port is positioned for uninterrupted gameplay and ready for your mouse or wireless headset adaptor. You can also harness the power of CUE for sophisticated macro programming and dramatic lighting effects and animations. Meanwhile, 100 per cent anti-ghosting with full key rollover on USB helps to ensure accuracy, so every keystroke translates directly into accurate gameplay. The contoured, textured FPS and MOBA keycap sets keep you in control, while the Cherry MX key switches give you a linear…