Table of contents for September 2016 in Custom PC UK

An overclocked Core i3 CPU is fast enough for a lot of people’s gaming needs I was recently shopping for a new mountain bike and, as I ride off-road a lot, and I’m tired of my backside constantly aching, I decided to buy one with suspension on both the front and back wheels. After going around a few shops, though, it became apparent that I couldn’t get what I wanted. Apparently the fundamental design of all bike frames is now controlled by one company, which insists that you need to buy a tricycle,rather than a bicycle,if you want full suspension, so all full suspension bikes have three wheels. This absurd recollection obviously isn’t true (although I would like a full suspension bike, naturally!),but it isn’t dissimilar to the situation with…

SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Graphics processor AMD Radeon RX480, 1120MHz (1266MHz boost) Pipeline 2,304 stream processors, 32 ROPs Memory 8GB GDDR5, 8GHz effective Bandwidth 256GB/sec Compatibility DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5 Outputs/inputs 1 x HDMI 2b, 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 Power connections 1 x 6-pin Size 243mm long, dual-slot Given that Polaris is the star that ancient travellers used to navigate when they got lost, it seems a wholly appropriate codename for AMD’s latest GPU, which points a new way forward in a number of ways. For starters, it’s AMD’s first GPU for over four years that doesn’t use 28nm transistors – more on that later. However, the price is also interesting. Usually, GPU makers launch a new architecture with a flagship, high-end GPU, to claim all the ‘fastest graphics card…

In the week that we’ve had our hands on the ToughArmor, we’ve subjected it to just about every drop, crush and impact test we can imagine, and it’s still intact and functioning. Even so, we find it hard to call the caddy truly rugged, thanks to the numerous cooling vents cut into the otherwise protective exterior casing, which make it vulnerable to water and dust ingress. You can drop the case from 6ft onto concrete without a problem, but drop it from an inch into a puddle and you’ll be in trouble. It’s a pity, as the enclosure was pretty quick with an SSD inside it, reading and writing at 271MB/sec and 119MB/sec respectively. For £60, it isn’t cheap either. However, if you want your external storage to be drop-proof,…

With motherboard audio becoming increasingly sophisticated, sound card manufacturers are adapting. Behold the G1 from Creative, a USB sound card aimed at gamers. Operated via Creative’s straightforward Acoustic Engine software, the G1 aims to tweak game audio to give the listener an advantage over their opponents. Scout mode, for example, picks out and boosts footstep sounds. A default profile can be saved to the card itself too, removing the need for software if you take the G1 on the road. It’s all very clever, but we found the gaming-specific settings overly intrusive, making audio feel unnatural and breaking our immersion. The G1 was, however, a boon on the move – movies on our cheap laptop worked well with its 7.1 emulation, and Creative’s Crystalizer engine is good for music too,…

The lighting adds a touch of zing and it’s controlled using Windows software SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel X99 CPU socket Intel LGA2011-v3 Memory support 8 slots: max 128GB DDR3 (up to 3466MHz) Expansion slots Four 16x PCI-E 3, two 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel I218-V Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi Overclocking Base clock 80–300MHz, CPU multiplier 12-80x; max voltages: CPU 1.92V, RAM 1.9V Ports 10 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 2 x SATA Express 6Gbps, 1 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 8 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 As if fairly extensive RGB lighting wasn’t enough, Asus has gone one…

Intel has introduced a new feature with its latest CPUs – Turbo Boost Max 3 (TBM3). It sits alongside, rather than replacing, Turbo Boost 2.0, which simply increases core clock speeds up to a certain frequency based on the load. For example, the Intel Core i7-6850K we’ve used in this month’s motherboard Labs test has a base frequency of 3.6GHz, but Turbo Boost can increase this clock speed under certain conditions. Finding the best core TBM3 is slightly more involved. Individual CPU cores aren’t created equal when it comes to voltages and frequencies. Each core will be unique, will run at different temperatures and will be located in a different area of the CPU. As a result, individually overclocking each core will see a wide range of maximum frequencies, each…

Build a home theatre PC The parts you’ll need to build an affordable, home theatre PC that’s ideal for putting in the lounge and playing back all manner of video formats. This machine will handle general computing and media tasks with no trouble, and its dual-core Skylake CPU can even handle 4K video playback. Meanwhile, its super-quiet Noctua CPU cooler prevents it from making a racket. 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, and even some games at 2,560 x 1,440. The machine has a discrete graphics card, a Skylake dual-core CPU and DDR4 memory. The ASRock Extreme4 motherboard is also capable of base clock overclocking via a BIOS update.…

One of the big frustrations of being a knowledgeable PC gamer is knowing that your expensive box of cutting-edge tech is massively more powerful than the latest consoles, but you can’t use all that power. Your graphics card might have loads more stream processors than the APU in the PlayStation 4, but then you have Windows clogging up the path. DirectX 12 aims to fix that, along with other new APIs such as Vulkan, enabling game developers to get ‘closer to the metal’, reducing the Windows overhead and improving performance. DirectX 12 marks a very new approach for gaming APIs in that it doesn’t introduce any new hardware features, and is even backwards compatible on earlier hardware. That isn’t to say that new hardware won’t be better optimised to take…

Time freezes when you stay still, and you can rewind Shadwen marks a significant departure for developer Frozenbyte, best known for its Trine series of charming 2D platformers. Shadwen is Frozenbyte’s first fully 3D game, shifting the emphasis from jumping over obstacles to sneaking past them. Shadwen derives its name from its protagonist, a female assassin who embarks upon a long and perilous journey to murder the king of an oppressed fantasy realm. During her mission, Shadwen comes across an orphaned girl named Lily, who’s being harassed by a guard about stealing an apple. In an unusual demonstration of altruism, Shadwen deals with the troublesome guard. As a consequence, Shadwen becomes the girl’s ward, despite being only a few days away from committing regicide. This intriguing premise is one of…

CPC: What was your inspiration? Jesse: My co-founder Ryan and I were both RaspberryPi fansandwefoundthateducators andmakerswantedadevicethatcouldbeused to learn how to create hardware, not simply consume it. Everything grew from there. CPC: The first Pi-tops were 3D printed. Why change? Jesse: In the beginning, it was just Ryan and I in a living room, building prototypes. 3D printing was the only way to affordably iterate, but we always planned to use injection moulding, as it gives the best finish. You can still 3D-print your own case but it’s an advanced project. CPC: How has the Pi-top design changed? Jesse: There’s a huge amount of change when youtakeaprototypeand makeitmanufactureready. Most of the changes were mechanical or structural, such as the custom hinge design and the snap-together circuits. All these changes result in…

REVIEW Particle Electron Particle, the company formerly known as Spark Devices, holds a special place in my heart. When I first acquired the Spark Core, reviewed back in Issue 132, it offered one of the simplest and cheapest ways to run Arduino code on a teeny-tiny microcontroller with embedded Wi-Fi, and remains one of the most useful tools in my box of bits. A rebrand later, and the Spark Core is known as the Particle Photon. It’s also under threat: the ultra-cheap ESP8266 is now programmable directly from the Arduino IDE and, while it can’t hold a candle to the Photon’s feature set, it’s available for a fraction of its price and already appearing on Arduino Uno-like boards for compatibility with existing Shields and other add-ons. Particle’s answer is the…

You rarely find games benchmarked with three or four GPUs Despite the rapturous reception to Nvidia’s latest GTX 1080 and 1070, Nvidia has also caused a bit of a storm by trying to keep these GPUs’lack of 3-way and 4-way SLI support quiet. Normally I’d cry foul after the sudden loss of a long-term feature,but this time I fully support Nvidia’s decision. Only a tiny fraction of Nvidia’s GPU user base uses more than two GPUs. It’s just not worth Nvidia’s while to spend so much money and resources on R&D, hardware verification and software development for such a small niche of its market.Sure, these people effectively spend 3-4x as much money as everyone else, but they’ve rarely had a good experience in return for their money. Inaddition, CustomPC has…

Measuring decibels I’m a broadcast sound supervisor and CPC subscriber. In your fans test you say sound multiplies by 100 times every 10dBA, but in fact sound pressure level doubles every 6dB (6dB for voltage measured decibels; it’s 3dB for watts, but voltage-related scales are always used for practical purposes). So an increase of 12dB is four times louder, 18dB is eight times louder, 24dB is 16 times louder and so on. The same goes for a decrease of -6dB; the sound is halved, so -12dB is a quarter as loud and so on. All we’re saying with decibels is that this sound is louder or quieter relative to that sound. It’s fair to say that the human ear perceives an increase of 10dB as a doubling of the sound…

If you enable the OC mode, you’ll get a 1657MHz core clock SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com /SPECIFICATIONS Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Core frequency 1657MHz base clock, 1860MHz boost (OC mode); 1632MHz base clock, 1835MHz boost (Gaming mode) Pipeline 1,920 stream processors, 64 ROPs Memory 8GB GDDR5, 8GHz effective Bandwidth 256GB/sec Compatibility DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5 Outputs/inputs Dual-link DVI, 2 x HDMI 2b, 2 x DisplayPort 1.4, SLI Power connections 1 x 8-pin Size 298mm long, dual-slot Nvidia is seemingly testing the water with its price label printer at the moment, as if it’s gauging just how much people will spend. What would happen if we added another £100? Let’s find out! Last month, the GTX 1080 set a precedent with its price of £619 inc VAT, and now the…

The XR3501’s 8-bit VA screen can render 16.7 million colours SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk The XR3501 is the latest addition to the exciting arena of curved gaming monitors, and BenQ has designed this panel with a tighter curvature than its rivals. The 35in XR3501 is built with a curvature of 2,000R, which easily beats the 3,800R measurement of the larger Asus ROG Swift PG348Q. In effect, this measurement means the BenQ’s panel is a slice of a smaller circle – which means the XR3501 more effectively wraps around the user than the Asus. That tight curve is great for immersion in games, but it can be initially disarming; the curvature can be seen on horizontal lines more obviously than on other panels. Interestingly, unlike many large, curved monitors, the BenQ doesn’t…

The brilliantly named Luminoodle is the one of the most useful gadgets we never knew we needed. Little more than a weatherproof strip of USB-powered LEDs, it’s a handy device when camping, working in poorly lit tight spaces (such as under a car) or just sitting out in the garden after dark. It’s magnetic and includes myriad loops, ties and fixings, meaning you’re able to stick it, wrap it or clip it just about anywhere. The £30 price includes a 4400mAh battery, which is good value for money, given that you can use the power pack to power other gear too. Our only concern is that, while the noodle is fully waterproof, the battery isn’t, which limits the outdoors credentials a little. SUPPLIER www.firebox.com…

How we test We test each motherboard with a Core i7-6850K, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz DDR4 RAM and two XFX Radeon R9 390X graphics cards in CrossFire configuration. We also use a Samsung 850 Pro SSD and 950 Pro M.2 SSD with CrystalDiskMark’s 32-queue-depth storage test. To measure the performance of the on-board audio codec, we use RightMark Audio Analyzer using 24-bit/192KHz settings, with the line-out connected to the line-in to obtain noise and dynamic range levels. We apply the optimised default settings and set the XMP profile in the EFI for stock speed tests, but touch no other settings, as we recommend for anyone setting up a new system. This process should set the correct memory speed and timings and ensure the board is set up for…

The fantastic RGB LED lighting shines through various plastic and metal shrouds SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel X99 CPU socket Intel LGA2011-v3 Memory support 8 slots: max 128GB DDR3 (up to 3600MHz) Expansion slots Five 16x PCI-E 3, one 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking 2 x Intel Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi Overclocking Base clock 80–266MHz, CPU multiplier 20-80x; max voltages: CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V Ports 10 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 2 x SATA Express 6Gbps, 1 x M.2, 2 x U.2, 9 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 2 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 As motherboards move beyond the realms of mere 2-way GPU setups, they…

You get the full complement of overclocking and testing buttons SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel X99 CPU socket Intel LGA2011-v3 Memory support 8 slots: max 128GB DDR3 (up to 3466MHz) Expansion slots Four 16x PCI-E 3, two 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel I218-V Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 90–300MHz, CPU multiplier 20-80x; max voltages: CPU 2.1V, RAM 2V Ports 10 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 1 x SATA Express 6Gbps, 1 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 9 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 8 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 f there was a motherboard that epitomises the focus on RGB lighting this month, it’s MSI’s X99A…

SUPPLIER www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS CPU 4GHz Intel Core i7-6700K Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz DDR4 Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Storage 240GB Kingston SSDNow UV300 SSD; 1TB hard disk Case Arcus AIO chassis Cooling CPU: Phanteks PH-TC90LS with 1 x 90mm fan; GPU: 1 x 70mm fan; rear: 1 x 50mm fan Monitor 34in PLS, 3,440 x 1,440 PSU Ehance EMP-7145B2 450W Ports Rear: 5 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, SDXC card reader, 1 x PS/2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 7 x audio Operating system Windows 10 Home 64-bit Warranty Two years parts and labour return to base with one month of collect and return cover, followed by one year labour only return…

Bolt-action rifles aren’t well suited to the kinetic twitchiness of FPS games The recent announcement that the Battlefield series would be visiting the trenches of World WarIsurprised nearly everyone. Not only did it completely buck the trend of military shooters pushing further into the future, but it also settled upon a conflict that first-person shooters, and indeed games as a whole, tend to avoid. There are a couple of decent WWI games, such as last year’s Valiant Hearts, or the online shooter Verdun, plus a smattering of flight simulators and grand strategy games. However, you could count on a hand the number of truly great WWI games that had recently passed through the digestive system of a bear. Part of the reason for this is that WWI poses significant problems…

From the reboot of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series to 80 Days (a dynamic retelling of the classic Jules Verne story), Inkle Studios’highly ambitious interactive fiction projects are far removed from the usual interactive fiction fare. They’re led by graphics, and they place strong emphasis on making you feel like you’re playing a game, rather than simply choosing from branching lines of text. ‘Right from the moment we formed the company, we knew we wanted to make flexible, narrative games,’says Joseph Humphrey, co-founder and lead programmer of Inkle.‘While a lot of games have branching, say, after a minute’s worth of content, we wanted to make sure the player was interacting with the story every few seconds. To enable that, you need to create tools that can cope with that level of…

A low pound may result in increased sales abroad as gamers take advantage of a bargain Popular wisdom says you should never talk about politics at a dinner party (or in your magazine column), but we can’t avoid talking about Brexit because it has an impact – good and bad – on just about everything. The gaming industry is no exception, and as I firmly believe the secret to a good dinner party politics chat is to look at the facts, that’s what I’m going to do here. The immediate impact of Brexit – the fall in value of the pound – will have an ongoing impact on British game developers, particularly developers who have to pay overseas staff. The pound will eventually regain value, and some Steam developers who…

Thought you’d seen every piece of Star Wars merchandise going? Think again. Yes, you can now flip your grilled goodies before they turn too far to the dark side with this lightsaber-themed set of tongs. Complete with electronic zummm zummm sound effects, and a red sheath for when the tongs aren’t in use, they’re just about the right side of knowingly corny to be fun. Thankfully, the sound effects can be turned off, so you can stop short of infuriating your guests before they’ve even been served a starter. The build quality is middling, as you’d expect from a novelty item, and the themed handle is also little too big for most people to hold comfortably. However, anyone looking for a serious piece of kitchenware should be looking elsewhere anyway.…

The Tile presents a pleasingly slick solution to a common problem – losing important objects. Attach a Tile to an object you value, pair it with your smartphone and you’re set. Your phone tracks the item while it’s near you (within Bluetooth range, specifically), noting the place and time it lost connection if you move away from it. Cleverly, you can mark items as lost in the app too. This mark automatically sets all other phones running the Tile app to look for your item, notifying you when and where a connection was made with your erstwhile tracker. Each Tile is a sealed weatherproof unit, however, so once the battery runs out (which Tile guarantees won’t happen for at least a year), you’ll need to purchase a new one, which…

The two primary 16x PCI-E slots are double-spaced for better cooling SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel X99 CPU socket Intel LGA2011-v3 Memory support 8 slots: max 128GB DDR3 (up to 3333MHz) Expansion slots Five 16x PCI-E 3, one 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking Intel I218-V Gigabit LAN, Intel I211-AT Gigabyte LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi Overclocking Base clock 80–300MHz, CPU multiplier 20-80x; max voltages: CPU 1.92V, RAM 1.9V Ports 10 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 2 x SATA Express 6Gbps, 2 x M.2, 2 x U.2, 8 x USB 3, 5 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 6 x USB 2, 2 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 We were massively impressed with the original X99 Deluxe when…

Cooling is aided by a heatpipe connecting the PCH and VRM heatsinks SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel X99 CPU socket Intel LGA2011-v3 Memory support 8 slots: max 128GB DDR3 (up to 3600MHz) Expansion slots four 16x PCI-E 3, one 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking 1 x Intel Gigabit LAN, 1 x Killer Gigabit LAN Overclocking Base clock 80–300MHz, CPU multiplier 20-80x; max voltages: CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V Ports 10 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 1 x SATA Express 6Gbps, 2 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 10 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 2 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244 The most lavishly illuminated motherboard this month has to…

 SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk MSI packed so much onto the PCB that it had to stretch its width to 272mm /SPECIFICATIONS Chipset Intel X99 CPU socket Intel LGA2011-v3 Memory support 8 slots: max 128GB DDR3 (up to 3466MHz) Expansion slots Five 16x PCI-E 3, one 1x PCI-E 2 Sound Realtek ALC1150 Networking 1 x Intel I218-V Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi Overclocking Base clock 80–300MHz, CPU multiplier 12-80x; max voltages: CPU 1.92V, RAM 1.9V Ports 10 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 1 x SATA Express 6Gbps, 1 x M.2, 1 x U.2, 11 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 7 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic Dimensions (mm) 305 x 272 While every other board on test has seemingly…

Launched as affordable bare bones microcomputers with an educational slant, the first Raspberry Pi boards offered some of the biggest bargains the computing world had ever seen. Since then, the Raspberry Pi has gone from strength to strength, spawning multiple hardware updates and forming the backbone for all sorts of modding projects. The Pi’s success has also given rise to a cottage industry of tech companies offering add-ons, extensions and upgrades designed to increase the Pi’s potential. That’s all well and good if you don’t mind breaking out the soldering iron or if you have a specific project in mind, but it’s also possible to build something a little more polished and traditional from the Raspberry Pi. That’s where London-based startup Pi-top enters the story. After raising nearly £200,000 from…

Once the butt of industry jokes, virtual reality is now very real and extraordinary to behold. Despite there being multiple headsets on the market, however, the games and applications currently available are still in their infancy.The focus so far has been largely on how well the technology works, rather than how we’ll use it. As a result, many companies are still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. One such developer is Hugh Hancock, one of the original foundersofwww.machinima.com ,anddirectorofMachinima films such as Bloodspell and Death Knight Love Story. Having spent most of his career using game technology to make films, Hancock recently switched to full-blooded game development after a transformative experience with the HTC Vive. ‘I’d pre-ordered the Vive consumer edition because I thought what the…

Hands on with CableMod’s PSU braids Last month I mentioned CableMod’s new online configurator (https://store.cablemod.com/configurator), which allows you to create custom cables for your PSU. And by ‘custom’, I mean that you can pick the colour of each cable strand and the type of the sleeving, the length of each replacement cable and the number of cables you want. The idea sounds fantastic – not only can you colour-match your cables to your case, but if you need shorter cables for a small PC, or longer ones for a multi-GPU behemoth, you could order your cables in the exact length you need. Buying your cables pre-cut and braided saves a huge amount of time compared to doing the work yourself, and while the cost of a kit plus shipping will…

The Radeon RX480 can stand toe to toe with the hugely popular Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 While AMD is faring much better in the graphics card business than the CPU market, for the past few years it’s still played second fiddle to Nvidia,with its steadily declining market share hurting revenue,as well as the amount availabletospendonresearchanddevelopment.However,after years of inertia, it looks as though AMD’s fortunes might turn around with the launch of the Radeon RX480,based on the new Polaris architecture. What makes the Radeon RX480 so much better than the R9 300-series cards is that it’s made using 14nm FinFET transistors, as opposed to the much larger 28nm transistors used to make AMD’s earlier GPUs. Smaller transistors not only switch faster, but they also consume less power, so the RX480 has…