Table of contents for October 2019 in Custom PC UK

There’s been a veritable avalanche of new silicon plummeting into the PC valley at high speed over the last few weeks, and this issue of Custom PC is largely dedicated to making sense of it, and showing what you can do with it. For starters, there’s our main build feature on p76, which shows that you don’t need to spend a ridiculous amount of money on building a new PC with all the latest tech. It’s not a budget rig, but it does get you all the exciting new gear, including an AMD Zen 2 CPU, a 1TB PCI-E 4 SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super GPU and an X570 motherboard for under £1,500 inc VAT. In addition, we’ve also reviewed Nvidia’s new RTX 2060 and 2070 Super GPUs,…

PREVIEW NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080SUPER/ £669 inc VAT SUPPLIER nvidia.com The summer hardware flurry isn’t over yet – Nvidia has launched another GPU in its Super series, and we managed to get our mitts on our sample just before this issue went to the printers. The GeForce RTX 2080 Super finally enables all the parts on Nvidia’s TU104 GPU, giving you 48 streaming multiprocessors (SMs). That gives you 3,072 stream processors, 48 RT cores and 384 Tensor cores. It’s a bit of a miniscule boost compared with the other two Super GPUs. The RTX 2060 Super and 2070 Super (see p16) each get 256 more stream processors than their predecessors, but the RTX 2080 Super only has 128 more stream processors and two more RTX cores than the original…

£351-£400 Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super / £380 inc VAT SUPPLIER scan.co.uk This is where the water starts to get muddy. AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT is undoubtedly faster than the RTX 2060 Super in most games, and it costs the same amount of money. However, at this price we expect some futureproofing, and AMD’s lack of hardware ray tracing hurts it here. When Cyberpunk 2077 comes out next year, we’re going to want to play it with ray tracing enabled. That said, the line is very thin here, and we’ve given both GPUs the same score. If your priority is getting the fastest frame rates possible, AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT is a better buy although, as with the RX 5700, we recommend holding out for third-party cards…

When M.2 hit the scene a few years ago, we were thankful for this brilliant interface that cuts cable clutter, and it’s made storage one of the focal points of cutting-edge hardware. Nowhere more so, in fact, than with AMD’s new X570 motherboards, which support PCI-E 4. What’s more, the storage industry has managed to galvanise the production of PCI-E 4 NVMe SSDs to launch at the same time, partly thanks to a $15 million US investment from AMD. That’s just as well, because there are precious few other reasons to opt for an X570 motherboard, apart from some admittedly very fancy board designs. This month we’re looking at one of a handful of PCI-E 4 SSDs to already hit the market, and Corsair was one of several companies to…

Virtual Reality represents the pinnacle of full-immersion gaming, but its practicalities have stymied Neuromancerlike fantasies of literally stepping into Cyberspace. The necessity to plug your headset into a powerful PC, and own large spare room for regular VR gaming, has limited its appeal. One solution is the Oculus Quest, an entirely standalone headset that essentially acts as a portable console you wear on your face. There are no cables tethering you to your PC, no external sensors to set up around your room. It’s the closest VR has come to ‘pick-up-and-play’ yet – a liberating and greatly improved experience that ,while not quite revolutionary, demonstrates the future VR must embrace if it’s to become a standard mode of play. Specs While the Quest’s design focus is usability, the headset also…

How we test While you don’t need an X570 motherboard to take advantage of AMD’s stunning new 3rd-gen Ryzen CPUs, there are several good reasons to consider one. You get PCI-E 4 support for starters, which allows you to run the latest generation of SSDs at speeds of over 5,000MB/sec. Some of the new boards also sport power circuitry that may better suit AMD’s 12-core and 16-core CPUs too. There are some fantastic designs out there, with feature sets that could give any Intel-based motherboard a run for its money. As well as looking into each board’s features and design, we test each motherboard’s prowess in raw performance. Our test kit includes a Ryzen 9 3900X CPU, 16GB of 3466MHz Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro RAM, an EKWB EK-MLC Phoenix all-in-one…

Asus’ Strix brand is all about RGB, and sure enough, the Flare provides the requisite RGB backlighting to its keys. However, this is a pretty standard feature on premium keyboards these days, so Asus has had to ramp it up a notch. In the top-right corner is an RGB-illuminated clear plastic plate with an Asus ROG logo painted on it. On its own, it isn’t a compelling extra feature, but the plastic plate can be removed and swapped for an included unmarked plate, allowing you to add you own little illuminated logo to the keyboard. You also get underlighting on the sides of the keyboard, creating some attractive washes of colour on the side of our test mouse. The big downside here, though, is that while the lighting might be…

I found myself muttering, ‘Oh that’s lovely, properly lovely,’ the moment I set this keyboard down on my desk. Corsair has long led the charge for smart-looking mechanical keyboards, and much of this keyboard’s appeal comes down to Corsair’s tried and tested design. There’s the brushed aluminium top plate on which the keys are mounted and the all-black livery, but the pièce de résistance is the new low-profile keys. Corsair keyboards that use standard Cherry MX switches have keys that stand so proud of the base that they look a bit gangly and cluttered. With these new low—profile switches, though, the whole unit sits tightly together, making for a more elegant look. What’s more, Corsair has really made the most of the low-profile switches, with the keyboard measuring just 22mm…

The GK60 is MSI’s second-tier mechanical gaming keyboard, after the flagship GK80. As such, you miss out on a few flagship features such as a USB passthrough and RGB backlighting. However, you do get an affordable keyboard with an even red backlight that’s easy on the eye. Often, RGB lighting has a slight shimmering quality, possibly down to the way the LEDs regulate their brightness and mix of colours. There also isn’t much light leaking from the sides of the MSI’s keyswitches, making for a clean overall look. The aluminium top plate helps too. Its anodised dark grey colour, combined with a slightly reflective brushed finish, looks good in isolation and provides an attractive backdrop for the backlighting. It’s also more pleasant to touch than the heavily brushed finish of…

I was originally going to title this column:‘To tell better stories,games need better characters.’It’s true,but it implies that games don’t tell compelling stories right now, and that’s unfair. There’s a wide array of games that have weaved wonderfully entertaining tales, from the BioShock and Portal games, to BioWare’s unique and brilliant Mass Effect trilogy. More recently, Telltale’s adventure games have added to the pile of fantastic story-driven experiences, and there are innumerable indie titles, such as To the Moon and Kentucky Route Zero, which are majestically written and plotted. Even the story of this year’s Wolfenstein, a game about shooting Nazi robot dogs with laser guns, punched above its weight. All these games share the same reason behind their storytelling success – characters, which are crucial to any story. Thankfully,…

DEVELOPER Indefatigable / PUBLISHER The New Bloods Interactive Amid Evil is a ‘first-person slinger’, a fantasy FPS that situates itself within the proud, albeit brief, tradition of games such as Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic and, er, Hexen 2. It’s a relentless metaphysical thrill ride with some of the most imaginative level and weapon design we’ve seen. The premise is delightfully simple. You’re a nameless warrior chosen to rid the universe of a mysterious evil spreading its tendrils through a bunch of different fantasy realms. That’s it. Now hurry up and get smiting. And what smiting! Your weapons aren’t shotguns and rocket launchers, but staffs, swords and tridents, each of which works differently, and you won’t know how until you press the left mouse button for that first, glorious time. The…

AMD’s new 3rd-gen Ryzen CPUs blew us away last month, offering amazing performance for surprisingly low prices, so this month we’ve built an X570-based gaming PC to show you how it’s done. We’ll be using AMD’s 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X, along with Corsair’s 1TB MP600 PCI-E 4 SSD and Nvidia’s RTX 2060 Super GPU, while throwing in some liquid cooling and Phanteks’ awesome P600S case in a fantastic sub-£1,500 gaming rig. As usual, we’ll be offering tips, tricks and tweaking advice, as well as alternative products for budgets above and below our example, depending on your own needs. We’ll also be taking a look at the best ways to overclock your PC and set it up for the best performance, depending on whether you need maximum multi-threaded grunt for content…

Overclock your graphics card The Nvidia RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition is an excellent overclocker, and it’s simple to get some extra performance. Download GPU-Z (techpowerup.com) and MSI Afterburner (guru3d.com), increase the temperature and power limits to maximum in the latter, and then locate the small three-bar button next to Core Clock. In the window that appears, hit OC Scanner in the top right, then select Scan. This will begin to automatically overclock and test your graphics card and is normally fairly accurate in obtaining a core frequency reasonably close to what you’d achieve manually. You’ll see the core frequency in GPU-Z leap around as the programs runs. When the test has finished, close the window and click the option that says Curve to the right of Core Clock. This…

REVIEW Raspberry Pi 4 Although everyone knew it was coming, nobody expected it quite this quickly: the Raspberry Pi is dead, long live the Raspberry Pi. To clarify: as indicated during the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+, the ‘legacy’ Raspberry Pi range has come to a close. Its replacement, looking not wholly dissimilar and going under the name Raspberry Pi 4, is a ground-up re-engineering effort that aims to finally address some of the most long-standing complaints about the low-cost, education-focused single-board computer family. The heart of the effort is a new system-on-chip (SoC), the Broadcom BCM2711B0. The headline-grabbing features are four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A72 CPU cores and an all-new VideoCore VI GPU – making it the first Raspberry Pi in history to launch without the aging…

The mid-range likes of Nvidia’s GTX 1060 6GB and RTX 2060 might be superb cards that have retailed for significant amounts of cash, but there have been no full-cover waterblocks available for them from reputable manufacturers. The RTX 2060 has been priced between £300 and £400, depending on the model, and it seems bizarre to me that water-cooling a card in that price range is so difficult. In fact, I’ve spent far less money on graphics cards with readily available full-cover waterblocks in the past. Given the rise of mini-ITX systems over the past few years, water cooling is an excellent way to keep GPU cooling in check in the tight confines of small cases with meagre airflow. That’s before we get into the aesthetics of the situation, which is…

If the CPU market were using Dungeons & Dragons rules, AMD just rolled a 20 for initiative, 20 to hit and 20 to  damage Over the past few weeks, the enthusiast PC landscape has seen a seismic shift away from Intel towards AMD. It’s not the first time this has happened, but the last time was back in the early noughties when AMD launched Athlon 64. AMD has spent the past few years building towards this moment, with the launch of Zen CPUs in March 2017, and Zen+ in April 2018. But while Zen was competitive, and Zen+ was good, the new Zen 2 CPUs are truly great, running circles around Intel’s Coffee Lake CPUs. What’s more, Zen 2 CPUs are aggressively priced – they not only perform better than Intel CPUs, but…

I will preface this column by reminding readers that leaked road maps aren’t officially confirmed by Intel. This column is based on a number of leaks of Intel’s plans for 2020, which have been published separately in various places online. Intel has already publicly announced that its Core i9-9900KS will be arriving later this year. It’s the same 8-core CPU as the i9-9900K/KF, but with a 5GHz all-core clock that should bring some performance advantages. Ultimately, though, AMD’s 16-core behemoth – the 3950X – is going to add far more advantages when it launches around the same time. The scheduling of the i9-9900KS tells us that Intel’s 300-series platforms (Z390 and so on) will remain with us until at least the end of the year. That’s unusual not only because…

What’s that? Our pals at be quiet! are offering a Dark Base Pro 900 Rev. 2 Silver case to one Custom PC reader. The image below is a distorted close-up of a piece of hardware in this issue. If you identify it, email the name and page number of the product to competition@custompcmag.org.uk, with ‘What’s that? 193’ in the Subject field. Last month we mistakenly reprinted the same ‘What’s that?’ image as the month before, so we’re going to run that competition for another month. If you can spot the image below anywhere in Issue 192, email the product’s name and page number to competition@custompcmag. org.uk, with ‘What’s that? 192’ in the Subject field. Issue 191 winner The winner from our Issue 191 competition was Stephen Rolph, who correctly identified…

After the utter chaos that’s just unfolded in the graphics card world, it feels like we need a bit of a recap in order to put Nvidia’s Super RTX GPUs in context. Last month, AMD released the first graphics cards based on its new RDNA architecture (see p86), the Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT. Nvidia, with spectacular timing, also marched in like a party-pooping parent, launching its first competing RTX Super products, with review embargoes expiring a week before the AMD launch. It’s a situation that made reviews difficult at Custom PC, as we had a print deadline at the same time. We had time to test the AMD GPUs, but didn’t get any RTX Super samples in time for full review last month. We ended up not being…

While AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X is undeniably awesome, the rest of the 3rd-gen Ryzen stack is no less important. After all, the Ryzen 5 2600 and Ryzen 5 2600X outstripped every other desktop CPU in terms of sales according to several retailers, and the Ryzen 5 1600 and Ryzen 5 1600X offered superb multi-threaded performance for the cash as well. As a result, the Ryzen 5 3600X’s price is a key battleground for AMD. In terms of price, the competition comprises just one CPU – Intel’s Core i5-9600K, which sits £20 below the Ryzen 5 3600. The next step up is the Core i7-9700K, which will set you back around £120 more, highlighting the huge gap in Intel’s current 9th-gen product stack. The AMD chip has a couple of sizeable…

Hard drive behemoth Seagate has recently returned to the SSD market, with its new Firecuda NVME drives available in capacities of 1TB or 2TB, with stated maximum sequential read and write speeds of 3,450MB/sec and 3,200MB/sec respectively. You can also get lower-capacity versions of essentially the same drive, but Seagate has branded these drives with the Barracuda name, in line with the reduction in performance that comes with lower capacities. Available in 256GB and 512GB models, they offer almost the same stated read speed of 3,400MB/sec, but the write speed drops to 2,180MB/sec on the 512GB model and just 1,050MB/sec on the 256GB version. The drives are governed by a Phison E12 NVMe controller, which has four cores and features up to eight NAND channels and 32 NAND chip-enable (CE)…

The X570 Taichi’s price tag lands in the middle of the pack this month, adding £30 to the price of the Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming, so it’s up against some stiff competition. It looks great, and it also has the full range of PCI-E 4 support, spanning all three M.2 ports and all its PCI-E slots. There are eight SATA 6Gbps ports too, making the Taichi one of the most storage and bandwidth-focused boards on test, and it will happily run SATA and PCI-E 3 SSDs in those M.2 slots too. The ASRock also takes on the Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming in terms of overclocking and testing tools, with the Taichi including power and reset buttons, a clear-CMOS button, an LED POST code display and USB BIOS Flashback.…

X570 boards might cost a fair amount more than their X470 predecessors, but at £270 inc VAT Asus’ ROG Strix X570-E Gaming has price on its side compared with most of the competition this month. It also  ticks a number of boxes when it comes to acting as the foundation for a powerful 3rd-gen Ryzen system. That, said, there's a few omissions and cutbacks. There are no power or reset buttons, and you don’t even get a clear-CMOS button either. The button on the rear I/O panel is actually tied to the BIOS Flashback function – even the £100 cheaper MSI X570-A Pro has a clear-CMOS button. The rest of the specification is bang on though. You get a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as an Intel Gigabit port,…

With its comparatively low price, the MSI X570-A Pro is undeniably rather spartan-looking compared with all the other boards on test, with no M.2 heatsinks and only modest-sized VRM heatsinks; there's no heatpipe to link them and spread the heatload. Underneath them are ten power phases, but just eight of them handle the CPU, so this board is by far the least well-equipped in terms of power delivery on test. There’s also no lavish cooling array, with the chipset heatsink and fan left to fend for themselves. Thankfully, the fan is very quiet. As well as omitting heatsinks from the M.2 ports, only one of them offers full PCI-E 4 support, but given the likelihood of the board being purchased with more limited budgets in mind, it’s unlikely owners will…

Optical keyswitches are the big feature of the Celeritas II. BenQ Zowie has teamed up with Flaretech, which makes a new type of keyswitch that relies on a light beam being blocked and unblocked, rather than a metal contact plate. One upside to these switches is a longer lifespan – they’re rated to 100 million keystrokes, compared to the 50 million of most mechanical keyswitches. They also have a shorter actuation point and there’s far less debounce delay. The firmware needs to allow a short period of time before sending a signal, to ensure that the key has been pressed properly and the contacts aren’t bouncing around. This delay is just 0.03ms, compared to 5ms on normal keyswitches. In most scenarios, this delay isn’t likely to make much difference, but…

Ducky has been making highly regarded mechanical keyboards for a long while, and the Shine 7 is its top model. It sports RGB backlighting, double-shot PBT keycaps and a beautiful zinc alloy top plate. The latter surrounds the keys and bends down the sides. It looks great, and the material is apparently three times stronger than aluminium, although it’s debatable if there’s much benefit when it’s only used to make the top plate. The plate surrounds the keys, rather than the keys being mounted directly to it, which creates a clean look and allows for an even backlight, thanks to the white plastic layer diffusing the light beneath the keys. Flip over the keyboard and it has a standard plastic base, with static rubber front feet and two-stage, flip-down rear…

Opto-mechanical keyswitches are the Huntsman Elite’s big selling point. Instead of using an electrical contact to trigger a signal, the keys open and close a light path. Because the signal actuation isn’t physical, you don’t get a worn contact point as with traditional mechanical switches. As such, Razer can claim a durability of 100 million clicks, compared to around 50 million for most mechanical switches. Razer has also aligned the actuation point with the point at which you hear and feel the click of the key – yes, Razer’s opto-mechanical switches are only available in clicky varieties for now. There’s also almost no debounce delay – the signal is sent the second the key is hit. They’re much like the optical switches of the BenQ Zowie Celerita II (see p54),…

DEVELOPER Blue Manchu / PUBLISHER Humble Bundle Created by former System Shock 2 designers, Void Bastards is about exploring derelict spaceships, scavenging what you can find and avoiding being murdered by horribly mutated Northerners. You’re a randomly selected prisoner en route to a penal colony on a giant prison ship when it becomes trapped in a gigantic spaceship graveyard. Your ship doesn’t have the necessary parts to escape, so you’re up for early release … into the dark void of space. Although completing the game requires you to achieve set goals, for the most part you’ll be looking for items that get you to the next ship across the graveyard, such as more fuel for your little scout-pod, or gadgets to build new weapons and equipment. You navigate the graveyard…

DEVELOPER Mobius Digital/ PUBLISHER Annapurna Interactive Space exploration games don’t get much better than Outer Wilds. You play the latest recruit of Outer Wilds Ventures, the space program of the folksy planet Timber Hearth. You’re given your own spaceship and tasked with investigating the farthest reaches of Timber Hearth’s star system. Unlike most space games, which emphasise the scale of the great and inky void, Outer Wilds takes place in a single star system. Within those boundaries are several planets, a handful of moons and a roving comet known as the Interloper. What’s more, you only have 20 minutes before the star at the centre of your system explodes, killing you and – due to mysterious circumstances we won’t spoil – cascading you back to the moment you first awoke…

CPU AMD Ryzen 7 3700X £320 inc VAT overclockers.co.uk The 3rd-gen Ryzen sweet spot for great performance in games, as well as content creation, is the Ryzen 7 3700X. It has a peak boost frequency of 4.4GHz and a massive 32MB L3 cache. Plus, with its eight cores and 16 threads, it’s a monster in multi-threaded content creation workloads too. It’s also an easy customer for our chosen motherboard with its 65W TDP, and even when overclocked, you don’t need to spend a fortune on cooling hardware for it. Intel still has a small lead in some games, but the list of titles where this happens is now smaller, as are the differences. Plus, in some games, the AMD chip is actually faster. If you need a great all-round CPU…

AMD is no longer undergoing a resurgence. Having recently released its new 3rd-gen Ryzen CPUs and Radeon RX 5700-series GPUs, AMD has accelerated past Intel on the processor front and is aggressively renascent when it comes to graphics. The one-two punch of fresh architectural advancements for both CPUs and GPUs, along with mass production on leading-edge foundry technology that’s yet to be tapped by its key competitors, has put the firm back on the competitive map. The Navi10 GPU underneath the RX 5700 Series products is made using TSMC’s excellent 7nm process technology, allowing the design to be smaller and consume less power, but with the same performance compared with being made on either 16nm or 12nm nodes. However, advanced foundry technology isn’t the whole story. AMD also made significant…

The Pi Hut acquires ModMyPi Popular Raspberry Pi accessory and customisation outlet ModMyPi has been acquired by rival The Pi Hut, with the promise that ModMyPi’s products will remain available under the new ownership. ‘The entire ModMyPi range will be available direct from The Pi Hut as soon as humanly possible! Please bear with us, there’s a LOT of stuff to move across,’ the company confirmed. ‘The Pi Hut team will continue to manufacture and distribute ModMyPi’s complete range of products, host the entirety of their web content and offer the same range of services our customers have grown to love.’…

I was recently asked to chair a panel at Manchester International Festival discussing gaming as a force for good. My panellists were Paloma Dawkins, a game designer in the USA; Hardeep Pandhar, an artist who had created an extraordinary installation exploring gamergate; and Dan Hett, a games writer and developer. Dan’s brother Martyn died in the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017. Losing someone in a terrorist attack is an unimaginable pain, but Dan has tried to create at least a small bit of good in response. He channels his grief into making games. As I played Dan’s interactive fiction game ‘C ya laterrr’ – named after the final text his brother sent – in preparation for the panel, I experienced his loss, and the panic of that final evening,…

Corsair has just added another case to its arsenal of RGB-equipped models, but rather than offer yet another premium model that won’t leave you with much change from £200, Corsair’s iCUE 220T RGB Airflow costs just £100 inc VAT. It has solid build quality, it’s  available in black or white and it includes a trio of the company’s SP120 RGB Pro 120mm fans. As its name suggests, the iCUE 220T RGB Airflow isn’t another tempered-glass-clad case. It offers a glass side panel, but the top and roof are ventilated, with the front section easily popping off to provide access to the filter and fans. The front panel isn’t quite as open as other high-airflow cases we’ve seen, but the snazzy design cut into it certainly offers better airflow than a…

Measuring 31.5in from corner to corner, MSI’s Optix MAG321CURV is large enough that you can just about use the screen at its native 4K resolution without using Windows scaling options. If that’s a stretch too far, you can also get away with scaling it up by just 125 per cent, or you can enjoy a large, easy-to-read experience running at its default scaling level of 150 per cent. MSI has equipped this monitor with a VA-type LCD panel, which provides it with a high native contrast ratio of 2,500:1. This contrast ratio, combined with the large screen size, makes it particularly well suited for sitting back and enjoying video or playing certain games. Add support for an extended colour range (81 per cent DCI-P3), and the MSI can deliver a…

As the second most expensive board on test, the MSI Prestige X570 Creation needs to justify its price, although a quick sift through the box reveals some exciting goodies. You get a beefy M.2 Xpander-Z Gen 4 card that adds two PCI-E 4 M.2 ports, complete with heatsinks and a fan, along with a sturdy desktop Wi-Fi antenna, three thermal probe cables, RGB extension cables, and cabling to hook up various Corsair RGB components. The board itself is the only E-ATX example on test, and it makes good use of the extra space. It has a huge cooling array, with a heatpipe connecting the VRM heatsinks and chipset heatsink, evening out the heatload and allowing the larger-than-average chipset fan to also cool the 17-stage power delivery and VRMs. Thankfully, the…

How we test Mechanical gaming keyboards are now the established premium option for gamers. Just a few years ago, it was enough for a keyboard maker to slap a few dozen Cherry MX keyswitches on a base and call it done, but these days there are far more options. The likes of Logitech and Razer now produce their own keyswitches, while cheaper copies of Cherry MX switches are available too. Sticking with Cherry MX provides the greatest versatility, as keycaps (and potentially keyswitches as well) can easily be replaced. We’ve also seen low-profile switches arrive, for those that prefer a lower typing angle, as well as quiet and high-speed options. RGB lighting is, of course, also a big factor on high-end keyboard these days, with full lighting customisation being an…

For all the innovations we’ve seen across the other keyboards on test, there’s only one keyboard that features a truly potentially game-changing innovation: the Cooler Master MK850. It includes eight keys (QWERASDF) that don’t just offer the digital single-action response of a normal key, but can provide an analogue signal too. Press the key deeper, and it sends a high signal, press it lightly and it sends a lower signal. The idea is that this extra Aimpad control can, primarily, be used to emulate the input provided by the analogue sticks of a gamepad/controller. Racing games, flight sims and other games where fine control is required could benefit. The keys work by using an infrared light set alongside the normal Cherry MX keyswitches, which tracks the distance of the keycap…

The Logitech G513 Carbon is a departure from the company’s previous gaming keyboards. The angular, plasticky, gimmicky feel of the G910 is gone, and instead we have a sleek, almost minimalist keyboard that oozes quality. The fanciest feature is the aluminium top plate. It’s not an original addition, with Corsair long being associated with the look, but it’s a tried and tested route towards a more premium-feeling product. In fact, it works better than with many other keyboards, as Logitech’s in-house Romer-G keyswitches don’t spill their backlighting out all over the aluminium plate, making for a tidy overall look. On the flipside, the metal used isn’t as thick as on Corsair’s keyboards, and the G513 feels relatively lightweight and flexible for a mechanical keyboard. The minimalist feel also impacts on…

Roccat has boldly chosen to develop its own low-profile Titan switches for this keyboard. They use a traditional electronic trigger but apparently provide a 20 per cent faster debounce response. The switches are also stabilised, for less key wobble, and have a very short 1.8mm actuation point. Meanwhile, the low-profile caps are 50 per cent lighter than typical Cherry MX-style ones. While most switches allow the keycaps to cover the switches as they’re pressed, on the Roccat the sides are always on view. This situation enables Roccat to make the RGB backlighting shine out evenly from all round the switches. It makes for a far more dazzling display than most keyboards, although it will be a bit garish for some tastes. The other key benefit of low-profile switches is, of course,…

Core component bundles The fundamental specifications we recommend for various types of PC. Just add your preferred case and power supply, and double-check there’s room in your case for your chosen components, especially the GPU cooler and graphics card. We’ve largely stopped reviewing power supplies, as the 80 Plus certification scheme has now effectively eliminated unstable PSUs. Instead, we’ve recommended the wattage and minimum 80 Plus certification you should consider for each component bundle. You can then choose whether you want a PSU with modular or captive cables. Mini PCs Our favourite components for building a micro-ATX or mini-ITX PC. Always double-check how much room is available in your chosen case before buying your components. Some mini-ITX cases don’t have room for large all-in-one liquid coolers, for example, or tall…

DEVELOPER Creative Assembly/ PUBLISHER Sega Total War has always dealt in the broad tides of conflict, seeing you control great empires such as Rome or nation states such as Medieval France. Yet in its sweeping strategy campaigns and massive, spectacular battles, people are often reduced to statistics in one of your vast armies. Even your most significant faction members, your generals and spies, are chess pieces, their individualism becoming significant if they’re knocked off the board. Total War: Three Kingdoms changes this situation. Taking inspiration from Paradox’s Crusader Kings series, it turns your faceless generals, faction leaders, government administrators and espionage agents into recognisable characters with their own distinct personalities. These characters exist within a complex social hierarchy that relates both to your faction and those surrounding you. It’s one…

REVIEW STAR WARS: VADER IMMORTAL: EPISODE ONE / £7.99 inc VAT DEVELOPER ILMxLAB/ PUBLISHER Disney Interactive Studio Star Wars: Vader Immortal is roughly one hour of pure Star Wars wish-fulfilment. It lets you watch a Star Destroyer loom over your puny spacecraft, wield a lightsaber and deflect blaster bolts at Stormtroopers. Plus, of course, it lets you stand nose to chest with one of the most iconic baddies in cinema history. It’s lavishly produced and utterly captivating, although it skimps on its best features just a little too much. Written by David S Goyer (who co-wrote The Dark Knight), Vader Immortal tells the story of a young smuggler who is intercepted by a Star Destroyer near the lava planet of Mustafar, abducted and imprisoned inside Vader’s Castle. You then discover…

We’ve long had accelerator and brake pedals for racing games, and rudder pedals for flight sims, but foot pedals have been sadly neglected in the wider gaming world. While we’re all used to keyboards and mice festooned with extra buttons, we’ve been leaving a whole extra set of input devices idle – our feet. Are foot pedals the next revolution in the gaming peripheral world? We did a little digging to find out. Why do I need a gaming pedal? The idea and overall benefit of using your feet to add more control to your computer shouldn’t take much explaining: you can perform two or more functions with your feet, freeing up your hands and fingers for other tasks. Adding pedals to a racing or flight sim setup may make…

Maker Media closes its doors Maker Media, the company behind MAKE: Magazine and the popular Maker Faire series of events (see Issue 155 for a field report from Maker Faire UK 2016), has laid off its staff and ceased operations. ‘Maker Media Inc ceased operations this week and let go of all of its employees — about 22 employees,’ chief executive Dale Dougherty told TechCrunch of the closure. ‘I started this 15 years ago and it’s always been a struggle as a business to make this work. Print publishing is not a great business for anybody, but it works, barely. Events are hard. There was a drop-off in corporate sponsorship.’…

To enter your machine for possible inclusion in Readers’ Drives, your build needs to be fully working and, ideally, based in the UK. Simply send us a couple of photos on Twitter CustomPCMag) or Facebook (CPCMagazine), or email low-res ones to editor@custompcmag.org.uk. Fame isn’t the only prize; you’ll also get your hands on some fabulous prizes. Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 SE – Cherry MX Speed The Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 SE is a premium mechanical gaming keyboard that’s built to last. It has a silver anodised brushed aluminium frame, as well as stunning white precision-moulded, double-shot keycaps. It’s built to turn heads and withstand a lifetime of gaming. There’s a detachable, soft-touch wrist rest too. Meanwhile, its Cherry MX  Speed mechanical keyswitches provide the reliability and accuracy you demand, with…