Table of contents for November 2019 in Custom PC UK

Not everyone can afford to fork out for a whole new PC, or even a new motherboard and CPU for that matter, but you can still make great improvements to your PC without spending over the odds. Your PC was designed to be expanded and improved in myriad ways – it’s a fundamental part of the PC’s design, and one of the main benefits of buying a PC over a console or Mac. There are universal mounts, slots and ports for hooking up new gear, enabling you to make a substantial difference to the way you use your computer, often for not much cash. This issue’s primary feature (see p74) is an epic, ten-page guide to those upgrades – the extra bits and pieces that can make a real difference…

Third-party AMD Navi cards appear The first third-party graphics cards based on AMD’s latest Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT GPUs have started appearing this month. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire and XFX have all entered the fray, with their cards offering two or three large fans, rather than the blower cooler used by AMD’s reference design. That’s a relief, as the AMD blower cooler makes a horrible racket when it gets going. However, the new cards aren’t cheap. The cheapest one at the time of going to press was MSI’s MECH OC variant of the RX 5700 (pictured), which costs £369 inc VAT from overclockers.co.uk, while Asus’ ROG Strix RX 5700 is currently up for pre-order for £448 inc VAT from scan.co.uk – comparatively, an RX 5700 card with…

Despite being unequivocally the fastest GPU on this side of a grand, it’s hard to get excited by the RTX 2080 Super. Nvidia’s other Super GPUs have offered a substantial jump in specs and performance over their predecessors, with the RTX 2070 Super moving to the TU104 core and offering 256 more stream processors, and the RTX 2060 Super getting 2GB more memory, a wider memory interface and 256 more stream processors. Comparatively, the difference between the RTX 2080 and its Super variant is disappointingly small. It finally sees the TU104 GPU fully enabled, with all 48 of its streaming multiprocessors (SMs) working to give you 3,072 stream processors. That’s fine, but the original RTX 2080 already had 46 of them enabled, so you only get 128 more stream processors…

If you were planning on upgrading to AMD’s X570 chipset and a PCI-E 4 SSD, you were probably disappointed to see the prices of the first motherboards. Thankfully, there are now several options available below £200 that offer full PCI-E 4 support. However, as we saw last month with MSI’s £170 X570-A Pro (see Issue 193, p50), manufacturers have to make sacrifices in the process, so we were keen to see if Gigabyte’s similarly priced X570 Gaming X could offer a better package. The Gigabyte board is certainly better-looking, with an integrated I/O shield and shroud covering up ugly rear ports, and the board looks slightly less skinny too. Gigabyte has also managed to include an M.2 heatsink, although its location in the rather crowded area above the 16x graphics…

There have been some changes in Cooler Master’s fans recently, with the latest MasterFan SF-series models gaining combined double and triple fan modules that make radiator mounting a breeze. You can buy individual fans as well, all with either 4-pin RGB or 3-pin digital addressable RGB connectors. The single fan modules sport fan speeds of up to 2,000rpm, but can still dish out 2.1mm H20 of static pressure. The RGB lighting spans outwards, catching the semi-transparent blades, and our digital ARGB model instantly lit up with a rainbow effect once connected to our motherboard’s 3-pin header. The brightness is fairly restrained – whether you like it is really down to your personal taste. The RGB connector also has a pass-through to connect another RGB device. Unlike many of the other…

The EKWB EK-Vardar Evo 120ER RGB has a similar blade design to other fans in this month’s Labs test, which gives us high hopes for the water-cooling hardware manufacturer's own design. It employs a dual ball-bearing hub design and offers up to 2,200rpm speed, allowing it to boost claimed static pressure of 3.16mm H2O. There’s also RGB lighting courtesy of a 4-pin RGB cable, which allows you to choose from a huge range of colours using a third-party RGB controller or motherboard; ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI are all listed in the compatibility table. There’s aren’t many accessories included in the box, but at a very reasonable £18, this is to be expected. Firing up the RGB lighting sees a bright and vivid array of colour, although it's fixed across…

The Blackout Club is a cooperative horror game with clever systems deserving of a better structure. It sees one to four players assume the roles of teenage friends whose neighbourhood is being manipulated by a mysterious subterranean entity. Their parents have been turned into sleepwalking drones and strange devices have cut off all contact with the outside world. To find out what’s truly happening, they’ll have to work together against forces far more powerful than them. The goal is to produce dynamic horror stories that exist halfway between the popcorn fun of Stranger Things and the surreal thrills of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Each night, the teens venture into the neighbourhood to complete a randomly assigned mission. You always start out exploring the streets and houses of your hometown,…

Originally released as a PlayStation exclusive, Tetris Effect takes its name from the real-life phenomena whereby a person spends so much time on a particular activity that it begins to imprint on their subconscious, viewing a random assortment of objects as puzzle pieces to be arranged in a Tetris-like order. Tetris Effect the game is both a meditation upon this peculiar quality of the iconic block puzzler, exploring the absorptive qualities of the game through clever use of visuals and sound. From the perspective of play, Tetris Effect is just Tetris. Its ‘Journey’ mode comprises a linear sequence of Tetris games in which you arrange descending Tetriminos in an attempt to complete and thus clear lines of blocks. But each of these levels is accompanied by unique sounds, music and…

Maker Media relaunches as Make Community Maker Media, which closed its doors as a publisher and event organiser earlier this year, has reformed as a new company dubbed Make Community. Under the newly formed company, Make: magazine will continue to be published in print and electronically, but in the older, more compact format and with a renewed focus on community and DIY projects and initiatives. It will also be shifting to a quarterly publication frequency. ‘I see Make Community as a voluntary association,’ claims Make’s Dale Dougherty, ‘An organisation dedicated to serving its members.’ More information about Make Community is available at makezine.com…

CPC: Let’s start with the initial inspiration. What made you want to build a PC into a desk? Johnny: It was actually a previous Readers’ drives feature, the L3p D3sk. I loved the idea of having all the hardware and wiring well organised and on show, with the added bonus of not having an ATX case on the floor. However, Peter Brands’ engineering skills far outstrip my own, so I was going to have to make the design within the scope of my abilities. CPC: That’s not a readily available desk chassis model from the likes of Lian Li – that’s amazing work! Tell us about how you designed it, and take us through the build process. Johnny: Thanks! The Lian Li desk cases are a work of art, but…

Over the past few months, AMD’s 3rd-gen Ryzen processors have well and truly established themselves in pole position on the desktop CPU market. Not only are they outperforming Intel’s Coffee Lake equivalents, but they’re also outselling them, particularly the Ryzen 9 3900X vs the Core i9-9900K. AMD also delivered another serious blow to Intel at the beginning of August with its 2nd-gen EPYC server processors. While server processors might not be massively interesting to your average enthusiast, they’re hugely important for the computer industry. Firstly, because, unlike the gradually shrinking desktop PC market, the server market is showing healthy double-digit growth. More poignantly still, AMD has effectively been absent from the server market since 2012, with its market share languishing at around 3 per cent. The big challenge for AMD…

If you were building PCs in the early 2000s, you might remember Intel’s separate strategy for desktop and laptop architectures. While its Pentium 4 (Netburst) CPUs were being crushed by AMD’s Athlon 64 (K8) chips on the desktop, its laptop architecture was continuing an evolution of the Pentium III core, and being much more successful. The latter was developed by its Israeli team in Haifa, which added novel functions such as micro-op fusion, smart caching, and dynamic frequency and voltage adjustment (branded SpeedStep), which are still being used in some form today. Intel later unceremoniously dumped Netburst, instead opting to use its laptop platform to develop its ‘Core’ architecture, giving it the historic Conroe moment in 2006 that flipped the tide of desktop performance back to Intel in a single…

AMD’s original Zen-based APUs from AMD were the most powerful of their type ever to hit the desktop, and while they weren’t going to compete with low-end graphics cards, they nonetheless gave folks on extremely tight budgets half-decent gaming performance at low resolutions. The lack of a need to buy a discrete GPU meant you could shave hundreds of pounds off the price of a new PC, and the Zen architecture meant that, unlike AMD’s previous APUs, you also got a capable CPU. The Ryzen 5 3400G is highly anticipated, then, promising to boost performance in both CPU and GPU portions, although it’s important to realise a few home truths. Firstly, we’re not dealing with a Zen 2 CPU here. Just as the Ryzen 5 2400G only sported the original…

Internal sound cards such as Creative’s Sound Blaster AE-9 are in competition with high-end motherboard audio that’s easily good enough for gaming and music. To help it stand out, the AE-9 has a bit of audiophile gloss, with swappable op-amps and a headphone amp, but it’s really best for Livestreamers, team multiplayer fans and Let’s Players. Priced at £300, it has a breakout box that can connect and power a wide range of headphones and microphones; the cheaper AE-7 is almost the same base card with a simpler external dongle. Note that the card requires a 6-pin PCI-E power connection from your PSU, which could be a problem for people with modest PSUs and large graphics cards. The AE-9 has an ESS SABRE-class 9038 digital-to-analogue converter (DAC). It’s a slight…

SPECLUX RGB LED STRIPS / £15.99 inc VAT SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk On the surface, the Speclux RGB LED strip looks like a fairly modest piece of interior lighting technology for your PC. When connected, however, you soon realise that somebody has invented the brightest light ever, and decided its most important use isn’t communicating with deep sea fish or helping land aircraft in heavy fog – it’s decorating a PC. The Speclux kit comes with two strips of 21 LEDs, and wires to connect them to either 3-pin headers on your motherboard or a supplied controller unit if you just want to run them independently. The controller will only handle the two strips and requires a SATA power connection. The strips of LEDs can be fixed with a double-sided tape…

Fractal Design’s Prisma AL-12 PWM includes digital addressable RGB lighting, which catches in its diffusing white blades to create an RGB display that gives Corsair’s LL120 RGB a run for its money. What's more, the Prisma AL-12 PWM doesn’t require a proprietary RGB controller and can hook up to any 3-pin RGB header. The fan itself can spin up to 2,000rpm, although only dishes out 2.8mm H2O static pressure, which is reasonable, but not chart-topping for a 120mm fan. However, it will only start at 7V, which means it’s missing from our 5V tests. The Prisma AL-12 PWM uses a sleeve bearing, which is generally seen as the cheapest type. It’s functional, but can be prone to low sound quality at full speed. Our main criticism of the Prisma AL-12…

Corsair does offer more premium gaming headset options than the HS50, but they all rely on either USB or wireless connections. That’s well and good, but for this group test, we wanted to concentrate on simple analogue headsets, and the HS50 is Corsair’s top pick of that variety. Despite its low price, the HS50 is one of the better-looking headsets on test. Corsair has become one of those companies on which you can largely rely to produce stylish products, and that skill is in evidence here. The all-black colour scheme certainly helps in this regard and it’s aided by a simple symmetrical layout and a silver Corsair logo on each earcup. Blue and green versions are also available, which both include an attractive, subtly coloured trim around the edge of…

The Razer Kraken is the update to Razer’s Kraken Pro V2. Sporting a near identical design, it brings a few tweaks and a much simpler name. The design has a very symmetrical feel, with a headband that sits centrally on the perfectly circular earcups. As well as this garish bright green, there’s an all-black flavour, a Quartz Pink version, a black-and-blue console model and a Mercury White option. Regarding those upgrades, the headband has thicker padding while the earcups have a cooling gel layer and a hidden eyewear relief indent. The difference is subtle, but the improvements are welcome and help to take the strain of the 322g weight for longer gaming sessions. The headband also contracts enough to fit small heads. However, the fit isn’t quite as secure as…

The 2019 edition of the Arctis 3 addresses criticism of the comfort and bass response of its predecessor. SteelSeries has added a little more padding to the earcups and bass to the sound of the whole Arctis range, plus the new versions have a smaller, stiffer volume wheel, so it’s not as easy to knock accidentally. The changes work for the most part. The earcup padding on the old version was a key concern, and the newer version makes the headset more comfortable and provides a better seal around the ears. They’re still not the best in this regard, but they’ve moved up in our estimation. The adjustable elastic headband is great for smaller heads too. The slightly boosted bass presence is welcome as well. Concentrating on high-end detail for…

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. Core component bundles cont … 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…

I expect three components of a Wolfenstein game; Nazis, guns and a fatal exchange between the two. What I’ve never expected from Wolfenstein is narrative ambition. Nonetheless, narrative is developer MachineGames’ most significant contribution to this longest-running of FPS franchises. Wolfenstein: The New Order sought not only to offer plenty of gratuitous fascist murder, but also to turn the all-American BJ Blazkowicz into a rounded, emotional character, to build a story around him that went further than ‘MechaHitler go bye-bye’. It was an intriguing idea that MachineGames largely pulled off. At times, however, it felt like the storytelling got in the way of what Wolfenstein’s raison d’être. As such, it was pleasing to discover that Wolfenstein: Youngblood goes back to the basics … eventually. Youngblood is an offshoot Wolfenstein game…

REVIEW NO MAN’S SKY BEYOND No Man’s Sky Beyond is a comprehensive overhaul of the original No Man’s Sky. It introduces large-scale online multiplayer, letting up to 30 different individuals inhabit a single game, as well as adding a massive range of smaller features, plus new planet types, exo-vehicles and crafting items. Perhaps most significantly, it adds No Man’s Sky VR. This is for all intents and purposes a separate game, taking place in the same procedurally generated universe, but fundamentally changing how many of the core systems work. It’s at once a much better and far worse way to play No Man’s Sky, offering unprecedented levels of immersion and incredible spaceflight, but struggling when your feet touch the ground. Visually, No Man’s Sky is perfect for current VR headsets.…

REVIEW Libre Computer Project La Frite Given its name, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Libre Computer Project is centred around open hardware and software. Parent company Shenzhen Libre Technology Co Ltd, though, defines ‘open’ in a very limited way: ‘all the hardware components are available to be purchased by anyone and can be used together with free software to build innovative products without licensing and other restrictions.’ To say the company’s products are inspired by the Raspberry Pi wouldn’t be unfair, and its initial product launch was pleasingly self-effacing: 2017’s Le Potato wasn’t quite as ugly as its name suggested, and its Pi inspiration was plain to see, although its colourful passive heatsink in the centre suggested power. Its cost-reduced successor, La Frite, is smaller but also less…

The Beatles complained about it. Jimmy Carr was humiliated by it. David Bowie moved to Switzerland for it. Wesley Snipes went to prison for it. Taxes. They seem grossly unfair or life-changingly essential, depending on which end of the system you sit. The entertainment industry is particularly notorious for tax-shyness, from ‘Hollywood accounting’ in movies to rock stars moving to tax havens. Video games have their own rock stars too – Notch is loaded and PewDiePie is a household name (in certain houses). Then there’s actual Rockstar, maker of Grand Theft Auto, which has just found itself the subject of a deeply unflattering report. The argument, by ethical thinktank Taxwatch, is reasonable and serious: Rockstar North has claimed tens of millions of pounds in tax credits, while paying zero corporation…

Is micro-ATX dying? After a few years of not feeling the need to upgrade anything except my GPUs, I’m finally ready to upgrade my aging Core i7-2600K. To tell the truth, I’ve never built an AMD-based system (my first build was based on a Core 2 Duo E6600) and I’ve been waiting a long time for AMD to give me an excuse to switch sides. The Ryzen 7 3700X has given me that push. I decided a few years ago that ATX was more than I need. I’ve always preferred one single fast GPU, rather than CrossFire or SLI, and with so much on-board, I don’t see the need for multiple PCI-E slots. So why have board manufacturers stopped producing micro-ATX boards? The X570 boards you reviewed in the latest…

Most companies that make air coolers also offer standalone fans, and be quiet! is no exception with the latest Silent Wings 3. It's held in high regard by other cooling manufacturers too, as Alphacool uses this fan in several of its premium water-cooling systems. The fluid dynamic bearing fan spins at up to 2,200rpm, making it one of the more powerful options on test, and be quiet! claims a quiet 28.6dBA noise level and impressive 3.37mm H2O static pressure too – one of the highest measurements this month. The seven fan blades use a rippled surface, which be quiet! claims reduces noise. The lip on the inlet side of the frame is funnelled outwards too, which in theory boosts airflow and static pressure. The fan is equipped with heavy-duty rubberised…

Thermaltake has expanded its water-cooling offerings over the last few years and now offers a range of fans touted as being suitable for radiators. The Riing 12RGB provides 2mm H2O static pressure and RGB lighting so seems one of the best. Surprisingly, Thermaltake claims it can supply this pressure at just 1,500rpm, although it does so at 26dBA, which is higher than other fans that spin faster. At £24, a single fan is rather pricey so, like Corsair’s LL120 Pro, it’s far better to buy a triple pack, which costs £36 and includes 4-pin RGB cables to hook all three fans up to your motherboard to synchronise them with your other lighting. As such, we can’t be too harsh on value, given most customers will want more than one fan.…

In anticipation of Remedy Entertainment’s excellent-looking Control, I recently replayed Alan Wake, the developer’s Twin Peaks-inspired, third-person shooter from 2010. I enjoyed it far more than the first time around, but one issue that bugged me is how the game’s camera defaults to positioning the character on the right of the screen, rather than the left. It’s a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it threw off my aim, despite the crosshair being in the same point of the screen. I found myself getting angry about it. Games have always viewed the character from the left side of the screen, I thought – why mess around if it isn’t broken? Then I realised this isn’t true at all. Games only started using this perspective after Gears of War in 2006. Before…

No you’re not dreaming. This is the year 2019, and you are seeing Doom in Custom PC’s review section. This is because John Romero, the co-creator of Doom and master of its level design, has created an unofficial fifth episode to Ultimate Doom to mark the game’s 25th anniversary. This episode, dubbed Sigil, is a free Doom Megawad containing nine new single-player and multi-player maps that sees the original Doomguy grab his shotgun and descend one last time into the depths of Hell. It’s a wonderful gesture from one of the gaming industry’s most significant figures, but can the original Doom really hold up in 2019? Yes it can, and Sigil acts as a bloody good reminder that Doom was not just a great game in 1993. It always was,…

Whether you’ve just received a stash of birthday money, you’ve been saving up for a while, or you just happen to have £100 burning a hole in your pocket, every now and then there are occasions where we all just want to splash a little – but not too much – cash. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of what we feel are the best ways for you to spend your hard-earned pennies – all 10,000 of them, or in some cases less – on getting the best from your PC. This isn’t an exhaustive list of our absolute favourite products in any given category or a recommendation on how to put together a complete system but rather a quick-fire guide to how you could improve your…

Corsair took another step on its path towards domination in the PC hardware market recently, releasing its own line of water-cooling hardware. This adds another feather to its cap, which already includes memory, SSDs, PSUs, fans, peripherals and all-in one liquid coolers. The Hydro X range of components includes everything you need to build a complete loop and the company sent me a selection of parts to check out. To start with, it’s worth mentioning that Corsair hasn’t created the entire range from scratch. For instance, the coolant is actually sourced from Mayhems, which is no bad thing given the latter’s reputation for stable, long-lasting coolant, and Corsair told me it has spent considerable time and effort testing the coolant with the rest of its hardware to ensure there were…

The classic 3.5in HD floppy disk has become a bit of an icon now, and in more ways than one. Plenty of people will tell you that their kids think of a floppy disk as the Save icon in Word. The 3.5in floppy is also what most people imagine when you say ‘floppy disk’ – a plastic case with a spring-loaded metal protector and a 1.44MB storage capacity. The history of floppy disks goes back well beyond these neat little storage packs though. My first experience of multiple types of floppy disk came when my dad bought me a game (Targhan, in case you’re interested) for our PC XT clone in 1988. I opened the box, and inside it were two 5.25in disks. We had to send it back to…

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…