P R E S E N T S

HANDBOOK
58 PAGES OF GUIDES

PC GAMING
STARTS HERE
FROM OVERCLOCKING TO CASE MODDING:
THE ADVICE YOU NEED

84
PAGES OF
HARDWARE
REVIEWS
INSIDE!
Edition
Digital

AMD vs INTEL
INTEL CORE OR AMD
RYZEN — WHICH
CPU SUITS YOU?
EDITION
FIRST

REVIEWED CPUs I CASES I GRAPHICS CARDS I MOTHERBOARDS I SSDs I MONITORS I MICE I HEADSETS
 WELCOME TO
P R E S E N T S

HANDBOOK
It’s been a fun old year for PC enthusiasts, and by ‘fun’ we mean “Thanks, crypto
miners, for driving up the prices of RAM and GPUs to literally insane levels. Good job.”
Snarky comments about being made of imaginary money aside though, the last 12
months have seen some interesting developments, aside from the squeeze on our
pockets. AMD dropped the bombshell that is Ryzen; everybody waited for Intel’s
counter-move. And waited. And waited. When it finally dropped, our first move was –
obviously – to pit them against each other in a battle royale of builds. That’s what we’re
all about here, which is why, on these pages, you’ll find all the essential info you need to
build and/or upgrade your own PC. Whether you’re looking to switch out components
to give yourself a performance boost ahead of the next slew of AAA games or whether
you’re going to simply bite the bullet and put together a whole new rig, we’ve got the
lowdown on the latest high-end kit as well as budget and mid-range offerings that
won’t break the bank. From processors, motherboards and graphics cards (and
solutions to keep them cool) to keyboards, mice, speakers and monitors, we’ve got
everything you need to put together your dream machine.
 P R E S E N T S

HANDBOOK
Future PLC Richmond House, 33 Richmond Hill,
Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 6EZ

Editorial
Editor April Madden
Designer Lora Barnes
Editor in Chief Jon White
Senior Art Editor Andy Downes

All copyrights and trademarks are recognised and respected

Advertising
Media packs are available on request
Commercial Director Clare Dove
clare.dove@futurenet.com
International
International Licensing Director Matt Ellis
matt.ellis@futurenet.com
Circulation
Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers
Production
Head of Production Mark Constance
Production Project Manager Clare Scott
Advertising Production Manager Joanne Crosby
Digital Editions Controller Jason Hudson
Production Managers Keely Miller, Nola Cokely,
Vivienne Calvert, Fran Twentyman
Management
!ǝǣƺǔ…ȵƺȸƏɎǣȒȇɀ…ǔˡƬƺȸAaron Asadi
Commercial Finance Director Dan Jotcham
Editorial Director Paul Newman
Head of Art & Design Greg Whitaker
Printed by William Gibbons, 26 Planetary Road,
Willenhall, West Midlands, WV13 3XT
Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HU
www.marketforce.co.uk Tel: 0203 787 9001
PC Hardware Handbook First Edition
© 2018 Future Publishing Limited

We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed,
ƬƺȸɎǣˡƺƳǔȒȸƺɀɎȸɵƏȇƳƬǝǼȒȸǣȇƺ‫ٮ‬ǔȸƺƺȅƏȇɖǔƏƬɎɖȸƺِÁǝƺȵƏȵƺȸǣȇɎǝǣɀȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺɯƏɀɀȒɖȸƬƺƳ
and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and
socioeconomic standards. The manufacturing paper mill holds full FSC (Forest
³ɎƺɯƏȸƳɀǝǣȵ!ȒɖȇƬǣǼ٣ƬƺȸɎǣˡƬƏɎǣȒȇƏȇƳƏƬƬȸƺƳǣɎƏɎǣȒȇ

All contents © 2018 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved.
No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without
the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number
‫דזזז׎׎א‬٣ǣɀȸƺǕǣɀɎƺȸƺƳǣȇ0ȇǕǼƏȇƳƏȇƳáƏǼƺɀِ«ƺǕǣɀɎƺȸƺƳȒǔˡƬƺ‫ي‬ªɖƏɵRȒɖɀƺًÁǝƺȅƫɖȸɵً
Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far
as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility
for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and
retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps
and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for
their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent
ƏȇƳȇȒɎƏǔˡǼǣƏɎƺƳǣȇƏȇɵɯƏɵɯǣɎǝɎǝƺƬȒȅȵƏȇǣƺɀȅƺȇɎǣȒȇƺƳǝƺȸƺǣȇِ

Future plc is a public Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne

company quoted on the Chairman Richard Huntingford
London Stock Exchange !ǝǣƺǔˡȇƏȇƬǣƏǼȒǔˡƬƺȸ Penny Ladkin-Brand
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244
 Contents
80

Build section
10 How to build a PC
Your essential guide to putting your
own rig together
18 Today’s best upgrades
Bring your system bang up to date
with these hardware picks
28 Memory matters
Discover the complex state of DDR4
in 2018
38 Protect your tech
Protect your kit from theft and make
your own alarm system. 132
46 Build it special:
AMD versus Intel
Two CPU titans go head-to-head, but
which build is the best?
128
HARDWARE
56 Build it: Ryzen to
the challenge REVIEWS
Our AMD build in depth All the hardware you
60 Build it: The Intel rig need to supercharge
of damnation your PC
Our Intel rig in depth
64 The CPU scandal
What do Spectre and Meltdown mean
for your gaming PC?

Head to head
68
BUDGET CASES PROCESSORS Z270
MOTHERBOARDS CARDS
If you’re building a new PC
you’re going to need something
to put it in. House your
hardware in our pick of the best
cases for under £100
74
GRAPHICS
We pit AMD and Intel’s chips
head-to-head in a CPU
brawl to find out which one
truly delivers the ultimate in
processing power
80 86 92
SOLID STATE
DRIVES
Lay the foundation of your new PC There’s no need to raid Give your level load times
with our selection of the best Z270 your savings for these a lift with these high-end
mobos on the market great-value GPUs solid state drives

6
 104 98

110

134 145

136

98 104 110 116 122

ALL-IN-ONE 4K MONITORS
COOLERS Show off your graphics card’s
capabilities on a high definition
Serve your CPU performance screen and get a graphical boost
ice-cold with these frosty from our selection of seven of the
cooling solutions best Ultra HD displays
KEYBOARDS WIRELESS SPEAKERS
MICE
We cherry (switch) pick
our favourite from the
Turn your PC into a high-
quality media centre and
best mechanical Set your mouse free from make some noise with a
keyboard setups cables with one of these set of high-end desktop
out there wireless mice speakers

7
 Contents

BUILD 28
HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED
TO BUILD YOUR OWN PC
FROM SCRATCH

38

60

10

8
 BUILD
Intro

10 HOW TO BUILD A PC
Your essential guide to putting a rig
together
18 TODAY’S BEST
UPGRADES
46 Bring your system bang up to date
with these hardware picks
28 MEMORY MATTERS
Discover the complex state of DDR4
in 2018
38 PROTECT
YOUR TECH
Protect your kit from theft and
make your own alarm system
46 BUILD IT SPECIAL:
AMD VERSUS INTEL
Two CPU titans go head-to-head,
but which build is the best?
56 BUILD IT: RYZEN TO
THE CHALLENGE
Our AMD build in depth
60 BUILD IT: THE INTEL
RIG OF DAMNATION
Our Intel rig in depth
64 THE CPU SCANDAL
What do Spectre and Meltdown
mean for your gaming PC?

BUDGET MID RANGE ADVANCED

9
 F E AT U R E
How to build a PC

10
 HOW TO BUILD A PC
Feature

GUIDE

HOW TO
BUILD A PC
Building a PC is a huge part of the joy of PC gaming. No-one starts
off as an expert PC builder, though, and here we’ll take you through
the entire process step-by-step

11
 F E AT U R E
How to build a PC
1 PREPARE THE CHASSIS
Let’s build. First, take off both side panels on the case. You’ll
need access to both sides for inserting hardware, cable management,
and general ease of access. It can get crowded, quick.
Move any cables inside of the case out of the way. We’ll get to moving
those around in a while.
2 MOTHERBOARD PREP
Your chassis should include motherboard standoff screws,
as pictured (sometimes they’re gold instead of black). These prevent your
motherboard from making direct contact with the back of the chassis,
which could short out the board. Reference the holes on your
motherboard to see where the standoffs need to be, since this can vary.
Screw them in tightly.
Take the I/O (input/output) shield and line it up with the frame from
inside the case. Make sure you have it facing in the right direction before
you pop it in. Again, make sure that you check your motherboard for
reference. Push it in, making sure not to press too hard on the centre (but
you might have to really press hard on those edges in order to make sure
that it’s in the right place). There should be a satisfying click from each
side once it’s aligned correctly and as it snaps into place. With this done,
we can move onto the motherboard itself.
12
3
INSERT THE MOTHERBOARD
Once the chassis is prepped, it’s time for you to insert
the motherboard. This chassis has a convenient built-in
standoff that centres the motherboard for you. However,
not all cases will have one, so when you place it down –
make sure that you do so gently – there may be some
resistance up against the I/O shield. This is completely
normal and nothing to worry about. Just make sure that
no metal prongs accidentally get lodged into a USB port,
otherwise it’s game over! Once the motherboard is
aligned with the standoffs, screw down the centre – don’t
tighten it yet – and then do the opposite corners.
Screwing in opposite corners is a good rule of thumb for
installing anything in a PC, as it lowers the risk of
misaligning and potentially damaging your hardware.
Tighten the screws bit by bit until the motherboard is
firmly in place. Don’t overdo it. If it isn’t jostling around, it
should be secure.
Once it’s secure, tighten up the screws slowly and
gently, working from opposite corners, to make sure that
the motherboard stays seated correctly.
 HOW TO BUILD A PC
Feature

4
SEAT THE
PROCESSOR
Good job. If you’re reading this and not
cursing or crying, you’ve successfully got a
motherboard in a PC case. Next up we
deal with the most important part of any
PC: the CPU. Treat the CPU like an
inexplicably living brain in a glass jar. Hold
it at the edges and avoid touching the
underside. Finger grease can mess with
the heat diffusion, which is not good on
one of the most expensive, vital, volatile
PC components. To install it, lift the lever
on the CPU socket on the motherboard,
remove the plastic placeholder, and locate
the golden arrow on your CPU. This, and
the notches on your CPU, will let you know
how to align the CPU above the slot. Make
sure everything is matched up, then
carefully lower the CPU straight down onto
the socket. It should fit in effortlessly, so
don’t put extra pressure on it. CPUs are
easily damaged.
Once the CPU is in place, lower the
socket shield and secure it by pulling and
locking the metal lever down. You’ll feel
resistance, and likely a few heart
palpitations, but try not to worry too much,
everything is (probably) okay.

13
 F E AT U R E
How to build a PC

5 PUT IN THE POWER SUPPLY 7

Now, for something much simpler… A PC isn’t powered by magic, so a
power supply (PSU) is necessary. Ours is a modular unit, meaning we can plug and pull
cables as needed. Some PSUs have cables built into the unit, making cable management INSTALL THE
a hassle, so if you can, go modular. Installing is simple. Just make sure the PSU fan is
either facing the chassis vent (or upwards if it works in with your airflow scheme) and COOLER
then screw it in from outside the case. This step will vary depending on what
type of cooler is being installed, so be sure
to refer to the manufacturer’s instructions.
If you’re using a stock Intel cooler,

6 READY THE RAM installation is as simple as lining up the

small fan and pressing down each corner
With the PSU in, its time for another simple step: the memory. First, you’ll until the legs snap into the motherboard.
need to locate the DIMM slots. Any DIMM-wit could do it! Sorry, that wasn’t helpful. Most coolers require some kind of
They’re the four, thin, RAM-length slots next to the CPU. In order to take advantage of any backplate installation, which means you’ll
dual-channel functionality, you’ll need to install the RAM in alternating slots. Refer to your be coming from the underside of your
motherboard documents for details, but for us, the slots were labelled. motherboard. With an air cooler, you’ll
Placing the RAM is simple. Make sure the locks at the end of each slot are open, find probably thread mounting screws through
the notch in your RAM, line it up with the notch in the slot, insert it, and push until the lock the top of the motherboard and attach
clicks and the RAM is securely in place. Don’t be afraid to push down hard. them to the backplate with nuts. On the
top side, directly over the CPU, goes the
cooler itself. Make sure you align each
corner around the CPU.
SOME PSUS HAVE CABLES BUILT INTO THE UNIT, Plug the cooler’s power cable into the
MAKING CABLE MANAGEMENT A HASSLE, SO IF motherboard. The manual should illustrate
where the pins are in case they’re not
YOU CAN, GO MODULAR labelled on the motherboard itself. We
plugged into CPU_FAN and W_PUMP.

14
 HOW TO BUILD A PC
Feature

8
INSTALL THE SSD
Of course, every PC needs non-volatile
memory for storage, but nowadays,
there’s an allowance for plenty of variation.
What you see on these pages is a simple
build, so in this case we’re just sticking with
a single SSD.
Installing an SSD is easy in this Fractal
Design Define R5 case. You’ll find that
most cases are built with SSDs in mind
these days: just screw the drive into one of
the provided SSD trays, and then screw
the SSD plus tray into wherever the
chassis allows. Now is a good time to start
thinking about cable management, too.
The drive will need power and a way to
interface with the other PC components.
First, you’ll need to plug the SATA data and
power cables into the drive.
Be sure to arrange your cables with
some kind of logic in mind that prevents
them from trailing across the
motherboard, if possible. Most cases let
you snake cables through the base behind
the mobo by using conveniently placed
routing holes, but not all chassis are quite
so lucky.
Next, the SATA data cable plugs into the
motherboard. Some plugs have different
speeds or interfaces, so check your
motherboard manual for specifics about
which to use. Lastly, the power cable goes
to the PSU, as indicated either on the PSU
itself or in the manual.

9
INSTALL THE GPU
It’s time to seriously pump this PC up
with the graphics card. Fortunately,
installing this in your PC is extremely
simple. First, remove the PCI-E slot shields
near the rear of the case where your video
card will lay. You’ll find that most of today’s
graphics cards take up two slots.
Grab your graphics card, align
it with the PCI-E slot, and press
it down gently until you feel the card lock
into place. Secure the graphics card by
screwing it in with thumbscrews where the
slot shields used to be.
Graphics cards need extra power to
function, so find the power cables your
GPU requires and plug them in (they’re
typically labelled PCI-E or VGA). Don’t
worry since PSU cables only fit where
they’re meant to, thanks to an elaborate
set of square and hexagonal plug
components. Of course, if your PSU is
modular, make sure the cables are
plugged into the unit as well.

15
 F E AT U R E
How to build a PC

10
PANEL CONNECTORS
In order to get the lights and switches
on the front of your chassis to work, these
tiny cables need to plug into your
motherboard in very specific places. Refer
to the motherboard manual and on-board
labelling if necessary. There may be some
front panel USB cables too, but those are
much easier to deal with. Plug them in as
indicated here.
A motherboard needs power too. Find
the 24-pin power connector, orient it
correctly, and push it into the motherboard
until it’s firmly connected. Standard ATX
motherboards also require an additional
power connection close to the CPU,
usually four to six pins. Check for one, plug
it in, and then make sure all power cables
plug back into the PSU if it’s modular.
There should be fan connectors in
various locations on the motherboard.
Find the ones that best suit your cable
management and plug them in.
Wrap things up by doing any last minute
cable management. It’s not a bad idea to
double check your connections and make
sure all of your components are firmly
seated, too.

16

11
AND THEN, A PC!
Be sure to take a step back and drink it
all in. You’ve (probably) successfully
expressed yourself via expensive
hardware, sweat, tears and a healthy dose
of love. This is the beginning of a new era
for you, but it doesn’t have to end here.
Feel free to add components we didn’t
cover. If you’re a fan of antiquated tech,
then throw in a disc drive. Want to open up
your PC to more peripherals? Add a
bluetooth receiver. Not enough red LEDs in
your life? Well, then light that sucker up. It’s
your PC, make it your way. The platform is
open for a reason, after all.
HOW TO BUILD A PC
Feature
TROUBLESHOOTING
No power? Try reseating connections
between PSU and the motherboard.
Still nothing? Recheck the mobo’s
front panel cables.
If you’re getting power, but no
bootup, check the RAM. Maybe try the
other set of DIMM slots.
Check your video cable – it should be
connected to the graphics card, not to
the motherboard.
If nothing else works, most
manufacturers offer solid support.
17
 F E AT U R E
Today’s best upgrades

KEY
Budget build Mid-range build Advanced build
Pick the parts you want to build a new, Run every new game at 1080p 60fps? This You’re looking for the best PC on the market,
well-rounded PC for a good price. recommended build will see you through. but you still want to spend smart.

BUDGET MID RANGE ADVANCED

18

TODAY’S BEST
UPGRADES
Bring your system bang up to date with some choice HARDWARE PICKS
U
pgrading is fundamental to the PC.
It’s one of the cornerstones of our
platform of choice, and it’s why the
PC has survived while other systems
have failed. It’s also the reason why
you can focus on the hardware that matters the
most, and spend your money appropriately. You can
upgrade in stages—if you want to focus on a
performance CPU first, with a mind to upgrading
your graphics card or storage later, you can. As long
as you know what’s happening in the tech world,
you’re in good shape.
On that note, we’ve just had an incredible year for
processors. AMD has come out swinging with its
Ryzen line, with increased core counts and strong raw
performance. And Intel has just responded with its
eighth-generation CPU line—we’ve managed to
squeeze the first chips to arrive into our
recommendations, too. Which means we’re now
looking at two completely new mainstream platforms
that didn’t exist a year ago. Plenty of opportunities for
T O D AY ’ S B E S T U P G R A D E S
Feature
upgrades, in other words, and we’ve rounded up some
of the best on the market, whatever budget you’re
planning on.
Bear in mind that any new piece of gear should
have a legitimate upgrade path. Getting the best
processor for your motherboard is fine, but it takes the
shine off it a bit if you know there’s a whole new
platform doing the rounds. That’s why our
recommendations all relate to some of the most recent
hardware lines. This shouldn’t stop you upgrading
older hardware as far as it can go, though, because
that can often be a cost-effective route – especially if
you’re happy to take the risk of buying used hardware
(great for older processor deals, and making the move
to SLI).
Over the page, we look at the best hardware
upgrades you can buy right now, with performance
benchmarks where they matter. We cover all the
major components, and highlight things to watch out
for when upgrading. It’s a great time to give your
machine a new lease of life, as you’re about to find out.
19
 F E AT U R E
Today’s best upgrades

PROCESSORS
ADVANCED
AMD RYZEN T O TA L
THREADRIPPER £999
1950X
www.amd.com

There is an argument for going with

Intel’s Core i9-7980XE: It’s a beast, with
18 cores and 36 threads. It costs £1,668,
though. For the vast majority of us, such
a move makes no sense. If you want
high-end performance that will leave
your bank balance less sore, then a
Threadripper is the way to go. And at
£999, the 16-core 1950X is the best that
AMD has on offer.
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper
1950X is incredible, effectively
squeezing a pair of Ryzen 1800Xs into
one package. There are big wins in
addition to the phenomenal core count,
including 64 PCIe lanes, support for
quad-channel DDR4, and 40MB of L3
cache. It happily turbos up to 4GHz,
and stays cool while doing so; 60 C puts
Intel’s latest to shame.
The
resultant chip is
huge, so AMD has
introduced a new
package and mounting
mechanism – an
interesting system that
helps ensure you don’t damage your
new motherboard or expensive CPU. FOR HIGH-END PERFORMANCE
Speaking of which, you will, of course,
need a new motherboard to go along A THREADRIPPER IS DEFINITELY
with your top-end chip, and we cover THE WAY TO GO
our recommendation for X399 later.

INTEL
www.intel.com
CORE I5-8400
At last, we’ve seen it come to fruition.
Intel has finally thrown off the shackles
of those four-core limitations, and added
an additional two cores to the vast
majority of chips in its arsenal of
mainstream processors. It is, in essence,
an effective way of combatting AMD’s
Ryzen eight-core parts, without having
to redevelop an entire processor
raft of additional processing
prowess, capable of demolishing
the older Core i7-7700K. It is, by
far, the best value processor you
can buy to date, coming in at a
faintly ridiculous £183.
That’s not to say there aren’t
any limitations with Coffee
Lake, the big one being power

INTEL HAS FINALLY THROWN OFF

THE SHACKLES OF THOSE FOUR-
CORE LIMITATIONS
architecture to do so.
The Core i5-8400 is the absolute
sweet spot in the lineup, and for those MID_RANGE
looking for a mid-range, no fuss chip,
that gets the job done, it’s the new king
of the hill. Although it still lacks the
T O TA L
Hyper-Threading of its Core i7 superior,
the inclusion of those two Coffee Lake
£183
cores on top of the usual four provides a

20
 T O D AY ’ S B E S T U P G R A D E S
Feature

BUDGET

AMD RYZEN 3 T O TA L
1300X £130
www.amd.com

As an upgrade, a budget chip is a tricky long in the tooth. So

concept. We’ve been recommending the
Intel Pentium G4600 for our budget
build for the best part of a year, but
when it comes to an upgrade, we can’t
really recommend a last-gen CPU that
slots into a last-gen motherboard. So
instead of tying ourselves in knots
trying to predict which platform you’re
upgrading from, we’ve picked a chip
that offers strong performance at a
great price point. The Ryzen 3 1300X
may not have the headline-grabbing
thread count of the top-of-the-range
1800X, but this is still an unlocked
quad-core chip for not much cash.
Talking of cost, you’ll need to buy an
AM4 motherboard to use it, and
possibly some DDR4 memory to go
with it, if your current system is a little
that £130 price tag
isn’t the whole
story, but this is
still a good
value
proposition,
with a decent upgrade
path of its own, which is always
worth considering at the budget end of
the scale. The retail chip comes with
the Wraith cooler as well, which does a
fine job of keeping it cool while hitting
the 3.7GHz turbo, so no immediate
need to grab a separate all-in-one to get
the most from this chip. This is an
upgrade path that represents
A CHIP THAT OFFERS STRONG
significantly less outlay than the others PERFORMANCE AT A GREAT
we’ve mentioned, but won’t struggle too
hard to run the latest games.
PRICE POINT

PROCESSOR BENCHMARKS
Cores/ Cinebench Cinebench R15 Fry Render Power Power
Chip Threads X265 R15 Single Multi Draw Idle Draw Load Price

Intel Core i9-7980XE 18/36 41.12 184 3,331 64 66 258 £1,668

MD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16/32 38.29 167 3,012 84 91 271 £999

Intel Core i9-7900X 10/20 38.15 180 2,218 94 86 223 £827

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12/24 35.39 152 2,308 127 67 243 £799

Intel Core i7-7820X 8/16 30.45 194 1,741 122 83 197 £496

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 8/16 27.89 159 1,612 161 56 182 £450

Intel Core i7-8700K 6/12 30.65 205 1,553 133 65 198 £336

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X 8/16 26.81 154 1,542 172 57 143 £329

Intel Core i7-7700K 4/8 20.68 194 970 225 44 110 £296

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 8/16 24.12 147 1,406 178 47 115 £290

AMD Ryzen 5 1600X 6/12 22.18 159 1,223 226 45 115 £250

Intel Core i5-7600K 4/4 15.86 179 663 346 44 103 £206

Intel Core i5-8400 6/6 22.24 172 956 231 44 123 £183

AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 4/8 15.85 154 807 329 42 101 £189

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 4/8 13.61 131 693 380 55 93 £169

AMD Ryzen 3 1300X 4/4 12.64 139 550 462 56 95 £130

21
 F E AT U R E
Today’s best upgrades

GRAPHICS CARDS
NVIDIA
www.nvidia.com
GTX 1080 TI
Graphics cards are in a bit of an odd
state right now. Nvidia has been left
unchallenged, with AMD only
providing any hint of competition in the
mid-range. The RX 500 refresh was
little more than a badge swap, and Vega
a dud – a disappointing high-end
solution, overhyped to its own
detriment (although it struts its stuff
nicely when it comes to cryptocurrency
mining, annoyingly).
So, how does the land lie if you’re
looking to invest in a high-end GPU?
How do you power a 4K gaming rig in
today’s market? Well, fortunately, ADVANCED
Nvidia hasn’t been resting on its laurels,
and is still focused on trying to capture
as much of that market share as it can.
T O TA L
Recently it dropped the bombshell that
is the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
one of the few things cut. The Titan Xp
is slightly more powerful – about 15 per
£679
Think of it as a cut-down Titan Xp, a cent or so – but it also costs £500 more,
warhorse of a GPU focused solely on making it a superfluous product aimed
gaming, but coming in at a far more
attractive price point. The differences
solely at the affluent, or those who need
the Titan’s very specific developer skill
GRAPHICS CARD BENCHMARKS
are slim, with its 1GB of GDDR5X being set, as limited as it is. High-End 4K GPUs (Over £550)

Nvidia Titan Xp

MSI
www.msi.com
GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Reference

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64

PNY GTX 1080 XLR8 OC

Once upon a time, the card to have was Asus ROG Strix GTX 1080
the GTX 660 Ti. It was cost-effective,
powerful for its day, and clocked like a
champ. However, as the battle lines
widen, and GPU prices extend ever Mid-Range 1440p GPUs (£300–£550)
upward, our idea of what a mid-range
card actually includes has inevitably AMD Radeon RX Vega 56
increased, too. Nvidia GTX 1080 Reference
The GTX 1070 is a prime example.
With performance matching the height MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G
of Maxwell’s frame-rendering
MID_RANGE Nvidia GTX 1070 Reference
capabilities, it’s a card that makes the
once-premium 9 series Titan X
affordable, cutting the price by 66 per T O TA L Sapphire Radeon RX 580 8GB

cent. MSI’s Gaming X variant provides a

fine balance between noise reduction £549 Budget 1080p GPUs (£120–£300)
and thermal management. There’s no
superfluous RGB lighting here apart Gigabyte Aorus RX 570 4GB
from a hint of background colour.
Couple that with a powerful stack of
8GB GDDR5X and its bunker-busting AS THE BATTLE LINES WIDEN, Zotac GTX 1060 AMP Edition

Pascal GPU, and the GTX 1070 OUR IDEA OF WHAT A MID- EVGA GTX 1060 3GB SC Gaming
dominates 1440p with ease, providing
average frame rates well into the 60fps RANGE CARD INCLUDES HAS Asus ROG Strix GTX 1050 Ti 4GB

range that every enthusiast with a INEVITABLY INCREASED EVGA GTX 1050 Ti SC Gaming 4GB
gaming habit covets.

22
 T O D AY ’ S B E S T U P G R A D E S
Feature

EVGA GTX 1060 3GB

SC GAMING
www.evga.com

So, where is AMD in all of this? The sad

reality is that AMD isn’t providing any
competitive solutions at any of the right
price points. Vega’s lack of availability
and sub-par performance has left the
upper echelons empty, while the
mid-range and budget solutions suffer
from cryptocurrency fever. Unless you
absolutely cannot live without
FreeSync, there is no justifiable reason BUDGET
to run with an AMD card, either as an
upgrade or in a fresh build.
At the budget end, there’s only one
T O TA L
choice: the GTX 1060 3GB. We’ve
recommended it all year, and for good
£289
reason: It’s at the price and
performance sweet spot, even up
against Nvidia’s own GTX 1050 Ti. so unattractive, seemingly nothing more
Look at the figures—for £89 more, you than a die shrink, and spec for spec
get a card that’s 50 per cent faster than almost identical to the 950, the 1060
IT’S AT THE PRICE AND
the next step down, gives the GTX 980 3GB is incredibly appealing. And it PERFORMANCE SWEET SPOT, EVEN
a run for its money, and masticates won’t set you back as much as some
1080p. Because Nvidia’s GTX 1050 Ti is others that offer less functionality.
UP AGAINST NVIDIA’S GTX 1050 TI

Total War: Far Cry The Rise of the Power Draw Power Draw 3DMark: Fire 3DMark: Time
VRAM Attila Primal Division Tomb Raider Idle Load Strike Ultra (DX11) Spy (DX12) Price

12GB GDDR5X 16/29 54/62 35/61 12/32 49 365 7,166 9,097 £1,149

11GB GDDR5X 14/27 51/56 39/55 11/29 47 354 6,587 8,307 £679

8GB HBM 2.0 9/16 36/43 22/43 13/20 66 403 5,241 6,758 £570

8GB GDDR5X 9/19 39/43 26/41 8/20 53 334 5,077 6,597 £700

8GB GDDR5X 9/20 40/44 21/43 8/22 49 325 5,339 6,892 £999
Our test bed consists of an Intel Core i7-7700K, 16GB of Corsair DDR4, an Asus Maximus IX Hero, and a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo. All games tested on the highest graphical profile, with AA at 4K

Total War: Far Cry The Rise of the Power Draw Power Draw 3DMark: Fire 3DMark: Time
VRAM Attila Primal Division Tomb Raider Idle Load Strike Ultra (DX11) Spy (DX12) Price

8GB HBM 2.0 21/31 58/69 42/67 22/36 64 331 8,656 6,263 £450

8GB GDDR5X 23/40 65/77 39/73 16/42 48 252 9,371 6,537 £529

8GB GDDR5 23/36 55/65 47/63 14/35 53 306 8,221 5,753 £549

8GB GDDR5 21/34 53/62 34/59 13/33 47 288 7,805 5,542 £419

8GB GDDR5 19/25 40/48 25/49 11/26 59 297 6,033 4,515 £420
Our test bed consists of an Intel Core i7-7700K, 16GB of Corsair DDR4, an Asus Maximus IX Hero, and a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo. All games tested on the highest graphical profile, with AA at 1440p

Total War: Far Cry The Rise of the Power Draw Power Draw 3DMark: Fire 3DMark: Time
VRAM Attila Primal Division Tomb Raider Idle Load Strike Ultra (DX11) Spy (DX12) Price

4GB GDDR5 24/31 45/56 32/56 7/33 66 268 10,243 3,833 £360

6GB GDDR5 26/38 53/66 31/60 15/38 53 225 10,959 4,158 £289

3GB GDDR5 24/36 49/61 31/55 9/35 47 251 20,251 3,905 £289

4GB GDDR5 14/23 34/43 19/36 9/23 52 216 7,042 3,209 £145

4GB GDDR5 13/22 32/40 17/36 9/23 43 201 7,012 3,188 £200
Our test bed consists of an Intel Core i7-7700K, 16GB of Corsair DDR4, an Asus Maximus IX Hero, and a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo. All games tested on the highest graphical profile, with AA at 1080p

23
 F E AT U R E
Today’s best upgrades
MOTHERBOARDS
ASUS PRIME X399
www.asus.com
If you’re going with the mighty
powerhouse of Threadripper, you need
a suitable motherboard. We admit,
there’s not a huge selection of X399
boards out there right now (seven in
total), so pickings are slim, but that’s not
to say there’s no choice to be had. In
our opinion, Asus’s Prime X399 is ideal.
For this number of cores, unless you
have very specific needs (overclocking,
more PCIe SSDs, specific storage
solutions, and so on), there’s very little
to justify investing in a pricier mobo.
Asus’s Prime X399 was the board we
chose for our recent workstation
rendering machine, because of these
very reasons. We wanted to keep an eye
on the price, yet still have access to a
fantastically smooth BIOS for additional
tweaking, overclocking, and more if we
needed it. Throw in the gorgeously
understated colour scheme and design
of the board, plus cooling and storage
support, and it’s an all-around no-
CPU COOLERS
www.nzxt.com £130
NZXT KRAKEN X62
If cash is tight, there’s nothing wrong with
using the cooler that comes with your CPU
(as long as it’s the retail version – OEMs
don’t have coolers). However, if you want
to overclock, or keep temperatures down
so your machine runs more quietly, water
cooling gets the nod from us. Obviously,
piecing together your own loop is the pro
choice here, although for an easier life, an
all-in-one cooler has a lot going for it. We’ve
seen quite a few of these recently as new
manufacturers enter the market, but the
likes of the Corsair H110 (£110) and NZXT
Kraken X62 (£130) still stand out as the
ones to buy.
24
ADVANCED
T O TA L
brainer. That said, one
£290
of the biggest reasons
we chose this board is
due to market share. Why?
Simply put, Asus has loads of money
and resources to invest in BIOS
development, pushing the boundaries
of memory support in the process—and
good memory support is still key to
unlocking the real potential of AMD’s
potent processor. Stability is also an
important factor, and you can max both
of those factors out using this powerful
motherboard. Throw in the strong
feature set and raw power on offer, and
this is an easy recommendation to make.
ASUS HAS LOADS OF
MONEY AND
RESOURCES TO INVEST
IN BIOS DEVELOPMENT
GIGABYTE
www.gigabyte.com
AB350 GAMING 3
Now we turn to our budget-specced
motherboard of choice: the Gigabyte
AB350 Gaming 3. Ryzen is an absolutely
revolutionary product, chipset and all.
Just how far it’s shifted the processor
industry is something we may never
know, but the fact that you can now
invest in a quad-core i5 equivalent for
less than $100 certainly makes it a force
to be reckoned with.
Couple Ryzen with Gigabyte’s
fantastically well-designed AB350
Gaming 3, and you’re quickly on your
way to speccing out one hell of a budget
rig. Gigabyte has long impressed us with
just how much it can cram onto a
motherboard, while still hitting
aggressive price points, and the plucky
underdog often wins our motherboard
group tests, purely because of its crazy
design ethos. it does provide everything you’ll need to
There’s a whole heap of mobos support multi GPUs, PCIe storage, USB
available for Ryzen, however if you’re 3.1, and more. It even supports memory
after a no-fuss, plug-and-play build, the up to 3,200MT/s, so you can net
AB350 is great. This board isn’t for yourself a 10–15 per cent increase in
tweakers – you can’t overclock it – but performance in some cases.
 T O D AY ’ S B E S T U P G R A D E S
Feature

RAM
www.corsair.com £420

CORSAIR 32GB
DOMINATOR
PLATINUM
2,400MHZ
It isn’t a great time to upgrade memory right now.
Memory pricing has almost doubled in the last 12
months, so while we’d love to recommend that
everyone aims for at least 16GB in their systems, it’s
a tough call to make when even a budget kit will set
you back nearly £200. Aim for 8GB as an absolute
minimum, although 32GB is nice for serious work. If
you’ve got room to double up on what you’ve already
got, do so, because hopefully pricing will calm down
by the time you upgrade again. When it comes to what
to buy, aim for capacity first and frequency after. Low
latency kits are the way to go if you can afford them,
although given the current inflated pricing, being picky
will cost you. As an example, you can pick up DDR4 kits
rated at up to 4,600MT/s (PC4 36800 with 19-23-23-
43 timings), although you will pay a lot for the privilege
(£390-plus for 16GB).
It’s worth noting that Ryzen benefits from faster
memory, but be mindful of compatibility—check your MID_RANGE
motherboard’s supported memory list for capacity and
speed first. T O TA L
£240

BUDGET ASUS
www.asus.com
ROG MAXIMUS X HERO
T O TA L
£289 At the time of going to press, we haven’t
had chance to play with a lot of Z370
with one manufacturer’s BIOS will
almost always know how best to take
motherboards yet. That said, it’s hard to advantage of that compared to another,
argue with the Asus ROG Maximus and it’s often personal preference that
Hero’s heritage. We’ve been using this dictates the issue; however, the
lineup of motherboards in our test placement of menus, along with the

THE OPTIONS AND ITEMS YOU CAN TWEAK IN

ASUS’S BIOS MAKE IT ONE OF THE MORE
INTUITIVE AND EASY-TO-USE
benches since Devil’s Canyon and Z97.
The Asus ROG Maximus X Hero is a
fantastic update to the series, featuring
an integrated rear I/O cover, oodles of
USB ports, BIOS reset switches,
Ethernet ports, integrated Wi-Fi,
dependable audio, a ton of onboard
storage support, M.2 heatsinks, and
GIGABYTE HAS IMPRESSED US more. One of the things we’ve already
touched upon with our love for Asus is
WITH JUST HOW MUCH IT CAN just how easy it is to use the UEFI
CRAM ONTO A MOTHERBOARD BIOS. It may be difficult to quantifiably
review a BIOS, because those familiar
options and items you can tweak in
Asus’s BIOS make it one of the more
intuitive and easy-to-use that we’ve
seen in the last few years.
This board is a touch on the pricey
side, but if you’re looking to shell out on
a high-end Coffee Lake processor, it’s
well worth the investment. After all,
there’s little point spending your
hard-earned cash on a top-of-the-range
processor and not letting it shine. This
is a good compromise on price without
sacrificing performance.

25
 F E AT U R E
Today’s best upgrades
SOLID-STATE DRIVES
SAMSUNG
www.samsung.com
960 PRO
No-brainer time: If you want the fastest
storage around, you’ll want an SSD. Not
just any SSD either—you’ll want a PCIe
M.2 drive that is capable of producing
the kind of transfer rates that make
grown system admins weep. And at the
top of that pile of drives at the moment
is Samsung, with its 960 Pro range of
M.2 drives, where you’ll see sustained
transfer reads and writes of 3,400MB/s
and 2,100MB/s respectively. The
random 4K performance is no slouch
either, hitting 57MB/s and 194MB/s
SAMSUNG
960 EVO
www.samsung.com
The 960 Evo mixes a lot of the same
magic as the 960 Pro, but at a lower
price. The big difference is the type of
NAND used: The 960 Pro uses MLC
(Multi-Level Cell) flash, while the Evo
uses TLC (Triple-Level Cell). They’re
both 3D NAND architectures, but the
Pro manages to squeeze more into the
same space, which is why it’s available
in larger capacities—512GB–2TB, while
the Evo ships at 250GB–1TB.
Performance-wise, there is a
difference between the Pro and Evo,
but it isn’t huge – sustained reads and
writes of 3,200MB/s and 1,800MB/s
aren’t too far off the Pro. It’s worth
noting that the 960 Pro does have a
five-year warranty (or 800TB
written), while the 960 Evo
MID_RANGE only has three years.
T O TA L
£110-£432
26
HARD DRIVES
www.hgst.com £340
ADVANCED
T O TA L
£260–£1,020
when throwing around smaller files.
You’ll notice that we haven’t specified a
capacity with our recommendation, and
that’s because we suggest getting the
biggest drive you can afford, without
getting silly; £260 will net you a fairly
sizeable 512GB model, which is more
than enough for your OS and your main
applications. Jumping up to a 1TB drive
means you can hold a good chunk of
your data on the drive as well, with the
pricey 2TB model allowing for serious
data usage.
HGST HE10
How much storage do you really need?
BUDGET We’re assuming you have some form of
T O TA L network attached storage, a good sized
£125
SSD, plenty of backup options, and a
healthy chunk of online storage, like any
good setup. So what’s left? Some extra
space is nice, sure, but unless you have
specific requirements, a 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB
hard drive is probably all you need, and will
set you back £40–£145. You can now pick
up hard drives up to 12TB, although they
cost over £560. This 10TB model is a little
more reasonable.
CRUCIAL
www.crucial.com
BX300 480GB
Once you’ve used an M.2, you can’t go who is still running an old-fashioned
back. To be fair, that’s not strictly true, spinning hard drive.
but it’s a good sound bite, and there are The Crucial BX300 is our new
some transfers where you can notice the favorite budget SSD, packing half a
difference. Not every system has access terabyte for a wallet-friendly £125. As
to M.2, though, and even those that do with any modern SSD, performance is
tend to be limited to one or maybe two
slots. M.2 drives also demand a slight
decent enough, although you’ll find that
the straight throughput of any SSD that
premium over 2.5-inch SSDs. That uses SATA is ultimately limited by the
means there is still a market for the interface. Still, it is significantly faster
more traditional SSD, and such drives and will be longer lived than the
are still the go-to upgrade for anyone spinning platters of yore.
 T O D AY ’ S B E S T U P G R A D E S
Feature

CASES FRACTAL DESIGN

MESHIFY
www.fractal-design.com

Fractal provides a plethora of more

PHANTEKS
ENTHOO EVOLV TG
www.phanteks.com
Cases are inevitably a very personal
thing for many people. After all, a big
factor is aesthetics. Whether you care
can dictate how much you’re willing to
spend. Looking for a super-slick, clean
build? Then it’s likely you’re hunting for
a svelte, aluminum, tempered glass
solution. Couldn’t give a damn? A
square tin can sans window will do the
job just fine.
That said, if you’re building a
premium system, you can’t go wrong
with a premium chassis. Ease of
building, materials, paint finish, and
internal cable routing options all
contribute to a happier enthusiast.
For us, all this is epitomised by
Phanteks—the Dutch company has a
knack for making the premium
affordable, and nowhere is this more
apparent than the Phanteks Enthoo
Elite TG. Featuring 4mm thick
ADVANCED
T O TA L
£175
aluminum, tempered glass, and a
sandblasted finish, combined with
extensive cooling and storage support,
it’s definitely one of the best chassis out
there for any custom system.
exotic styled, cooling-heavy cases. The
MID_RANGE
Meshify is a perfect example: a small,
stylish, mid-tower design, developed
T O TA L
with maximum airflow in mind. The
polygon-esque 3D diamond mesh front
£90
panel lends itself to up to 360mm
radiators, and although liquid cooling
isn’t the best solution, it’s perfect for
AIOs and smaller form factor
builds. Despite its low
price, it supports up to
three 2.5-inch SSDs on
the rear of the
motherboard tray, two
3.5-inch hard drives
below the PSU cover, and
a full-sized ATX PSU.
Couple that with the
inclusion of fan filters,
solid cable management,
and a smoked glass side
panel, and you start to
wonder where the corners
were cut when designing
this beauty. We’ll let you
know—if we find them.

DISPLAYS
www.asus.com £1,410
CORSAIR
www.corsair.com
CARBIDE 270R
ASUS PA329Q
£60 is a fair amount of cash when
BUDGET Recommending
building a budget rig. We usually
recommend you try to save as much T O TA L a display is
tricky because
money as you can on parts – apart from
your PSU, CPU, GPU, and RAM. After £60 there are so
many subjective
all, you won’t gain much from a case variables. What
upgrade compared to amping up those
may be perfect
four essential components.
for one may not
But if you’re looking for a cheeky
cheap upgrade, nothing’s more work for you.
satisfying than upgrading that old hunk Gamers, for instance, want
of metal in which you house your to prioritise the high refresh
precious hardware. Corsair’s Carbide rates and low latency of a TN
270R hits that mark perfectly. With a panel over IPS’s colour accuracy and
simple, elegant design, the 270R would viewing angles, while video editors may prefer the higher
look as at home in a bedroom as in a contrast ratios of VA panels.
game developer’s studio. With support Most of us want the best of all worlds—which tends to
for up to three 120mm fans in the front,
mean IPS panels, although newer tech is blurring these
two 140mm ones in the roof, and four
lines. Add in screen sizes, native resolutions, FreeSync/
hard drives, it’s not that different from
the more expensive Fractal Design G-Sync, high dynamic ranges (HDR), and more, and
Meshify design and provides plenty of it’s clear that recommending a screen is difficult. We’re
room for cooling and further expansion. still searching for the “perfect” panel at a price we’re
It’s not perfect, but for the cash, you’d comfortable with – the Asus PA329Q is great, but at
be hard pushed to find better than £1,410, it’s not for everyone.
Corsair’s aggressively priced, budget-
busting box.

27
 F E AT U R E
Memory Matters

MEMORY
28
MATTERS

A fresh look at the state of DDR4 in 2018
W
e often describe the PC as
having its own ecosystem,
almost as though it’s some form
of living entity, and the
symbiotic relationship between
each component is almost a perfect example of
Aristotle’s (oft misparaphrased) saying: “The whole
is more than the sum of its parts.” Admittedly, the
Greek philosophical genius was likely referring to
metaphysics and ideologies, rather than the
modern-day abacus, yet in our eyes the saying is
more apt here than anywhere else.
After all, you only have to take one core component
out of the typical system’s arsenal, and you render the
machine incapable of function. Whether that’s
processor, motherboard, or memory, the crux of the
matter is that this holy trinity of hardware combines
to create a perfect amalgamation of machine-based
interfacing – yet, isolated, the components themselves
M E M O R Y M AT T E R S
Feature
hold far less value. And not only does this metaphor
suit the PC itself, but it also extends to the PC
marketplace. With the prices of both memory and
GPUs skyrocketing, inevitably those generational
spikes in performance we’ve been seeing across the
computing industry over the last 10 years are going to
evaporate – because the price of memory has nearly
tripled, new platform adopters are forced to go for
lower-spec parts.
This has a knock-on effect across game
development, video production, CGI... Hell, even us
tech journos are going to feel the bite. Whether it’s
mining, supply issues, or a bit of both, the ecosystem is
suffering, and there’s not a lot we can do to change
that, but understanding how memory works, and what
you should be spending your cash on, as far as
memory is concerned, is now more pivotal than ever.
So, it’s time for us to bust out the magnifying glass,
and shine a light on the volatile world of memory.
29
 F E AT U R E
Memory Matters

THE OBSESSION WITH SPEED

Memory speed is one of the most
convoluted specifications around, and is
often misrepresented. Way back when, in
the early days of SDRAM development, the
megahertz measurement was the correct
way of advertising the associated speeds of
memory. In short, every single solid-state
component in your machine operates at a
specific frequency, or Hz – whether it’s your
processor, GPU, memory, or even SSD, each
one operates on a cycle. Like the ticking of a
clock, each tick represents a single hertz or
cycle (the opening and closing of a
transistor gate, in this case). A speed of 1Hz,
for example, is one cycle per second; 2Hz is
two per second; a MHz is 1,000,000 cycles
per second; you get the picture. Once we got
our heads round it, it made perfect sense,
and continued to do so for years.
The problem is, when DDR (or double
data rate) RAM came on the scene, it
changed how data transfers were registered.
Instead of only actuating once on the rising
of each clock cycle, it could now also
process an additional operation on the fall
of that same clock cycle, effectively doubling
the rate at which the DIMM could process
data. The figure for accurate measurement
of data transfer requests then shifted from
MHz to MT/s to adjust for this change,
despite the fact that memory still operated
at the same frequency. However, marketing
apparently didn’t get that memo, because
many companies, in a bid to tout it as the
next big thing, ignored the MT/s figure,
instead referring to it as MHz, while
modern-day memory quoted at 2,400MHz,
for instance, actually only operates at half
that frequency.

TIMINGS AND LATENCY

The next part of the holy trinity of memory
specifications revolves around timings and
latency. There’s a ton of them, but the most
important one you need to keep in mind is
the CAS latency. Referring to the Column
Address Strobe, this figure indicates just
how many clock cycles it’s going to take for
the memory module to access a particular
memory location, either to store or retrieve
a bit of data held there, ready for processing
by the CPU.
That said, this figure on its own doesn’t
give you all the information you need. It’s
only when you combine it with the memory
transfer rate we mentioned above that you
get a better picture of just how fast your
memory modules are. So, how do we get a
figure that makes any sort of logical sense to
us consumers? Well, there’s a handy
formula that converts CAS latency and
MT/s into a real-world latency: Latency =
(2,000/Y) x Z, where Y is your RAM’s
speed in MT/s, and Z is your CAS latency.
So, as an example, if we take a 2,666MT/s
memory kit, operating with a CAS latency
of 15, we get a real-world result of 11.25ns.
This tells us exactly the total time it takes
for that memory module to access, store, or
request a bit of data from its particular
location on the module.
This is where the concept of overclocking
your memory typically comes unstuck. As a
general rule of thumb, the higher the
frequency, the higher the CAS latency, and
as such, real-world performance gains are
often slim, unless the rise of that CAS
latency is slowed as well. When it comes to
the “best” performing memory, what you’re
looking for is a kit that has a high frequency,
a low CAS latency, and the necessary
capacity (see opposite) to do what you want
to do.

RAM LATENCIES
Technology Memory Chip Capacity Transfer Rate (MT/s) CAS Latency (ns) Real Latency (ns)

DDR2 500MB 400 5 25.00

DDR2 500MB 800 5 12.50

DDR3 1GB 800 9 22.50

DDR3 1GB 2,400 11 9.17

DDR4 2GB 2,133 15 14.06

DDR4 2GB 4,500 19 8.44

DDR5* 4GB 4,266 23 10.78

DDR5* 4GB 6,400 27 8.44

30
 M E M O R Y M AT T E R S
Feature

CAPACITY FOR CAPACITY

To understand how memory capacity is
calculated, we have to look at how the chips
themselves are designed. This starts with
JEDEC, an association of over 300 different
companies that focus on solid-state
technology. Its task is to ensure that
universal standards are used across the
registered companies when it comes to
solid-state tech, with a particular emphasis
on DRAM, solid-state drives, and interfaces
(NVMe and AHCI, for instance). What this
does is ensure that the consumer won’t have
to pick between four different connection
standards for DDR4, for example, and
everything is consistent across multiple
manufacturers – aka no proprietary BS. As
far as memory is concerned, JEDEC lists
the criteria that, say, DDR4 needs to adhere
to – for instance, the number of pin outs,
the dimensions of the chips, and more.
That spec is then handed over to the
manufacturers to produce memory chips to
their own specifications that fit into
JEDEC’s criteria. Typically, the differences
lie within the size of the manufacturing
process used (which additionally affects
power draw). These chips are then bought
by aftermarket partners, such as Corsair,
HyperX, G.Skill, and so on, to be assembled
with their own PCBs, heatsinks, and
aftermarket features (RGB LEDs, anyone?),
while, of course, still adhering to JEDEC’s
original outline.
Due to limitations in transistor size,
DDR4 chips are limited to just 1GB each,
although a theoretical 2GB per chip is well
within the specification. In the consumer
market, most DIMMs can only support up
to a maximum of 16 memory chips per stick,
meaning a maximum capacity of 16GB per
DIMM is possible. You can find larger sticks
in the enterprise market, typically featuring
up to 32GB per stick, but these are designed
for server use rather than the consumer
market, and are priced into the thousands.

HOW MUCH MEMORY?

So, in this world of
hyperinflated memory prices,
just how much DDR4 is
enough for what you want to
do? It’s tricky. A year or so
ago, we would have happily
sat here and recommended
64GB of DDR4 for any video
editor or content creator out
there. But, to be honest, given
the ludicrous price increases
(more on that later), that’s
just not a practical or good
use of your money in this day
and age.
4GB If all you’re
building is a home theatre PC
or a machine for low-end
office work, then arguably a
single 4GB stick of low-spec
DDR4 should be perfect for
the job. Couple that with a
low-end Pentium part, and
you’re all set. For those keen
miners out there, this is also
the ideal spec for a
cryptocurrency mining rig,
because mining is typically
not as memory-intensive as
other more mainstream
applications (but you should
pass on the Pentium if you’re
planning to mine CPU-
intensive currencies).
16GB is also a nice it’s the absolutely perfect
8GB If entry-level
gaming is your jam, 8GB (2x
middleweight RAM capacity
for any task you want to throw
amount for applications such
as After Effects, 4K Premiere
4GB) is the absolute minimum at your rig. Whether that’s Pro, and more.
we’d recommend. Ironically, extensive office work,
the lower the amount of VRAM Photoshop, entry-level
on your GPU, the more likely videography, you name it, it’s
the right spec for you. 32GB PLUS
the system is to cache overly
large texture files onto the
actual RAM itself.
For now, unless you can
somehow get it aggressively
32GB For anyone
who makes a living from 3D
subsidised, anything beyond
32GB just isn’t worth it, at
16GB For
mid-range to high-end
modelling and content
creation, 32GB is the way to go
least not until RAM prices
drop below that key £500
for the time being. Although mark once more. You’ll kick
gaming, you absolutely need
this will more than likely still yourself for spending that
that 16GB of DDR4.
Annoyingly, more and more set you back £300 or more, much when prices drop again.
games are starting to use
more and more memory.
Yearly releases and poorly
optimised titles are putting
more strain on system
memory, with even Star
Citizen recently announcing a
minimum spec of 16GB of
RAM purely to run the Alpha.

31
 F E AT U R E
Memory Matters

PRICE HIKES
If you haven’t built or upgraded a machine
recently, you might not realise that memory
pricing has gone crazy over the last 12–16
months. While, a year or two ago, the
amount of memory you put in a system
could be decided on a whim, it now has to
be a carefully thought-out plan if you want
to keep any machine up to date and capable
of the workloads intended. But why have
prices increased so much? And what are the
chances of them coming back down to more
reasonable levels?
The biggest problem for DRAM is that
producing flash is far more lucrative. The
IT COULD BE WORTH HANGING TIGHT FOR A LITTLE
LONGER, BECAUSE THE MEMORY MARKET HAS A
HISTORY OF RIGHTING ITSELF
reason for this is primarily down to one
thing: smartphones. The specifications for
these tiny powerhouses are constantly on
the rise, so the amount of storage and RAM
they ship with has risen sharply recently. As
they are premium products, the amount of
money being charged for them has gone
through the roof.
You might be thinking that high-speed
desktop DDR4 RAM has nothing to do with
NAND flash, and in a sense you’d be right,
but the plants that manufacture NAND are
also the ones responsible for our beloved
DDR4. So, because it’s financially more
advantageous to switch over to NAND,
that’s exactly what has happened. It might
be important to us, but desktop RAM is
relatively low in the pecking order as far as
manufacturers are concerned. There is
another reason for the current high prices,
though, and that’s down to market demand.
We had some decent platform releases last
year, which meant there has been a slew of
people in the market looking to buy more
RAM. Yes, it’s Ryzen’s fault. Well, not really,
but the new platform has certainly not
helped the situation.
If you’re looking to upgrade a system
with more RAM, it could be worth hanging
tight for a little longer, because the memory
market has a history of righting itself. If
you’re looking to build a new system, your
options aren’t as obvious. Buy wisely. And
be ready to pounce when pricing does
return to more reasonable levels.

MEMORY PRICING GONE HAYWIRE

We’ve collated the average memory $13.00
prices over the last two years. This is
an average of memory pricing on our
test machines on a per gigabyte basis
(which helps mitigate the fact that the $12.00
turbo build tends to use 4x 8GB
DIMMs, while the budget build uses a
pair of 4GB sticks). How we pick $11.00
memory for these builds is also
affected by pricing –if RAM prices are
high, we pick lower-frequency DIMMs.
So, there is some margin of error, but $10.00
the general trend shown in this graph
is hard to ignore.
$9.00

$8.00

$7.00

$6.00

$5.00

$4.00

$3.00

2016 2017 2018

32
 Memory Matters
Feature

CHANNEL BANDWIDTH
What is channel bandwidth and how does it
affect memory? Think of it as the maximum
amount of data that can be transferred at any
one time between your system and the
memory installed. It’s calculated by using
MT/s, the width of the memory bus, and the
number of memory channels your system
supports. So, for a typical Ryzen 7 1800X
system, featuring 16GB (2x 8GB) of 3,200MT/s
DDR4, it’s something like this:
3,200,000,000 (3,200MT/s) x 64 (64-bit
bus) x 2 (dual-channel) = 409.6 billion bits per
second, or 51,200MB/s ,or 51.2GB/s.
That’s the absolute maximum amount of
data the system could transfer between the
memory and the processor at any given time,
before bottlenecking. If you were to use a 4x
4GB kit on your dual-channel board,
bandwidth wouldn’t increase, because the
processor can still only read and write from
two memory channels at a time (thus the
dual-channel spec), despite the fact that you
have four DIMMs installed. On the flip side,
installing just one DIMM will cut that figure
in half.
It’s worth noting that for most applications,
dual-channel memory kits provide you with
more than enough bandwidth for everything
you want to do on your desktop. However, for
applications that manipulate massive data sets,
textures, and more, an increase in channel
support can eliminate potential bottlenecks,
because more powerful processors become
more capable at manipulating larger data sets.
4K, 5K, and 8K video editing in After Effects,
for instance, benefits greatly from having
access to both a larger memory capacity and
increased memory bandwidth, thanks to
quad-channel support. Ultimately, you need to
work out exactly how much strain you’ll be
placing on your machine and where
bottlenecks could potentially occur.
THE FUTURE
JEDEC is poised to announce the next-gen memory
standard (DDR5) later this year, and has confirmed a few
details for us: “DDR5 will offer improved performance,
with greater power efficiency compared to previous
generation DRAM technologies. As planned, DDR5 will
provide double the bandwidth, and density over DDR4,
along with delivering improved channel efficiency.”
That’s exciting, if only for the fact that power
consumption should drop – DDR3 sat at 1.5V and DDR4
at 1.2V, so it’s likely we’ll see DDR5 at 1.0V or lower. The
doubling of density means we’ll likely see mobos double
in max capacity, too, with mainstream platforms maxing
out at 128GB, and high-end desktops hitting a 256GB
limit. Expect initial MT/s figures to hit around
4,133MT/s, with latencies at 27ns if not more. However,
it’s unlikely to come into production until late 2019.

STANDARDISATION
What exactly are JEDEC’s standards? And
why are they necessary? Well, the biggest
reason they exist is to ensure consumers
have a non-convoluted platform. They also
ensure that motherboard manufacturers
don’t have to design four different types of
motherboard, just because Corsair has its
own connection standard, HyperX another,
and G.Skill a slightly different variant. You
get the picture. Think of it like USB, but for
memory. The biggy is that all 300 members
can pool their resources to accelerate
technological development, without any one
of them getting a competitive edge, and
saving them time and money in the process.
It’s worth noting that JEDEC’s standards
are on the fairly conservative side of things
when it comes to memory frequency (after
all, they’re designed to work with
everything from desktops to servers and
supercomputers), and DDR5 has yet to be
clarified in its entirety just yet, but you can
see from the table below the standards that
each manufacturer has to adhere to.

JEDEC STANDARD DDR4 MODULE

Standard Name Data Rate (MT/s) Module Name CAS Latency (ns) Real Latency (ns)

DDR4-1600J 1,600 PC4-1600 10 12.50

DDR4-1600K 1,600 PC4-1600 11 13.75

DDR4-1600L 1,600 PC4-1600 12 15.00

DDR4-1866L 1,866 PC4-1866 12 12.86

DDR4-1866M 1,866 PC4-1866 13 13.93

DDR4-1866N 1,866 PC4-1866 14 15.01

DDR4-2133N 2,133 PC4-2133 14 13.13

DDR4-2133P 2,133 PC4-2133 15 14.06

DDR4-2133R 2,133 PC4-2133 16 15.00

DDR4-2400P 2,400 PC4-2400 15 12.50

DDR4-2400R 2,400 PC4-2400 16 13.33

DDR4-2400U 2, 400 PC4-2400 18 15.00

33
 F E AT U R E
Memory Matters

INTEL HOW MEMORY SPEEDS AFFECT INTEL CHIPS
When it comes to memory, over the years
Intel’s architecture has benefitted very little
from increased frequencies. Certainly, the
current mainstream platform sees little to no
performance increases when fixed up with
higher frequency memory with lower
latencies. When it comes to mainstream
applications, gaming, and even video editing to
some degree, if you’re sitting pretty on Z77 and
above, you’ll likely have enough bandwidth to
do anything you want, without having to shell
out for higher frequency kits for the additional
bandwidth. There is one area where Intel does
benefit from higher frequency memory,
though, and that’s file compression. If you’re
exporting and sending compressed files on a
day-to-day basis, memory speed does help
significantly. That said, it’s a fairly niche
scenario. All we can suggest, then, is that the
best thing to do when speccing out a new
system is to find a reasonable frequency (2,400
or 2,666MT/s) memory kit at a capacity that
suits your needs. We’ve recommended a few
kits as examples (see opposite), so pick a kit
with similar specs for as little money as you
can find. The good thing here is that unless
you desperately need the higher frequencies
you can shop around the different
manufacturers and you’re likely to find better
deals, because you’re mainly focusing on
capacity rather than worrying about whether a
particular brand works better with Intel CPUs.

BENCHMARKS
8GB DDR4 Cinebench R15 AIDA 64 AIDA 64 Total War Middle Earth 10GB WINRar
Single/Multi Memory Latency (ns) Warhammer II Shadow of War Archive Time
(Index) Read (Low and (Low and (Seconds)
(MB/s) Avg fps) Avg fps)

Core i7-8700K @ 2,400MT/s 204/1,521 35,933 65 38/43 22/51 245

Core i7-8700K @ 2,666MT/s 205/1,522 39,418 53.1 39/43 28/53 232

Core i7-8700K @ 3,000MT/s 205/1,527 44,130 51.2 39/43 25/53 223

Core i7-8700K @ 3,200MT/s 204/1,526 46,802 47.3 31/43 34/51 215

16GB DDR4 Cinebench R15 AIDA 64 AIDA 64 Total War Middle Earth 10GB WINRar
Single/Multi Memory Latency (ns) Warhammer II Shadow of War Archive Time
(Index) Read (Low and (Low and (Seconds)
(MB/s) Avg fps) Avg fps)

Core i7-8700K @ 2,400MT/s 204/1,515 35,282 57.5 38/43 34/51 245

Core i7-8700K @ 2,666MT/s 205/1,532 38,936 53.4 33/43 24/51 231

Core i7-8700K @ 3,000MT/s 205/1,544 43,662 49.3 33/43 35/52 225

Core i7-8700K @ 3,200MT/s 204/1,541 46,153 47.1 38/43 24/52 216

32GB DDR4 Cinebench R15 AIDA 64 AIDA 64 Total War Middle Earth 10GB WINRar
Single/Multi Memory Latency (ns) Warhammer II Shadow of War Archive Time
(Index) Read (Low and (Low and (Seconds)
(MB/s) Avg fps) Avg fps)

Core i9-7900X @ 2,400MT/s 195/2,175 62,432 84.4 33/43 29/52 197

Core i9-7900X @ 2,666MT/s 194/2,167 70,065 77.3 36/42 32/51 192

Core i9-7900X @ 3,000MT/s 191/2,197 77,599 73.8 31/43 24/51 185

Core i9-7900X @ 3,200MT/s 194/2,177 83,063 70.3 34/43 26/52 182

Our test bed consists of an Asus Z370 Maximus X Hero for the Core i7, and an Asus X299 Prime Deluxe motherboard for the Core
i9. All memory tests were performed with either 8GB or 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DIMMs, with a CAS latency of 16.

34
 M E M O R Y M AT T E R S
Feature

THE RECOMMENDED SPECS

Right then, what do we recommend,
memory-wise, for your latest immersion
into the Intel platform? Well, given the vast
swathe of different setups and use cases out
there, we’ve categorised our selections into
three rather generic specs: one for run-of-
the-mill office work, one specifically for
gaming, and one for creating grade-A
quality image or video content. It’s worth
noting that you don’t have to stick with the
brands we’ve highlighted – because
memory prices are fluctuating about rather
haphazardly at this point, you’ll probably
find brands jumping in and out of being the
best value kit you can get depending on
when they refresh their lines. Stick with
trusted brands, such as Corsair, Crucial, G.
Skill, and HyperX, and you’ll be good.

OFFICE & HOME THEATRE

As we mentioned earlier, if all you’re
wanting to do is run office software
and browse the web, a single stick of
DDR4 4GB will do you just fine.
Unfortunately, that means you’ll be
forking out about 50 whole
smackeroonies for this 2,400MT/s kit
(sadly, that’s the state of affairs we’re
now faced with). Real-world latency is
pretty attractive, though, coming in at
12.5ns at CAS 15 – not that it’ll matter
for these kind of applications.

HYPERX FURY 4GB (1X 4GB) @ 2,400MT/S, CAS 15 £35–£45

GAMING
16GB is ideal for future-proofing
yourself against the inevitable rise of
HD texture packs and unoptimised
AAA titles. Yes, devs should be
working harder on coding, rather than
the “can it run Crysis?” crapfest of a
mindset, but there’s not a lot we can
do to influence that. 2,400MT/s at
16GB is perfect under Intel’s platform.
Combine that with a CAS latency of
16, for around $170, and you’ve got a
fast (13.34ns) future-proof kit.

CRUCIAL BALLISTIX SPORT LT 16GB (2X 8GB) @ 2,400MT/S, CAS 16 £164–£170

WORKSTATION
Until memory prices change, 32GB is
the go-to spec we recommend for
anyone looking at the more expensive
workstation-oriented stuff. There’s
some good value kits out there –
Corsair’s Vengeance LPX series, in
particular, has long been a staple of
our high-end test benches. Again, as
Intel doesn’t benefit much from the
frequency side of things, 2,666MT/s
is a sweet deal for any would-be video
editor out there.

CORSAIR VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (4X 8GB) @ 2,666MT/S, CAS 16 £350–£410

35
 F E AT U R E
Memory Matters

AMD MEMORY MASTERY FOR TEAM RED Ryzen is an oddity when it comes to memory.
For the first time in eons, memory speed
impacts processor performance. Simply going
from 2,666MT/s to 3,200MT/s can equate to a
performance increase of around 10 per cent in
rendering tasks. Combine that with an
overclock on your Ryzen CPU, and you can net
yourself almost 25 per cent more grunt. Why
is this? It’s all down to how AMD has crafted
its Infinity Fabric. This is the interface that
connects all the core complexes in the
processor together, enabling them to
communicate with one another. The Infinity
Fabric is directly controlled by the IMC
(integrated memory controller), so the higher
the speed of the memory, the faster the IMC
operates, and the quicker the processor can
transfer bits of data across each core complex.
It’s a smart solution, but it does mean that
Ryzen is somewhat bound by its dependency
on faster memory – not so good when the
memory market is priced as high as it is today.
So, best bet? If you’re heading toward Team
Red’s Ryzen platform, get the highest
frequency memory you can, at a capacity that
best suits you. While this may make things
more expensive in the memory stakes thanks
to the current overinflation of RAM prices
(thanks, crypto miners), there is a trade off in
that AMD chips are typically a bit cheaper
than Intel’s offerings. Gamers especially may
find that they’ll be laying out more cash going
for AMD over Intel though, because of the
minimum RAM requirements for AAA games.

BENCHMARKS
8GB DDR4 Cinebench R15 AIDA 64 AIDA 64 Total War Middle Earth 10GB WINRar
Single/Multi Memory Latency (ns) Warhammer II Shadow of War Archive Time
(Index) Read (Low and (Low and (Seconds)
(MB/s) Avg fps) Avg fps)

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 2,400MT/s 156/1,607 37,299 91.4 32/42 18/51 344

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 2,666MT/s 153/1,615 41,307 87.3 33/42 22/50 340

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 3,000MT/s 154/1,632 46,202 79.9 37/43 28/51 316

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 3,200MT/s 155/1,638 48,473 76.5 35/43 31/51 308

16GB DDR4 Cinebench R15 AIDA 64 AIDA 64 Total War Middle Earth 10GB WINRar
Single/Multi Memory Latency (ns) Warhammer II Shadow of War Archive Time
(Index) Read (Low and (Low and (Seconds)
(MB/s) Avg fps) Avg fps)

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 2,400MT/s 153/1,607 36,523 93.7 30/41 17/51 345

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 2,666MT/s 149/1,612 40,436 88.9 30/41 18/50 336

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 3,000MT/s 150/1,620 45,717 80.6 37/43 29/52 319

Ryzen 7 1800X @ 3,200MT/s 154/1,632 47,850 75.1 35/43 27/52 311

32GB DDR4 Cinebench R15 AIDA 64 AIDA 64 Total War Middle Earth 10GB WINRar
Single/Multi Memory Latency (ns) Warhammer II Shadow of War Archive Time
(Index) Read (Low and (Low and (Seconds)
(MB/s) Avg fps) Avg fps)

Threadripper 1950X @ 2,400MT/s 141/2,891 56,524 113.7 38/43 24/55 532

Threadripper 1950X @ 2,666MT/s 138/2,902 62,712 106.2 31/43 25/54 505

Threadripper 1950X @ 3,000MT/s 140/2,939 71,961 97.0 39/43 24/53 472

Threadripper 1950X @ 3,200MT/s 139/2,945 74,992 94.3 39/44 23/53 464

Our test bed consists of an Asus X370 Crosshair VI Hero for Ryzen, and an Asus X399 ROG Zenith Extreme motherboard for Threadripper. All memory tests were
performed with either 8GB or 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DIMMs, with a CAS latency of 16.

36
 M E M O R Y M AT T E R S
Feature

THE RECOMMENDED SPECS

Now we’ve wrapped up exactly how AMD
benefits from memory speed in particular
(thanks, Infinity Fabric), it’s time we got
down to the nitty-gritty of recommending
some kits and specs. As with the Intel
recommendations, it’s worth noting that
you don’t need to stick with the brands
we’ve picked out below, because prices are
fluctuating about rather haphazardly at this
point. We’ve just tried to balance, price,
spec, and performance to come up with the
perfect pairings for your AMD-based build.
As noted previously, gamers in particular
need to shop around for the best deals,
because today’s high-end games won’t
compromise on their minimum RAM, and
ideally you want to be running slightly over
the lowest recommended specs.

OFFICE & HOME THEATRE

Let’s assume you have an old GPU
from an out-of-date system that
you’re going to be plugging into this
build, because until the Zen APUs
come out, you’ll need a dedicated GPU
to run a Ryzen HTPC or office system.
A single stick of 4GB DDR4 at
2,666MT/s fits the bill perfectly.
Ryzen has always been a bit fussy
with memory, so make sure you go for
a good mainstream brand here, and
stick with 2,666MT/s and above
where you can.

HYPERX FURY 4GB (1X 4GB) @ 2,666MT/S, CAS 16 £41–£69

GAMING
That price jump is painful, but we
reckon it’s worth it for this kit. For
gaming, frame rates matter, and
near-instantaneous communication
between Ryzen’s intricate core
complexes certainly helps batter
those low frame rates into
submission, at the very least. With a
super-low latency of 10ns, a
3,200MT/s kit with a CAS latency of
16 will set you back a good £200, but
it’s definitely the best way to game on
Ryzen. Period.

CORSAIR VENGEANCE LED 16GB (2X 8GB) @ 3,200MT/S, CAS 16 £180–£220

WORKSTATION
We’ve opted for more capacity here,
but a slight drop in frequency in
contrast with the gaming
recommendation above. This is
mostly centred around the notion that
the gains from Threadripper’s
memory speed increase (from 3,000
to 3,200) weren’t that impressive.
That said, it’s still a kick-ass kit, and
the latency combo is perfect, if you
can get a kit at a good price. G.Skill’s
Ripjaws V series is the best value
we’ve seen so far.

CORSAIR VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (4X 8GB) @ 3,000MT/S, CAS 15 £330–£370

37
 F E AT U R E
Protect your tech

PROTECT
YOUR

TECH Having your laptop, tablet or

phone stolen is depressingly
common. As we explain here,
there’s a lot you
can do to keep your IT
equipment safe

38

AT A GLANCE
How to find what you’re looking for
• Anti-theft products, p40
Anti-theft products range from devices to
provide physical security, through alarms that
will let you know if your equipment is tampered
with, to products to mark your gear uniquely
and indelibly. We look at the pros and cons of
each, and identify some suitable products.
W
e have good news and
bad news. The good
news is that the crime
rate has been falling in
the UK, from a peak in
1995. Similar trends apply in many other
countries. The bad news is that, despite a
reduction in household burglary, property
theft overall – and theft from the person in
particular – has remained high or even risen
over the same period, with computer-related
equipment being especially targeted.
Needless to say, mobile phones are
particularly sought after, but we’re guessing
most would-be thieves wouldn’t turn their
nose up at a top-of-the-range laptop or
tablet either.
It’s a depressing irony, then, that although
convenience while you’re out and about is
the whole reason for using portable
electronic devices, once your equipment is
taken out of the home or office it becomes
much more likely to attract the attention of
criminals. What’s more, the consequences
could be serious. Certainly, the cost of
replacement of the hardware has to be
considered – and even if it’s insured, you
won’t necessarily be fully reimbursed for the
loss – but this is just a start. The possibility
of theft makes data backup even more
important on a laptop or tablet than it is on a
desktop but, unless you use a cloud backup
or an external disk kept separately from the
laptop, your data will only be secured once
you get back home. Potentially, therefore,
you stand to lose a day or more of work and
information which – in the case of notes
made at a meeting, for example – might be
difficult to replace.
We also have to consider the fact that
sensitive data could fall into the wrong
hands. Finally, getting a replacement for a
stolen item, setting it up, re-installing all
your software and restoring your data will
take some time. Unless you have a spare,
• Behavioural changes, p41
Even if you don’t want to buy any anti-theft
products – although we certainly suggest you do
– you could probably make your kit
a lot more secure just by altering the way you
behave. It’s all too easy to let your guard down,
so here are some common-sense precautions.
therefore, you could be without a laptop or
tablet for quite a few days and this could
have a serious impact on your productivity.
It’s common to believe that these
problems always happen to someone else
and are probably due to carelessness.
However, one in 10 laptops is stolen during
its lifetime and half a million people in the
UK had a phone stolen in 2016. If these
statistics have convinced you that this is a
subject that can affect us all, do read on
because, as you’ll see, a small change in your
behaviour and a modest investment in
anti-theft products could make your
equipment a whole lot more secure. We’re
going to be looking mainly about prevention
of laptop theft here but some of the
products, and most of our advice, applies
equally to tablets, smartphones, cameras or
just about any other electronic equipment
you might want to use on the move.
GET THE RIGHT PRODUCT
Just as there are several ways of protecting
your home or car from theft, the same
applies to your laptop. The choice is even
more diverse, however, so a bit of guidance
is called for. Anti-theft products that are
suitable for high-tech gear fall into three
main categories.
First are products that make it physically
difficult for a thief to get away with your
gear – we can think of these as the
equivalent of the lock on a door. Second are
those devices which will draw attention to a
thief should they attempt to steal your
equipment; this is the equivalent of a
household burglar alarm. And third are
products for marking your kit to improve
the likelihood of it being returned if it is
stolen while, at the same time, making it less
attractive to a would-be thief. Again, very
similar products are available for household
items. Here we’ll look at each category in
turn, examining their pros and cons and
PROTECT YOUR TECH
Feature
• DIY solutions, p42
Creating your own anti-theft products could
provide you with extra functionality while being
an interesting exercise and perhaps providing
a cost saving. We recommend a couple of DIY
solutions: a software-only laptop alarm, and a
proximity tag with app.
highlighting some actual products. First we
need to make an important point, though:
no single type of product is better than the
others and each offers benefits in certain
circumstances. So, just as it’s common to
have locks on your house doors and a
burglar alarm, it would be wise to consider
protecting your portable gear with at least
two, if not all three, types of products.
PHYSICAL ANTI-THEFT KIT
Most laptops have a so-called Kensington
lock slot which is used to secure it using a
security cable from Kensington (www.
kensington.com) or other manufacturers.
The cable is wrapped around some
immovable object such as the legs of a desk,
then the end is threaded through a loop in
the cable before being inserted into the
Kensington slot. The laptop is now secured
against casual theft, although it won’t deter
a thief equipped with a pair of bolt cutters
or who is prepared to damage the laptop to
release the security cable. The laptop can be
removed by its rightful owner using either a
key or a combination lock, depending on the
specific product. Prices vary significantly,
from as little as £3 to over £35.
Tablets rarely, if ever, have Kensington
lock slots and smartphones are never
equipped in this way. Realistically, it’s
probably easier to just make sure that
phones are always kept in a secure place,
and any adaptor would be quite intrusive on
such small devices. Nevertheless, if you’re
willing to accept a bulge on the back cover,
cable anchors that glue onto the back of
smartphones are available from various
sources and these can also be used on
tablets. However, a better solution for
tablets is the Blade Universal Lock Slot
Adaptor provided by Maclocks (www.
maclocks.co.uk). This is a low-profile
hinged bracket that can be attached to the
base of tablets using high-strength adhesive,
39
 F E AT U R E
Protect your tech
which allows a security cable to be
attached, and that folds away when not
in use. It costs from £38.
ALARMS
The first type of alarm we’ll look at, the
Lock Alarm Mini (www.lockalarm.
com) at £25, serves a dual purpose in
also providing physical protection. Like
security cables, this product also
incorporates a steel wire that is fitted to
any type of product that has some sort
of loop through which it could be
threaded. For a laptop, you also need an
adaptor which allows it to be fitted into
a Kensington lock slot. The wire is
much thinner than Kensington-type
security cables but it probably won’t
succumb to small wire-cutters and, in
addition, its small diameter allows it to
be retracted into the body of the unit
when not in use. Where it differs from a
plain security cable is that a 100dB
alarm will sound if the cable is cut. A
movement sensor can also be activated.
The next type of alarm, and one that
is becoming increasingly popular, is the
proximity alarm. These generally take
the form of a Bluetooth-enabled tag
that is attached to the equipment being
protected and is paired with a
smartphone. There are lots on the
market, each with slightly different
features, and although this isn’t a
comparative review, we will indicate
what to look for and approximately
how much you can expect to pay. First,
it’s important to recognise that the tags
tend to be in the region of 35mm across
and cannot easily be attached to a
MOST LAPTOPS HAVE A SO-CALLED
KENSINGTON LOCK SLOT THAT IS USED
TO SECURE THEM WITH A CABLE
40
laptop. They’re frequently shown
hanging from keyrings but they could
readily be attached to a laptop case or
hidden in one of its pockets. To truly be
called a proximity alarm, an audible
alarm should sound if the phone and
the tag are separated by more than
some preset distance. Not all tags offer
this useful feature, perhaps because it’s
tricky to gauge distance from Bluetooth
signal strength.
What they do all offer, however, is a
means of manually triggering an alarm
on the tag from the paired phone if the
tag is still within Bluetooth range – up
to several tens of metres, depending on
the device and whether there are walls
between the tag and the phone. This
helps you to track down the tag and
might cause a thief to abandon it if it
truly has been stolen. Many also have a
crowd-finding facility which, even
without people’s active participation,
employs the user community to help
find a device if it’s out of Bluetooth
range. In reality, this isn’t going to be
much use unless you’re in a densely
populated area and you’ve chosen one
of the most popular brands.
These products are equally effective
against accidental loss as against theft,
and to help you here, most associated
apps will allow you to see, on a map,
where your tag was last detected. Tags
cost from about £20, but some have
batteries that cannot be recharged or
replaced so you have to buy a new tag
– often at a reduced price, fortunately
– after the year or so it takes for the
battery to run down. The product
QUICK GUIDE
PREY: TRACKING SOFTWARE
Prey doesn’t stop your mobile device being
stolen, but it does make it more likely you’ll
be able to get it back if it is taken from you.
It takes the form of software that you install
that runs in the background. If your device
is stolen, you report it as stolen on the Prey
website and, from then on, whenever it’s
switched on you’ll receive reports containing
an IP address and a location based on nearby
Wi-Fi signals. If the device has a camera you’ll
get photos of whoever’s using it, and you’ll
also receive screenshots – which might be
useful as they could show, for example, the
culprit’s Facebook page. Armed with this, you
could approach the police, who might be able
to recover your device. The Pro version also
allows you to remotely delete files. Prey is
open source and the standard version is free.
It is available for most operating systems
from www.preyproject.com.
family that is probably the market
leader is Tile (www.thetileapp.com)
although, as yet, it doesn’t feature a true
proximity alarm. The PebbleBee Honey
(www.pebblebee.com) is one that does
offer a proximity alarm, also known as
geofence, functionality.
The other main type of alarm that’s
relevant to laptops is the purely
software version. These are really only
effective against opportunistic theft and
will sound if, for example, the mains
Below: Prey power supply or a mouse is unplugged
provides you from an unattended laptop.
with reports,
including Unfortunately, pretty much all of these
information alarms only work on Windows and,
about the
location of
while a few free packages are still
available for download, most
missing
devices commercial products have been
discontinued. However, for those
proficient in coding, a DIY solution
could be a possibility.
MARKING PRODUCTS
Products for marking equipment serve
two quite distinct purposes. First, they
improve the likelihood of your
equipment being returned to you if it’s
stolen and subsequently recovered by
the police. Second, because possession
of marked equipment could be
discriminating, it makes your laptop or
other equipment a much less attractive
target to a potential thief. Two
categories of product achieve these two
important functions.
The first category allows you to mark
a product in a way that is highly visible
and difficult to remove. One type
comprises stencils, prepared with either
 Protect your tech
Feature

potentially removable with a solvent if

Top: SmartWater is almost impossible to remove
and uniquely identifies the owner Above: Tags
from Tile use Bluetooth to help you track down
missing devices
your address or a unique serial number,
that are supplied with an applicator and
special ink. The ink etches into the
surface of your laptop or other
equipment, thereby making its removal
almost impossible. The other main type
involves specially prepared tamper-
resistant labels, again showing your
address or an ID, which are supplied
with an adhesive for attaching them to
your equipment. Again, removal is
difficult and, at best, will leave tell-tale
signs. When a serial number is used as
opposed to an address, this product is
sold with registration to a database –
accessible by the police – that associates
the owner with the equipment. The
advantage this offers is that equipment
can be re-registered if you sell it.
Retainagroup (www.retainagroup.
com) offers this type of product in the
UK, and STOP (www.stoptheft.com)
offers it in the US.
At first sight, the second category of
products – those that mark your
the thief discovers the marking. Where
things get more interesting is when we
consider those products such as
SmartWater, which is an invisible ink,
prepared with a formulation unique to
PRODUCTS
each customer, that you apply to the
equipment and is almost impossible to Anti-theft device types
remove completely. It can be detected
with an ultraviolet light, leading the
to consider
police to forward recovered equipment
to SmartWater for analysis to reveal the LOCTOTE
registered owner.
It’s provided with warning labels that
1 FLAKSACK
SPORT
you can attach to marked equipment, It’s difficult to
thereby providing that all-important provide physical
deterrent value. SmartWater is sold in protection for
the UK; prices range from £25-35 for individual small
products in the Home Security range items, as you can
and these can be purchased from easily do with a
https://shop.smartwater.com. In the laptop. However, the
US, up to ten items can be protected for LocTote FlakSack
as little as $5 per month – see https:// Sport (http://loctote.com, £75) keeps
shop.smartwatercsi.com. several small pieces of equipment secure.
It takes the form of a slash-resistant bag
BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES with a nylon and steel locking strap and
Physical protection, alarms and marking combination lock with which you can attach
products are important anti-theft it to an immovable object.
measures and should be seriously
LOCK
considered by anyone who regularly
takes valuable equipment outside the
home or office. However, your
2 ALARM
MINI
behaviour is also important and changes The Lock Alarm Mini
here could prove to be equally as (www.lockalarm.
effective in preventing loss. com, £25) offers
Our first piece of advice is to not both physical
advertise the fact that you’re carrying protection and an
valuable equipment when you’re not alarm. The physical
using it. When you’re walking down the protection is
street, keep small items such as phones provided by a strong
in your pocket or handbag rather than steel cable to secure
in your hand, where they can be easily your laptop or other
seen and could readily be snatched kit. This is difficult to cut with hand tools
from your grasp. Needless to say, this and, if a thief does try to cut through it, an
isn’t feasible with larger items such as alarm will sound.
tablets and laptops. However, it’s not
necessary to carry them in a
conventional laptop case, which does
little to disguise the expensive
equipment it contains. A police Crime

STENCILS, PREPARED WITH EITHER YOUR ADDRESS

OR A UNIQUE SERIAL NUMBER, ARE SUPPLIED WITH
AN APPLICATOR AND SPECIAL INK
products invisibly – seems a strange
concept. Some companies sell invisible
ink pens that you’d use to write your
postcode or ZIP code on your
equipment, which becomes visible if
you shine an ultraviolet light on it. We
don’t recommend this solution since it
offers no deterrent value and is also
Prevention Officer we spoke to said that
he always carries his laptop in a scruffy
supermarket bag because nobody would
guess it contained anything more
valuable than a few cans of beans.
If you want something a bit smarter,
or that provides more protection from
knocks, you could consider a backpack.
SMARTWATER
3 SmartWater provides the benefits
of both visible and invisible
marking. Warning labels act as a deterrent,
while the invisible paint is very difficult to
remove and the smallest trace is enough
to identify you as the owner. You can mark
up to 50 items for £35 from https://shop.
smartwater.com.

41
 F E AT U R E
Protect your tech
You could use an ordinary backpack of
the sort you might take on a hike, but a
special laptop backpack might be more
appropriate, because they’re designed
to hold a laptop of a particular size and
have plenty of compartments for
accessories and documents. You can
easily pay over £100 for such a
backpack, but we recommend opting
for a much cheaper one so it’s not as
IT’S IMPORTANT TO RECOGNISE THAT YOUR
INSURANCE COMPANY MIGHT NOT REIMBURSE
YOU IF YOU LEAVE YOUR LAPTOP UNATTENDED
conspicuous. These are widely available
from several suppliers. With laptop
backpacks now fairly common, their
stealth value is not as great as it once
was, but a thief will still find it more
difficult to take a backpack from your
back than a case from your hand.
Next, think about the situation when
you’re using your equipment, most
notably your laptop, in a public place
such as an airport lounge, railway
station, coffee shop or university library.
It would be rare for a laptop to be
stolen while you’re actually using it,
although you should be careful about
leaving a phone in view. After all, it only
takes a momentary lapse in your
attention for someone to walk off with
any such small items. The main risk to
your laptop, however, is if you need to
take a break,
42
perhaps to buy a coffee. It’s important
to recognise that your insurance
company might not reimburse you if
leave your laptop unattended – and if it
belongs to your employer, you might
find yourself having to answer some
very difficult questions from your boss.
Of course, the safest piece of advice
that we can give is to never leave your
laptop unattended, even if you only
intend to be away for a very short time.
That’s not always possible though, even
if you just need a short trip to the loo,
and in any case you might not want to
appear neurotic (Looking neurotic is
better than losing your laptop, but we
have to be realistic). This being the case,
how about carrying out a risk
assessment to come up with your own
set of rules?
You might decide, for example, that
you will never leave your laptop
unattended in an airport, on a train, or
in a coffee shop or bar (and that really
is the only sensible option in these
places). If you’re in the university
library, you might decide that you’d be
prepared to ask someone to watch it for
you, as long as you’re not going to be
away for more than two minutes. This
is also an instance in which you might
decide to use a software alarm,
QUICK GUIDE
ENCRYPT SENSITIVE DATA
Losing a laptop could deny you access to
important data, at least until you can access
a backup, but if sensitive data falls into the
wrong hands it could be even more costly. An
obvious precaution is not to store sensitive
information on your portable devices unless
you really need to access it when you’re away
from home. If it is necessary to store that
data when you are on the move, though, it
would be wise to encrypt it. Choosing an ideal
solution is a major topic in its own right.
bearing in mind that it’ll only provide a
minimal degree of protection.
Below
Security
cables, like
DIY SOLUTIONS
this one from If you’re a developer as opposed to a
Kensington, user, you might want to consider
are ideal for creating your own anti-theft utilities
deterring
casual laptop
and devices. We’ve already seen that
theft software-only laptop alarms are few
and far between and most of those that
do exist only operate under Windows.
Still, there’s some benefit in having an
extra layer of protection, even if it’s not
100 per cent effective. So how about
writing your own alarm? Since this will
cost you nothing at all except your time,
it’s worth considering.
The advantage in writing your own
alarm is that you can decide exactly
how you’d like it to operate. Be
prepared to be innovative. Some
features, such as sounding if the power
supply is unplugged, are surely
essential, but there are other useful
things you might choose to add. For
example, you might find that certain
patterns of Wi-Fi signal strength are
indicative of the laptop being moved, as
opposed to someone just walking
between it and the access point. If so,
this might provide a means of detecting
theft of your laptop, even if it wasn’t
connected to mains power.
An alternative is to detect motion
directly. While nearly all smartphones
contain the accelerometers that would
permit this, they are not nearly as
ubiquitous in laptops. Some products,

Visibly
marking your
gear provides
a deterrent to
potential
thieves
THE ADVANTAGE IN WRITING YOUR OWN ALARM
IS THAT YOU CAN DECIDE EXACTLY HOW YOU’D
LIKE IT TO OPERATE
most notably Lenovo ThinkPads, have
accelerometers as part of the Hard
Drive Active Protection System
(HDAPS) which parks the disk drive
heads to prevent damage to platter if
the laptop is dropped. Another example
are convertible laptop/tablets that often
include an accelerometer so that screen
rotation can be detected. Finally, don’t
forget that an alarm could be disabled
just by turning off the laptop or closing
its lid, so do be sure to disable both the
power and the lid switch whenever the
alarm is active.
Another DIY project you might want
to attempt is a proximity alarm based
on a small single board computer with
an associated Android or iOS app. The
Particle Photon (www.particle.io)
would be a contender due to its small
size and, while it isn’t much cheaper
than an off-the-shelf Bluetooth tag, it
does offer some benefits. First and
foremost is the fact that you can add
whatever features you want, rather than
being constrained by what’s on offer in
commercial products. In fact this
additional functionality needn’t be
restricted to theft prevention. These
tiny SBCs are often targeted at Internet
of Things applications, so you could use
it to experiment with real-world
monitoring too.
On the downside, many of the
smaller SBCs – the Particle Photon
included – have Wi-Fi rather than
Bluetooth. For a tag that has to operate
on internal batteries for perhaps a year
or more, this would be a serious
disadvantage as Wi-Fi is much more
power-hungry than Bluetooth. If you’re
going to run your tag from an external
battery and are prepared to recharge it
periodically, however, this is no longer a
disadvantage, and has the extra benefit
of a greater range.
Another platform that’s designed
specifically as a tag, is the open source
RuuviTag (https://tag.ruuvi.com). This
takes the form of a compact circular
board powered from an onboard button
cell, housed in a round waterproof case,
fitted with various sensors including an
accelerometer, and including Bluetooth.
It costs Ð69 excluding VAT for three
units (that works out to roughly £76
Protect your tech
Feature
QUICK GUIDE
INSURANCE
Insurance is important for valuable
equipment but do make sure your equipment
is adequately covered. Details differ between
countries, insurance companies and policies,
but there are two things you should check:
Does your household policy provide adequate
cover for equipment that you take out of the
house? And is equipment covered if you use
it for business? If the cover provided by your
general policy doesn’t meet your needs, look
for dedicated insurance for your tech gear.
including 24% EU VAT at the time of
going to press).
You’ll never find a solution that
allows you to keep your laptop
completely secure all of the time –
accidents can happen – but you can do
your best to minimise the risk of theft.
Right: It’s
much harder
to steal a
laptop if you
carry it in a
backpack
43
 F E AT U R E
Protect your tech
HOW TO
MAKE A DIY BACKPACK TRACKER WITH RUUVITAG
BACKPACK BEACON
1 This project is a simple way
to make your own tracking
device that you can tuck away in your
backpack. Essentially, what you are
doing is turning the RuuviTag into a
proximity beacon and for this we’re
using Eddystone, the open beacon
format from Google. Make sure
you’re running the latest version of
Eddystone by flashing the firmware.
The RuuviTag is set up for Over the Air
(OTA) updating, so it’s easy to flash.
You’ll need a phone: we used the Moto
G4 Android smartphone for the job, so
we needed to download nRF Connect
(http://bit.ly/nRFConnect) from the
Play Store.
ENTER THE
2 BOOTLOADER
Now you need to head on over
to https://lab.ruuvi.com/
dfu on your phone, scroll to the ‘Ruuvi
Firmware’ link and download it. To
flash RuuviTag, we first need to enter
its bootloader, so prise it open and
pop it out of its enclosure using the
attached metal clip. On the RuuviTag,
you’ll notice two tiny buttons. Press
the one marked R while keeping B
pressed to enter the bootloader. If
you’re successful you’ll get a red light.
Next, open nRF Connect and swipe
down to refresh. ‘Ruuviboot’ should
pop up as a found device so press
‘Connect’. At this point the light on
the board will turn green.
44
PREPARE TO FLASH
3 In the top right-hand corner
of the app’s GUI there’s a
tiny DFU icon which you now need to
tap. This enables you to select the
file type you want to use. The default
‘Distribution package (ZIP)’ is correct,
so Click ‘OK’ and select the Ruuvi
Firmware. This will start the upload to
your RuvviTag. (Note: It’s confusing
but the firmware file is actually called
weather_station_1.0.1.zip.) Once
complete, it will display ‘Application
has been sent’ and disconnect
from Ruuviboot. Now you’ve got to
configure your tag as a beacon.
GET EDDY READY
4 Head back to https://
lab.ruuvi.com/dfu/ and
download the second link called
‘Eddystone’. Go back to Step 3 and
follow the same process, but choose
eddystone_dfu_1.0.0.zip to upload.
CONFIGURE YOUR
5 BEACON
Now to the configuration
proper. First, download nRF
Beacon for Eddystone (http://bit.
ly/nRFBeaconforEddy), but this
time press B to get a red light and
enter config mode. Launch the
nRF Beacon for Eddystone, click
the ‘Update’ tab, click the RuvviTag
Device from available devices and
you’ll connect. This will bring up an
‘Unlock Beacon’ box that needs a 16
byte default unlock code. This will be:
0x00112233445566778899aabbccdd
eeff. Configure the beacon by
typing a dummy address into ‘Slot
0’, such as https://my-backpack.
The transmission interval needs to
be set to 300 milliseconds, so edit
‘Adv. interval’. The recommended
transmission power is -4 decibel-
milliwatts (dBm), so alter that in the
‘Radio Tx Power’ option. Now click
‘Disconnect’. You’re all set!
6
TEST YOUR BACKPACK
BEACON
We stuck the tag inside a
backpack, at the top. This shouldn’t
affect the signal too much, but you
could put it on the outside – the
RuuviTag is waterproof. To track your
tag, you can use any beacon scanner.
We’ve just used Beacon Toy (http://
bit.ly/BeaconToy). Open the side
menu and click on ‘Beacons around
me’ and your Ruuvitag will pop up.
The tag has a range of 50 metres (150
feet), but you’ll get a distance from
your backpack in metres to track it.
 THE BEST
PC GAMES
MAGAZINE
ON THE
PLANET!

ORDER NOW
from myfavouritemagazines.co.uk
 F E AT U R E
AMD vs. INTEL

BUILD IT SPECIAL
AMD
AMD VS.
Two very different systems and two very
different builds go head to head in this
BUILD IT! workstation showdown
Step-by-step guide

W
e’ve spent a while bigging up
Pg. 56 how important Ryzen is in the
grand scheme of processor
development. Without it, Intel’s
price gouging would likely have
continued for the foreseeable future, with the red
prodigy being relegated to a footnote in computing
history. Ryzen, for better or worse, has changed
everything, giving Intel’s R&D labs the gusto to
push forward with core count and chip design, and
reintroducing choice into an otherwise stagnant
decision-making process.
No longer is system spec purely tied to how much
money you want to spend on an Intel chip, but which
CPU you believe is right for you. With most
multithreading professionals looking toward Ryzen for
its cheap and affordable multicore applicational use,
the question is, does it warrant the fanfare it’s received

AMD INGREDIENTS
Street
PART PRICE
Case Corsair Carbide Air 740 £125

Motherboard MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon £190

CPU AMD Ryzen 7 1800X £310

Memory 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair Dominator

Platinum 2666 £465

GPU AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 £625

PSU Corsair HX1200i Platinum £260

Samsung 960 Pro 512GB PCIe

Storage 1 £276
NVMe SSD

Western Digital - Black 2TB

Storage 2 £102
7,200rpm HDD

Cooling Arctic Freezer 33 £33

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM £80

Total £2,466

46
 AMD vs.INTEL
Feature

INTEL
so far in the workstation environment? We know what
the situation is with our synthetic benchmarks, and
for gaming, but what about the real-world tests? What
about situations that really matter? Gaming is great
and all, but it’s in the 3D workshops, the VR
laboratories, the photomanipulation bunkers and the
video-editing powerhouses that these processors are
truly designed to shine.
This all caused something of an argument in the
office. So, to stop the squabble, we got a hold of
ourselves and decided to settle the debate. A build-off,
to the death. One side Intel, one side AMD. No budget
constraints, no fluff, just a pure, fair, and balanced
battle between processor, chipset, and GPU type, to
decide, once and for all, which platform is the better
workstation standard.
So, then, the rules: Storage would be the same for
each system, but we’d have free rein over the choice of
processor, memory, motherboard, GPU, and cooling
– and, of course, we’d have full access to any system
and OS tinkering we wanted, including overclocking
and memory frequency. With both builds completed,
it was time to benchmark the mighty beasts to settle
the quarrel, and put an end to the bickering.

INTEL INGREDIENTS
Street
PART PRICE
Case Raijintek Asterion Plus £140

Motherboard Asus X99-E-10G WS £500

CPU Intel Core i7-6950X £1,630

Memory G.Skill Trident Z 64GB (4x 16GB)

DDR4-3200 £900

GPU Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB

Founder’s Edition £750

EVGA SuperNova T2 1,600W 80+

PSU £440
Titanium

Storage 1
Samsung 960 Pro 512GB PCIe
NVMe SSD
£276
INTEL
Storage 2
Western Digital Black 2TB
7,200rpm HDD
£102 BUILD IT!
Cooling Noctua NH-D15 CPU heatsink £83
Step-by-step guide
Pg. 60
OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM £80

Total £2,466

47
 F E AT U R E
AMD vs. INTEL
AMD BUILD
AMD CPU
AMD RYZEN 7 1800X £310
There are plenty of good processors in the Ryzen
stack, but for a workstation-class machine, you
really do want to make sure you have the top dog.
Eight cores, 16 threads, running at a slight
overclock of 3.9GHz makes for a beefy heart for
any number-crunching activity. It’s only a fraction
of the cost of Intel’s top chip as well.
PROFESSIONAL GRAPHICS CARDS MAY
COST A LOT MORE, BUT THE PAY-OFF
CAN BE CONSIDERABLE
AMD GPU
AMD RADEON PRO
WX 7100 £625
Professional graphics cards may cost a lot more
than their gaming-focused brethren, but the
pay-off can be considerable in the right
applications. It’s all about drivers. The Radeon Pro
48
AMD MOTHERBOARD
MSI X370 GAMING PRO
CARBON £190
The Gaming Pro Carbon is our current favorite offering for any AM4 build. Solid,
stable performance, backed up by a rich feature set, and a reasonable price make
this a tough one to beat. Dual M.2 ports and six SATA connectors make for great
storage options, while a total of 16 USB ports give you plenty of connectivity, too.
WX 7100 is a single-slot card in delightful YInMn
blue (Google it; the colour does more than look
good), with 2,304 stream processors, capable of
hitting an impressive 5.7Tflops.
AMD MEMORY
32GB (4X 8GB)
CORSAIR
DOMINATOR
PLATINUM 2666
£465
Memory can make a considerable difference in a
lot of workstation applications, so spending
more on a quality kit makes sense. We’ve gone
for a set of the Corsair Dominator Platinum 2666
sticks here, as it’s a good compromise between
capacity, speed, and price. If you handle a lot of
large data sets, a 64GB kit may be a better idea.
 AMD vs.INTEL
Feature

INTEL BUILD

INTEL MEMORY INTEL CPU

64GB (4X 16GB) G.SKILL TRIDENT INTEL

Z DDR4 £900 When it came to memory, we didn’t want to
absolutely demolish the competition, but we
did want to lean on X99’s hypothetical
memory maximum and oomph up
performance to the max. G.Skill’s 64GB (4x
16GB) kit has served us well in the past. Its
grand capacity and 3,200MT/s speed
really dents our benchmark suite. Did
it work? Best read on to find out.
CORE I7-
6950X £1,630
It’s a lot of money for those 10
cores, but it’s hard to deny how
impressive this chip is. Capable of
reaching 4.4GHz, we overclocked this
monster to 4.2GHz, to keep it strong and stable, and more than
capable of kicking the crap out of our rendering benchmarks.

INTEL GPU

NVIDIA GEFORCE
GTX 1080 TI £750
We could have opted for a Titan Xp, or a Quadro, but
decided to use something a little different from the
AMD competition. The 1080 Ti packs a stunning
amount of performance in a card that costs just as
much as the Radeon alternative, but with enough
wallop to hammer games as much as any CAD task you
can throw at it.

THIS IS TRULY A
STUNNING AMOUNT OF
PERFORMANCE IN A
CARD THAT COSTS
JUST AS MUCH AS THE
RADEON ALTERNATIVE

INTEL MOTHERBOARD

ASUS X99-E-10G WS £500

Workstation heaven, thy name is X99-E-10G WS. All right, that might be a little more
long-winded than we’d like, but you get the point. 10 SATA 6Gb/s ports, dual 10GbE
ports, seven PCIe 3.0 slots capable of running seven workstation GPUs (in x16/x8/
x8/x8/x8/x8/x8), plus it overclocks like a champ, and has incredible memory
support, too.

49
 F E AT U R E
AMD vs. INTEL

AMD BUILD

AMD COOLING

ARCTIC FREEZER 33 £33

There is a growing number of options Ryzen 7 1800X in check, and the Arctic
for AM4 coolers, but most focus on Freezer 33 steps up to the task
all-in-one solutions. Here we wanted to brilliantly. Easy to install and quiet
use an air cooler that can keep the running, it’s a great option.

THERE IS A GROWING NUMBER OF

OPTIONS FOR AM4 COOLERS, BUT MOST
FOCUS ON ALL-IN-ONE SOLUTIONS

AMD CASE

CORSAIR CARBIDE
AIR 740 £125
Having plenty of space in your case
is great when it comes to airflow.
The Carbide Air 740 takes that to a
wonderful level with its
compartmented design, which has
the power supply and hard drives
hidden out of the way, leaving
plenty of room around the
motherboard for any further
upgrades we might have planned.
It’s a joy to build in, and looks great,
too, which keeps us happy.

AMD PSU

CORSAIR HX1200I £260

Two hundred and sixty quid. That’s a
lot of money for a power supply, but it’s
arguably worth it. For a system that’s
going to spend a huge proportion of its
life turned on, efficiency and
expandability are key. Not only will the
Corsair HX1200i provide you with
enough options for multiple add-in
cards, but it’ll also waste little energy
on heat, thanks to its 80 Plus Platinum
certification, meaning your rig runs
just that little bit cooler.

AMD INTEL
STORAGE

SAMSUNG 960 PRO 512GB £276

Keeping our storage fairly well
balanced between these systems was
key. Although memory is a big part of
what makes both X99 and X370 so
different, the storage situation is
relatively similar between the two. The
950 Pro 512GB was the perfect choice;
its exceptional file transfer speed and
performance are second to none,
making it perfect for pitting our
benchmark machines against each
other head to head.

50
 AMD vs.INTEL
Feature

INTEL BUILD

INTEL COOLING

NOCTUA NH-D15 £83

We needed something reliable and powerful to alleviate all that heat,
and the challenge fell to Noctua’s NH-D15. Astoundingly, it held out
fantastically well, even with the 6950X clocked at 4.2GHz. In fact, if it
weren’t for the fact that it’s so easy to install an AIO, this may very well
have been replacing our Kraken X62 that’s on the dedicated test
bench. It’s that good.

INTEL CASE

RAIJINTEK
ASTERION PLUS £140
The Asterion Plus is a full tower, acrylic-
covered, aluminum box. It looks stylish, and
comes with support for plenty of hard drives,
and a slim 5.25-inch bay. Is it the best solution
for this system? In hindsight, we perhaps
should have used a Define R5 instead, but this
case was more than adequate for the job that
we wanted it to do.

IN AN IDEAL WORLD, WE WOULD HAVE

POPULATED BOTH SYSTEMS WITH A WD BLACK
6TB HDD FOR ONBOARD STORAGE

INTEL PSU
AMD INTEL
EVGA SUPERNOVA
STORAGE
1600 T2 £440
WD BLACK 6TB £236 This SuperNova is a 1,600W beast of a PSU, fully
Unfortunately, Western Digital didn’t get these drives to modular, and comes with a Titanium rating, for a
us in time for our Build It photo shoot, but in an ideal power efficiency of 96 per cent. Couple that with the
world, we would have populated both systems with a WD inclusion of two eight-pins, nine eight-pin PCIe, five
Black 6TB HDD for onboard storage. Back these up daily six-pin PCIe, and 16x SATA power, and it’s one of the
on to an external NAS, and you’re guaranteed to have best equipped PSUs out there. It even supports
plenty of onsite storage. floppy! Floppy!

51
 F E AT U R E
AMD vs. INTEL

AMD BUILD

CHOOSING
BENCHMARKS
FORGET YOUR
STANDARD TESTING
SUITE, IT’S TIME TO
GET SERIOUS
CAD PERFORMANCE
ascertain how they’ll perform in the real world of
3D CAD modeling. Because the tests used vary
in complexity and rendering techniques used,
there isn’t an overall score or index; instead, we
have results for different testing scenarios
(which, in fact, are made up of multiple test runs
themselves). You can download and run
SPECviewperf 12.1 for free on your own machine
to see how it compares: www.spec.org. Note
that it’s a chunky 4GB download, and not a fast
one either.
In theory, the big takeaway is that
professional graphics cards make a big
difference in CAD. This is muddied by the fact
that plenty of the tests benefit from the raw
grunt offered up by the GTX 1080 Ti, so it isn’t
the whitewash for the AMD Radeon Pro WX
7100 that you might expect. The GTX 1080 Ti
does incredibly well in the DirectX Maya
benchmark, while the WX 7100 is almost 10
times faster in the penultimate SNX test. If
you’re serious about CAD, then upgrading to a
Quadro P6000 might make sense, although you
Assessing the performance of a workstation for drive, or graphics card in others. There’s a lot of need to be prepared to drop up to £5,200 on
Above: CAD applications isn’t easy, mainly because real factors when it comes to CAD work, and that’s a such a card.
SPECviewperf is a workloads vary so wildly. Even when handling problem when you want to know how one Note that these tests are largely processor-
harsh test of a the same models and data, what you’re doing workstation compares to another. agnostic, running on a single core, so the focus
system’s CAD can be just as important as what you’re working There is a solution: industry stalwart is very much on the graphics card. Even so, as
capabilities
with. While you may be CPU-bottlenecked on SPECviewperf. This pushes any would-be with gaming scenarios, a faster core clock on
some tasks, you can be held back by RAM, hard workstation through a series of gruelling tests to your CPU can make a difference here.

52
 AMD vs.INTEL
Feature

INTEL BUILD

On to the nitty-gritty. You can build runs a number of CAD

all the fancy workstations you want, applications to truly test your
but if you don’t have some way of GPU’s design capability. Next
measuring real-world performance on the list was video editing –
across them (which is, let’s face it, the for this, we took a copy of the
entire point of this feature), it latest version of Adobe’s
amounts to very little outside of Premiere Pro CC, and coupled
hypothetical potential throughput. it with a fairly gargantuan
Synthetic benchmarks are good at project file we borrowed from
giving you a rough idea of how a system our parent company’s
responds, but they’re also fallible. Just corporate advertising division.
take a step into Asus’s Crosshair VI For photomanipulation, we
BIOS, and you’ll quickly spot the option went with Gigapan Stitch.
to enable performance boosts for both Designed to test memory
Cinebench and GeekBench, if you capacity, bandwidth, and CPU
should so desire. prowess, this takes hundreds, if
Which brings us to the question of not thousands, of images, and
what benchmarks we should use. For stitches them all together to
both our Intel and AMD builds on the create a massive panorama,
following pages, we stuck with our with PSB files reaching upward
traditional suite, which we use across of 96GB in some places,
most of the systems we build for those depending on DPI settings.
pages – more game-heavy, with a peek Finally, we ran a few more
at processor performance and storage synthetics for our own
output. However, for this feature, we understanding of how the
really wanted to focus on a more systems performed across
accurate depiction of how each memory, and our traditional
platform operates in a working rendering benchmarks,
environment. Which meant delving including SiSoft
into real-world programs. Sandra and X265,
From the get-go, we knew we which are available
wanted to include something that for free or on trial.
utilised CAD clients. Because most
software associated with CAD reaches
the tens of thousands of pounds mark,
we opted for SPECviewperf, a
free-to-download benchmark, which

SPECVIEWPERF 12.1 BENCHMARKS

ZERO
VIEWSET RYZEN WORKSTATION POINT INTEL WORKSTATION
3ds Max (Index) 95.72 (-39%) 157.54 124.3 (-21%)

Catia (Index) 103.42 (20%) 85.93 105.69 (23%)

Creo (Index) 81.41 (31%) 62.32 62.6 (0%)

Energy (Index) 4.06 (-53%) 8.57 11.73 (37%)

Maya (Index) 75.2 (-45%) 136.04 175.43 (29%)

Medical (Index) 34.32 (-31%) 49.72 52.64 (6%)

Showcase (Index) 65.43 (-36%) 101.71 141.35 (39%)

SNX (Index) 96.79 (1,011%) 8.71 10.52 (21%)

SW (Index) 111.97 (84%) 60.98 67.80 (11%)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our desktop zero-point has a Core i7-7700K running at a stock frequency of 4.5GHz, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB,
16GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400, and a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo, mounted on an Asus Maximus IX Hero mobo.

53
 F E AT U R E
AMD vs. INTEL

AMD BUILD

VIDEO RENDERING
The video editing community is divided on
Premiere Pro in all which editing software is best. Apple’s Final Cut
of its processor- Pro and Adobe’s Premiere Pro are the two most
eating glory
commonly used applications. Although
Premiere offers a far greater set of tools than its
barely supported Apple counterpart, Final Cut
Pro’s render times are far superior, especially
when it comes to exporting 4K video. That said,
Final Cut Pro isn’t available on Windows,
therefore anyone lacking the investment into
Apple’s Mac OS ecosystem has little choice
when it comes to video editing software.
We used Adobe Premiere Pro CC for our
real-world benchmarks, taking 180GB-worth of
files, a preconstructed Adobe project file,
rendering out in 4K in H.264 at maximum bit
depth and render quality, and timing how long it
took each machine to complete the task.
As far as performance goes, Premiere is
always a mixed bag, because it relies heavily on
both the CPU and the GPU, leveraging
workloads to whichever core makes the most
sense. Its Media Rendering engine supports
both OpenCL and CUDA, with the latter taking
centre stage when it comes to eking out that
extra performance. The number of cores and
clock speed also matter, because although not
every processor is fully utilised during
rendering, the more you have and the faster
those individual cores run, the better.
On top of that, we also ran our X265
benchmark. This is an interesting one because it
doesn’t rely on any particular GPU, but purely
transcodes video from one file format into
another, so it acts as a fairly heavy synthetic
CPU test, producing average fps figures for four
consecutive runs, which are then averaged out.

VIDEO RENDERING
VIEWSET RYZEN WORKSTATION ZERO POINT INTEL WORKSTATION
Premiere Pro
(Seconds)
901 (-9%) 824 733 (11%)

X265 Benchmark
(fps)
29.56 (41%) 20.93 35.92 (72%)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our desktop zero-point has a Core i7-7700K running at a stock frequency of 4.5GHz, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB,
16GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400, and a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo, mounted on an Asus Maximus IX Hero mobo.

AMD CONCLUSION
The value proposition
Both of the machines we built are incredible. But
in terms of raw performance, there’s no getting
away from the fact that Intel’s Core i7-6950X is
an absolute beast. It is expensive, though, and
getting the best from that chip will set you back
a serious amount of cash. Our Ryzen machine,
meanwhile, is much more thrifty, which means
that while we do lose out in the drag race of
straight performance, Ryzen has the Intel
system easily beat in terms of value for money
– 20 per cent performance improvements in
most of the tests doesn’t balance well with the
80 per cent price difference.
In light of that, you could emphasise the win
on this front by focusing even more on the value
of the individual components. We wouldn’t step
away from the core of the RAM, motherboard,
and CPU (although an argument could certainly
be made for stepping down to the Ryzen 7
1700), but everything else is potentially up for
grabs. You could pick a more affordable power
supply, and while we’re personally huge fans of
the case, it’s an obvious place to save a bit of
cash – especially as it won’t affect the
bottom-line performance at all.
The one component that would be easy to
replace is the graphics card, as you could hit
pretty much the same performance in many
tasks by swapping to a Radeon RX 580 (saving
£200). Of course, if you use applications that
benefit from a pro-level card, that doesn’t make
sense, but for everyone else, it’s an easy win.
Overall we’re happy with how the Ryzen build
came together, and how it has performed. It’s a
strong system that proves that AMD is back on a
par with Intel. We still have a few reservations in
some areas – RAM support is still not quite
where we would like it to be, and as the platform
is new, we ran into problems during testing that
we couldn’t be certain weren’t down to the
particular test, so that’s worth factoring in. Even
so, if you’re looking to build a power workstation
machine, AMD is definitely an option once again,
and it’s been a while since we’ve been able to
say that with confidence.

54

IMAGE STITCHING
The world’s most
frustrating 2-12
hour benchmark
GIGAPAN IMAGE STITCHING
VIEWSET RYZEN WORKSTATION
Kolor Autopano
Giga 4.4 (Time)
1h 57m 34s (4%)
0% 10%
Our desktop zero-point has a Core i7-7700K running at a stock frequency of 4.5GHz, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB,
16GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400, and a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo, mounted on an Asus Maximus IX Hero mobo.
INTEL CONCLUSION
Pricey build, pricey prize
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when
we say that assessing how these machines
handle image editing varies depending on what
you’re doing. When you’re packing loads of
memory, fast storage, the fastest processors
20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
When considering CPU cores, how do you best
explain the proposition behind a workstation,
like the two builds we have here?
Going from a four-core, eight-thread
processor to an eight-core, 16-thread one can
cut render times in half. If you shave 15 minutes
off a 30-minute render, and do that twice a day,
five times a week, that’s 2.5 working hours
saved in a week. Multiply that out by a year, and
it’s around 125 man hours saved. Take the
average wage of an experienced video editor
(£20 an hour), and that’s a total of £2,500
saved, purely in time, in a single year.
What we’re getting at is that, for the
self-employed, or the corporate busybody
money can buy, and great graphics cards, many
tasks that take a while on a standard desktop
are too easy for our monster rigs. We searched
for workloads that actually made sense, but
kept coming up with operations that finished
ZERO POINT INTEL WORKSTATION
2h 1m 55s 1h 29m 6s (27%)
0% 10% 20%
looking to improve their company’s efficiency,
investing in good systems, much like
infrastructure, will always pay for itself in the
long run. And that’s something you partially see
with the two systems we have here. Ryzen’s
value proposition in contrast to our Intel build is
huge. We knew from the start that Intel could
never win a fight based on trying to spec a
similarly priced machine, so performance was
the goal – smashing the opposition through
sheer brute force, graphically, computationally,
and in I/O support and memory was key.
We’ve gotta give credit to Ryzen – it’s
exceptionally well equipped at an outstanding
price in comparison to Intel, but it wasn’t
AMD vs.INTEL
Feature
INTEL BUILD
within seconds, or were too specific to be of
much use. In other words, if you’re looking for a
workstation for image editing, both machines
fulfill the role competently.
Not all image-based tasks are created equal,
though, and if you’re looking for serious system
draining, image stitching is a good option. The
concept is to take a series of photographs that
cover a wide panorama, and stitch them
together to create a massive final image. In
order to get consistent coverage for these
images, a “robot” is often used, and that’s
exactly what was done to get the live data set for
our testing. The shots in question were
bracketed for improved contrast, and the final
image count came in at a cool 690 images, with
each measuring 5184x3456 pixels.
There’s some necessary overlap between
images, but the final panorama is
136,758x50,502 pixels, and weighs in at 22GB.
The software we used for this test, Autopano
Giga 4.4, uses as many CPU cores as you can
throw at it, loads of RAM, and requires fast
storage, too. No real surprises on the result
front – the added core count of the Intel build,
along with the larger capacity memory, makes a
real difference.
30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
without its limits. Initial setup and getting
memory to operate above 2,133 was still
challenging, even with the latest BIOS updates,
and Gigapan, in particular, proved troublesome
(although that’s also true of the Intel rig).
Ultimately, recommending one rig over the
other is difficult. If you’ve got the cash to spare,
the Intel one is easier to set up, more powerful,
and far more stable than its Ryzen counterpart.
But, in all honesty, with AMD’s 16-core
Threadripper HEDT platform and Intel’s
Skylake-X right around the corner, it would be
better to see what both of those new platforms
muster up first, before committing to either
processor ecosystem.
55
 F E AT U R E
BUILD IT: Ryzen to the challenge

BUILD IT LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY

Ryzen to the
challenge
Just because AMD’s new chips offer great value for money,
it doesn’t mean we have to scrimp and save

THE CONCEPT

W
e’re always
comparing
hardware here.
Every review,
build, and feature
sees us comparing components, or
whole systems, against what has gone
before; either explicitly when picking
components, or more subtly when
alluding to performance metrics.
Even so, it’s rare that we actually go
head to head against another
machine, yet that’s exactly what we’re
doing here: two machines aimed at
solving the same problems, but only
one can be considered the winner.
That’s the ethos, and it forms what
has gone into these two builds.
However, when it comes to piecing
together this Ryzen build and the Intel
one that follows, they can be considered
in isolation. If you want to build either
machine, you’ll find the full component
lists and build processes over the next
few pages.
Having said that, there are a few
things worth bearing in mind at this
point: These machines are designed to
handle workstation loads, and, as such,
the component choice isn’t the standard
desktop fare – the Radeon Pro WX
7100 that can be found inside this
machine is aimed at serious CAD work,
for instance, not playing the latest
games at 4K. You’ll probably want to
factor in your own requirements. With
that said, it’s time to get building….

56
 B U I L D I T: R Y Z E N T O T H E C H A L L E N G E
Feature

STARTING ON THE RIGHT FOOT

Obviously, the starting point for this RAM, alongside a serious graphics card
build was the Ryzen 7 1800X, the high in the form of the AMD Radeon Pro INGREDIENTS
end of AMD’s current Ryzen lineup. We WX 7100. There are plenty of all-in-one PART
STREET
PRICE
did briefly toy with the idea of trying to solutions for keeping a Ryzen cool, but
build a machine on a much tighter here we wanted to go with an air cooler, Case Corsair Carbide Air 740 £125
budget, to see what sort of value for and so reached out to Arctic, who
money we could squeeze out of AMD’s provided us with a Freezer 33 for our Motherboard MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon £190

new architecture, but looking at the build. We’ve used the same hard drive
CPU AMD Ryzen 7 1800X £310
Intel rig that follows on afterwards, cost and M.2 system drive as the Intel
is clearly the last thing on the young machine, which give us a good base for Memory 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair Dominator
reviewer’s mind. Time is money, after a fast boot drive, coupled with plenty of Platinum 2666 £465

all. Once we’d decided on the chip to space for data at the same time. We GPU AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 £625
use and the general ethos of building eased all of this gorgeous gear into the
something that needs to at least give spacious Corsair Carbide Air 740 case, PSU Corsair HX1200i Platinum £260
Intel’s finest a run for its money, a lot of and powered it all with the frankly
Storage 1 Samsung 960 Pro 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD £276
the other components came together over-the-top HX1200i Platinum from
quite easily. Corsair as well. Read on to discover Storage 2 Western Digital Black 2TB 7,200rpm HDD £102
On the motherboard front, we went how this build came together and
for, the MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon. whether the Ryzen managed to give the Cooling Arctic Freezer 33 £33
Into that we slid four 8GB sticks of Intel machine a suitable run for its (not
Corsair’s sleek Dominator Platinum insignificant) money. OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM £80

Total £2,466

1
INSIDE OUT
There are two schools of thought when it comes to building PCs:
one, check the core components outside of the case first, and two,
the more optimistic route of throwing it all together in the chassis,
and only finding out if you’ve got problems once you flick the switch
(Which, let’s face it, is not the recommended course of action). For
this build, we were of the more pessimistic persuasion, partly
because our chip had some bent pins that needed straightening. It
also means you have lots of room when piecing together the cooler.
The Arctic Freezer 33 was fairly straightforward, as it uses the
backplate that comes with the mobo. Even so, we ran into a few
problems while screwing in the heatsink, which resulted in a screw
shearing. We had a spare backplate, but if you’re not so lucky, don’t
force it. Like we did.

2
ROOM FOR POWER
We love compartmentalised cases, because they
promote good airflow and clean builds, and the Carbide
Air 740 gives you plenty of space in both sections for your
components (Also, if you’re less familiar with building PCs,
the LEGO-like shapes and sectioning make it much easier
to see what you’re doing and where things are going). The
rear area is for the power supply and your hard drives,
with removable drive cages for 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch
drives. There is ample space for the slightly oversized
power supply we used in this build, and the fact that it is
completely modular made for a particularly easy
installation. A thumbscrew helps position the PSU in place
with a tiny retaining bracket, as you get it lined up with the
rear grille, which is a neat addition.

57
 F E AT U R E
BUILD IT: Ryzen to the challenge
3 4
CAPACIOUS INTERIORS
Sliding the motherboard into place was every bit as easy as
installing the power supply. In fact, because the PSU is in its
own compartment, it frees up plenty of space around the
motherboard, making this one of the easiest installs we’ve
ever done. After clipping the rear IO shield into place, the
board slotted in neatly. One thing to note here is that we had
to spin the rear case fan around, so that it was working in
tandem with the Arctic Freezer 33, as opposed to fighting
against it. We could have avoided this by installing the cooler
fan the other way around, but we didn’t want to obstruct the
RAM slots, despite there being plenty of clearance.
5 6
CABLE GUY
The next step was to spin the case around so we could work on
the cabling after installing the hard drive. The Carbide Air 740 uses a
tool-free design for holding your hard drives, which means that
popping the data drive into the system was really easy – clip the drive
into the caddy, then slide it into the cage. There’s only room for three
3.5-inch drives in this cage, although there’s space for four 2.5-inch
drives as well. Cabling was also straightforward, thanks to the
copious number of rubber-edged cutouts on the motherboard tray.
58
SMALL SCREWS
Once the motherboard was in place, it was a straightforward task
of installing the memory and the M.2 drive. The only awkward bit here
was getting the heat spreader, which MSI includes to keep those M.2
temperatures in check, screwed into place. This uses a very small
screw, which escaped our grasp a few times when trying to anchor it
in place. In hindsight we should have installed the M.2 drive before
placing the motherboard in the case. It’s also worth noting that we’re
using the top M.2 slot, as there are two slots on this motherboard.
SINGLE SLOTTER
The Radeon Pro WX 7100 is something of an oddity in
these days of oversized coolers, because it’s just a single-slot
card. There’s an air of no-frills seriousness about its design,
and it’s refreshing to not have to worry about making room
for a two- or three-slot behemoth. The card only requires a
single six-pin power connector, too, which was easy to route
around the back of the motherboard. We connected the rest
of the cabling at this point as well, pulling it as tight as possible
around the back to keep airflow clear on the business side of
things – this is particularly important when using an air cooler
on the CPU.

2 1
THE EVERYMAN WORKHORSE
The big selling point of Ryzen is the
multi-threaded performance at a great
price. This machine promotes that ethos
in a succinct way without compromising
in order to get its point across – you could
definitely build a cheaper workstation with
the same core, but it wouldn’t be as
rounded a machine. This is a PC that has
an eye on its price tag, while knocking out
solid performance at the same time.
The build itself was surprisingly
straightforward, with the Corsair Carbide
Air 740 making for a great basis for a
clean build. After constructing so many
ITX systems, it’s refreshing to have so
much room around the motherboard. If
you’re going to augment your own
workstation with plenty of SSDs and hard
drives, this comes heartily recommended
– although if you want to install lots of
3.5-inch hard drives, you’re going to need
to come up with your own mounting
system, because the included cage only
holds three drives.
The other component that impressed
us was the Arctic Freezer 33. Even
allowing for the fact we overtightened one
of the mounting screws, and needed to
grab another backplate, we’d still class it
as an easy install. (Besides, that was our
fault, not Arctic’s.) The Arctic Freezer 7
Pro was an incredibly popular option back
when the Core i7-920 was king, and while
it’s doubtful that the Freezer 33 will regain
the throne in these days of all-in-one
coolers, it’s worth considering for your
own builds.
3 comfortable temperatures in use. You may get
When it came to testing, we could have
left the Ryzen 7 1800X running at stock
speeds, but that would have felt like we
were wasting the chip’s potential. We
couldn’t get this particular chip running at
4GHz stably (it would boot fine, but then
fall over during a benchmarking session),
so settled for a solid 3.9GHz. There is an
argument to be had for not overclocking at
all when dealing with a workstation, but it’s
in our DNA to push CPUs as hard as
possible, and we weren’t about to change
that stance. Even so, for reference, we did
initially run the chip at stock settings, and
saw Cinebench R15 post scores of 149 in
single-threaded loads, and 1,600 with the
multi-threaded test.
BENCHMARKS
Cinebench R15 Multi-Thread
Cinebench R15 Single-Thread
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential Read
(MB/s)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential Write
(MB/s)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps)
Far Cry Primal (fps)
Attila: Total War (fps)
The Division (fps)
Our desktop zero-point PC uses a Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.6GHz, an AMD R9 Fury X, and 32GB of RAM. All games are tested at 1080p on max
settings, with HD texture packages installed.
B U I L D I T: R Y Z E N T O T H E C H A L L E N G E
Feature
Having the hard drives and power supply in the
back compartment makes for a clean build,
with plenty of room around the motherboard
for good airflow, while providing easy access to
the various ports. All the cutouts make for some
neat cabling options, too.
The Arctic Freezer 33 was straightforward
to install, and kept the Ryzen 7 1800X at
a little more overclocking headroom with an
all-in-one water cooler, but the simplicity of this
solution is a good counter to that.
A professional card, such as the AMD Radeon
Pro WX 7100, isn’t essential for many builds, and
if you fancy spending your spare time gaming, an
enthusiast-level card may well be a better option.
For instance, an RX 580 is half the price, and
outperforms it when it comes to gaming.
It’s worth bearing in mind that this is our
standard benchmarking suite for Build It, and
as such it leans toward gaming more than the
hardware in this machine is happy with. The
Radeon Pro WX 7100 is essentially an RX 480
with slightly slower clocks, which equates to a
rather sound thrashing from our zero-point
machine (which employs a Fury X for the
gaming heavy lifting). You can hit smooth
frame rates in most games with some
tweaking, but if you’re serious about relaxing
with your workstation, you would be better off
going with either a more powerful card, or
conversely a cheaper one. To find out more
about the workloads that these machines are
really built for, we suggest checking out the
result of their head to head on p55.
ZERO-
POINT
987 1,710 (73%)
196 158 (-19%)
1,895 3,509 (85%)
949 2,093 (121%)
76 32 (-58%)
72 56 (-22%)
42 28 (-33%)
73 56 (-23%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
59
 F E AT U R E
BUILD IT: The Intel rig of damnation

BUILD IT LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY

The Intel rig

of damnation
Proof, once and for all, that X99 is the platform-pulverising
workstation of choice

THE CONCEPT

T
his is it: the head-to-head.
The build-off. To hell with
gaming, it’s Ryzen versus
Intel. X370 versus X99.
Chipset versus chipset. A
superstar competition to determine the
definitive champion of the workstation
marketplace. Whether it’s high-end
photomanipulation, 4K video editing,
or the most advanced calculative tasks,
we’re pitting two of the gnarliest
top-end Ryzen and Intel systems
against each other in an epic battle to
the FPU death.
After gushing over Ryzen’s positive
performance prowess, it was this
hardware reviewer’s duty to take on team
blue. And, boy, did we call in the big guns:
10 cores, 20 threads, 64GB of high-spec
DDR4 memory (we did consider 128GB
but, well, we can’t absolutely demolish
the competition), an Nvidia GeForce GTX
1080 Ti, and Asus’s now legendary
X99-E-10G WS motherboard to hold the
whole thing together.
From a price to performance
perspective, this is a system and platform
that makes little to no sense. With Intel’s
chips still priced so high, the per-core
cost of this machine really is unjustifiable.
That said, with support for twice as much
memory, at frequencies as high as
3,333MT/s, and with the vast majority of
rendering programs benefitting from
larger quantities of the volatile stuff, it
should make this platform the overall
performance king.

60
 B U I L D I T: T H E I N T E L R I G O F D A M N A T I O N
Feature

THE KING OF CRAZINESS

Okay, that price: ouch! Why the big powerful cores, and our real-world INGREDIENTS
bucks? Where are the compromises? benchmarks should be substantially
STREET
And what makes this system so much different from the Ryzen cousin. PART
PRICE
better than the competition? That X99 Enough to shatter those real-world
platform. Knowing the Intel build was benchmarks in half? Well, maybe. Case Raijintek Asterion Plus £140

never going to win as far as affordability Apart from memory and chip Motherboard Asus X99-E-10G WS £500
was concerned, we decided our best bet differences, the two rigs feature
was to ignore the price differentials and identical storage setups. To retain some CPU Intel Core i7-6950X £1,630
leverage those two extra cores and the tenuous notion of parity, we decided to Memory G.Skill Trident Z 64GB (4x 16GB)
greater support for DDR4 over the run each system off a single Samsung DDR4-3200 £900
X370 opposition. By default, our Ryzen 960 Pro 512GB PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD,
GPU Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
system consisted of an eight-core, and a 2TB WD Black hard drive – we Founder’s Edition £750
16-thread processor, and 32GB of didn’t want the storage to have a huge
DDR4, likely operating at 2,133MT/s, impact on the real-world figures, PSU EVGA SuperNova T2 1,600W 80+ Titanium £440
depending on motherboard revision. preferring instead to set the chips
Storage 1 Samsung 960 Pro 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD £276
That’s nice for it. In contrast, we against each other and see what
doubled the memory capacity to 64GB happened. Couple that with the fact Storage 2 Western Digital Black 2TB 7,200rpm HDD £102
of 3,200MT/s DDR4, and added an that the X99 smokes X370 on the
extra two cores and four threads. Boom! number of SATA ports and potential Cooling Noctua NH-D15 CPU heatsink £83

Couple all that higher-spec quad- PCIe drives, and you can see what OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM £80
channel memory with the more we’re getting at.
Total £4,901

1
MOTHERBOARD MOUNTING
Ahh, that beautiful X99-E-10G WS. To be quite honest, we could
have gotten away with a cheaper motherboard, but why would we?
The connectivity, combined with its strong overclocking prowess
and workstation pedigree, made it the perfect choice. Also, the
beauty of X99 is its lack of need for a backplate. We simply installed
the motherboard into the system, popped the memory and chip in,
and could leave the massive CPU heatsink until last, thanks to that
reinforced socket, making life a dream in comparison to our Ryzen
competition. With a fairly easy plug-and-play build process, slotting
together the first three key components was ease itself. Getting the
fans on would be another matter (see below), but hey, sometimes if
you want to achieve great things, you’ve got to put the work in.
Which we did.

2
FANS WITH MOLEX?
Raijintek’s Asterion Plus comes with an assortment of
cooling from the get-go – pretty impressive for this kind of
chassis. And those fans? Well, they’re not bad either. You
get two 120mms in the front, and a single 120mm in the
rear – the only nuisance is those Molex adaptors.
Traditionally (well, back in the late noughties), if you didn’t
have enough fan headers on your board, you could plug
them in via Molex, to get them to run at a constant speed.
However, because we didn’t need them, we simply cut the
Molex part off as close to the three-pin header as possible,
and plugged the fan header into the board instead. Okay,
yes, hacking bits off of things will definitely invalidate any
warranty, but you’re building your own PC, you were going
to be doing that anyway.

61
 F E AT U R E
BUILD IT: The Intel rig of damnation
3 4
PSU PROBLEMS
It’s been a struggle to find a system in which we can use
EVGA’s 1,600W T2 – without occupying those PCIe slots with
another three GTX 1080 Tis, there’s very little need for a PSU
of this calibre. However, the biggest problem by far isn’t the
fact that it remains heavily under-utilised, but more that the
thing is so darn long. So long, in fact, that it ends up touching
the hard drive cages located under the PSU cover, even in this
rig. It’s a frustrating fix, but for the sake of the build, as we’re
only running one hard drive here, we opted to pull the hard
drive cage out entirely, and run off the single one on top of the
PSU cover. In a real-world scenario, you could get away with
running a 1,200W PSU or smaller, then keep the additional
HDD cage, to allow for a total of three 3.5-inch HDDs.
5 6
NOCTUA COOLING
SUPERCOLLIDER
Noctua’s NH-D15 is a monster of air cooling capability. With two
NF-A15 140mm fans, it cools the same surface area as a Kraken X62
or Corsair Hydro H115i AIO. But with two major differences: it works
by convection, not a pump, and is half the cost of the Kraken. And
with Noctua’s legendary fan lifetime (150,000 hours), and six-year
warranty, there’s no fear of it dying on you. But it wasn’t all roses: we
had to raise up the closest fan to avoid making contact with the
memory, and drop down the GTX 1080 Ti by one PCIe slot, so it
didn’t make contact with the GPU’s backplate.
62
HARD DRIVE SOLUTIONS
And here’s our solution to the conundrum we mentioned: You can
mount an additional two SSDs here, on top of the PSU cover – or,
using the included rubber locking grommets, a single 3.5-inch HDD.
You need to use a straight SATA data cable, and the end of a SATA
power, but it’s more than suited to chilling out here. Let’s just take a
moment to appreciate that Samsung 960 Pro 512GB – we do enjoy
some of that sweet M.2 love. What a standard!
LIMITED I/O
Look at that Rear I/O, or perhaps we should say lack of.
There’s not a lot of it on this board. Four USB 3.0 slots, one
USB 3.1 Type A, and another Type C, and, of course, the
standard 5.1 + optical-out audio solution. But the real kingpin
of this device is the dual 10Gb/s Ethernet ports, and a fairly
good excuse for skimping on the internal storage. Couple this
system with a QNAP TS-431X-2G NAS, with built-in 10GbE,
for a $350 starting price, sans hard drives, and a nice chunky
10GbE Internet connection, and it would be a workstation
force to be reckoned with.

1
2
4
PRICE VS. PERFORMANCE
This build was a relative cake walk to
produce. There were conundrums and
problems that needed solving, mostly to
do with that insane NH-D15 cooler being a
little too chunky in various places, but
otherwise nothing really stood out in
terms of difficulty. Ideally, we would have
loved to have gone with a case with a
touch more storage potential, but you
should be running your backups away
from your main system in this working
environment anyway. Replace that
meagre 2TB with a 6TB or higher WD
Black, and it should be plenty for any
onsite storage.
The biggest advantage of using the
X99-E-10G WS, however, comes in the
form of those dual 10GbE connections in
the back. What they do is make offsite
storage a potential reality for heavily
accessed programs and media. That
QNAP NAS we spoke of earlier, coupled
with a few HDDs, would make this system
truly killer. On top of that, if you really do
crave the internal capacity, there’s
support for a total of six 2.5-inch drives
with this system, all of which can be
plugged in via the X99-E-10G’s 10 SATA
6Gb/s connection. And, of course, you
have Intel’s U.2 connector, and that M.2
x4 for a plethora of PCIe alternatives.
On to performance. Because we’ve
already covered our extensive real-world
tests in the main feature, we’ll focus on
the usual plethora of system benchmarks
to provide some clarity for the regulars
about how our two systems perform.
B U I L D I T: T H E I N T E L R I G O F D A M N A T I O N
Feature
The biggest fault with this case is probably the
rear panel, consisting of a hinged acrylic door – if
your cable tidying isn’t good enough, it’ll jut out
above the hinges.
Although appearances shouldn’t really be
a major factor when it comes to a decent
workstation, we’ve got to admit that the beige
3 and poop-brown fans have really grown on us.
If a windowed chassis like this isn’t quite your
jam, you could save yourself some cash, and
opt for a silenced Fractal Design Define R5 midi
tower instead.
We could have gone with a Titan XP, or perhaps
even a Quadro, but for most jobs, the GTX 1080
Ti holds its own against the two graphics giants,
and comes in far cheaper.
In short, and unsurprisingly, our Intel The biggest shocker, however, was the
system absolutely demolishes our cooler, and its absolutely staggering
zero-point in almost every benchmark, the performance. Staying at a steady 72 C, with
big one being Cinebench R15. Our 6700K, 1.29V in the V Core, the plucky tower just goes
at 4.6GHz, is certainly no slouch, but can it to show that not only can you overclock easily
compete with the mastery of a 4.2GHz enough on air, but it’s just as powerful as any
Core i7-6950X? Sadly not. With the AIO, and packs the extra reliability that a
20-threaded beast bringing in an pump simply cannot muster.
impressive 2,188 points in multi and 175 There’s no escaping the fact that this
points in single-core performance, it system is expensive – exceedingly so – but if
makes the 6700K look like small change. you’re after the very best in performance,
Storage performance was equally as whether that’s for 3D rendering, video content
impressive, with the 512GB Samsung 960 creation, photomanipulation, or more, in this
Pro booting those figures up against the humble reviewer’s opinion, X99 is still the king
wall. Our 1080p gaming test suite also fell of the hill.Well, until we build another system
prey to the 1080 Ti, with nothing scoring with an even newer chip and some more toys
below 60fps. to play with, that is.
BENCHMARKS
ZERO-POINT
Cinebench R15 Multi-Thread 987 2,188 (121%)
Cinebench R15 Single-Thread 196 175 (-11%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
1,895 3,450 (82%)
Read (MB/s)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
949 1,951 (106%)
Write (MB/s)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 76 92 (21%)
Far Cry Primal (fps) 72 121 (68%)
Attila: Total War (fps) 42 65 (55%)
The Division (fps) 73 131 (79%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Our desktop zero-point PC uses a Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.6GHz, an AMD R9 Fury X, and 32GB of RAM.
All games are tested at 1080p on max settings, with HD texture packages installed.
63
 F E AT U R E
The CPU scandal

Within that
T EC H architecture, a
dangerous security
REP O RT exploit lurks. So
is there a
performance-
friendly fix?

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

THE CPU SCANDAL

Caption goes in
here x xx xx xx x xx
x

Spectre and Meltdown affect PC gaming, and there’s no easy fix

I
ntel has had a bad time lately. A pair of
far-reaching CPU security issues dubbed
‘Spectre’ and ‘Meltdown’ (presumably
action movie producers were in charge of
naming them) have been all over the
headlines recently, and their impact is far-reaching:
if you have an Intel CPU produced in the last 20
years sitting at the heart of your PC, you’re affected.
The question is: how much? In theory, the
Meltdown exploit allows access to all the bits of your
CPU that were long considered impossible to access,
and thus allocated as secure memory storage. That
means any and all sensitive data is fair game for
potential cyber snoopers. Passwords, photos,
documents, off-colour Skyrim mods: the lot. Spectre is
a similar story, but it doesn’t end with Intel PCs. AMD
desktops, smartphones and tablets of all
denominations can be pilfered of their most secure
information by the latter exploit. It’s a bit of a worry.
Security exploits do crop up, of course, and a
company as big as Intel shouldn’t be dragged across
the coals simply for an exploit being discovered across
its decades-wide raft of hardware. It might seem a
flimsy platitude, considering the scale of the problem,
but these things happen. Frequently. That’s why your
PC wants to restart itself every five minutes – the
goalposts of cyber security are forever changing, and
both manufacturers and platform holders need to be
agile in their responses.
FEELING THE HEAT
The difference with Meltdown and Spectre is that
they were brought to the world’s attention long before
Intel, Microsoft, Apple, AMD et al were ready to roll
out any fixes. That’s dangerous. It was discovered by
four separate research teams, all working Melting
independently, over the span of just a few months. point
They informed Intel, and Intel started work on a fix The headlines
for its two-decades-old security flaw. Yet word about were full of worry
Meltdown and Spectre got out before it was ready. in early Jan: two
security exploits
After the security flaws were made public, news were found that
sites reported that Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich had affected all Intel
sold off a huge number of stocks in the company in CPUs for the past
November 2017 – months after Intel had been made 20 years, and
aware of the problem. An Intel spokesperson told a raft of
smartphones
press that Krzanich’s sale was “unrelated” to the and tablets too.
security issues. And as of writing, Intel’s stock is What really
trading at roughly the same price Krzanich sold it for, matters, though,
meaning there was no significant monetary gain from is how it impacts
that timing. your framerate.
Obviously.
Some good news, though: Meltdown hasn’t been as
bad as the gloomier industry voices feared, and we’ve

64

S TAY F R O S T Y Here’s what you can do to protect yourself
1 MOBILE
Protect your Android device by
letting the OS update run its course
2 WINDOWS
It should install its own update, but
you can force it by clicking ‘check for
while you’re charging. updates’ in the Windows Update menu.
yet to see an attack as a result of these flaws. In fact,
despite panicked reports about just how bad these
exploits could be, Intel and other affected manufacturers
were able to roll out their updates before Meltdown lived
up to its ominous moniker. We haven’t yet seen anything
on the scale of the 2017 NHS cyber attack, for example, in
which over 300,000 computers were affected.
Unfortunately, the updates come with an admittedly
less-cataclysmic side effect: CPU performance.
CPUs, like pre-election governments, need to
demonstrate strength and stability. Strength, in this field,
is measured in raw data-crunching ability, and stability
from the absence of blue
screens, system hangs, and
alarming pops coming from
within your case. It’s been a LARGE SERVER ARRAYS AND BIG
frenetic 20 years for CPU
performance and until
DATA VIRTUAL MACHINE-TYPE
recently the industry kept STUFF HAS BEEN HIT HARDEST
pace with Moore’s Law,
which is to say the focus
has long been on faster performance; iterating on
architecture so that it’s optimised to perfection, then
doing it all over again. Fixing a problem that applies to
every Intel CPU architecture since the mid-’90s, then,
threatens to shake loose a lot of those incremental
performance gains. It requires a fundamental change in
operation, because the exploit works by accessing the OS
kernel, a secret area of virtual memory kept several layers
deep in an OS which blocks untrusted programs from
accessing it. Kernels have been fundamental to Windows
OS design since Bill Gates had acne, and Intel has made
CPUs in accordance with that constant for a long time.
THE CPU SCANDAL
Feature
LEFT: The huge spike
on the Fortnite
servers’ CPU
utilisation graph
shows the impact of
Intel’s Meltdown fix
3 UPDATE E VERY THING
Have a Chromebook or a phone
around that you hardly use? Turn it on
4 O R YO U C O U L D T R Y…
If you want to go tinfoil hat, buy an
AMD CPU. They’re not vulnerable to
and make sure it automatically updates. Meltdown (but are to Spectre).
Early reports about the Meltdown fixes suggest they can
impact performance by as much as 49%. Your gaming PC
is probably fine. Large-scale server arrays and big data
virtual machine-type stuff has been hit hardest. Your data
probably isnt that interesting, but snoop on a virtual
machine that’s connected to many others, and suddenly
you’ve got access to the type and volume of data that lets
you hold big companies to ransom. That was an example,
by the way, not an instruction. Please don’t do either,
there’s a good reader.
As the Windows patch has been ignominiously rolled
out the world over, benchmarkers haven’t noticed much
of a drop-off in gaming
performance on a single
machine. Synthetic
benchmarks seem more
likely to report lower
performance, but games
themselves? Most
benchmarks show a 1fps
drop, roughly. That’s
frustrating, certainly, if you’ve fine-tuned your CPU and
overclocked that extra 1fps through hard graft. But
considering the potential ramifications of a security
vulnerability this big, it’s a comparatively small price to
pay. So if your first instinct upon reading this is to start
googling ‘how to roll back meltdown fix’... don’t. Seriously.
The real question is whether major companies can
implement a fix without their whole infrastructure falling
over. Ultimately, yes, these security breaches are a big
deal. Yes, they affect PC gaming, but no, not by any
meaningful measure. Let Windows or Linux do their
thing, and enjoy that private data of yours.
65
 Contents

HEAD TO HEAD

98
CPU
COOLERS
The best cooling
solutions to keep your
CPU chilled

68 86

66

DISCOVER THE BEST KIT ON THE MARKET IN
OUR HEAD-TO-HEAD GROUP TESTS
92
HEAD TO HEAD
Intro
68 BUDGET CASES
House your hardware in the best
cases for under £100
74 PROCESSORS
We pit AMD and Intel’s chips
head-to-head in a CPU brawl
80 Z270 MOTHERBOARDS
Lay the foundation of your new
PC with these motherboards
86 GRAPHICS CARDS
No need to raid your savings for these
GPUs
92 SOLID STATE DRIVES
Give your level load times a lift with
these SSDs
98 ALL-IN-ONE COOLERS
Serve your CPU performance
ice-cold with these solutions
104 4K MONITORS
Get a graphical boost from
seven of the best Ultra HD displays
110 KEYBOARDS
The best mechanical keyboard
setups out there
116 WIRELESS MICE
Set your mouse free from cables with
one of these wireless mice
122 SPEAKERS
Turn your PC into a high-quality
media centre and make some noise
116
67
 GROUP TEST
Budget cases

BUDGET CASES
Seven of the best cases for under £100

68
 BUDGET CASES
Group Test

cases can still pack in all the

Q&A
How much should I spend?
A quality, modestly sized
case can be had for between
£50-£100. Large, premium
cases can hit £200 or more,
while small, low quality ones
are under £30.
How big do I need?
Most modern gaming PCs
only need one hard drive and
an SSD. As such, even small
features and cooling you
need. Only water cooling
needs larger cases.
What layout?
Modern cases tend to have
no optical drive bays and just
a couple of hard drive bays
at the bottom, next to the
PSU, leaving plenty of room
at the front for cooling. Older
cases, meanwhile, have drive
bays at the front, limiting
cooling options.
Dictionary
Radiator – removes the
unwanted heat from a
water-cooling system.
2.5in, 3.5in, 5.25in – the
size of SSDs, hard drives and
optical drives respectively.
Form factor – all the cases
here are ATX form factor so
fit full size motherboards,
but will also fit smaller sizes.

C
ase design is getting £100 to test. From the hefty, sound Intel Core i5-6600K, Nvidia GTX 1070 – and
smarter and with hard deadened might of the Fractal Design tested for ease of build, upgrade options and
drives and optical disc Define R4 to the sub-£30 BitFenix cooling performance.
drives being ditched, the Nova, there’s a case here to suit most It’s a testament to how efficient modern
latest models are smaller kinds of gamer. CPUs and GPUs are that none of our cases
and more affordable than ever. Each case was assessed for build really struggled, but if you’re still rocking
We’ve grabbed seven of the most quality and design then loaded up something like an AMD Radeon R9 290 then
popular cases you can buy for under with a powerful gaming system – you’ll need a case with plenty of ventilation.

69
 GROUP TEST
Budget cases
NZXT SOURCE S340 ELITE
www.nzxt.com £75
The S340 is one of the most popular cases you can buy right
now. Entirely modern in its design, it does away with any optical
disc drive bays and has just two 3.5in hard drive bays that are
hidden in the bottom alongside the power supply.
This makes the case impressively compact yet still
1 leaves plenty of room for large CPU coolers and
graphics cards thanks to the whole top section
being one big open space. This also means you can
fit a 2 x 140mm or 2 x 120mm radiator in the front
section as well as one at the rear.
As well as being petite, this case looks great.
Matt black paint gives it a really classy look while the
full tempered glass side panel adds a premium
touch. The downside is the paint is very delicate and
easy to scratch, so build it and leave well alone.
Up top you get the power button and
connectivity, which consists of no less than four
USB ports and an HDMI. Meanwhile, the default
cooling configuration has two 120mm exhaust fans
at the top and rear of the case. These combine to
good effect, providing good overall cooling
performance without getting too loud.
Overall, this is by far the best looking
case on test, it has good cooling and is
competitively priced. Not a bad combo. 90%
70
PHANTEKS ENTHOO PRO M
www.phanteks.com £90
As the most expensive case on test, you’d expect big things
of the Enthoo Pro M, and big things it delivers. Like the S340
Elite, it features a tempered glass side panel, while the rest of
the case is built from quality materials and is well put together.
It’s a big case too. Big enough, in fact, for eight 3.5in
2 hard drives, three 2.5in drives and a removable
optical drive bay. Cooling options are also extensive.
You can fit in five 140mm fans, six 120mm fans or
two 3x120mm radiators and there are mounts for
reservoirs and slots for fitting pumps. However, by
default you only get one 140mm fan that’s
positioned as an exhaust behind the CPU. But this
case still delivered the best CPU cooling on test and
was mid-table for GPU temperatures.
Something I’m less keen on is the bottom
section that covers the power supply and a couple
of the 3.5in drive bays. For some reason Phanteks
has perforated the entire top of it and put a large
hole in the side, so you can see much of the ugly
mess of cables and you don’t get airflow isolation.
The power button is on the front edge. The IO is
on the left side and consists of two USBs and audio.
Overall, this is well thought out, good
value case for a high-end PC that
requires serious cooling power. 80%

AEROCOOL 300
www.aerocool.com.tw £30
The Aerocool 300 was a real surprise. Just a few pounds
behind the BitFenix Nova as the cheapest case on test, we
weren’t expecting anything too clever. However, this case is
actually really well thought out and ideal for budget builds.
For a start, it doesn’t look too bad. It’s a bit boxy and
3 utilitarian but it’s far from ugly and the whole interior
is painted, which isn’t always a given. Constructed
from thin steel, the build quality isn’t great, though.
This is also an impressively small case with a
useful modern layout. That is, while you do get an
optical drive bay, it’s very compact, and elsewhere
there are just two 3.5in hard drives that are hidden
in the closed off bottom section, along with the PSU.
This leaves plenty of space in the top section for
long graphics card coolers, hefty CPU heatsinks
and up to five 120mm fans. You can also squeeze in
three 3.5in drives.
But the default cooling is modest. There’s just
one small fan at the rear. Despite this, the Aerocool
performed well, with mid-table results for both CPU
and GPU temperatures. We believe this was largely
due to the ventilation grill in the side panel that
allowed hot air from the graphics card to
vent straight out the case. Overall, for
the price, this is a great case. 80%
BUDGET CASES
Group Test
CORSAIR CARBIDE 270R
www.corsair.com £57
The Corsair 270R is a case that looks like it means business
when it comes to cooling. The whole top panel is perforated
with big hexagonal holes, and you can fit a 2x120mm radiator in
the top, as well as a 3x120mm radiator in the front.
As the latter gives away, this is a case with a modern
4 layout with no drive bays in the front section.
Instead, this area is dedicated solely to cooling
options, although unlike the top section, this is
covered by a plastic panel that’s solid at the front
and perforated at the sides.
That means you can’t fit any optical drives in
here and you’ve only got room for two 3.5in hard
drives and two 2.5in drives, all of which are mounted
on the back of the motherboard tray.
Like most such modern layout cases, the PSU is
installed from the back of the case. Combined with
the generally simple and tidy design, this makes for
a great looking case overall.
As for cooling performance, despite featuring
two fans and having all that ventilation, this case
didn’t do all that well in our tests, with it coming
second last for CPU temps and joint second last for
GPU temps. We’re only talking about a
couple of degrees, though, so this is still
a case that’s well worth considering. 75%
71
 GROUP TEST
Budget cases
COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX 5
eu.coolermaster.com £55
This case has great side panels. No really. So many cases,
even the premium ones, have side panels that are a pig to get on
and off. Here, though, the screws line up properly and the
panels slide effortlessly into and out of position.
Elsewhere, this case has plenty else going for it too.
5 The simple angular design with the full ventilated
front panel works well, and it’s an impressively
compact case. Despite this you still have room at
the front for a 2x120mm radiator and a rear 120mm
radiator/fan, though you do miss out on an optical
drive and have only two 3.5in/2.5in combi drive
bays and one 2.5in bay.
Also, despite the generally modern layout with
the PSU and drives at the bottom and the nice
looking stuff at the top, CoolerMaster hasn’t fully
covered up the bottom. You get a plastic shroud
that screws into place over the PSU but the drives
are left exposed. Otherwise you get good cable
routing options and two preinstalled fans.
As for cooling, it performed very well. The front
fan being directed straight towards the graphics
card meant it had the lowest GPU temperature on
test while the CPU temp was mid-table.
Overall, the MasterBox 5 is a solid
option for a good price. 75%
72
FRACTAL DESIGN DEFINE R4
www.fractal-design.com £80
The Define R4 is still a popular and widely available case but
it’s one of Fractal’s slightly older designs now. As such it has an
older-style layout that puts more emphasis on drive bays than
compactness and cooling. But it does have an ace up its sleeve.
Starting with that layout, though, you can squeeze
6 in a whopping eight 3.5in drives as well as two
5.25in drives, which is fairly ludicrous by modern
standards, particularly as the huge stack of 3.5in
bays gets in the way of longer graphics cards. It
takes removing just a couple of screws to slide out
the whole middle section of bays, opening up a nice
gap for your graphics card to extend into.
Elsewhere, this is clearly a premium case with
quality touches everywhere. You also get masses of
cooling options, with seven 120/140mm fan
mounts. Two of these are occupied and combine to
provide good overall cooling, with the lowest CPU
temp on test and a mid-table result for the GPU.
And as for that trick up its sleeve? The case is
plastered in sound deadening material, meaning
that only the strong whoosh of fans comes through.
Still, there are plenty of other cases with more
modern layouts that would probably suit
most users better, including Fractal’s
own Define S. 70%
 BUDGET CASES
Group Test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) CPU TEMPERATURE GPU TEMPERATURE
(Celsius) (Celsius)

1
NZXT Source 340 Elite
75

56

62

2
Phanteks Enthoo Pro M
90

50
7 62

3
Aerocool 300
30

52

64

4
Corsair Carbide 270R
57

58

64
5

CoolerMaster MasterBox 5
55

53

58
6

Fractal Define R4
80

51

61

BITFENIX NOVA
7

BitFenix Nova
26

www.bitfenix.com £26 63

67

The BitFenix Nova is a very popular option for an entry level

case, as it’s cheap but has a nice, tidy, simple design with a
window. However, particularly when compared to the more
modern layout of the Aerocool 300, it feels dated. ESSENTIALS
The main culprit is the very old-school layout with a 3,5in drive 5.25in 2.5in drive 120mm
bays bays bays type fan points Window?
7 full-height drive bay column at the front that doesn’t
even have 3.5in bays that face the side panel. As
1

3 0 4 4 Tempered
such, you have to remove or work around the PSU glass
to install hard drives. Thankfully, for those with long
graphics cards, so long as they aren’t too tall, you
2

8 0 3 3 Tempered
can manoeuvre them under the drive cage to install glass
them. Plus, if you want a small case but still use
optical drives then the Nova can accommodate you.
3

2 1 3 6 No
Cooling options are basic but sufficient if you’re
not interested in water or all-in-one coolers. You get
4

two 120mm fan mounts at the front and one at the 2 0 2 6 Plastic

rear, which is already occupied.

Nonetheless, this modest configuration and the
5

2 0 3 5 Plastic
lack of top or side penal ventilation meant that this
was the only case on test to noticeably fall behind in
our cooling tests. It came last in both CPU and GPU
6

8 2 2 6 Plastic
cooling and by a clear distance.
All told, this stalwart of budget cases
is starting to look a bit long in the tooth
7

4 1 2 3 Plastic
as more modern designs outclass it. 65%
73
 GROUP TEST
Processors
PROCESSORS
Intel and AMD trade blows in this CPU brawl
T
he arrival of Ryzen gave
the CPU market the
kick it had long been
waiting for. By offering
multicore performance
at unprecedented low prices, it
forced Intel to battle back. As a
result, we now have one of the most
competitive CPU markets in ages,
and there’s never been a better time
74
to invest in a new and improved
multi-core processor.
The tricky part, of course, is
deciding which chip to get, which is
where this handy guide comes in.
We’ve tested a handful each of AMD
and Intel’s main contenders to see
which of them is the best option for a
variety of budgets. Benchmarks at
the ready...

Q&A
AMD or Intel?
AMD still offers the best
value, especially as the
company has suggested its
imminent second-gen Ryzen
chips will still work on its
X370 motherboards and will
be noticeably faster. Right
now, though, Intel still has a
lead in single-threaded
workloads, which is best for
gaming, though you pay a
little more for the privilege.
Cores or clock speed?
Clock speed is still king for
most games – even a
dual-core chip is sufficient
for the majority of games.
Times are changing, though,
and devs are getting better
at utilising multiple cores.
What about overclocking?
Intel still has a lead in clock
speed. AMD’s fastest chips
struggle to pass 4GHz, even
when overclocked, while
Intel’s chips can push 5Ghz.
What about Threadripper/
Core i9?
Something you won’t find in
this roundup are any AMD
Threadripper or Intel Core i9
processors. These high-end
processors are beyond what
we consider necessary for
any gaming PC, unless you
intend to run multiple
top-end graphics cards.
PROCESSORS
Group Test
Dictionary
Core/thread: Modern CPUs
are made up of several
processors called cores.
Each core can run a piece of
code, or thread,
independently.
Simultaneous
multithreading: The
generic term for Intel
Hyperthreading and AMD
SMT, this is where a CPU
core is able to handle two
threads at the same time.
This makes each core appear
as though it’s dual-core to
your software and can give a
performance boost in
multithreaded workloads.
Socket: CPUs are designed
to be used only with certain
motherboards. The socket is
the physical thing the CPU
plugs into, and the
components have to match.
Chipset: The chip that
controls how the CPU
interacts with the
motherboard. The two main
ones are X370 for AMD and
Z370 for Intel.
Base clock/boost clock:
The base clock is the normal
top speed for all cores while
the boost clock is the
maximum potential speed of
one or more cores.
75
 GROUP TEST
Processors
AMD RYZEN 3 1300X
www.amd.com £105
The cheapest of the AMD CPUs in this test, the Ryzen
3 1300X offers four cores but, unlike the Ryzen 5
processors, it doesn’t include SMT. As such, it can only
handle four threads at once.
Otherwise it has all the other key features that make
1 the Ryzen line so tempting. It’s unlocked for easy
overclocking, it auto-overclocks from a base clock
speed of 3.5GHz to 3.7GHz, and it’s very cheap.
Intel does have a similarly priced quad-core chip
but it’s multiplier-locked and lacks turbo boost, so
its clock speed is stuck at 3.6GHz. Not that the
1300X is all that great for overclocking, but like most
Ryzens, it can be pushed to around 3.9GHz-4GHz.
What’s more, the relatively modest core/thread
count of this chip doesn’t hold it back, with it holding
its own in all of our game tests other than the
fiendish Ashes of the Singularity. Here, it’s the only
AMD chip to not deliver around 65fps at 1080p.
It’s worth noting that the performance deficit of
the AMD processors in Ashes of the Singularity is
an anomaly. We’ve still included it, as an indicator
that there are games simply better optimised for
Intel’s Core architecture.
That aside, the 1300X is a great
starting point for a budget gaming PC. 90%
76
AMD RYZEN 5 1500X
www.amd.com £155
The Ryzen 5 1500X is another great value chip. With
four cores and SMT, it can handle up to eight threads at a
time, plus it’s multiplier-unlocked and runs at a decent
clock speed. For £155, that’s seriously good.
All the usual caveats apply in regards to its relatively
2 modest clock speed compared to its Intel rivals, but
Intel can’t offer anything with this multithread
performance for the same price.
Plus, we see that the 1500X comes out on top of
all the AMD chips for several tests, hinting that its
core count allows AMD’s automatic overclocking to
squeeze out that last little bit of speed.
Incidentally, the reason we’ve chosen the X
variants for the AMD chips is that clock speed is the
biggest thing AMD’s chips struggle with. So even
though all Ryzens are overclockable, results aren’t
guaranteed. Opting for the X variants gives you the
best chance of getting the fastest clock speed.
In contrast, we’ve gone for the K variants of the
Intel chips because they’re easy to overclock, and
though they don’t need the extra speed, they’re so
easy to boost that you might as well.
Intel doesn’t have a direct equivalent
to the 1500X now and, as such, it
stands out as an ideal option for £155. 85%

AMD RYZEN 5 1600X
www.amd.com £180
At launch, the 1600X stood out in AMD’s Ryzen line.
Six cores, SMT, a decent clock speed and multiplier-
unlocked. Back then, Intel’s closest equivalent was a
quad-core chip that didn’t even have hyperthreading.
Nearly a year on, however, and the story’s different.
3 Now Intel has a much more direct equivalent in the
shape of the 8600K, which has six cores and can
run at a considerably faster clock speed (although it
still lacks hyperthreading). However, AMD has kept
the fight going through the 1600X’s price.
It’s available for £180, making it an excellent
choice for those seeking a powerful multicore
machine, but who are still on something of a budget.
Combine it with a basic B350 motherboard and you
can have a strong six-core CPU-and-motherboard
combo for under £300, which is, frankly, ludicrous.
There are some caveats to consider, though.
Despite being multiplier-unlocked, there’s not all
that much headroom for overclocking, so around
4GHz is all you’ll likely get. Even without
overclocking, the 8600K maintains a strong lead in
single-thread performance, and so in terms of
gaming power, it’s the better of the two.
That said, the 1600X’s value can’t
be ignored, making it a great option. 90%
PROCESSORS
Group Test
AMD RYZEN 7 1800X
www.amd.com £330
The Ryzen 7 1800X is AMD’s flagship mainstream CPU
and brings with it more cores than anything Intel can
offer for the same price. You can get an 1800X and
motherboard for well under £400.
As well as packing in a huge number of cores, the
4 1800X also includes SMT technology so it can
handle 16 threads at a time. Plus, like all Ryzen
processors, it’s multiplier-unlocked for easy
overclocking and runs at a decent clock speed, with
a base clock of 3.6GHz and boost speed of 4GHz.
However, while the 1800X may be the fastest
Ryzen chip, it’s still some way off comparable chips
from Intel. Notably, the Core i7-8700K may have a
base speed of 3.7GHz but it can boost to 4.7GHz.
What’s more, the 1800X can’t be overclocked
that well. Our Asus Crosshair VI Hero motherboard
couldn’t push it far beyond a 4GHz base clock. That
provides a nice boost to multithreaded workloads,
but because overclocking disables the automatic
single-core overclocking, many will find single-
thread performance doesn’t improve or even drops.
While the 1800X is still a fairly decent option for
most gamers, it’s not the best. The
8700K would be the better way to
spend around £330 on a CPU. 80%
77
 GROUP TEST
Processors
INTEL CORE i3-8350K
www.intel.com £155
Intel’s multiplier-unlocked Core i3 processor from last
generation, the Core i3-7350K, always felt a bit too
underpowered, despite its impressive clock speed.
This was because it had two cores, and while
5 hyperthreading helped, the advantage from
jumping to quad-core processors was plain to see.
This update to the Core i3 part bumps it up to true
quad-core, making it much more of an all-rounder.
However, it doesn’t come without compromises.
While you gain two physical cores, you lose
hyperthreading, so as far as your apps can tell it has
no more cores than the 7350K. Also, it lacks Turbo
Boost so it can’t bump up the frequency of one of
the cores to eke out even more performance – all
four can run at up to 4GHz and that’s your lot.
It holds its own in multithreaded workloads,
doing well with Ashes of the Singularity, which
favours having many cores. It trounces the 7350K,
with the older chip managing 39fps in the 1440p/
Ultra test, compared to 46fps for the 8350K.
You’ll have to stretch your budget further than
for an equivalent AMD chip, but for sheer
gaming performance, the 8350K is a
great option. 85%
78
INTEL CORE i5-8600K
www.intel.com £240
If the 7700K was always the go-to choice for gamers
with money to burn, the 7600K was the aspirational next
best thing. With its four cores, high clock speed and
overclockability, it was a great all-rounder.
Now Intel’s back with the 8600K that, like the
6 8700K, ups the core count by two while retaining
the high clock speed and overclockability that made
its predecessor so tempting.
The one thing you still miss out on is
hyperthreading, and it’s surprising just how much of
a difference it makes. While the 8700K does have a
clock speed advantage, it’s nonetheless notable
that it’s 50% faster than the 8600K in the
multithread Cinebench test.
As ever, the major caveat here is price, with
AMD’s direct rival, the 1600X, being around £50
cheaper while still having a lead in multithread
performance thanks to its inclusion of SMT.
Take advantage of the 8600K’s overclockability,
though, and it’s able to close most of that gap, and
further extend its lead in other areas.
As such, if your budget can stretch a little
further, the 8600K may be the better bet,
particularly if gaming is your highest
performance priority. 85%
 PROCESSORS
Group Test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) CINEBENCH R15 (POINTS) ASHES OF SINGULARITY (FPS)
Single 1440p/high
Multi 1080p/low
(Higher is better) (Higher is better)

1
AMD Ryzen 3 1300X
105

152 545

6 45.2 52

2
AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
155
7
155 812

45.8 67

3
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
180

161 1240

45.2 64.6

4
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
330

159 1619

42.9 68.1
5

Intel Core i3-8350K

155

174 670

46.3 70.2
6

Intel Core i5-8600K

240

188 1072

INTEL CORE i7-8700K 43.7 84.2

7

Intel Core i7-8700K

www.intel.com £355 355

207 1543
The i7-7700K was the ideal for gamers who weren’t on a
45.6 93.5
budget. Its four hyperthreaded cores, 4.2GHz base
speed and 4.5Ghz turbo boost offered a perfect balance
of single and multithreaded performance.

However, as soon as Ryzen came along it instantly ESSENTIALS

7 looked like poor value, despite the high clock speed
meaning it held its own when gaming. Base clock speed (GHz) Turbo clock speed (GHz) Cores Threads

Intel’s response? The Core i7-8700K. With 50%

1

3.5 3.7 4 4
more cores it brings the fight to AMD’s finest in
multithreaded workloads while its 3.7GHz-4.7GHz
clock speed means it still has a big advantage.
2

3.5 3.7 4 8
What’s more, it overclocks well. With an Maximus X
Hero I managed to push all six cores to 5GHz.
3

3.6 4.0 6 12
This is all reflected in its benchmarks where it
tops the Cinebench single-thread test and almost
beats the 1800X in the multithread test. In games, it
4

3.6 4.0 8 16
dominates, topping all but one of the tests.
The only downside is that it’s still pricey
compared to AMD’s range. Even the eight-core
5

4.0 4.0 4 4
1800X is cheaper, and though the 8700K holds its
own in multithread workloads, it’s not that good.
6

3.6 4.3 6 6
However, with a strong lead in clock speed, the
8700K is still the clear choice for those
seeking pure gaming performance,
7

without too much regard for price. 75% 3.7 4.7 6 12

79
 GROUP TEST
Z27O Motherboards

Z270 MOTHERBOARDS
Lay the foundation of your next gaming PC with one of
the latest Z270 motherboards

80

A
lthough existing Z170
motherboards will
support Intel’s Kaby
Lake CPUs, the Z270
chipset brings a couple
of new features that make it the
better option if you’re looking to buy
a new mobo right now.
The first is support for 24 PCI-E
lanes, up from 20 on the Z170. This
Q&A
How much should I spend?
If you’re not fussed about
overclocking don’t spend
much more than £200.
Already have a great
soundcard and lots of USB
hubs? Drop that to under
£175. Don’t care much about
looks? Head below £150.
Is onboard audio worth it?
The pricier options are
enables multiple 4-lane PCI-E M.2
SSDs, without impacting graphics
bandwidth at all.
There’s also better support for
new Optane storage technology,
enabling it to act as a cross between
system memory and long term
storage, which is handy.
We’ve reviewed seven new Z270
boards on the following pages.
better, but if you’re really
concerned about audio
quality you should get a
separate soundcard.
What about overclocking?
All these motherboards
support overclocking of your
processor and memory. The
flagship Intel Core i7-7700K
processor we’ve tested them
with is relatively easy to
Z27O MOTHERBOARDS
Z27O Motherboards
Dictionary
overclock from 4.5GHz to Chipset
5GHz, resulting in close Controls communication
to a 10% performance between the CPU and other
boost for around a 20% features of a motherboard.
increase in power
consumption. PCI-E lanes
The main communication
interface for graphics and
other expansion cards.
81
 GROUP TEST
Z27O Motherboards
GIGABYTE Z270X-GAMING 7
www.gigabyte.com £215
This is a fully featured, powerful motherboard that comes
with a few quirks but largely delivers. There’s certainly little
missing in terms of design. A matt PCB? Check. RGB lighting?
Check. IO shrouding? Check. Full colour coordination? Check.
Not that the result is quite to our liking. It’s smart
1 and premium-looking but we prefer the darker
shades of the Asus Code. It is packed with features,
though. Two M.2 slots, buttons for power,
overclocking, eco mode, turbo mode and XMP
mode, a POST readout display, excellent hybrid fan
headers, strip lighting headers and much more.
Connectivity is also excellent. There are six USB
Type-A ports of various sorts, USB Type-C, two
gigabit Ethernet ports and quality surround sound.
It’s a different story when it comes to the UEFI. It
was the only board on test that had a problem with
mouse movement. We also struggled with manual
overclocking, instead resorting to the quick
“upgrade” options, which managed to push the
CPU to 4.8GHz but not 5GHz. We’re sure this board
could do better, but it shouldn’t be such a struggle.
Also, it had by far the most aggressive non-
overclocked settings, bumping the CPU
to 1.32V at stock speed, when every
other board hovered around 1.2V. 83%
82
ASROCK Z270 EXTREME4
www.asrock.com £160
This is one of the cheaper boards in this test but packs plenty
of features and performance. Styling isn’t its strong suit, but it’s
a step up from the Pro4 thanks to a matt finish to its PCB, more
extensive plastic shrouding and RGB lighting.
Something we’re less keen on is the backplate IO,
2 which has just four USB 3.0 ports, no USB type-C
and too many legacy video connections – who
needs DVI, HDMI and VGA on a board like this?
Otherwise the Extreme4 has a good all round
selection of features with a layout that’s easy to
work with. The two M.2 slots are easy to reach while
all the fan headers and other connections are
conveniently arranged around the edges. Some of
the on-PCB labelling of those features is a bit hard
to read but you can get by.
What’s more, the UEFI of this motherboard is
great. It’s nothing too fancy but it’s logically laid out
and easy to get overclocking.
Not that we quite reached our target of 5GHz for
overclocking. The CPU wouldn’t go beyond 4.9GHz
through basic multiplier and Vcore adjustment. It
was also quite power-hungry once overclocked.
Overall, though, this board offers
plenty and is well worth considering, if
rear IO isn’t your biggest priority. 80%

ASROCK Z270 PRO 4
www.asrock.com £120
This is the cheapest board on test, and in many ways it
shows: a shiny finish, lack of cover for the IO, plain silver CPU
mount and a lack of lighting. It all adds up to a board that
immediately looks less premium than the others.
That’s not to say it looks bad. The black and white
3 design has its charm and most of the components
are colour coordinated. More importantly, this
board provides solid performance and overclocking,
plus low power consumption.
You also get all the features you should need.
Two M.2 SSD slots, an M.2 W-Fi card slot, plenty of
connectivity and some basic onboard sound.
The only real stumbling block is the IO panel,
which has too many legacy connections and too few
USB ports, plus there are no USB 3.1 ports despite
the presence of one Type-C connector.
If you’re happy with the basic feature set, then
the Z270 Pro4 delivers. It demanded the lowest
power draw on test while having no problem
running our fast RAM.
Its UEFI is also a doddle to navigate, though try
as we might we couldn’t get the 7700K up to 5GHz.
We stuck with 4.8GHz instead, which still
delivered performance within 2% of
that of the fastest on test. 85%
Z27O MOTHERBOARDS
Z27O Motherboards
ASUS MAXIMUS IX CODE
www.asus.com £290
This is just a couple of steps down from Asus’s most
expensive Z270 motherboards and as such it’s packed with
features and performance. The most striking thing about it,
however, is that it’s covered head to toe in plastic armour.
This protects the board and makes it look better
4 too. On the flipside, it can be quite an inconvenience
if you drop a screw and get it stuck under that lot.
There are also several RGB-lit zones, including a
Republic of Gamers logo in the middle of the board.
RGB lighting is getting a little out of hand at the
moment but the balance here is about right and it
can all be controlled from the desktop software.
It’s a top-tier board, so you get masses of
features including 2x USB 3.1 and 6x USB 3.0 ports
on the backplate, with support for several more via
headers. There are also two M.2 SSD slots, though
their positioning is far from ideal. You also get top
notch audio and inbuilt ac-Wi-Fi.
All this, and extensive overclocking options from
a UEFI that’s simple and quick to navigate. We
couldn’t get the memory to hit its XMP-defined
3200MHz top speed but the board overclocked the
7700K CPU to 5GHz with no problems.
Its resultant performance took second
place in our charts. 87%
83
 GROUP TEST
Z27O Motherboards
ASUS STRIX Z270G GAMING
www.asus.com £180
This is only a micro-ATX motherboard but it wants for little
compared to the big boys. RGB lighting, two M.2 SSD slots (one
is on the back), quality audio, plenty of connectivity, it’s all here.
This is a great-looking board, too.
The single RGB Republic of Gamers light on the
5 chipset adds just the right touch of customisation,
while there are two headers for further lighting
strips so you can fully illuminate your case without
the need for any extra wiring.
Talking of headers, there are masses of these for
further USB connections, fans and more, and
they’re all conveniently arranged around the edges
of the board and clearly labelled.
It’s more good news when it comes to
connectivity. You get seven USB Type-A ports as
well as a Type-C, plus gigabit Ethernet, ac-Wi-Fi,
DisplayPort and HDMI, PS/2 and decent quality
audio. The Strix Z270G Gaming doesn’t let up when
it comes to performance either. It easily keeps up
with the larger boards, and you’ve even got space
for a couple of graphics cards.
Overclocking worked well too. We had no
problem reaching 5GHz, though had to
run the memory at a slightly slower
3000MHz to get the system to boot. 90%
84
MSI Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON
www.msi.com £160
Amusingly, the eponymous carbon fibre flourishes are the
least appealing thing about this board’s design. Otherwise it’s a
decent mid-range option with great performance. As the price
indicates, some of the more premium touches are missing.
You get plastic IO shrouding, chunky colour
6 coordinated heatsinks, a matt black PCB and some
RGB lighting. The CPU mount is plain metal, there
are no heatpipes to assist cooling, no cover for the
audio section and you miss out on a power button.
But back to that carbon. MSI has managed to
take the edge off what would’ve been quite a nice
simple, sedate design by plastering all the plastic
sections with faux carbon fibre. It’s not our thing.
Otherwise there’s a lot to like. You’ve got plenty
of connectivity on the backplate, a neat metal cover
for your M.2 drives and quality audio. All told, it’s a
well balanced selection.
What’s more, this board had no issues with
installation or configuration. Nearly every other one
had a moment where a reset was needed or a
setting-change failed. Here, it just worked.
The same was true when it came to
overclocking. We dialed in 5GHz and
1.34V and off it went, and the resulting
performance was class-leading. 88%
 Z27O MOTHERBOARDS
Z27O Motherboards

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) OVERCLOCK (GHz) CINEBENCH R15 (points)
Not overclocked
Overclocked

1
Gigabyte Z270X-Gaming 7
215

4.8

988 1053
6

2
ASRock Z270 Extreme 4
160

7 4.9

988 1066

3
ASRock Z270 Pro 4
120

4.8

983 1058

4
Asus Maximus IX Code
290

5.0

996 1081
5

Asus Strix Z270G Gaming

210

5.0

988 1067
6

MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon

160

5.0

986 1090

MSI Z270 GAMING M5

7

MSI Z270 Gaming M5

www.msi.com £185 185

4.9

994 1072
The MSI Z270 Gaming M5 is, on paper, very similar to the
Gaming Pro Carbon, but what a difference a little bit of design
makes. It gets just the right balance of muted colours, little
extras and that obligatory RGB lighting. ESSENTIALS
Dig a little deeper, and you don’t find much extra for Form Factor USB Type A USB Type C Wi-Fi Surround Sound

7 the price difference. A U.2 slot adds extra SSD

1

ATX 6 1 No Yes
support but it’s a very niche feature. You also get a
POST readout. You miss out on the raft of extras on
more expensive models, such as power and
2

ATX 5 1 No Yes
overclocking buttons. You don’t even get labelling
for the front panel headers, leaving you to read the
manual to know which cable to plug in where.
3

ATX 5 1 No No
Otherwise there are few slip ups. The layout is
tidy and intuitive and the M.2 shield a nice extra.
When it comes to performance the Gaming M5 just
4

ATX 9 1 Yes Yes

pipped the Carbon in its default config, though it
consumed slightly more power in the process.
As for overclocking, for some reason we couldn’t
5

mATX 7 1 Yes Yes

push past 4.9GHz, even with quite a bit of extra
voltage. It remained rock solid at 4.9GHz at 1.34V,
though, and the resulting performance was within
6

ATX 7 1 No Yes
one per cent of the Carbon.
This is a good board, but it doesn’t
excite as much as more expensive
7

ATX 5 1 No Yes
ones, nor is it a bargain. 80%

85
 GROUP TEST
Graphics cards

GRAPHICS CARDS
No need to raid your savings for these

86

T
he sweet spot for the
graphics card market
right now is somewhere
around the £400-£500
mark, with both the
Nvidia GTX 1070 and GTX 1080
offering amazing performance for a
not-ludicrous price. However,
spending that sort of money on a
graphics card just isn’t an option for
GRAPHICS CARDS
Q&A
AMD or Nvidia?
Nvidia has consistently held
the top-end performance
crown for years. Its cards
also remain slightly more
power efficient. However,
AMD competes well for
mid-range cards, and if
crypto-currency mining is of
interest to you, they are a
better choice.
AMD Freesync or
Nvidia G-Sync?
An extension of the AMD/
Nvidia battle is which
stutter-eliminating adaptive
sync technology to plump
for. Both work as well as
each other, for the most
part, but the more expensive
G-Sync tends to be used on
the best displays.
How much video memory?
The basic rule is that the
higher the resolution and
graphical fidelity, the more
memory you’ll need. So if
you’ve a high resolution
screen and want your games
to look their absolute best,
then go for more memory.
many of us. That’s why we’ve grabbed
the next seven cards down from the
GTX 1070. That means they cover a
range of prices from £300 down to
£115, which is a much more palatable
amount to consider when looking at
upgrades. So if you are looking for a
compromise between power and
price, you should find the right card
for you here.
Group test
Dictionary
GPU – The graphics
processing unit is the heart
of your graphics card, just as
the CPU is for the rest of
your PC. Its hundreds (or
thousands) of tiny stream
processors power through
the highly parallel workloads
that are required to render
each frame of your game.
Stream processors
(SPs) – Tiny processing
cores, like the cores of a CPU
but far simpler. The more of
them and the faster their
clock speed, the faster your
framerate. Architectural
differences mean you can’t
directly compare AMD SPs
to Nvidia SPs, though.
Video memory – Otherwise
known as VRAM, this is the
high-speed memory on a
graphics card that allows the
GPU quick access to all the
data it needs, such as
textures, polygons, etc. Not
having enough means having
to access your much slower
system memory.
AIB – Add-in-board partners
are the likes of EVGA and
Sapphire which take the
chips designed by AMD and
Nvidia and build them into
the graphics cards you can
actually buy. Overclocking,
custom coolers and other
extras allow each AIB to
differentiate its product.
Bang for Buck (BfB) – The
number of frames per
second you get for each
pound spent. Calculated
here by taking the average
fps in our tests divided by
the cost of the card. A raw
indication of value.
87
 GROUP TEST
Graphics cards
EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1050
GAMING 2GB www.evga.com £120
The EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming is one of the
smallest and cheapest cards featured here, but it still
packs a surprising punch.
It’s only a few frames-per-second behind the more
1 expensive GTX 1050 Ti but is available for a much
lower price. As a result, this card has the second
best bang for buck score in this test. If you’re mainly
concerned with 1080p gaming then it’s ideal.
Its appeal stretches further than just raw
performance and value, too. This is a compact card
that’s no taller than a PCI bracket. It is two
expansion slots thick, but is still a card ideally suited
to small form factor PCs.
Moreover, it doesn’t need any extra power, other
than what’s supplied by its PCIe slot, so it makes for
a great drop-in upgrade even on PCs that aren’t
equipped with fancy power supplies. This is also
reflected in its power consumption, which peaks at
just 104W under load.
Meanwhile, its single fan and small heat sink do
an ample job of keeping things cool and quiet, with
the fan not spinning up when idle and
remaining quiet when under load. For
just over £100, this is the card to get. 85%
88
GEFORCE GTX 1050 TI
EXPEDITION 4GB www.asus.com £160
Expedition? What’s that all about? It’s Asus’s graphics
card equivalent of its TUF motherboard brand. This
means they’re designed to cope with being used in
always-on PCs.
While plenty of other GTX 1050 Ti cards use just
2 one fan and have short PCBs, the Expedition offers
two high-quality fans and a spacious circuit board
layout, making for a much lower chance of the card
overheating and meaning a longer overall life.
Crucial to the appeal of the GTX 1050 range,
though, is that you don’t need any extra power
inputs. It can draw all its power from your
motherboard, which is demonstrated in its power
consumption figures, with the whole system
consuming just 103W when gaming.
With this power consumption comes relatively
modest performance, though. This card will hit
63fps average at 1080p but drops to 41fps at
1440p. You wouldn’t want to be playing anything
competitive at the latter resolution.
Moreover, in terms of bang for buck, the GTX
1050 Ti loses out to the vanilla GTX 1050 and the
GTX 1060 3GB. It sits nicely between the
two when it comes to price, but is closer
to the GTX 1050 in performance. 80%

ASUS RADEON RX 580
DUAL 4GB www.asus.com £270
Available in either 4GB or 8GB VRAM versions, the
RX 580 is AMD’s top-tier offering for below £300. We
tested a 4GB version in the shape of the Asus RX 580
Dual, which is available for around the £270 price point.
Unlike most of the other cards in this test, having
3 two fans isn’t an upgrade over a single-fan version.
Instead, it’s a downgrade from more expensive
three-fan options. Not that this was evident in our
testing. The fans remained still when the card was
idling and were impressively quiet when under load.
There’s good reason for needing at least this
many fans, though, as the RX 580 is a toasty chip. It
is far and away the most power-hungry card we’ve
featured here, consuming 222W when under load. It
also requires one eight-pin power connection.
This card takes up two slots and is taller than a
standard PCI bracket. It isn’t particularly suited to
low-profile cases, but it’s not longer than standard
ATX motherboards.
As for performance, the RX 580 is quite
powerful, delivering 88fps average in our games at
1080p and dead-on 60fps at 1440p. However, its
bang for buck score is the lowest in this
test, suggesting its price needs to drop
£20-£30 to be competitive. 70%
GRAPHICS CARDS
Group test
GIGABYTE GTX 1060 WINDFORCE
OC 3GB www.gigabyte.com £200
Many people believe that graphics cards with large
amounts of VRAM are the ones to get, and for certain
situations that can be true. However, this 3GB GTX 1060
goes to show that this is far from always the case.
At £200, this card is almost as cheap as some
4 top-end GTX 1050 cards, but hidden under its hood
is a far more powerful GPU. Its GTX 1060 processor
absolutely rips through our benchmarks, with an
average of 101fps at 1080p and 65fps at 1440p.
That’s a big step up. You might see the benefit of
the GTX 1060’s 6GB version at even higher
resolutions, but then the raw power of the card isn’t
necessarily enough to make the most of them
anyway. The long and short of it is that the 3GB card
is the standout bargain of the test.
There’s nothing too fancy about it, though. A
plastic covering on the back of the PCB keeps it
protected, but largely this serves to cover over the
heat sink. More powerful cards use heat pipes and
have coolers made from sheets of folded metal. But
even without, this card wasn’t overly hot or loud.
It requires a six-pin power input and uses 165W
when under load, so performance
doesn’t come without some penalty.
Still, this the card to get for £200. 90%
89
 GROUP TEST
Graphics cards
MSI GEFORCE GTX 1060
GAMING X 6GB www.msi.com £300
As the most expensive graphics card featured in this
test, you’d expect big things from the MSI GeForce GTX
1060 Gaming X 6GB, and it sure delivers on that front
with strong performance and build quality.
It comfortably came out on top in our benchmarks
5 with average framerates of 107fps at 1080p and
69fps at 1440p. In comparison, AMD’s fastest
competitor at around this price, the RX 580,
couldn’t break 90fps for 1080p gaming.
This is also a premium-looking card. The back is
covered in a protective, cooling metal plate, while
the front has various illuminated sections.
Underneath its two fans is a fancy fine-finned heat
sink with several heat pipes for efficient cooling.
The extra power of this card over the 3GB
version of the GTX 1060 means it requires an
eight-pin power input rather than a six-pin one.
Perhaps more of a concern is the size of the card. It
sits some 35mm above its expansion bracket, so
might not fit in some compact cases.
Also, we’re not actually sold on the design. It may
have flashing lights, but it’s gaudy. Nonetheless,
overall this is a good option, it’s just that
the 3GB version provides much of the
same performance for a lower price. 70%
90
SAPPHIRE RX 560 PULSE 4GB
www.sapphiretech.com £115
This Sapphire RX 560 is the minnow of this group test,
with the lowest price and lowest performance. However,
you shouldn’t judge it on performance alone: it still has a
few things going for it.
For a start, if you shop around, there are other RX
6 560 cards available for under £100, which bumps
its bang for buck score up.
The usual caveats about G-Sync and Freesync
monitors also apply. For instance, you could buy this
card and the LG 23MP68VQ-P monitor and have a
75Hz, IPS, 1080p, Freesync-enabled monitor and
graphics card setup for £330, which is the same
price as the cheapest G-Sync monitor on its own.
That said, the card isn’t small form factor-
friendly. While it’s relatively short and is no taller
than an expansion bracket, it’s not that compact.
It’s also worth saying that the 4GB version of this
card is unlikely to be necessary for most buyers.
The amount of processing power this card has
means that it will seldom be able to take full
advantage of the extra memory.
So just how fast is it? It’ll hit 47fps at 1080p and
30fps at 1440p. Tweak detail levels right
down and 1440p will be playable, but
largely this is a 1080p and below card. 70%
 GRAPHICS CARDS
Group test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) FRAMES PER SECOND BANG FOR BUCK
Minimum (higher is better) FPS divided by price
Average (higher is better) (higher is better)

1
GeForce GTX 1050 Gaming 2GB
120

39 46

0.38
6

2
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Expedition 4GB
160

7 45 52

0.33

3
Radeon RX 580 Dual 4GB
270

60 74

0.28

4
GeForce GTX 1060 Windforce OC 3GB
200

69 83

0.41
5

GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6GB

300

75 89

0.30
6

RX 560 Pulse 4GB

115

32 38

0.33

SAPPHIRE RX 570 PULSE

7

RX 570 Pulse ITX 4GB

ITX 4GB www.sapphiretech.com £195 51

195

64

The RX 570 is AMD’s almost-direct rival to the GTX 0.33

1060 3GB. It can boast a slightly larger 4GB VRAM quota

– 8GB versions are also available – and it costs just £195,
making for a whopping £5 saving. ESSENTIALS
This version is also compact and comes with a GPU SPs Clock speed Memory Memory bus TDP (W)

7 premium heat pipe-equipped cooler. And despite

1

GP107 640 1455 2GB 128-bit 75

only having one fan, it’s surprisingly cool and quiet. GDDR5
However, when it comes to performance, the
GTX 1060 3GB has it beat. The GTX 1060 3GB can
2

GP107 768 1392 4GB 128-bit 75

hit over 100fps at 1080p and 60fps at 1440p, but GDDR5
the RX 570 can only manage 77fps at 1080p and
51fps at 1440p. They’re still decent figures but for
3

Polaris 20 2304 1380 4GB 256-bit 185

just £5 more it’s a clear choice – the GTX 1060 3GB GDDR5
has a comfortable lead in bang for buck.
It doesn’t help that the RX 570 is more power
4

GP106 1152 1708 3GB 192-bit 120

hungry, consuming 172W under load, although it still GDDR5
only requires a single six-pin power connector.
Of course, where AMD does have an advantage
5

GP106 1152 1708 6GB 192-bit 120

is in cryptocurrency mining, so if you are interested GDDR5
in that then the RX 570 may represent better value.
Similarly, it’s always worth considering the extra
6

Polaris 11 1024 1216 4GB 128-bit 80

cost of monitors that feature Nvidia’s G-Sync GDDR5
technology. Go with AMD and you can
buy a Freesync monitor instead for, on
7

Polaris 20 2048 1244 4GB 256-bit 120

average, £100 less. 65% GDDR5

91
 GROUP TEST
Solid State Drives

SOLID STATE DRIVES

Give your level loads a lift with a new SSD

92
 In Association With

Q&A Dictionary SLC/MLC/TLC – Single- multi- or triple-

Do I need a really fast SSD?
As a gamer you won’t see much benefit –
levels will only load fractions of seconds
faster. They’re more useful if you work with
very large files, such as when video editing.
Should I worry about drive life?
Early SSDs suffered from performance
degradation and they weren’t rated to last all
that long. These days most SSDs will last the
better part of ten years with average usage.
NVMe/AHCI – The protocol a drive uses to
talk to the PC. AHCI is an old standard
designed for hard drives and used with SATA
drives. NVMe is designed specifically for
SSDs and can be much faster.
M.2/SATA/PCIe – The physical connection
between drive and PC. SATA is the classic
hard drive connection, PCIe the same slot
that your graphics card plugs into, M.2 is a
new storage-specific slot for tiny SSDs.
level cell. SSD memory cells can store one bit
of information or several. The fewer, the
faster information can be written to them and
the greater the longevity of the drive.
Sequential/random – Sequential tests
measure how fast a drive can continually
read/write a big block of data, in MB/s.
Random tests are where the drive has to
constantly look all over the place for separate
bits of data and so is measured in Input/
Output Operations per second (IOPs).

T
he speed advantage of
SSDs has been known
for a long time, but low
capacities and high
prices have previously
meant we had to make compromises.
Usually, pairing it with a bigger
conventional drive and having not
quite the best of both worlds. But
now capacities have risen and prices
dropped, so much so that there’s little
reason to buy another conventional
hard drive at all.
Stick to the traditional 2.5-inch
SATA SSD route, and while you won’t
find a much faster device than those
of a few years ago, you will get far
greater capacity: 500GB is now
available for under £100. Meanwhile,
new connection standards have
opened up the maximum speed of the
most expensive drives to astonishing
levels. The latest M.2 NVMe drives
are seven times faster than the fastest
SATAs. With that in mind, on these
pages we round up some of the best
Solid State Drives out there at the
moment to consider which one gives
you the best storage and performance
for your money.

93
 GROUP TEST
Solid State Drives
INTEL SSD 750 SERIES 400GB
www.intel.com £350
Intel’s 750 Series was the first drive to arrive with the new
NVMe connection standard. But rather than an M.2 slot, the
750 Series uses the classic PCIe slot, and there’s a version that
looks like a 2.5in SATA drive but uses an SFF 8639 connector.
This makes it decidedly bulkier and less convenient
1 than most other SSD options, but top-line
performance still makes it a tempting proposition.
This 400GB version is quite a bit slower than the
largest capacities but it can still hit 2200MB/s
sequential read and 900MB/s sequential write, and
that’s a sustained write speed too. What’s more, if
random read and write performance is what you’re
after then Intel is still the fastest you can get.
This 400GB drive can manage 430,000 read
IOPs and 230,000 write IOPs, which is 100,000
IOPs faster than the 512GB 960 Pro for read,
though 100,000 IOPs slower for write.
One advantage of the 750 Series over M.2 drives
is heat management. The larger drive enables Intel
to add metal heat sinks that keep it cool.
However, nearly two years have passed since its
launch, and the 750 Series is let down by Intel’s
uncompetitive pricing. With the arrival of
the 960 Pro it doesn’t look like great
value for money anymore. 70%
94
1 2
SAMSUNG 960 EVO 500GB
www.samsung.com £230
The little brother to the 960 Pro, the 960 Evo is essentially
the same drive but rather than using MLC (two-level) NAND it
uses TLC. This means you get much of the same performance
when it comes to read speed but write speed is slower.
Where the 512GB 960 Pro can maintain up to
2 2100MB/s sequential write, the 500GB 960 Evo
can only hit 1800MB/s, and only for a short period.
This is because the Evo uses the same trick as many
other TLC drives where it converts a small portion
of the drive to work in an SLC mode to enable fast
writes. Once it’s full, write speed drops until the SLC
memory can be cleared. Here the speed drops to
600MB/s after 22GB have been written. The Evo
also has a lower rating – 200TB vs 400TB – for the
total amount of data that can be written to it.
All that, though, is in comparison to the fastest
drive you can buy. Compared to everything else the
Evo is lightning fast for both sequential and random
workloads. In many ways it’s still overkill, but the Evo
is priced more competitively than the Pro.
All told, the 960 Evo is the performance SSD to
buy right now. It does demand a premium but it’s
super fast yet far cheaper than any drive
of comparable speed, and has all the
performance you’ll ever need. 95%

SAMSUNG 960 PRO 512GB
www.samsung.com £320
Samsung’s new 960 Pro SSDs are the fastest you can buy.
They can hit sequential speeds up to 3500MB/s read and
2100MB/s write. That’s 1000MB/s and 600MB/s faster than
last year’s 950 Pro drives and way beyond any other SSDs.
Several factors enable such high speeds. First is
3 that these drives use the M.2 interface and NVMe
protocol. This removes the inherent speed limit of
SATA, which maxes out at around 550MB/s.
Samsung also packs in its latest V-NAND
memory technology for even higher data densities.
V-NAND is a form of 3D NAND and this latest
version moves from 32 layers to 48 layers. This has
allowed Samsung to offer the 960 Pro in a
maximum capacity of 2TB, which has never before
been possible on an M.2 drive. The result is it
monsters every test you could imagine and, unlike
some far more expensive, specialist SSDs, it isn’t
only fast according to a few criteria – it’s a complete
all-rounder. It also has a healthy five-year warranty.
But all that performance is totally overkill for
most users. Load times for games, Windows and
other applications are hardly improved over far
cheaper SSDs. So a slower drive with
more capacity for the same money is
likely to be a better option. 90%
In Association With
SAMSUNG 850 EVO 500GB
www.samsung.com £145
The Samsung 850 Evo line has been the champion of
mid-range SSDs ever since it first arrived last year. That’s
because it strikes a near perfect balance of performance and
value, making it ideal for gaming PCs.
Based on Samsung’s older 32-layer V-NAND
4 technology, the 850 Evo is a SATA drive so can claim
maximum read and write speeds of 540MB/s and
520MB/s respectively. Even then it’s not the fastest
SATA SSD around, but with random performance
figures of 98,000IOPs read and 90,000IOPs write,
it comfortably outpaces most other SATA drives.
Being a TLC drive, it uses a form of SLC caching,
but the sustained write speed on the 500GB and
larger drives is still fast enough to nearly max out
the SATA interface. The 120GB version does drop to
as low as 150MB/s, though.
As with other Samsung Evo drives, the 850 Evo
has a three-year warranty while the 500GB is rated
to last for up to 150TB total written data. To put that
into perspective, our three-year-old 750GB 840 Evo
still only has 17TB total data written to it.
All told, the Samsung 850 Evo is still the single
best option for those on a budget but
who don’t want to compromise too
much on performance. 95%
95
 GROUP TEST
Solid State Drives
SANDISK EXTREME PRO 480GB
www.sandisk.com £190
The SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung 850 Pro are the two
top dogs of the SATA SSD market. Both have near identical
performance and are priced very similarly, so whichever you
pick you’ll be happy, but for this test we opted for the SanDisk.
That performance doesn’t come in the form of
5 maximum sequential read and write speed, which is
as limited as any other SATA SSD – 550MB/s read
and 515MB/s write. Instead, what sets these drives
apart is that they use MLC NAND, so can maintain
that write performance right until the drive is full.
Random performance is also fantastic, with
100,000IOPs read and 90,000IOPs write, making
these an excellent choice for demanding workloads.
What’s more, you get a whopping ten-year
warranty, though only an 80TBW total data rating
– great for gaming PCs but less so for applications
where masses of data is regularly written to the
drive. You also miss out on drive encryption, which
is something most other SSDs now offer.
But if data security isn’t a massive concern, then
the Extreme Pro – while markedly cheaper than the
ludicrous M.2 NVMe drives – still offers the sort of
sustained load performance that means
your work won’t grind to a halt because
of your SSD. 85%
96
CRUCIAL MX300 525GB
www.crucial.com £110
Crucial’s MX300 line is the first commercially available SSD
not made by Samsung to use a form of 3D NAND. It should
bring the same speed and capacity advantages, but, unlike
Samsung, Crucial is debuting it in a mid-range TLC model.
The MX300 is available in both 2.5in and M.2
6 versions, but unlike the other M.2 drives featured
here it still uses the SATA interface, so can’t hit the
speeds of NVMe drives.
This 525GB model, which is notably larger than
other ~500GB TLC drives, can reach 530MB/s
sequential read and write as well as hit 92,000 IOPs
read and 83,000IOPs write in random operations.
Like other TLC drives, the MX300 uses a form of
SLC write-caching but here it’s a completely
dynamic system where any portion of the drive can
temporarily act in an SLC fashion when needed. As
a result, while you do get a drop in performance, it’s
not until half the drive has been filled with data (in
one go) that you’ll see performance drop.
Overall, however, in benchmarks it can’t
compete with other MLC drives and even trails the
Samsung 850 Evo for raw speed, making it a drive
you’d buy for similar reasons to the 850
Evo but with even more of a focus on
capacity over speed. 80%
 In Association With

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) SEQUENTIAL READ RANDOM READ
SEQUENTIAL WRITE RANDOM WRITE
(MB/s) (IOPs)

Intel SSD 750 Series

1
350

1063 1652

250k 332k
6

2
Samsung 960 Evo
230

7 1766 3406

272k 342k

Samsung 960 Pro

3
320

2007 3566

336k 358k

4
Samsung 850 Evo
145

530 551

69k 98k
5

SanDisk Extreme Pro

190

526 562

77k 98k
6

Crucial MX300
110

514 535

81k 90k

KINGSTON SSDNOW UV400

7

Kingston SSDNow UV400

480GB www.kingston.com £120 515 528

120

35k 76k
Kingston’s UV400 should be the cheapest drive on test both
based on past pricing and its feature set, but at the time of
writing price fluctuations mean it’s more expensive than the
Crucial MX300 in the UK – in the US it’s still a little cheaper. ESSENTIALS
That’s not a great starting point and it’s only made Form factor NAND mode Warranty TBW

7 worse by the fact the UV400 has a markedly lower

1

PCIe MLC 5 127TBW

capacity than the MX300 – 480GB vs 525GB.
As for that feature set, it’s an entry-level 2.5in SATA
model that uses TLC planar NAND. As such, it has
2

M.2 TLC 3 200TBW

modest performance figures, particularly for the
lower capacity models.
This 480GB version has decent sequential
3

M.2 MLC 55 400TBW

speeds of 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write, as
well as a reputable 90,000IOPs random read.
However, its random write speed shows why it’s
4

2.5in SATA TLC 3 150TBW

considered such an entry level model – it hits just
35,000 IOPs. That’s still far faster than any hard
drive, mind, which measure in the hundreds of IOPs.
5

2.5in SATA MLC 10 >80TBW

If you can find it for £100 or below, this drive is a
decent buy for an entry-level SSD, and you’ll still get
fast boot, app load and game load times. But if you
6

2.5in SATA TLC 3 160TBW

regularly move big files or work on IO-intensive apps
it’s not the best choice – by spending
only a little more you can get much
7

2.5in SATA TLC 3 200TBW

better performance for the money. 70%
97
 GROUP TEST
All-in-one CPU coolers

ALL-IN-ONE
CPU COOLERS
CPU performance is best served cold

C
PUs are a hot topic this year.
Starting with the launch of
Ryzen and followed by Intel’s
Socket 2066 chips and AMD’s
monster Threadripper CPUs,
there’s never been a greater choice of chips
to have with everything.
Whichever you are using, you need to
keep it cool. Water cooling is ideal, and
an all-in-one liquid cooler eliminates
any faff.
We’ve grabbed seven popular
all-in-one coolers and tested
them using an AMD Ryzen
1800X running the Prime95
torture test. We measured
temperatures with the
cooler set to a silent
mode, where the
fans spin slowly,
and a more
uniform
standard
mode.

98

Q&A
What is an all-in-one
liquid cooler?
These coolers offer the basic
properties of liquid cooling
but in a self-contained unit.
A CPU/water block mounts
to the CPU while a pair of
pipes feed water to and from
a radiator where the heat is
drawn out from the liquid.
Which CPUs do liquid
coolers support?
All of the coolers on test
support all AMD Ryzen and
Intel socket 1151 CPUs.
They’re also compatible with
all Intel 2066/2011 CPUs,
but some wouldn’t be
recommended for use with
the most powerful
processors in those lineups
as they simply don’t have the
cooling power.
Do they need filling?
These coolers ship
prefilled and most are never
meant to be refilled.
However, some do include a
means of emptying and
refilling the coolers.
How much better are they?
For reference, we also tested
our 1800X with AMD’s
Wraith Max cooler and it hit
75°C in silent mode and 70°C
in standard mode.
Dictionary
120mm, 240mm
etc - These coolers are
generally categorised by
how large their radiators are.
The smallest use a radiator
that’s the size of a single
120mm case fan – it’s these
A L L- I N - O N E C P U C O O L E R S
ones that generally don’t
have the cooling power for
Threadripper and Socket
2066/2011 processors.
Then there are double-length
240mm radiators and even
larger 280mm radiators that
use 140mm fans. The bigger
the cooler, the greater the
overall cooling ability and
the slower the fans can spin
to keep things quiet.
TDP - Thermal Design Power
(TDP) is the maximum
amount of heat generated by
a chip. It’s a good rough way
Group test
of telling how powerful a
cooler you’ll need for any
given processor.
Decibels - We’ve measured
the noise created by each of
these coolers, and this is
measured in decibels (dB).
This is a logarithmic unit so if
something is 10dB louder it’s
actually 10 times as loud.
Therefore just a couple of dB
difference in our coolers is
significant. Ambient noise in
our test labs was 30dB and
noise levels were measured
30cm from the cooler.
99
 GROUP TEST
All-in-one CPU coolers
BE QUIET! SILENT LOOP 240
www.bequiet.com £120
While the inclusion of a second fan in the 120mm
version of be quiet!’s cooler means it is priced a little
high, the 240mm Silent Loop is more competitively
positioned. This is still a premium option, though.
This means you still get the nickel-plated base to the
1 water block, a solid metal block itself and the
coil-wrapped flexible tubing.
You miss out on having software control of the
whole system. The Silent Loop 240mm relies on
your motherboard having three fan headers – one
for the pump, and one each for the fans.
One of the nicest things about this cooler is the
flexibility of the water hoses. It’s a cinch to slot it all
into place and the metal coils surrounding the tubes
help to ensure they don’t get bent.
As for performance, this cooler delivers some of
the best temperatures both in silent and standard
modes, and it’s among the quietest, too. In silent
mode it claims top spot, outputting just 31.5dB,
while in standard mode it sits a little more mid-table,
but with a still decent 41dB.
As such, the be quiet! Silent Loop 240 is a
great option if you’re after a premium
240mm cooler and aren’t particularly
fussed about software control. 75%
100
BE QUIET! SILENT LOOP 120
www.bequiet.com £95
The be quiet! Silent Loop 120mm is, by some distance,
the most expensive 120mm liquid cooler that’s featured
in our group test, but it immediately justifies much of this
cost in several ways.
This one has a CPU block with a polished base. The
2 theory goes that the flatter and more polished the
surface of your cooler and the top of your CPU, the
greater the contact and the less reliance on less
thermally-efficient thermal paste to fill the gap.
This is also the only 120mm model to come with
two fans. This is great for performance, though it
does make the radiator section rather bulky. This
cooler is also refillable, something that be quiet!
recommends you do every two years.
With the fans set to the motherboard’s silent
mode, this cooler was one of the hottest. However,
with the fans cranked up, it improved considerably,
coming in comfortably mid-table and ahead of the
other two 120mm models. However, this generated
a fair amount of noise.
All told, there’s a lot about this cooler that
justifies its high price but its performance means it
sits in an awkward position between
single-fan 120mm options and two-fan
240mm options. 70%

CORSAIR H60i V2
www.corsair.com £70
While the Corsair H100i is all about its software control
and RGB lighting, the H60i keeps things simple. This
120mm cooler runs straight off your motherboard’s fan
headers and lacks lighting of any kind.
Compatible with everything but Threadripper CPUs,
3 the mounting system used here is simple. It uses a
choice of two top mounting pieces that are
magnetically attached to the block. The AMD one,
then, just uses the AMD mount on the motherboard
so there’s no need to fit a base plate on the back.
Meanwhile, the Intel one does require fitting a back
plate but it’s simple enough to do and doesn’t
require any brute force or an extra hand.
The H60 V2 is pretty much middle of the pack
for 120mm coolers. It’s ahead of the CoolerMaster
MasterLiquid Lite 120 but a couple of Celsius behind
the be quiet! Silent Loop 120, which is to be
expected given this is a single-fan design.
That’s true of noise levels too, with it being a little
louder than the CoolerMaster but quieter than the
Silent Loop, at least in standard mode. In silent
mode it’s a touch louder, but still stays below 34dB.
As such, the H60i doesn’t quite stand
out as a bargain, but it is a fairly good
option for the reasonable price. 80%
A L L- I N - O N E C P U C O O L E R S
Group test
CORSAIR H100i V2
www.corsair.com £105
The H100i V2 has a mid-range feel in terms of features
and build. You get a copper base plate and an RGB logo
set into the top piece of the CPU block, but you don’t get
the fancier quality of some of the other coolers.
One of the crucial selling points of this cooler,
4 though, is its software control. Using the Mini-USB
port on the side of the CPU block and the supplied
cable that can fit directly to a motherboard USB
header, the cooler can talk to Corsair’s Link
software. This enables you to control fan and pump
speed, either via presets or by customising how the
cooler responds to different CPU temperatures.
Oddly, despite this control, the H100i defaults to
being surprisingly loud. The H100i silent option had
the fans spinning at 1200rpm and at 1800rpm in
standard mode. As such, this was the loudest cooler
on test in silent mode.
The upside to this is better cooling, and sure
enough the H100i ran away with it. It’s likely there’s
an ideal compromise between noise and
performance to be found by customising profiles.
The H100i can’t claim to be the cheapest or the
fanciest cooler here, but it sits in a nice
middle ground, making it a good
option, especially for software control. 80%
101
 GROUP TEST
All-in-one CPU coolers
COOLERMASTER MASTERLIQUID
240 www.coolermaster.com £65
The MasterLiquid 240 is astonishingly good value. It’s
nearly half the price of most other 240mm coolers, and
while similar cost-cutting measures have been applied
here as to the Lite 120, the end result is more impressive.
It’s got an illuminated logo and the hose mounts
5 rotate, which is useful, but there’s none of the fancy
materials or clever infinity mirror lighting of the
more premium models on test.
However, you get a chunky radiator, quieter
rubber-tipped fans and the convenient
thumbscrews for mounting them. CoolerMaster
has also upgraded the tubing from the Lite 120.
Here, it’s much thicker and braided. This makes it
more difficult to move around, but it’s a lot tougher.
When it comes to performance, the
MasterLiquid 240 is surprisingly good. At no point
does it take the crown in either silent or standard
modes, however it holds its own and is relatively
quiet in standard mode when under load – hitting
just 40dB compared the Silent Loop 120’s 44dB.
Just as with its 120mm sibling, the
MasterLiquid 240 can’t help but impress. For raw
performance you can’t really go wrong
for the price, especially if this is your
first time buying an all-in-one cooler. 90%
102
COOLERMASTER MASTERLIQUID
LITE 120 www.coolermaster.com £40
The CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 120 is by far the
cheapest cooler in this group test, and in some ways it
shows, but fundamentally this cooler still delivers in the
areas where it counts.
You do get a few nice extras, too. While plastic, the
6 pump/block is topped by an illuminated
CoolerMaster logo. The radiator is also well made,
though it is a touch bigger than others.
The fan also comes with integrated rubber pads
on its corners to help reduce transfer of vibrations
and reduce noise. Plus, the screws for mounting the
fan are thumbscrews, which means there’s one less
reason to grab a screwdriver when installing it.
The mounting system of this cooler is also good,
particularly for AM4 motherboards. It uses the
standard AM4 motherboard bracket, so there’s no
need to fit a base plate.
In terms of performance, it came dead last for
overall cooling, both in silent and standard mode. It
was also the joint loudest in silent mode – due to the
pump making noticeable burbling noises – though it
was the quietest in standard mode.
The end result is that this is a perfectly
decent budget cooler. It’s not perfect,
but for the price it more than delivers. 85%
 A L L- I N - O N E C P U C O O L E R S
Group test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) NOISE LEVEL (DB) TEMPERATURE (°C)
Standard Standard
Silent Silent

1
BeQuiet! Silent Loop 240
120

31.5 41

52 55
6

2
BeQuiet! Silent Loop 120
95
7 32.5 44

56 61

3
Corsair H60i V2
70

33.5 40.5

56 62

4
Corsair H100i V2
105

36 37.5

51 55
5

Coolermaster MasterLiquid 240

65

32,7 40

55 57
6

Coolermaster MasterLiquid Lite 120

40

33.5 38

58 65

NZXT KRAKEN X52

7

NZXT Kraken X52

www.nzxt.com £135 135

32.5 38

As the most expensive cooler on our test the NZXT 55 61

Kraken X52 has a burden of expectation resting heavily
on its shoulders, and thankfully it largely justifies its
asking price. ESSENTIALS
The top of the CPU block uses a piece of mirrored Radiator + fan dimensions (mm) Radiator material Fans

7 plastic and clever lighting to create an illusion of

1

277 x 124 x 55 Copper 2 x 120mm

depth as the ring of light around the outside
appears to continue deeper into the block.
Less impressive is the mass of cables that is
2

153 x 128 x 95 Copper 2 x 120mm

needed to get this thing fully hooked up. It requires a
proprietary connection from the block to the USB
header, plus a SATA power connection. But the end
3

120 x 152 x 52 Aluminium 1 x 120mm

result is a cooler that can be controlled by NZXT’s
excellent software that offers various default fan
presets and the ability to customise the profiles.
4

120 x 275 x 52 Aluminium 2 x 120mm

The default silent and standard modes had the
fans spinning very slowly, which meant the cooler
didn’t excel when it came to cooling, but also meant
5

277 x 119.6 x 52 Aluminium 2 x 120mm

it was among the quietest – although not by much.
As such, in terms of performance it’s basically
on par – spin the fans up more and it would be in
6

157 x 119.6 x 52 Aluminium 1 x 120mm

line with the other 240mm coolers on our test.
Instead, the appeal of this cooler comes
down to that snazzy but ultimately
7

275 x 123 x 55 Aluminium 2 x 120mm

superfluous infinity mirror effect. 80%
103
 GROUP TEST
4K monitors

4K MONITORS
Seven of the best Ultra HD displays around

104

T
he arrival of 4K was
greeted with much
fanfare, but it has
taken a few years to
become affordable.
Now, however, prices have
dropped and graphics cards have
become powerful enough to run at
4K resolutions, making it a great
time to invest.
There are caveats, of course.
Upcoming screens will be able to
run at 144Hz, making for a much
smoother experience. They’ll also
be monstrously expensive. If
you’re on a budget, the current
60Hz screens are the way to go.
For this test, we’ve picked a
broad spectrum of models to give
an idea of what’s available now.
4K MONITORS
Group test
Q&A
Which LCD panel type
should I get?
It’s always the same
question when buying a
monitor: IPS, TN or VA? And
the usual rules apply: IPS is
best for overall image
quality, VA is great for video
and TN is cheap and suitable
for gaming. However, with
4K refresh rates at a current
maximum of 60Hz, TN is less
appealing as there’s little
gaming advantage.
Large screen or small?
You’d need a 40-inch
monitor at 4K resolution to
get the same pixel density as
a 27-inch 1440p display. If
you do a lot of reading or
writing on your PC, you’ll
need as big a screen as
possible. However, if you
only need your monitor for
video, pictures and gaming,
a smaller screen will get you
an incredibly sharp image.
Why only 60Hz?
The main limitation with 4K
screens right now isn’t the
panel itself but the
interconnect. Older
DisplayPort and HDMI
standards don’t support the
1.2 trillion pixels per second
that are required to run such
a massive resolution at
144Hz. The latest
DisplayPort will support this,
and the latest HDMI
supports up to 10K at 120Hz.
Dictionary
Colour temperature:
A measure of colour as
related to the temperature
of a very hot object. The
cooler the object, the redder
the light. The hotter it is, the
bluer the light. Our sun’s
daylight is 6500K so this is
the standard for monitors.
Hz: The refresh rate, as
measured in hertz (Hz), is
how many times a monitor
changes image in a second.
100Hz+ feels best for
gaming, but 60Hz is the max
for current 4K monitors.
DisplayPort and HDMI: The
two current PC and
multimedia video
connection standards. Both
support audio and video and
come in a variety of versions.
Windows scaling: In order
to make most programs on
your desktop readable when
using high-res displays,
Windows has a setting that
lets you ‘zoom in’. This
makes things appear larger
and allows apps to bypass it
if needed, letting you view
pictures, videos and games
at full resolution.
105
 GROUP TEST
4K monitors
SAMSUNG U28H750
www.samsung.com £400
The prolific Korean manufacturer has something of a
knack for making surprisingly stylish-looking budget
displays, and the U28H750 is no exception. In fact, this
display even gives the Acer S277HK a run for its money.
It can’t match the Acer’s build quality but it’s
1 commendable for the price. The only thing to keep
in mind is that the stand is a bit wobbly. On a sturdy
desk it’s fine, but if you have a lightweight desk then
the U28H750 can start to wobble as you type. Its
connectivity is basic, too. You get two HDMI to go
with the one DisplayPort, and there’s a headphone
jack but no USB hub nor speakers.
The biggest cost-cutting measure here, though,
is that this is a TN display, and in fact it’s worse than
the Asus MG28UQ. Both have poor viewing angles,
mediocre colour accuracy and slightly low contrast,
but the Samsung suffers that much more from one
of the most distracting qualities of many TN
monitors: they struggle to reproduce the light grey
colours that are used as window dressing in apps
and websites.
Not that this display is bad, by any stretch. It’s
mostly fine, and one of the cheaper
screens in our test. But a video or
picture editor’s dream this isn’t. 70%
106
ACER S277HK
www.acer.com £430
The S277HK is a designer screen. With its all-metal
stand, white rear and hidden bezel, it ticks every style
box. It may not sit well next to your RGB-filled black box
of a PC, but it’s ideal for minimalists.
The only caveat being that there’s a mass of
2 connectivity on the back, and it’s not as elegantly
integrated as, for instance, the rear of an iMac. Still,
you do get plenty of connectivity. DisplayPort, mini
DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI video ports are all on
offer, along with an audio input and headphone jack.
Its image quality is largely impressive. It uses an
IPS panel, so viewing angles are excellent. As a
27-inch display, you don’t get a huge desktop boost
from the resolution, as you’ll want to have Windows
scaling set to 150% most of the time to make things
readable. Nonetheless, for video and gaming, it’s
superb. The only problem is that contrast is a bit
low. It’s okay for desktop work, but it takes a bit of
the punchiness out of video.
Otherwise, the only major downside is the stand,
which offers only tilt adjustment with no option to
swap it for an alternate stand. If you’re happy to
height-adjust via stacking books, though,
then the S277HK is a really nice 4K
monitor option. 85%

AOC AG271UG
eu.aoc.com £600
AOC’s AG271UG is a direct competitor to the Acer
XB271HK and Asus ROG PB279Q. All are 27-inch 4K IPS
displays that include G-Sync to reduce screen tear. But
AOC’s model is the cheapest of the three.
Available for around £600, it’s by no means cheap,
3 but with its competitors asking for closer to £700, it
still offers a good saving. What’s more, it doesn’t slip
up elsewhere, making this an excellent display.
It all starts with the elegant design. The frame is
slim and simple, and the stand is similarly
understated in solid metal. That stand also offers a
full range of adjustments and VESA compatibility. It
even has a dial on the side that makes it easy to
reset the height back to exactly where you like it.
You get a couple of rare extras, too. On the right
edge, for instance, there’s a flip-down headphone
stand that sits above two USB 3.0 ports and the
headphone jack, making for a convenient little zone
of connectivity. One of the USB ports also supports
fast-charging.
The display offers very good image quality, too,
even if the colour balance needs a bit of tweaking to
get the best from it. All told, this the best
27-inch 4K G-sync display on the
market for the price. 90%
4K MONITORS
PHILIPS 328P6VJEB
www.phillips.com £550
Philips offers a couple of large 4K displays, including
the massive 40-inch BDM4037UW. The 32-inch
328P6VJEB is likely a more practical size for most
people’s needs.
This display uses a VA panel, the chief advantage of
4 which is great contrast. This makes it fantastic for
watching video. However, it’s not just a one-trick
pony and also works well for work duties.
One thing it can’t claim, though, is to be stylish
– there’s an obvious cheapness to the overall look.
What it lacks in pizzazz, though, it makes for up for
in practicality. The stand offers height, rotation and
tilt adjustment and can be swapped for a VESA-
compatible alternative. You also get plenty of
connectivity, with DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and even
VGA connections on the back, as well as four USB
3.0 ports on the side.
Overall image quality is good, with the massive
2,317:1 contrast really bringing movies and games
to life. Being a VA panel, gaming isn’t its strongest
suit thanks to the technology’s slow response time,
but it’s still okay for non-competitive games.
Overall, it offers a good set of features
and will appeal to those that like to sit
back and watch movies on their PC. 75%
107
 GROUP TEST
4K monitors
ACER PREDATOR XB321HK
www.acer.com £800
Acer offers two premium 4K monitors that, for the
most part, only differ in size. Both offer 4K resolution, an
IPS panel, a 60Hz refresh rate and G-Sync, so it just
comes down to how big of a screen you want.
Pay more and you do get more, though. That’s
5 because a larger screen means you can reduce
Windows scaling, resulting in more desktop real
estate. A 27-inch screen with Windows scaling set to
150% reduces the effective resolution to
2560x1440, whereas this screen lets you use 125%,
for a resolution of 3072x1728. Fire up a game or
movie and you also get a bigger picture overall.
Resolution and size considerations aside, the
XB321HK has loads going for it. The design is not
too offensive and is likely to sit comfortably
alongside most PCs. The stand also offers height
and tilt adjustment, though not rotation or pivot. It
does support VESA monitor mounts, though.
As for image quality, it’s fantastic. The IPS panel
produces accurate colours and great contrast right
out of the box, and when combined with G-Sync it
makes for some truly fantastic gaming.
It’s no competitive monster but it’s a
superb all-rounder that’s great for all
other forms of work and play. 85%
108
ASUS MG28UQ
www.asus.com £375
There’s an argument for saying that 4K and TN just
shouldn’t mix. With 4K refresh rates limited to 60Hz, the
gaming advantage of TN is null, while the lower quality of
TN negates the point of having a large resolution.
However, there are a couple of reasons why a
6 display such as the Asus MG28UQ might suit you.
First, there’s the price. You’re getting a large 28-inch
display, all those pixels, a fully adjustable stand and
Freesync all for well under £400.
Nonetheless, the MG28UQ does struggle to
convince. This one has a grey finish to its stand and
frame that just cheapens the overall look. It also
feels like a noticeable step down in build quality
from Asus’ more premium models.
Some of the image quality issues of TN panels
are also obvious. Contrast is low and the viewing
angles aren’t a patch on other display types.
Still, the stand is great in terms of practicality
and is removable, plus you get loads of connectivity
with three HDMI ports alongside the DisplayPort.
Plus there’s a couple of USB 3.0 ports.
Nonetheless, there’s not quite enough here to
convince. You can get 4K for less and,
without a fast refresh rate, gaming
performance is compromised. 70%
 4K MONITORS
Group test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) CONTRAST COLOUR TEMPERATURE (K)
(The higher the value Deviation from 6500K (the lower
the better) the value the better)

1
Samsung U28H750
400

874

376
6

2
Acer S277HK
430

7 560

100

3
AOC AG271UG
600

1,060

558

4
Philips 328P6VJEB
550

2,317

118
5

Acer Predator XB321HK

800

1,238

95
6

Asus MG28UQ
375

869

170

LG 27UD68P
7

LG 27UD68P

www.lg.com £400 400

1,144

LG has hit a winning formula with some of its displays. 26

They’re great value, combining elegant design and a

minimum of features with IPS panels that deliver reliably
good image quality. The 27UD68P is such a model. ESSENTIALS
Take this 27-inch display from its box and you can Screen size Panel tech Resolution Response time

7 feel the cost saving as its plastic stand and

1

28 inch TN 3840 x 1ms

lightweight construction shows that it’s no 2160
professional-grade display.
However, once set up, its simple, curved stand,
2

27 inch IPS 3840 x 4ms

plain black rear and low-profile bezel makes for a 2160
stylish display. And so long as you treat it right, it
should continue to look good for a long time.
3

27 inch IPS 3840 x 4ms

This is even something of a step up model in LG’s 2160
range as it offers height adjustment and pivot so
you can use it in portrait mode. The stand can also
4

32 inch VA 3840 x 4ms

be removed to reveal a 100x100mm VESA mount. 2160
Otherwise you get no extras here. Connectivity is
one DisplayPort and two HDMI, but there’s no USB
5

32 inch IPS 3840 x 4ms

hub or speakers. 2160
The image quality is great, though. IPS glow and
backlight evenness might be a touch worse than
6

28 inch TN 3840 x 1ms

premium models, but that’s just nitpicking. Overall, 2160
it’s superb right out of the box. If you’re
looking for a cheap 4K screen this is the
7

27 inch IPS 3840 x 5ms

one to get. 80% 2160

109
 GROUP TEST
Keyboards

110

KEYBOARDS
The best mechanical setups out there
I
f the reports are to be
believed, there has been
something of a downturn in
the mechanical keyboard
market. With every man and
his dog having already bought into the
revolution, it seems that the
scene has already reached its
saturation point.
Q&A
Why mechanical
keyswitches?
Some users still aren’t
convinced by mechanical
keyswitches, however the
benefits are clear. They last
longer than membrane-type
keys, and they feel
responsive throughout their
life. They also have a far
more consistent resistance,
making for a more
even-feeling typing
experience.
Blue/Brown/Red?
The leading mechanical
keyswitch brand, Cherry MX,
has three main keyswitch
types. Tactile (Blue and
Brown) have a slight bump
as you press the key, giving
you physical feedback
when the button has been
pressed – Blue adds an
audible click to this.
Meanwhile Red provides a
linear motion with no
physical feedback of when
the switch has been
activated – you just see the
results on your screen.
However, that doesn’t mean there
isn’t still plenty of choice out there if
you want to upgrade or join in
fashionably late. So, we’ve grabbed
seven of the top keyboards you can
currently buy, all of which feature
mechanical keyswitches and RGB
backlighting, and, in some cases,
several more features, too.
KEYBOARDS
Group test
Which switch is best for
playing games?
Blue and Brown switches are
preferred by typists due to
the feedback they provide,
making it easier to touch
type. However, for gaming,
many prefer the linear type
switches as they allow for
rapid key presses.
Dictionary
Mechanical keyswitch -
This is any form of properly
engineered individual switch
used to register a keypress.
Older incarnations include
the buckling spring switch of
old IBM keyboards, while the
modern explosion of
mechanical keyboards has
been driven by the switches
made by Cherry MX.
Keycap - The thing you
actually press. You can
easily replace the keycaps
– there are hundreds of
colours and fonts you can
use, making it possible to
customise your keyboard.
111
 GROUP TEST
Keyboards
ASUS ROG CLAYMORE
www.asus.com £200
The ROG Claymore from Asus is the most expensive
keyboard that’s featured in this group test, and just
about the most expensive keyboard you can actually go
out and buy, full stop.
There’s good reason for this: you get the mechanical
1 switches and RGB lighting, a hefty metal build and
its signature feature – a detachable numpad that
can be affixed to either side of the device.
It makes it more appealing to leftys and, for
right-handed users, it can also be used for macro
keys or simply to allow for more mouse room.
The latter is welcome as it means your arms end
up at a more natural angle when using the classic
WASD-and-mouse gaming combo. You can also just
buy the keyboard without the numpad for £150.
This is also a great-looking piece of kit. The
‘Mayan’ pattern on the top plate and the backlit
ROG logo add just the right amount of flair.
Performance is also excellent. It’s available with
a range of Cherry MX switches, with us testing the
Cherry MX Red version, and they’re as good as ever.
We also like that you can remove the Micro USB
cable, though we’re less keen on there
being no USB hub and no extra gaming
keys. All told, though, this is fantastic. 85%
112
COOLER MASTER MASTERKEYS
PRO L RGB www.coolermaster.com £90
Cooler Master describes the MasterKeys Pro L as “no
gimmicks, just quality”, and despite it being the second
cheapest keyboard on our test, this is a tagline it well and
truly lives up to.
What Cooler Master has got so right here is the
2 simple design. The base and keys are unadorned
with logos, light-up sections or anything extraneous.
What’s more, there are some nice practical
touches here, too. The base rises slightly above the
sides of the keys, providing them with some
protection from getting snagged and broken – a
common problem with open designs.
The Micro USB cable for this keyboard is also
removable, making it easy to replace if it gets
damaged. All this and you get proper Cherry MX
keyswitches, with all three types available.
The lighting is fully programmable via Cooler
Master’s software, with downloadable layouts also
available, and there are four extra profile-switching
buttons above the numpad. On-the-fly macro
recording is also offered, however the software has
no macro editing function. It’s on-the-fly or nothing.
Nonetheless, the price, great design
and combination of features make this
keyboard a real winner. 90%

RAZER BLACKWIDOW
CHROMA V2 www.razer.com £165
Razer can sometimes be accused of manufacturing
products that are a little style over substance, but with
the Blackwidow Chroma V2, it has proved that statement
is far from the truth.
Not that it isn’t stylish. It’s minimalistic with nothing
3 more than a backlit logo adorning the matte-black
plastic body. The only thing letting it down is a
cheap-looking glossy plastic section in the top-right.
We also like that Razer provides a sample key
that’s accessible from outside the box so you can
try out which switch you prefer before you buy.
Also included is a proper cushioned wrist rest
that magnetically attaches to the front of the
keyboard. This provides the proper comfort and
support required of a wrist rest, unlike the token
hard plastic efforts you get on most keyboards.
You also get a USB pass-through. It’s only
USB 2.0, and it’s on the side, but it’s still nice to
have. There’s a headphone pass-through there, too.
As for Razer’s keyswitches, the Yellow ones work
well and are rated to last ages. What’s more, they
are compatible with Cherry MX keycaps so you can
customise them to your heart’s content.
The Blackwidow Chroma V2 is
pricey, but it largely delivers the goods. 85%
KEYBOARDS
CORSAIR K95 PLATINUM
www.corsair.com £195
The Corsair K95 Platinum is the second most
expensive keyboard on this test but it certainly has all
the bell and whistles to show for it, especially when it
comes to extra functions and key customisation.
You get six extra programmable keys on the left
4 side, multimedia buttons and a volume wheel on the
top-right, and the top-left houses buttons for
switching profiles, adjusting backlight brightness
and locking the Windows keys.
There’s more, too. A detachable wrist rest is
included and there’s a USB pass-through on the
back as well. The wrist rest also offers a rubber top
that’s bumpy on one side and dimpled on the other.
Also present is Corsair’s signature brushed
aluminium top section. This is joined by an RGB
strip that runs along the back edge, as well as a full
complement of RGB keys.
The design looks busy, but it still feels nice and
premium. Otherwise, this keyboard delivers on all
fronts. The Cherry MX Brown switches are fantastic
and Corsair’s software makes programming the
lighting and key functions easy. Super-fast Cherry
MX Speed switches are also available.
This keyboard is mighty expensive,
but has the functionality to justify that. 85%
113
 GROUP TEST
Keyboards
LOGITECH ORION SPARK G910
www.logitech.com £120
The G910 doesn’t make the best first impression,
thanks to a design that’s a bit ‘plastic fantastic’. While
several of the other keyboards on our test are externally
all plastic, with this you can really feel it.
The addition of strange 3D-looking symbols on the
5 gaming keys and the lit-up G logo in the top-left and
G910 logo on the wrist rest don’t help matters.
Then there’s the ARX dock. This wobbly piece of
blue plastic slides out the back to provide a place to
rest your phone, which you can link up to the
keyboard via an app. This lets you control aspects of
your PC and keyboard from your phone – like
lighting, music and seeing PC temperatures and
other stats. It’s nice, but the appeal is pretty niche.
You get plenty of extra keys, though. You’ve got
four gaming keys above the F1-F4 keys and five
more on the left. There are also buttons for profiles,
a host of media keys and a volume wheel.
As for performance, it holds up well. Logitech’s
Romer-G keyswitches feel great and they’re rated to
last for ages. However, you can’t replace the
keycaps with third-party ones, which is a shame.
Add in the non-removable wrist rest
and lack of a USB hub and you have a
keyboard that doesn’t wholly convince. 75%
114
ROCCAT SUORA FX
www.roccat.org £120
The Roccat Suora FX is as straightforward as a
mechanical gaming keyboard can get, and therein lies its
appeal. Its barebones design is completely devoid of any
unnecessary additions.
This not only results in a keyboard that looks
6 appealingly simple, but also means that you have
more space to move your mouse around.
The downside is that you miss out on a few of the
niceties of other keyboards. There’s no volume
wheel, no USB pass-through and no gaming keys.
You just get four extra keys above the numpad for
mute, volume down, volume up and ‘Game Mode’,
which disables the Windows key.
Otherwise, you get programmable RGB
backlighting and plenty of default secondary
functions that can be activated by hitting the Fn key.
You don’t, however, get Cherry MX keyswitches,
but rather ones made by TTC. They still offer good
performance and withstand 50 million keystrokes,
plus Cherry MX keycaps fit on them. Only the Brown
TTC switches are available, though, which have the
same action as Cherry MX Red switches.
This is a great, simple keyboard. It’s
just that the Cooler Master MasterKeys
Pro L does the same for less. 70%
 KEYBOARDS
Group test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) KEY TYPES TOTAL KEYS
Gaming keys
Multimedia keys

1
Asus ROG Claymore
200

106
6

2
Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L
90

7
109

3
Razer Blackwidow Chroma V2
165

110

4
Corsair K95 Platinum
195

6 6

120
5

Logitech Orion Spark G910

120

9 1

126
6

Roccat Suora FX
120

109

STEELSERIES APEX M800

7

SteelSeries Apex M800

www.steelseries.com £80 80

The SteelSeries Apex M800 is the cheapest keyboard 111

on test, at least here in the UK. Available for just £80, it’s
incredibly cheap for a fully programmable RGB keyboard.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s an instant bargain. ESSENTIALS
Things get off to a good start. Although all-plastic, Keyswitches Volume wheel USB pass-through Programmable macros

7 there’s a simplicity to the design of this keyboard,

1

Cherry MX Yes No Yes

with the illuminated sides being a nice little flourish.
You also get five extra keys down the left side,
there’s a two-port USB hub on the back and the
2

Cherry MX No No No
massive spacebar is surprisingly useful.
Unfortunately, this keyboard has a couple of
issues. The first is forgivable given the low price,
3

Razer No Yes Yes

which is that the keyswitches are SteelSeries’ own
QS1. Like the Logitech they’re incompatible with
replacements, though you do get replacement keys
4

Cherry MX Yes Yes Yes

for the Alt and SteelSeries keys in the box. The
switches otherwise feel nice and are rated for 60
million keystrokes. They have a linear action, like
5

Logitech No No Yes
Cherry MX Red, but with a short throw of just 3mm. Romer-G
The other problem, though, is that the
backlighting on the keys flickers. This is an issue
6

TTC No No Yes
we’ve encountered before and we find it
troublesome. It’s distracting, and can
make it difficult to focus on the keys
7

SteelSeries Yes Yes Yes

when looking directly at the keyboard. 70% QS1

115
 GROUP TEST
Wireless mice
WIRELESS MICE
Set your mouse free
O
ver the years, wireless
mice have got a lot
better, so much so that
the latest models offer
exceptional
performance. Many prefer the
reliability of wired mice, but for most
users wireless models are now good
enough for everyday use.
What’s more, many wireless mice
now offer the best of both worlds,
with you able to plug in a cable when
needed. It’s therefore intriguing to
116
note that several of the big names in
peripherals don’t currently offer a
wireless mouse solution. Still,
Logitech and Razer are doing their
best to hold up the wireless end, with
both companies offering several
models ¬ in fact they make five of the
seven models on test here.
We’ve put all seven mice on this
test through their paces, looking at
performance and features as well as
that all-important convenience that is
the hallmark of a wireless mouse.
WIRELESS MICE
Group test

Q&A
Wired or wireless?
Wireless is more convenient
and performance is good
enough now for most
gamers. However, wired
mice still have a slight
advantage – they are
endlessly reliable, and
they’re cheaper, too.

But what about batteries?

Every now and then you have
to charge wireless mice or
swap batteries over.
However, several wireless
mice now allow you to plug in
a cable when needed, which
also has the advantage of
switching to a wired
connection. Moreover, the
latest mice from Logitech
can also charge wirelessly
using the Logitech
PowerPlay mousemat.

Dictionary
DPI – Dots per inch is the
standard method by which
the sensitivity of a mouse is
measured. The higher the
DPI, the further the cursor
will move on your screen.

Reporting/polling rate
– This is how frequently a
mouse will report its position
to the computer, measured
in hertz (Hz). The faster it is,
the more accurate.

Latency – The potential

delay in a signal being
received and sent on to the
computer, as compared to a
direct wired connection. The
best wireless mice have a
latency of just a millisecond.

117
 GROUP TEST
Wireless mice
ROCCAT LEADR
www.roccat.com £130
Wireless mice with their own charging docks may be
uncommon, but they’re certainly not unique to the Razer
Mamba series. The Roccat Leadr also has such a feature
and more besides. A lot more, in fact.
This mouse is packed with goodies, including no
1 less than eight extra buttons. These include a tilt
switch behind the scroll wheel, a button below
where the thumb rests and an analogue paddle.
The only problem is that, despite Roccat’s best
efforts to position them so that they don’t get in the
way, it is easy to knock all these extra buttons. In
particular, the analogue switch frequently changed
weapons in the heat of battle. You can just disable
the offending buttons, but there’s no point having all
these extras if you can’t ever use them all.
That said, this mouse’s dock is quite something.
It’s very large and prominently presents your mouse
as though it were a work of art. The dock also
includes a charging indicator and illuminated
Roccat logo, so it certainly isn’t subtle.
All told, this is an excellent, feature-packed
mouse for a very competitive price. Its
ergonomics aren’t the best but its optical
sensor is excellent and overall
performance is top-notch. 80%
118
LOGITECH G403 PRODIGY
WIRELESS www.logitech.com £80
Logitech’s G403 mouse is the company’s attempt at
making a mouse that has all the performance but none of
the extras, making it affordable but free from
compromise. And largely it has succeeded.
At Logitech’s list price of £99.99, it’s a bit close to
2 other mice that have far more features, but with it
currently available for around £80, it’s great value.
The mouse can be used in a wired mode. You’ll
need to unplug the receiver to use a cable, but at
least the option’s there. There are also a couple of
RGB lighting zones, and its onboard memory
means you can take presets with you on the go.
The best thing, though, is that its ergonomics
and performance are excellent. The simple,
right-handed design with its thick rubberised sides
sits effortlessly in the hand, suits a variety of grips
and the mouse is light at just 107 grams. The six
extra buttons are also perfectly placed. The
mouse’s PMW3366 optical sensor is fantastic,
delivering near flawless performance.
If you’re just after a high-performance wireless
mouse for the least outlay, the G403 is the one to
get – or opt for the G703 which is
identical, but includes PowerPlay and
so is a touch more expensive. 90%

LOGITECH G903
www.logitech.com £130
This is Logitech’s new first-class gaming mouse. It
includes a bunch of features, including an ambidextrous
design and a freewheeling scroll. However, its headline
feature is the inclusion of Logitech’s PowerPlay tech.
This integrates wireless charging right into a
3 mousemat, meaning the mouse is always charging.
This works really well, though the impact on
long-term battery remains to be seen. Also, the
PowerPlay mat costs an extra £125 which is quite
an investment. Otherwise, the G903 has lots going
for it, though you wouldn’t know just from looking:
its ambidextrous design doesn’t look comfortable.
In use, however, the G903 works well, and the
secret is its interchangeable buttons. You get back
and forward buttons on both sides of the mouse,
but whereas this usually makes such mice awkward
to hold, here you can take out the buttons from
whichever side you’re not using and insert a cover.
Its other features work well, too, such as the two
DPI buttons behind the scroll wheel. We’re less keen
on the tiltable scroll wheel, but the fantastic optical
sensor pulls things back.
There isn’t a feature that makes the
G903 shine – other than PowerPlay –
but it’s still a versatile option. 80%
WIRELESS MICE
Group test
ASUS ROG SPATHA
www.asus.com £130
The Asus ROG Spatha is bursting with features. In the
box you also get a dock and stand, cables,
interchangeable button switches, a mini torx screwdriver
for dismantling the mouse and a case to store it all in.
The default switches are rated for 20 million clicks
4 and require a 60 gf (gram force) to activate, while
the alternate pair require a 75 gf. They’re only rated
to a million clicks, though, which suggests Asus
knows most people won’t swap them.
The mouse itself has six extra buttons, as well as
your usual left, right, back, forward and middle. Four
of these are positioned where your thumb rests,
which brings us to a major frustration.
That positioning means there’s basically no
room to rest your thumb, making it awkward to lift
and move the mouse without accidentally hitting a
button. This is made worse by the device’s large size
and its heavy build, measuring 135x90x43mm and
weighing 179 grams.
These ergonomic issues rather kill the Spatha’s
chances, and the choice of a laser sensor further
reduces its appeal for some gamers. If, for some
reason, the ergonomics do work for you
and you do prefer a laser sensor, it
offers good performance and value. 70%
119
 GROUP TEST
Wireless mice
RAZER MAMBA
www.razer.com £150
The Mamba has been one of the most desirable mice
on the market ever since the first version arrived nearly
ten years ago. And after all these years, it remains one of
the best you can get.
Its key appeal is in the charging dock. While several
5 mice offer wired and wireless functionality, few also
have a dock on which to rest and charge it. This
makes using the Mamba that much more
convenient as it quickly becomes a habit that you
just dock the mouse after every use. Its wired option
only comes into play for very long gaming sessions,
or if you just prefer to game in a wired mode.
It also helps that the Mamba looks great,
although it isn’t quite as nice as some of Razer’s
wired mice when it comes to ergonomics. It’s just a
touch more compact and the top surface isn’t quite
as grippy as some.
The biggest problem with this mouse, though, is
its laser sensor. It’s good for tracking on a variety of
surfaces but isn’t as good as optical for providing
smooth and stable tracking on fabric mousemats.
The tiltable scroll wheel is also unnecessary for a
gaming mouse. If you can get past this,
though, then the Mamba remains an
excellent wireless mouse. 80%
120
RAZER ATHERIS
www.razer.com £55
The Atheris is a real surprise package from Razer. This
tiny wireless device packs in all the core technology that
you’d hope for but at a fraction of the price of most
wireless mice. It’s the cheapest one on this test.
Part of the reason it manages to be so cheap is that
6 it uses disposable AA batteries rather than
rechargeables, but nonetheless it’s impressive stuff.
What’s also worth noting is how well put together it
is. Pry open the top and you can access the battery
compartment wherein you’ll also find the stowage
location for the tiny USB wireless adapter.
This clever system means you can toss the
mouse into a bag without fear of losing the adapter.
And if the need does arise, the Atheris can also be
used in Bluetooth mode. Running off disposable
batteries also allows this mouse to last a whopping
12-and-a-half days of use before it runs dry.
Of course, there are compromises, the most
obvious of which is the small size. Such a cramped
design means it isn’t as comfortable as large mice
for long sessions. Also, although ambidextrous in
design, you only get back/forward buttons on the
left side of the device.
Overall, though, this is one of the
finest travel gaming mice you can buy. 90%
 WIRELESS MICE
Group test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) DPI WEIGHT
(dots per inch) (grams)

1
Roccat Leadr
130

12,000

134
6

2
Logitech G403
80

7 12,000

107

3
Logitech G903
130

12,000

110

4
Asus ROG Spatha
130

8,200

179
5

Razer Mamba
150

16,000

133
6

Razer Atheris
55

7,200

66

RAZER LANCEHEAD
7

Razer Lancehead

www.razer.com £125 125

16,000

The Lancehead is Razer’s newest wireless mouse and 111

it’s a competitor to the Logitech G903. Like that mouse,

it has an ambidextrous design, and crucially it lacks the
charging dock that makes the Razer Mamba more pricey. ESSENTIALS
While it has many similarities, there are several key Sensor Type Buttons Weight system Wired/Wireless

7 differences. For a start, unlike the G903, this mouse

1

Optical 14 No Wired/Wireless
looks great. The silver version isn’t as nice as black,
but it’s still much classier than Logitech’s offering.
The ergonomics and button layout are a bit
2

Optical 6 Yes Wired/Wireless

more familiar and approachable, too. You get a
normal lightweight scroll wheel and DPI buttons
that are in line, rather than next to each other.
3

Optical 11 Yes Wired/Wireless

However, you don’t get the removable buttons of
the G903 so you’ll just have to disable, via software,
the buttons on the side you don’t use.
4

Laser 12 No Wired/Wireless
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that it uses a
laser sensor, where optical is still the gamers choice.
This alone would put many off getting this over the
5

Laser 9 No Wired/Wireless
G903, though some users do still prefer laser,
particularly if you use a hard mousemat or if you use
your mouse on a tabletop.
6

Optical 6 No Wireless
There’s not enough here to push the Lancehead
to the top. It’s good for left-handed Razer
fans but the G903 or the Mamba are
7

Laser 9 No Wired/Wireless
better for right-handed users. 75%

121
 GROUP TEST
Speakers

SPEAKERS
Turn your PC into a high-quality multimedia centre
122

W
ith gaming
headsets and
high-end
headphones all
the rage, PC
speakers are the forgotten child of
the enthusiast PC market. Not today.
Spending just £30 or so will get you
a huge upgrade in quality and volume.
Not that £30 is as much as you can or
should spend. We’ve compiled a
selection of speakers that runs from
under £20 all the way up to £400.
Whether you’re after something basic
for occasional use or you really want to
make an impact, you’ll find a speaker
set here to suit you.
Q&A
How much bass do I need?
As much as you want. It’s that
simple. If you like how certain
speakers sound, get the
biggest sub you can and
enjoy. However, as general
rule, spending the same
amount on speakers without a
separate sub-woofer will get
you better overall sound
quality, so it comes down to
what sort of music you like.
Do watts matter?
The wattage rating you’ll see
on speaker systems is only a
very crude indication of how
loud they can get. That’s
because there are several
other factors in play, such as
speaker/driver efficiency. As
a rough indicator, wattage can
be useful, but pay attention to
the RMS (root mean square)
level and not the peak level.
Quantity or quality?
One of the biggest
considerations is whether to
go for less powerful but better
quality speakers or all out
power. Generally I’d opt for
the former when it comes to
games, but if you’re looking
for something that you can
really crank up for parties – or
just when you’re doing a bit of
housework – then you may
want that extra oomph.
SPEAKERS
Group test
Dictionary
2.0, 2.1, 5.1…?
The number of speakers in a
set. The first number tells you
how many satellite speakers
there are, the second how
many sub-woofers. Soundbar
speakers have several
satellites in one bar and often
have virtual surround sound.
Frequency response
The range of audio
frequencies – measured in
hertz (Hz) – the speaker set
can reproduce. Somewhere
around 50Hz to 20kHz is
typical, but numbers outside
that range deliver more.
123
 GROUP TEST
Speakers
BOWERS & WILKINS MM-1
www.bowers-wilkins.com £399
By far the most expensive speakers in this round-up, the
Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 are proper high-end hi-fi audio squeezed
into desktop form. The question is, can they possibly justify the
price? Short answer: yes.
Clearly you’ll need deep pockets to even consider
1 them, but if you’re after a PC speaker set that
delivers truly exceptional audio quality and looks
fantastic too, there simply isn’t anything better.
What’s perhaps most striking is just how small
they are considering their audiophile aspirations
and high asking price: they’re just under 17cm tall
and 10cm square. Yet what perfectly formed
speakers they are. Covered all round in speaker
fabric broken only by an aluminium strip running
round the middle and down the back, and an
aluminium plate on top, they simply ooze class.
They sound classy too. Astonishingly deep and
powerful bass is joined by a rich and detailed
mid-range and a top-end that simply sparkles, plus
they sound great at both high and low volumes,
without the need to tweak any EQ. Add the lovely
little wireless remote, headphone jack, 3.5mm jack
input and a USB input that uses the
MM-1’s own high-quality DAC, and you
have the perfect PC audio package. 90%
124
CREATIVE T3250
www.creative.com £45
The Creative T3250 is a perfect 2.1-vs-2.0 counter to the
company’s own T20 speakers. Although a little cheaper, they’re
in the same ball park, and while the latter offers clarity and
mid-range, the T3250 is all about that bass.
The impressively petite sub delivers just the sort of
2 rumble that can bring explosions in games and films
to life while also delivering the thud that certain
genres of music require. You also get Bluetooth
connectivity that’s easily set up via the wired
remote, which also houses the power and volume
control and power indicator. It’s a useful addition
but so lightweight you’ll need to stick it down to stop
it being dragged around by its own cable.
This is clearly a fairly cheap 2.1 speaker set – in
fact, it’s more of a sub-£40 set in terms of pure
speaker quality. It’s the Bluetooth that raises the
price. As such the build quality is basic. It all feels a
little flimsy and none of the cables are removable.
The overall sound quality is let down by a lack of
clarity from the satellite speakers, there’s a
noticeable mid-range gap between the relatively
weedy satellites and the sub-woofer, and you can’t
adjust bass level. All told, a perfectly
adequate entry level 2.1 option, but one
with definite limitations. 70%

CREATIVE GIGAWORKS T20
SERIES II www.creative.com £60
The Creative T20 was something of a revelation when it
arrived ten years ago. In a market dominated by big subs and
satellite speakers galore, the T20 delivered quality over quantity
without breaking the bank.
All these years later there’s only been one revision of
3 the T20, in the shape of the T20 Series II, and the
set’s impact hasn’t lessened one bit.
The T20s just sound so damn good. It’s the
combination of detail and power with a sound that
stretches from surprisingly low bass right the way
through the mid-range and to the top-end. In
contrast, many 2.1 speaker sets are missing that
vital mid-range that brings guitar, piano and
vocal-driven music to life.
The lack of a sub does mean you miss that bass
thud, and compared to the more expensive 2.0 sets
reviewed here the T20 does lack top-end detail. But
for the price, it’s fantastic.
It’s stylish and well made too. Although all-plastic
there’s a heft and solidity to this speaker set. For
features you get bass and treble dials and front-
mounted headphone and aux inputs on the right
speaker, along with the main input on its
rear. So while the T20 is basic, it
delivers where it counts. 88%
SPEAKERS
Group test
RAZER LEVIATHAN
www.razerone.com £180
“One soundbar to rule them all”, declares Razer on the box of
this review sample supplied by Overclockers. Razer does have a
point – as you’d hope given the price. One area where the
Leviathan doesn’t immediately impress, though, is design.
The plain old plastic used throughout isn’t
4 particularly premium and the glossy plastic around
the controls in the centre of the soundbar actually
looks a little cheap. Those controls could also do
with some backlighting to tell the seven identically
shaped buttons apart.
Otherwise this soundbar delivers. Its bass
presence is huge – it’s by far the most bombastic on
test – and yet there’s high-end detail and good
mid-range warmth too. It can’t match the MM-1 for
overall finesse but it’s not bad. The bass control is
too fiddly, however.
You get plenty of features: Bluetooth with easy
NFC setup, Dolby virtual surround, three sound
modes (Gaming, Movie and Music), digital optical
input and an analogue 3.5mm jack. The virtual
surround sound adds immersion to games and
movies, although it doesn’t quite bring the
competitive advantage of true surround.
There’s a lot to like. If Razer could
tweak the design it would be perfect. 82%
125
 GROUP TEST
Speakers
LOGITECH Z533
www.logitech.com £80
You would expect this to be a decent step up from the
Logitech T3250, but actually it’s surprising how much of a leap
it is, for just a £30 or so price difference. It’s available in either
black or white, and both versions look great.
The option of covers for the satellite speakers would
5 have been nice, it’s true. As for build quality,
perhaps the two most notable improvements
compared to the T3250 are that all the cables, bar
the wired remote, are removable, making setup,
adjustment and cable-replacement far more
convenient. The remote itself is heftier too, so it
stays firmly planted on your desk, and it has a lovely
big knob – sorry – for turning the speakers on and
adjusting volume. Plus it houses 3.5mm jacks for
headphone and auxiliary input as well as a bass
adjustment dial. The sizeable sub also has a 3.5mm
jack input and a pair of RCA inputs.
As for sound quality, that sub doesn’t disappoint
– it can hit hard and loud. The satellites also offer a
huge step up in high-end detail compared to the
T3250, though there is still something of a
mid-range gap. The Z533 is ideal for gaming,
movies and EDM/hip-hop, but the
Leviathan and premium 2.0 speakers
are better for other types of music. 80%
126
LOGITECH Z150
www.logitech.com £17
For the money – a very small amount of money – these
speakers boast a whopping 3W RMS output, one 3.5cm driver
per speaker, a headphone jack, a secondary aux input jack and a
combined volume/power control.
The latter three are all situated on the front of the
6 right speaker while round the back is the main input
– which sadly is a tethered cable rather than a
proper jack socket – and the socket for the included
mains power adapter. Some speakers at this price
range are either passive or USB powered. The latter
can be useful as it saves a mains plug socket, but
then it uses up a USB socket. Which is more
convenient will be down to you.
These small, all-plastic, speakers are reasonably
well made, all things considered, and they look more
stylish than you might expect.
What’s more, they sound okay. They’re
reasonably clear and have far more power than any
monitor or laptop speakers. They can’t really stretch
to kitchen-party duties but are plenty loud enough
for daily desktop listening.
Doubling your outlay will gain you a big leap in
volume and bass, but for a cheap-as-
possible upgrade to monitor or laptop
speakers the Z150s deliver. 80%
 SPEAKERS
Group test

STACKED UP
PRICE (£) Power (watts RMS) FREQUENCY RESPONSE (Hz)
Minimum
Maximum

1
Bowers & Wilkins MM-1
399

72

22 38
6
Creative T3250

2
45

7 30

20 35

3
Creative T20
60

28

20 50

4
Razer Leviathan
180

60

20
5

Logitech Z533
80

60

20 55
6

Logitech Z150
17

20 150

EDIFIER R1600T III

7

Edifier R1600T III

www.edifier.com £90 90

60

20 30
If Creative’s T20 and T3250 bring the 2.0 vs 2.1 fight to the
sub £60 mark, it’s the Edifier R1600T and Logitech Z533 that
bring it to the sub £90 level. And what a step up in quality that
£30 or so gets you. ESSENTIALS
On every level the R1600T is a noticeable upgrade Speaker configuration Satellite speaker dimensions (cm)

7 form the T20, including size. Standing 26cm tall and

1

2.0 17 x 10 x 10
with a 16 x 18cm footprint, these are proper
bookshelf hi-fi speaker-sized units – they’re easily
double the size of the more expensive B&W MM-1.
2

2.1 15 x 7 x 9
They also use some premium build materials,
the real wood sides contrasting nicely with the
silver/grey of the rest of the chassis and removable
3

2.0 23 x 9 x 13.5
speaker covers.
For features you get two pairs of RCA sockets for
inputs, joined by a mains power switch on the back.
4

4.1 (soundbar + sub) 9.5 x 50 x 7

On the right side of the right speaker are the
well-engineered bass, treble and volume knobs, plus
there’s a little IR remote with volume and mute.
5

2.1 17 x 10 x 8.5
With that extra size comes power and quality.
For sheer bass oomph these kept up with all the
sub-woofer equipped units other than the
6

2.0 15 x 8.5 x 7.5

Leviathan. You also get a much more pronounced
yet smooth and balanced mid-range and
high-end. Hi-fi in look and price, these
7

2.0 25.5 x 15 x 21
are fantastic if you have the space. 88%

127
 Contents

135
KIT REVIEWS
ALL THE HARDWARE YOU NEED TO 151
SUPERCHARGE YOUR PC

143

133
145

147

153

128
 BUYERS
GUIDE
Don’t want to put your own rig
together? We round up the
best prebuilt PCs on the
market today.
Turn to page 156

139

30
PAGES
full of must
have kit!

155

148 137
129
 REVIEWS
Hardware

DIGITAL STORM BOLT X

www.digitalstorm.com From £1282 (approx) depending on chipset
What makes a small form factor system? Surely massive, hulking machines don’t qualify, but is
PC shaving only an inch or two off a standard mid-tower desktop enough? That’s the question asked by the
Bolt X, the latest iteration of Digital Storm’s “slim and powerful” small form factor design.

Measuring 15.5 x 6 x 20 inches, and weighing up to
30lb, the Bolt X is only an inch or two smaller than
many mid-tower cases, and massive compared to
super-compact systems, such as the Corsair One.
We wouldn’t call it small judging solely from the
exterior, but things are different once you look
inside. The most impressive achievement of the
Bolt X’s size is its slimness – at only six inches wide,
some finesse is required to fit all the components
soundly. That includes a vertical alignment of the
graphics card, connected to the mobo by a long
ribbon cable.
Speaking of that GPU, it sure is a doozy. The Bolt
X is one helluva gaming machine, rocking a single
GTX 1080 Ti for pixel-pushing power. It doesn’t pack
the same punch as crazy high-end dual-GPU builds,
but there’s also no SLI to worry about. The single
GTX 1080 Ti is a powerhouse on its own, pairing
nicely with Intel’s i7-8700K Coffee Lake CPU. Both
are slotted (the GPU remotely, as we mentioned)
into an Asus ROG Strix Z370-I motherboard that
also sports 32 gigs of DDR4-3000 RAM.
The first thing we noticed when firing up the Bolt
X: Wow, this thing is loud. The CPU fan, a Corsair
H115i 280mm Liquid CPU Cooler, was whirring
loudly at idle, kicking up to a roar at even the
slightest hint of load. The problem was quickly
sorted, though, with a tweak to the fan control
profile in Corsair Link. Without much ado, the Bolt X
was purring along quietly.
So, what kind of power does this compact system
pack? Quite a bit. The GTX 1080 Ti crushed our
1080p gaming benchmarks, averaging 167fps
in Rise of the Tomb Raider, 104fps in Total
War: Warhammer II, and 74fps in the
super-demanding Ghost Recon: Wildlands.
Those are largely overkill numbers, though, and we
wager most users won’t be saddling a £2k system
(yep, the Bolt X is pricey) with a 1080p screen.
1440p is a much more logical companion, and the
1080 Ti performs admirably in that slot.
Rise of the Tomb Raider’s three-part benchmark
served no issue, with the Bolt X scoring 145fps in
the Mountain Pass, 110fps in Syria, and 106fps in
the Geothermal Valley—an average of 121fps;
perfect for a high refresh rate 1440p monitor such
as the Asus ROG Swift PG279Q or the Acer
Predator XB271HU. Total War: Warhammer II’s
Battle benchmark proved a bit more demanding,
but with a score of 74fps, the Bolt X still survived
unscathed. The only benchmark to dip below the
coveted 60fps line was Ghost Recon: Wildlands –
but just barely. A score of 59fps there is nothing to
scoff at, as that game’s Ultra graphics preset brings
even the most impressive systems to their knees.
Small or not, the Bolt X brings the might of a
full-size gaming powerhouse. And while pricey, it’s
not nearly as extravagant as some of the pre-builts
that we could mention. Throw in Digital Storm’s
top-notch build quality, metallic paint finish, custom
cable-sleeving, and did we mention the built-in
software-controlled RGB lightshow? It’s clear to see
that X marks the spot.
PROCESSOR: INTEL CORE I7-8700K @ 3.7GHZ / GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX
1080 TI 11GB / RAM: 32GB DIGITAL STORM PERFORMANCE SERIES DDR4-3000 /
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I GAMING / PRIMARY STORAGE: 500GB WD
BLUE M.2 / ADDITIONAL STORAGE: 3TB SEAGATE/TOSHIBA / COOLING: CORSAIR
H115I 280MM LIQUID CPU COOLER / PSU: 750W LIAN-LI PE-750 / CASE:
CDIGITAL STORM BOLT X WITH STORM BLUE EXOTIC PAINT / WARRANTY:
90% LIFETIME EXPERT CARE WITH THREE-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY
(THREE-YEAR LABOUR AND ONE-YEAR PART REPLACEMENT)

BENCHMARKS
ZERO-
POINT

Cinebench R15 (Index) 959 1,644 (71%)

CrystalDisk QD32
1,721 559 (-68%)
Sequential Read (MB/s)
CrystalDisk QD32
1,473 529 (-64%)
Sequential Write (MB/s)
Rise of the Tomb Raider
93 121 (30%)
(Avg fps)
Total War: Warhammer II
55 74 (35%)
(Avg fps)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
48 59 (23%)
Wildlands (Avg fps)

3DMark Fire Strike (Index) 9,128 12,863 (41%)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Our desktop zero-point consists of an Intel Core i5-8400, 16GB of DDR4 at 2,666MT/s, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, and a
500GB Samsung 960 Evo PCIe SSD. All games tested at 1440p using highest available preset.

130
HARDWARE
Reviews

131
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 POWER DRAW
Combine the
i3-8100 with a GTX 1080,
and 16GB of DDR4, and
you’ll be fine with a
550W PSU running it.

INTEL CORE i3-8100

2 WOT NO
OVERCLOCK?
Some mobos may let you www.intel.com £105
overclock this, but Intel
doesn’t let you bump up
its budget parts. With Intel’s first foray into its Coffee Lake architecture, we saw one major difference from
CPU its seventh series processors: core count. Each part received two extra cores.

3 4K STREAMING
Thanks to support
for HDCP 2.2 you’ll
finally be able to have
access to those 4K
streams without worry.
4 AMD
COMPETITION
The closest red rival for
single core performance
is AMD’s Ryzen 5 1500X,
coming in at £143.
The Core i3-8100 is the cream of the crop from that
redesign. It goes up from last gen’s two-core,
four-thread design to a flat four cores and no
hyperthreading. It’s a £105 Core i5 from last gen,
with a 3.6GHz clock count and integrated graphics,
making it versatile both for gaming and for those
looking to build a cheap and cheerful HTPC too.
In CineBench, we saw scores of 156 on the
single core, and just shy of 600 on the
multithreaded scenario. To put that into
context, a Sky Lake Core i5-6600K, scores
90%
166 and 598. In games, we saw similar
performance, with 76fps in Far Cry Primal at 1440p
with a GTX 1080 versus the Core i7-8700K’s 77fps,
and 42fps in Total War: Attila against the 8700K’s
43fps. If gaming is your focus, the Core i3-8100 is a
great option. The only downside compared to those
older Core i5s? No overclocking capability, and no
turbo. Honestly, that’s a small price to pay.
BASE CLOCK: 3.6GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 4/4 / LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM /
CACHE: 6MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @ 2666 MHZ /
MAX PCIE LANES: 16

132
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP

STEELSERIES ARCTIS 3
www.steelseries.com £135
The tried-and-true Steelseries
Arctis brand is one we trust for
HEADSET
providing solidly built,
comfortable headsets.
COOLER MASTER
The Arctis 3 Bluetooth edition is a bit COSMOS C700P
of an odd one, though, as it lacks the www.coolermaster.com £260
USB connectivity and RGB lighting of
the Arctis 5, yet costs more than it A premium case with a legendary
too. The headset is designed for a heritage. The C700P is a fantastic
very specific scenario, and that is for combination of aluminium, RGB and
the mobile gamer. design merged into a XL Tower. With
You can, of course, plug it directly an array of great features, it’s
into your rig via the analogue cables, perhaps one of the best
but the battery is reserved for chassis out there at this
Bluetooth use only. The soundscape price point.
85 %
is good, great even – well balanced
with no emphasis on either end. But
paying an additional £55 for
Bluetooth seems a bit steep.
DRIVER TECHNOLOGY: DYNAMIC / FREQUENCY RESPONSE:
20 HZ - 22 KHZ / IMPEDANCE: 32 OHMS /

78% CONNECTIVITY: ANALOGUE, FOUR & THREE POLE

SPLIT / BATTERY LIFE: 28 HOURS

PHANTEKS ENTHOO
EVOLV FLOW
www.phanteks.com £200

This is an upgrade to the ATX

SENNHEISER GSP 600 variant, and thanks to its honeycomb
cutouts, enables superior internal
www.bit.ly/sennheisergsp600 £220 airflow to its predecessor,
making it ideal for anyone
This headset is damn good. looking to craft a
Whether it’s the build quality, liquid-cooled system.
88 %
HEADSET
the fit and feel of the cups, the
sound stage or the materials
used, it’s just awesome.

Admittedly, the price is steep, but you

get a lot for your money. The fit and
feel is tight – not too constricting, but
secure. Noise isolation has
been paramount in the
design of the GSP 600,
and you can tell. The
likelihood of hearing much FRACTAL DESIGN MESHIFY C
outside of your game is slim. www.fractal-design.com £80
On top of that, the soundscape is
incredible. It’s not a reference The Meshify may be at the more
soundstage, that’s for sure – the bass budget end of the spectrum, but it still
is intense, enveloping, but unlike most touts an arsenal of features. Whether
headsets, the treble doesn’t suffer that’s the support for up to a 360mm
from it. It’s clear and an absolute joy radiator, tempered glass side
to listen to. panel, or great cable
DRIVER: DYNAMIC / FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 10 HZ - 30 management support, it’s
91 %
92% KHZ / IMPEDANCE: 28 OHMS /
CONNECTIVITY: ANALOGUE, FOUR & THREE POLE SPLIT
a case that can do it all.

133
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 D-PAD SWAP
Although on the
cheaper side of life, MSI
also includes a more
circular d-pad cover,
giving the GC30 a bit
more versatility.

2 USB+WIRELESS
You can connect it
to your rig via a tiny 2.4 MSI FORCE GC30 GAMING CONTROLLER
GHz USB Wireless
dongle. There’s a
2m-long USB cable, too.
www.msi.com £37
This is the first time that we’ve placed a controller in the main spot. That alone should tell

3 BAT TERY LIFE ?

By default, the
GC30 offers up eight
CONTROL
PAD
you just how impressed we are with MSI’s Force GC30. In a world where PC gaming is
becoming ever more well-stocked with console-style titles, is now the time to pick up a pad?
hours of use, and this is
our only criticism. We’d We say the answer is yes. After all, for the games controllers. The materials are good, and although
have happily taken a bit that need them (here’s looking at you Dragon Ball not weighty, it’s not light enough to feel tacky.
of extra weight for FighterZ), using a controller over a mouse and Not to overstate it, but the value factor here is
double that. keyboard makes life so more enjoyable. If the high superb. To find such build quality in a wireless
price of wireless pads has previously put you off, the controller at this price point is ridiculous. This isn’t

4 NO
BLUETOOTH?
There’s no Bluetooth, but
MSI GC30 is the pad for you.
It’s a fantastically well-bundled bit of kit, with an
awesome finish, a typical Xbox controller layout,
the route we expected MSI to go down, but if this is
any sign of how its peripherals are going to develop
going forward, consider us excited.
we wouldn’t say no to a
premium £50 version vibration and, more importantly, wireless (or COMPATIBLE OS: WINDOWS 10/8.1/7, ANDROID 4.1 AND ABOVE / BATTERY: 600
with it. Hint hint, nudge,
nudge, MSI.
wired) connectivity, all for £37. Everything
feels solid, which is a rarity for cheaper
95% MAH BATTERY (8 HOURS USE) / ACCESSORIES: ADDITIONAL D-PAD COVER /
CABLES: 2M USB CABLE + 30CM CABLE FOR ANDROID / WEIGHT: 280G

134

ASUS ROG STRIX
X370-I GAMING
www.asus.com £185
This is a really tidy piece of motherboard design, but it’s not
entirely without its downsides.
MOBO
We can tell you just how impressive a
motherboard this thing is, and that’s
no word of a lie. The raised M.2 PCB
integrated into the audio hardware
makes it a really exceptional piece of
mobo design.
However, the VRM solution
has its flaws. At idle it draws
30W more than its own ATX
84%
ASUS ROG STRIX
Z370-G
www.asus.com £191
We’ve seen the price of a 16GB kit of memory increase
exponentially, so a Micro-ATX system is now much more appetising.
MOBO
The Z370-G is a fantastic Micro-ATX
offering, packing a small form factor,
and plenty of connectivity into its tiny,
yet affordable, confines. The aesthetic
is absolutely stunning, and, although
we do wish it had some form of rear
I/O cover internally for prettier
builds, it’s something we’re
willing to let slide.
93%
HARDWARE
Reviews
ROUND-UP
VERTAGEAR S300 –
INFERNO RED
www.vertagear.com £230
Vertagear’s S300 fabric chair is a
fantastic entry point into the gaming
chair ecosystem. Available in a load of
different colours, it’s easy to
set up, and it gets a
thumbs-up for comfort as 87 %
well. Pricing is just right.
siblings, and it doesn’t overclock as
high (coming in at 3.9GHz, versus the
4.0GHz we usually achieve). Whilst
this isn’t damning, it’s worth noting if
you’re looking at an ITX Ryzen build.
CHIPSET/SOCKET: X370 / AM4 / FORM FACTOR: ITX /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 32GB DDR4 @ 3600 MT/S /
M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 2X M.2 /
SATA SUPPORT: 4X SATA 6GB/S
NOBLECHAIRS EPIC SERIES
BLACK/RED
www.noblechairs.com £300
Next up is Noblechairs’ Epic Series.
Still following that bucket seat fashion,
its faux leather composition is a
delight to sit in. Not so great in
warm weather, but the
range of adjustability on it 83 %
is staggering.
NOBLECHAIRS ICON TOP
GRAIN LEATHER
www.noblechairs.com £520
Performance is a blast, too. We £520 is a good GTX 1080’s worth
coupled this with an Intel Core of cash to splash. Happily, the Icon is
i3-8350K, and a GTX 1060, and found a premium product. Its leather fabric
it made a fantastic little mid-range finish makes it right at home in any
1080p machine for little over £1,200. office, and is perfect for
CHIPSET/SOCKET: Z370/LGA 1151 / anyone with more refined
taste than the typical %
FORM FACTOR: MICRO-ATX / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB
84
DDR4 @ 4000 MT/S / M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 2X M.2 /
SATA SUPPORT: 6X SATA 6GB/S
bucket seat style.
135
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 1440P VALUE?
Expect average
framerates of around
70 in most titles, with 40
fps in some of the more
demanding games.

ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1070 TI A8G

2 ASUS DESIGN
Asus’s DCIII cooling
design is a fantastically www.asus.com £500
quiet solution for the
GTX 1070 Ti, and it looks
classy as hell. This is the world’s most confusing graphics card. A seemingly nonsensical reaction to the
GRAPHICS Vega 56, AMD’s only competitive gaming GPU right now (unless you’re into mining), the GTX
CARD 1070 Ti doesn’t make much sense. It’s a card that’s simultaneously amazing, yet annoying.
3 OVERCLOCKING
HEADROOM
With a bit of a push you
The difference between a GTX 1060 6GB and 3GB 0-4 fps across our four test titles. That’s ridiculous
can easily get a 220 MHz is 128 CUDA cores. The difference between a given the £80 difference in price.
overclock on the core, GTX 1080 and a GTX 1070 Ti is 128 CUDA cores and What you’re getting with the GTX 1070 Ti is a
boosting it further. a drop down from GDDR5X to GDDR5. So why does discounted 1080 under a new badge, with slightly
the 1070 Ti warrant a new designation when the cheaper memory. On top of that Nvidia gets to pitch
3GB 1060 doesn’t? Good question. it as a new product, and at the same time, it nibbles
4 4K?
Although it’s
possible to achieve 4K
You can’t beat the GTX 1060 3GB for price to
performance. The fps difference between the two
at that last smidge of market share that AMD’s Vega
56 currently holds.
resolutions with some is, on average, a meagre 5%. The 1070 Ti LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET / TRANSISTOR COUNT: 12 BILLION / CUDA
AA tweaking, itdoesn’t
quite hit the mark yet.
follows the same trend. At 1440p, the
difference between the cards ranges from
90% CORES: 2432 / CORE/BOOST CLOCK: 1607/1683 MHZ / MEMORY CAPACITY:
8GB GDDR5 / DISPLAY CONNECTORS: DISPLAYPORT 1.4, HDMI 2.0(B)

136
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP
MEDION ERAZER X7851
www.medion.com £1,150
It’s great to see Medion really push into the gaming sector. The
Erazer brand promises fantastic value for your money, but does it
actually hit the mark?

To be short, yes, it does. Our sample

unit here is the slightly aged X7851, GAMING ASUS RT-AC86U
LAPTOP
packing a Core i7-7700HQ, 16GB of www.asus.com £220
DDR4, a 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD and a
GTX 1060 6GB graphics card at its There’s nothing quite like having a
heart. It’s actually a fairly accurate decent home router. Asus’s RT-
representation of a mid-range rig at AC86U is perfect for anyone looking
the moment. Combine those innards for that additional customisation.
with the 17-inch IPS screen and a From smart bandwidth management
£1,150 price tag, and well, it speaks to VPN setup, your own personal AI
for itself. Cloud, 5 GHz dual bands and more,
The build quality of the Erazer the RT-AC86U makes the
X7851 is good. It’s not whole affair as easy and
84 %
exemplary, but the painless as possible.
soft-touch finish is a
nice addition to its design.
The one thing we wish it had
was a more slimline design, however,
especially when it comes to its
distracting bezel.
SCREEN SIZE: 17-INCH / NATIVE RESOLUTION:
1920X1080 / GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB /
MEMORY: 16GB DDR4 / STORAGE: 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD
86% RAZER BLACKWIDOW TE
CHROMA V2 YELLOW SWITCH
www.razerzone.com £160

Man, this keyboard is good.

Razer’s yellow switch lacks the
clack of its standard switch in
favour of a more subtle Cherry
Red-like linear click instead.
Combine that with the stunning
RGB lighting and a
fantastically comfortable
wrist rest and there’s little 93%
to fault here.

VIEWSONIC XG
GAMING XG2530
www.viewsonic.com £420
First-person shooters are fast-paced dens of destruction. Split-
second reactions can mean the difference between life and death.
MONITOR
We tend to advocate higher refresh
rate screens for the enjoyment factor.
However, once you get above 165Hz
it becomes less about enjoyment,
and more about response. The
XG2530 is an FPS-targeted
monitor, packed with tech and
designed to reduce latency and
offer perfect smoothness.
91%
ASUS ROG STRIX X370-I GAMING
www.asus.com £185
The X370-I gaming may be pricey,
but it’s one hell of a well-built Ryzen
Does it work? Well, there’s no board. Packing some intuitive
delay, and the colour reproduction is engineering into a raised M.2 PCIe
impressive, even for a TN panel. If you SSD/audio hub, the design aspect is
live and breathe shooters, the XG2530 impeccable. Ryzen demands strong
is perfect for you. VRM solutions, and this doesn’t miss
SCREEN SIZE: 25” / PANEL TECH: TN / the mark, providing solid
NATIVE RES: 1920X1080 / REFRESH RATE: 240HZ / overclocks in the tiny form %
91
RESPONSE RATE: 1MS GTG /
CONNECTIONS: 1X DISPLAYPORT, 2X HDMI (2.0 & 1.4)
factor.

137
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 HOT HOT HOT

More cores and a
poor TIM between the
IHS and the CPU die
means that to get the
most out of it, you need
to delid the device.

2 GAMING
Thanks to that
single-core prowess, the INTEL CORE I7-8700K
i7-8700K is the best CPU
we’ve tested when it
comes to gaming.
www.intel.com £400
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Coffee Lake, Intel’s mainstream retaliatory blow to the

3 OVERCLOCKING
We managed
5 GHz at 1.3V with ease,
CPU
might of Ryzen. A second optimisation of Intel’s 14nm process, but is it enough to beat back
the big red beast?
seeing load temps
increase to 80°C, and With Coffee Lake, we think it’s fair to say that higher stock clocks and more cores. And to be
performance matching tick-tock is dead. Coffee Lake’s main focus is to frank, it’s an effective mix.
Ryzen’s best equivalent bring the fight back to multi-core mainstream The Core i7-8700K is a potent computational
component. dominance by the inclusion of two additional cores part, still dominating in single-core performance,
across the vast majority of its range. yet its true potential lies in multi-threaded

4 DELIDDING
Intel still refuses to
solder its processors.
And for the most part it succeeds. The Core
i7-8700K now features a hefty six cores and 12
threads, the Core i5 has six cores and six threads,
applications, with it seeing a 50% performance
increase in both CineBench and our X265
benchmark tests.
Temperatures can drop
by up to 20 degrees with
and the Core i3 comes with four cores and four BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.7 GHZ/4.7 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 6/12 /

delidding and better

thermal paste.
threads. And that’s about it, there’s little else
new so far as architecture is concerned. Just
85% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 12 MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @
2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 16

138

MSI GEFORCE
GTX 1080 TI GAMING X TRIO
www.msi.com £770
We already know the GTX 1080 Ti, is the king of all GPUs. If you’re
GPU
looking for a high-end, 4K-capable GPU, there truly is no other option.
But it’s been a while since we looked
at an aftermarket variant. MSI’s latest
Gaming X Trio is the first in its new
line of triple-fan-cooled cards.
Although we’ve seen these designs
from MSI before, they were
typically only available in the
expensive Lightning line.
91%
ASUS MX34VQ
www.asus.com £717
If you’re after the most premium experience you can get, 21:9,
MONITOR
1440p and 100Hz is definitely the place to be.
It’s not cheap, not by any measure.
The MX34VQ is the perfect
combination of super wide aspect
ratio, high refresh and pixel density,
perfect for those looking to have it all.
The 21:9 aspect ratio makes it
perfect for enjoying media,
maintaining productivity and
enjoying any and all games out
88%
HARDWARE
Reviews
ROUND-UP
LOGITECH BRIO
www.logitech.com £180
4K and HDR in a webcam? Yep, it’s
finally happened. No more messing
around with overly pricey DSLRs and
the like. Logitech has done the
seemingly impossible and finally
integrated all those high-end features
into a camera worth its salt. Yeah,
it’s a little pricey, but for a
plug-and-play USB
webcam at this calibre, it’s
hard to argue with.
85 %
The elegant black aesthetic
coupled with intuitive RGB lighting
and exceptional fan curves keep it
quiet, whilst still hammering the
framerates at 4K.
GPU: PASCAL / LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET /
CORES: 3584 / MEMORY: 11GB GDDR5X /
MEMORY BUS: 352-BIT
XPG EMIX H30
GAMING HEADSET
www.adata.com £190
Adata is doing headsets, and damn
are they good. We were fairly
apprehensive, but this headset-and-
DAC combo is exceptionally
impressive. And it wants to be for
£190. There’s a bit of sound
leakage, but the comfort
and quality is exactly
where you want it to be.
90 %
RAZER BLACKWIDOW
CHROMA TE V2
www.razerzone.com £140
This wrist pad is so comfortable.
there. It’s not got super low response Razer’s keyboards are exceptional,
times or crazy refresh rates, and it and this TE variant of the Blackwidow
does take up a fair chunk of desk is lush. Fully RGB, with a silent
space, but experiences in story-driven mechanical switch, it’s perfect for any
games are unparalleled. FPS gamer, or anyone who
SCREEN SIZE: 34 INCH / PANEL TECH: VA / values a smaller footprint
NATIVE RESOLUTION: 3440X1440 / for their peripherals. It’s
88 %
REFRESH RATE: 100 HZ / RESPONSE RATE: 4MS GTG /
CONNECTIONS: 1X DISPLAYPORT, 3X HDMI
pretty pricey, though.
139
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 PRICE
£1,800 is a huge
amount of money. Even
given its extensive
performance, the price
point has contributed to
the 71% verdict.

INTEL CORE
2 GAMING
PROWESS
The i9-798OXE is one of I9-7980XE
the highest scoring
processors we’ve ever
reviewed for gaming.
www.intel.com £1,800
The highest echelon of AMD’s Ryzen architecture, the Threadripper 1950X, is a beast,

3 POWER DRAW
At stock, power
draw is concrete at
CPU
although certainly not designed for gaming. What it did do, however, is demand a response
from Intel, and, oh boy, a response is what we got.
258W under load.
However if you start This is not a cheap processor; you could build two As far as rendering goes, it’s only 300 points off
cranking it higher, you competitive 1080p systems for the price of this of AMD’s Threadripper part in CineBench, despite
can easily see 500W CPU. However, it’s a part designed for those who the excessive price difference. However, unlike TR,
under load. profit from more cores in a working environment. it’s only after you overclock it that the 7980XE
That said, it’s impressive at gaming. It’s hard to becomes unhinged. Power draw may sail through

4 OVERCLOCK
SUPERIORITY
We saw scores of 4,289
deny just how good Intel’s core Skylake-X
architecture is. Its single-core prowess is second
only to the latest Coffee Lake parts. Yes, really.
the roof, but we saw a 15% boost in CineBench
going from 3.4 GHz to 4.4 GHz. That’s the
equivalent of adding six cores to the part.
points in CineBench R15
at 4.4 GHz, only limited
In-game it dominates all. There’s no gaming BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 2.7 GHZ/3.4 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 18/36 /

by the integrity of the

board’s VRM.
mode, just pure brute force powering all of
those cores.
71% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 24.75MB /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 128GB DDR4 @ 2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 44

140
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP

STEELSERIES RIVAL 310

www.steelseries.com £60

We’ve long been fans of the Rival

series from SteelSeries, and the 310
MSI Z370 doesn’t disappoint. It’s a lightweight,
FPS-oriented, intuitive gaming
GODLIKE GAMING mouse, with pixel-perfect 1:1 tracking,
thanks to its Pixart TrueMove3 optical
www.msi.com £530 sensor. It’s comfortable, sleek,
effective and highly
Intel has broken away from its ‘four cores’ ideology with Coffee recommended. %
Lake, and implanted an extra two into its mainstream offerings.
92
MOBO

And a new chip means new mobos,
which may sound sucky, but if you’re
buying a new system, it does mean
you get the latest gear.
The Godlike Gaming is the
pinnacle of MSI’s mobo arsenal. It
may be pricey, but its features
sell it: triple Ethernet, wireless
91%
A/C, support for three M.2 PCIe
SSDs, and four GPUs. Incredible. The
real joy lies in the audio, though: if
you’re not willing to invest in a DAC,
but still want the best sound you can
get, this is the board for you.
CHIPSET/SOCKET: Z370 / LGA 1151 / FORM FACTOR: E-ATX /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @ 4133 MT/S /
M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 3X M.2, 1X U.2 / LOGITECH G613 WIRELESS
ATA SUPPORT: 6X SATA 6GB/S www.gaming.logitech.com £130

Why, oh why, has it taken this long

for us to get a wireless mechanical
keyboard? Logitech’s G613 has finally
arrived to fill that gap. Offering an
impressive 18 months of battery life,
it’s powered by only two AA batteries.
Sure, It may not feature any of the
fancy LEDs that we’re used to,
but the inclusion of that
wireless switch is enough %
for us.
91

AMD RADEON
RX VEGA 56
www.msi.com £500
AMD’s GPU offerings have been a little lacklustre, to say the least.
GPU
Even with all the hype in the world, they fell far flat of what we hoped.
Priced out of the stratosphere due to
cryptocurrency mining, and coupled
with nasty power draw and little room
for extra performance, Vega 64 was
nothing more than a disappointment.
The 56, on the other hand,
somewhat redeems the series.
Priced at a reasonable £450, it
fortunately provides some very
64%
competitive performance with the
GTX 1070. However, right now, you’re
still forking out an extra £80 for it, and
with no aftermarket cards scheduled
for team red, it’s not looking good at
all for Radeon going forward.
GPU: VEGA / LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM FINFET /
CORES: 3584 / MEMORY: 8GB HBM 2.0 /
MEMORY BUS: 2048-BIT
RAZER TIAMAT 2.2 V2
www.razerzone.com £125
Razer’s Tiamat 2.2 V2, is an
impressively designed, dual-driver-
per-earcup headset. The latter is what
drew our attention to them. The
headset sounds crisp, with no
muddiness in the treble or upper end,
making it actually fairly well
balanced. Still a touch pricy,
but not bad. %
84

141
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 I/O
CONNECTIVITY
This houses 64 PCIe
lanes, meaning you can
run up to four GPUs at
x16 without degradation
or throttling.

2 SINGLE-CORE
PERFORMANCE
This behemoth is still a
AMD THREADRIPPER 1950X
Ryzen part, and you can www.amd.com £990
expect performance
similar to an i5-6600K.
Let’s get this out of the way right now: this is not a gaming part, but that doesn’t stop it
CPU
from being an incredible piece of engineering. AMD’s Threadripper series is aimed solely at
3 GAMING?
By default, AMD
includes a gaming mode
the professionals, the folk who make money out of rendering content on a day-to-day basis.

to ensure single-core
performance doesn’t
hold back titles that tend
to favour higher clocks.
And, my God, is it awesome? Packing a total of 16
cores and 32 threads, this kills the competition,
when it comes to price and performance in more
computational-oriented tasks. We saw scores of
over 3,000 points in CineBench at stock, a
coming in at the same price of this part, only
manages 2,184 points at stock. That’s just an
astronomical performance increase.
The biggy is overclocking. By default, it performs
identically to its Ryzen cousins, making it easy to

4 OVERCLOCKING
HEADROOM
You can clock this up to
around 4 GHz across all
the cores, adding an
extra 160 points in
Cinebench tests.
benchmark of software traditionally used in the
industry for CGI and rendering cinematic content.
To put that into perspective, a Core i5-7600K
overclock it to 4 GHz on all cores; increasing single
and multi-core performance by 15%. If you profit
from computational work, this part is a no-brainer.
scores around 663 points, a Core i7-7700K BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.4 GHZ / 4.0 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 16/32 /
970 points, a Ryzen 7 1800X 1,612, and even
Intel’s top dog right now, the Core i9-7900X,
90% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 40MB /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 128GB DDR4 @ 2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 64

142
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP

GIGABYTE AX370 GAMING K7

www.gigabyte.com £200

PNY GEFORCE GTX This is, by far, Gigabyte’s best

offering when it comes to Ryzen
1080 TI XLR8 GAMING OC mobos, featuring a sleek satin black
design, classy RGB LED lighting, and
www.pny.com £760 impressive memory support (We’ve
got it running 64GB of 3200 MT/s
What, no Vega? That rant is coming soon enough, but here we right now), it’s a solid contender
GPU decided to take a look at PNY’s latest GTX 1080 Ti rework instead. for any high-end Ryzen
system. If only the BIOS
After all, if Vega has shown us design, and packing a hell of a wallop were a little stronger.
90 %
anything, it’s that it’s just not quite up to overclock potential. We managed
to GTX 1080 levels of performance. to push the clock up to 2025 MHz,
The GTX 1080 Ti is still king of the hill. and the memory clock up to 12 Gbps,
PNY’s aftermarket XLR8 GPU pushing both minimum framerates
capitalises on that 1080 Ti GPU by and averages up by 15%, making
pushing up the boost clock by a this an ideal 4K card.
solid 70 MHz at stock, taking 92% LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET / CORES: 3540 / EKWB A240G LIQUID
advantage of a tri-cooler fan MEMORY: 11GB GDDR5X / MEMORY BUS: 352-BIT COOLING KIT
www.ekwb.com €240

Ever fancied your own custom

loop? EK’s latest aluminium liquid
cooling kits are super cheap, easy to
setup, and can cool your GPU and
CPU off a single dual radiator unit.
Performance is incredible, and after
testing these extensively we
can’t recommend them
enough to anyone
dabbling in liquid cooling.
95 %

RAZER LANCEHEAD ASUS ROG STRIX

www.razerzone.com £140 X370-F GAMING
www.asus.com £120
£140 for a mouse? You’ve got to be kidding right? Well maybe not,
MOUSE Razer’s newest mouse more than makes up for the hefty tag. Here’s another contender for your
Ryzen build. This has incredible
Mice are one of, if not the, most Combine that with an easy memory support, solid performance
subjective peripheral you’ll ever find plug-and-play setup and a 24-hour and comes in at an affordable price.
– we all hold mice in different ways. battery life and we’re well on to a So what’s the downside? Well, the
That said, the Lancehead is nothing if winner. We hope Razer makes one of RGB strip isn’t the prettiest, backed
not spectacular. Its svelte design, those continually charging pads that into the Rear I/O cover, and it
combining a gunmetal matte finish, Logitech has for this bad boy. could do with a bit of extra
smooth curves, rubber grips and SENSOR: 5G LASER SENSOR / MAX DPI: 16,000 / spice in overclocking
88 %
subtle RGB lighting, makes it a
standout product.
95% CABLE LENGTH: 2M / LIGHTING: 16.8 MILLION
COLOURS / BUTTONS: 9 / WEIGHT: 111 GRAMS
performance.

143
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 X370 CHIPSET
Combine the 1300X
with a solid X370 board,
such as the Asus Prime
X370-A, and you’d be well
on the way to a
well-equipped machine.

2 SINGLE-CORE
PERFORMANCE
RYZEN 3 1300X
Unfortunately, this is still
a little bit lax – at least,
www.amd.com £125
until AMD refines that
core architecture. This CPU U has got one of the more price-conscientious processor parts. Don’t be fooled
CPU
by the naming scheme, this is a fully-fledged four-core, four-thread part, more akin to a Core
i5 than anything else, but at half the price.
3 INTEGR ATED
GRAPHICS?
We’re still missing this, We’re seeing a war occur between the two major In CineBench R15 the 1300X managed 562, with
and it could be a while processing powerhouses. With AMD and Intel 154 points for single-core performance, putting it in
until we see Vega GPUs gearing up to pit ever-more powerful models of their line with a Core i5-4670K. In-game, the 1300X
baked into these as well. ranges head-to-head, it’s looking like a exciting time performed well, scoring 70 fps in Far Cry Primal.
to be a CPU enthusiast. Ultimately, the Ryzen 3 1300X, is a sound

4 OVERCLOCKING
HEADROOM
Like most Ryzens, you
can clock this up to
around 4 GHz across all
the cores, adding an extra
160 points in Cinebench.
It’s the low end that interests us, though, and the
1300X hits the nail right on the head. It’s a four-core
processor, with 8MB of cache, and 3.7 GHz turbo.
quad-core part. We would’ve liked to have seen
higher clock speeds for better single-core
performance, but aside from that, it’s a solid chip.
It doesn’t have the multithreading of the 5 BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.5 GHZ / 3.7 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 4/4 /
series, but it comes with a decent cooler and
uses 65W of power.
94% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 8MB /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @ 2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 16

144
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP

ASUS RADEON RX 580 4GB

www.asus.com £380

ASUS TUF The RX 580 might not be anything

other than an overclocked RX 480,
X299 MARK 1 but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good
card. Although the price of these is
www.asus.com £285 through the roof, once they come
back down to that £220 sweet spot
It’s weird to think that this is one of the most affordable X299 (goddammit, cryptocurrency),
motherboards out there right now. TUF hasn’t ever let us down in the it’ll definitely be the card to
MOBO
past, and, as a brand, it’s one of the few we go to without question. get, especially if you game %
at 1080p.
84
If the brash styling of Asus’s ROG We managed to reach an
Strix line doesn’t cut it for you, impressive 4.4 GHz on my Core
perhaps TUF’s armour-based X299 i9-7900X with relative ease. Asus’s
boards can sway you instead. The BIOS is also one of the easier to work
integrated PCB/M.2 cooling, with if you’re new to overclocking.
memory support and clean RGB CHIPSET/SOCKET: X299 / LGA 2066 / FORM FACTOR: ATX /
lighting makes this a solid choice MEMORY SUPPORT: 128GB DDR4 @ 4133 MT/S /
for anyone looking to build a
crisp-looking setup.
91% M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 2X M.2 /
SATA SUPPORT: 8X SATA 6GB/S

BITFENIX PORTAL
www.bitfenix.com £120

Bitfenix has always designed some

bonkers cases, whether it’s the
Prodigy or the Shinobi, it has always
CORSAIR VOID PRO WIRELESS been at the forefront of pushing those
case design boundaries further. The
www.corsair.com £100 Portal is no exception. Its crazy
cylindrical ITX design is impressive,
the materials used
It’s been a while since we first took a look at Corsair’s Void series of exceptional and the %
headsets. We’ve always had a penchant for wireless headsets, and so cooling acceptable. 88
HEADSET
when Corsair announced a V2 of its Voids, we had to get a pair.

So what’s new for the headset? Well,

the audio drivers have been tweaked
to provide a more resonant sound,
the microphone has been
redeveloped from the ground up for
greater sensitivity, and, more
importantly, the ear cups have
been changed out for memory ASUS ROG STRIX B250I
foam additions. www.asus.com £125
That last bit is a big deal.
Previously, the ear cups on the Voids And what’s better to go with the
always felt like they were leaking ITX Portal than a solid Asus
sound out of the bottom of the motherboard. This B250i Strix is
circumaural cups, but with the packed with features, including an
memory foam in place, this seems M.2 PCIe SSD heatsink, eight-pin CPU
there’s a tighter fit – isolating more power, a ton of USB and SATA ports,
noise, whilst also being far more RGB lighting and even Wi-Fi. Couple
comfortable than its counterparts. that with a stunning price
DRIVER TECHNOLOGY: 50MM DYNAMIC / FREQUENCY and solid performance. %
92
90% RESPONSE: 20 HZ - 20 KHZ / IMPEDANCE: 32 OHMS /
CONNECTIVITY: USB / WIRELESS
It’s a winner.

145
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 PCIE LANES
Although X299
supports 44 PCIe lanes,
these are only available
on the Core i9-7900X
and higher. That’s a
£900 processor.

2 SINGLE-CORE
PERFORMANCE
INTEL CORE I7-7740X
That Kaby Lake
architecture doesn’t
www.intel.com £320
disappoint, delivering 190
points in Cinebench R15. It’s a good job these are near £30 cheaper than their Skylake and Kaby Lake cousins, as
CPU
that’s about the only saving you’re going to achieve on Intel’s X299 platform. Designed as an
all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all chipset, but not without fault.
3 D U A L- C H A N N E L
WOES
You can only use DDR4 The release of Ryzen has unsettled the blue beast The idea is simple. Invest now, with a pricier
in the left slots, others and there’s competition back in the market. X299, motherboard, and a quad-channel memory kit, a
are disabled until you Intel’s latest chipset, is an oddity. Comprising ‘cheaper’ dual-channel 2066 processor, and then
upgrade to a six-core. everything from four-core, four-thread parts, to invest in one of the meatier eight-core parts later on.
18-core, 36-thread parts, it makes little sense. With As far as performance goes, it’s identical to our

4 INTEGR ATED
GPU?
The HEDT platform
both the Core i5-7640X and the, pictured, Core
i7-7740X being nothing more than a transplanting of
its Kaby Lake quad-core equivalents onto a larger
Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K sample. In short, if you’re
on Haswell or above, we’d say to hold off, unless you
desperately need more processing power.
doesn’t support any
integrated graphics,
CPU PCB, with the integrated graphics BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 4.3 GHZ / 4.5 GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 4/8 /

meaning you’ll need a

dedicated GPU.
soldered off, 100 MHz added on to the core
clock speeds, and a 21W increase to TDP.
68% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 8MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @
2666 MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 16

146

ASUS ROG STRIX
GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI
www.asus.com £800
That’s one hell of a price tag for a GPU. No matter how you look at
GRAPHICS it, it’s no small amount of cash. But does it warrant the splurge?
CARD
At 1440p I managed to hit over 100
frames per second in Far Cry Primal
and The Division, and even kept Rise
of the Tomb Raider and Total War:
Attila comfortably above 60fps, with
all of the graphical settings ramped
right up. Move up to 4K and Far
Cry Primal hits that 60fps
sweet spot easily.
84%
MSI GEFORCE
GTX 1050 TI 4GT LP
www.msi.com £150
MSI’s GTX 1050 Ti might not make a lot of sense at first glance,
GRAPHICS but it’s one of the more interesting cards we’ve reviewed this year.
CARD
Why is that, you ask? Low profile, no
PCIe power, and fairly impressive
performance. For those looking to
upgrade, it’s a viable budget option.
For high-to-ultra 1080p gaming you
can easily hit around 40-50fps in
most AAA titles, as long as the
game doesn’t bottleneck
the CPU.
83%
The biggest bonus to this AIB card,
however, is the cooling solution. The
triple-fan DC III Strix cooler is one of
the best in the business, if you’re
looking for a super-quiet card, the
Strix is the one to get.
GPU: PASCAL / LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET /
CORES: 3,540 / MEMORY: 11GB GDDR5X /
MEMORY BUS: 352-BIT
And if that isn’t your jam, put up
£120 for the 1050 2GB version and
you’ve got yourself a gnarly HTPC as
well. It is louder than we’d like to
admit, but for the money, it’s not a
bad investment.
GPU: PASCAL / LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET /
M.2 / CORES: 768 / MEMORY: 4GB GDDR /
MEMORY BUS: 128 BIT
HARDWARE
Reviews
ROUND-UP
ROG STRIX EVOLVE
www.asus.com £55
The Evolve is one of the more
interesting gaming mice out there.
Featuring swappable top plates, you
can turn this from a right-handed
mouse to a left-handed ergonomic
dream with ease. It comes with Asus’s
RGB lighting and is comfortable
to grip. If only the material
was a touch more %
premium.
84
PULSEFIRE FPS
www.hyperxgaming.com £50
Another £50 mouse, this time from
HyperX. Being its first venture into the
mouse ecosystem, the Pulsefire is
inspired by other competing brands,
with an overall look not too dissimilar
from Razer’s DeathAdder. Don’t let
that put you off, however, it’s a
crisp palm-gripping tool,
locked and loaded ready %
for any FPS gamer.
83
QCK PRISM MOUSEPAD
www.steelseries.com £65
It’s hard to stomach paying £65 for
a mousemat. That said, the Prism
expands on the likes of Corsair’s
Polaris MM800 and Razer’s Firefly by
smoothing out the USB hub and
making sure the RGB LEDs are visible.
Swapping out from a smooth to
a more textured surface is
also a pretty neat and %
71
intriguing feature.
147
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 GPU POWER
Boy, do you need
some serious GPU grunt
to power this screen. At
a minimum, you’ll need a
single GTX 1080, or a
1080 Ti, to enjoy it fully.

2 IPS
PERFECTION?
IPS (in-plane switching) AOC AGON AG271UG
is, by far, the most
accurate when it comes
to colour reproduction.
www.aoc.com £650
Choosing a monitor is possibly the most difficult decision you’ll ever have to make when it comes to

3 NO 120HZ?
Is this the end of 4K
60Hz being the best?
MONITOR
your gaming rig. Which resolution do you go for? What graphics card do you have? Do you prefer higher
refresh rates, or more clarity in your gaming? What about adaptive sync?
Asus, Acer and AOC
have announced 120Hz There’s never a perfect answer. A screen great for combo, although we’re surprised it isn’t available in
4K panels but they’ll be shooters will be less than stellar for RPGs, and vice a 32-inch form factor. It’s quite hard to discern the
priced at £2,000-plus. versa. Arguably AOC’s AGON AG271UG is the best difference between 1440p and 4K at 27 inches.
of what PC gaming has to offer. Got a GTX 1080 Ti, Boost that up to 32 inches, however, and the
and a penchant mindblowing visuals? Then this difference is huge. Those extra five inches are

4 PRICE TAG?
AOC’s AG271UG
isn’t the first to market,
screen is the one for you. Featuring 4K, an IPS panel
for stunning colour reproduction, a four-millisecond
response time and G-Sync, it more than
joyous. G-Sync is also a fairly nice feature, although
adaptive sync (found in the Nvidia control panel)
does negate a lot of its benefits if you fancy
but it does come at an
attractive price – almost
makes up for its price. saving the cash.
£70 cheaper than the
Asus equivalent.
It’s one of the nicest screens we’ve used.
There’s a lot to be said for that IPS 4K
86% SCREEN SIZE: 27 INCHES / PANEL TECH: IPS / NATIVE RES: 3840X2160 /
REFRESH RATE: 60 HZ / RESPONSE RATE: 4MS GTG

148

AMD
RYZEN 5 1500X
www.amd.com £170
When this was written, Intel was yet to reveal a decent competitor to AMD’s
CPU
Ryzen processors – a response that’s best described as confusing.
For all the constant criticism of Ryzen
for gaming and early BIOS teething
issues, the plucky underdog really
does seem to have the market pinned
right now. Think of the 1500X as the
top-end Core i7 equivalent, just at
half the price and coming with a
stock cooler as well. In-game,
it’s a solid performer, akin to
89%
ASUS
RAMPAGE V EDITION 10
www.asus.com £545
Skylake-X doesn’t offer anything particularly new or interesting, with
MOBO
performance likely to be no more than 10% over last generation.
Furnishing your rig with a better
motherboard makes a lot of sense.
The Rampage V Edition 10 is
aesthetically stunning, and
exceptionally well equipped. It’s one
of the only boards capable of
pushing our Core i7-6950X to
4.4GHz and beyond, and its
vast arsenal of connectivity
88%
HARDWARE
Reviews
ROUND-UP
MASTERPULSE
www.coolermaster.com £60
The MasterPulse headphones are
an intriguing new design from CM,
featuring both an open and closed
back design, depending on how bassy
a sound you want. The overall rigid
design, and strong comfortable
headband ensures they’ll last
the test of time, and the
any Devil’s Canyon part – it still has a sound quality is solid, too.
few niggles, but we’re talking about Highly commended.
84 %
less than a 5% difference in
framerate between that and its
closest Intel competition.
BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.6GHZ / 3.7GHZ /
CORES/THREADS: 4/8 / LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM /
CACHE: 16MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @
2666MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 20
GLAIVE BLACK
www.corsair.com £70
We had our reservations when we
first saw the Glaive, being big fans of
the M65. The design is lacklustre, and
the professional flair Corsair once
touted seems to have dried up in
favour of a gaming-centric style.
That said, it’s a comfortable,
precise, solid palm grip
mouse that is well worth
your consideration.
77 %
OPTANE MEMORY 16GB
www.intel.com £50
It’ll cost you a mere £50 to speed
up an old hard drive to SSD speeds,
options makes this the perfect X99 but only if you’re running a Z270 and
motherboard. If you can stomach the the latest Kaby Lake platform. It’s a
eyewatering price, there’s no doubt new form of caching technology,
this thing is the perfect showpiece for similar to RST, but lacks substance.
your desktop. Save the cash you’d spend on this and
CHIPSET/SOCKET: X99 / LGA 2011-3 / FORM FACTOR: E-ATX go out there and buy
/ MEMORY SUPPORT: 128GB DDR4 @ 3333 MT/S / yourself a 120GB SSD for
58 %
M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 1X M.2, 1X U.2 /
SATA SUPPORT: 10X SATA 6GB/S
your OS instead.
149
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 CORE COUNT
More cores and
more threads make
Ryzen the king when it
comes to Twitch
streaming and video
content creation.
AMD
2 OVERCLOCKING
The overclocking RYZEN 5 1600X
situation is still a little
lacklustre on this one. www.amd.com £240
You can crank all four
cores up to 4GHz.
Six cores and 12 threads make this a heavy hitter. Well, sort of. It’s hard to ignore just how much of an
incredible proposition Ryzen is to any looking at joining the ranks of streamers and people who make
CPU
3 PRICE
At £240, the Intel
equivalent to
videos across the globe. But what about gaming? That’s Ryzen’s Achilles heel, right?

Ryzen is the Core

i5-7600K, a four-core,
four-thread processor.
For a total of a third of
the processing power.
The answer isn’t as easy as the majority of fanboys
would believe. Ryzen has problems. Specifically at
higher framerates (120+), stuttering in older titles
that no longer have developer support. Ultimately,
each Ryzen processor will operate from multiple
core complexes (two, in fact). Each complex is
That said, Ryzen is fine in developer-supported
titles, at high-res and lower framerates. If you’re
looking to game at 1440p or 4K, Ryzen is only few
frames behind its competition.
The 1600X is a jack of all trades; it presents 12
threads of power at a phenomenal price. It feels like

4 FUTURE
PROOFING
The six cores, solid
capable of housing four individual cores that can
communicate with one another. The latencies
within each complex are low, but as soon as
we’d be doing you a disservice suggesting you buy
anything other than Ryzen today.
single-core performance,
and hefty chipset should
Windows starts scheduling processes BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.6GHZ / 4.0GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 6/12 /

sort you out for the next

four to five years.
across both complexes, latency increases,
in turn creating irregularities.
90% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 20MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4
@ 2666MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 20

150

ASUS
MAXIMUS IX APEX
www.asus.com £285
It’s nice to see AIB manufacturers do something crazy for once, and the
MOBO Apex is a marvel of mechanical engineering and an overclocking masterpiece.
Two memory slots allow for dual-
channel DDR4 for a total of 32GB
of up to 4133 MT/s memory. The
others are replaced by a DIMM.2 slot,
usable with Asus’ add-in card,
allowing you to run two M.2 PCIe
x4 NVMe SSDs via the DRAM
bus, enabling zero bottlenecks
outside of thermal throttling.
87%
MSI X370
GAMING PRO CARBON
www.msi.com £175
We spent ages combing over AMD’s motherboards, trying to find out just
which one offers the best value. This was the clear winner.
MOBO
MSI’s X370 aesthetic may not be for
everyone, but it’s hard to argue with
just how well equipped it is. With two
M.2 PCIe x4 slots, one featuring MSI’s
heat shield, and reinforced PCIe and
DDR slots, the list is vast as to what
this motherboard can support.
Although integrated
graphics hasn’t been featured
95%
HARDWARE
Reviews
ROUND-UP
ARCTIS 7
www.steelseries.com £158
Wireless headsets with a ski
band for a headrest; what’s not to love
about the Arctis 7? It’s comfortable,
clean-looking and generally a
well-rounded headset. The
headphone drivers could use some
love, widening that soundscape and
whacking up the bass, but
otherwise they’re a solid
It’s expensive, but it’s still more pair of cans for the price.
affordable than a Formula or Code. Worth a listen.
78 %
CHIPSET/SOCKET: Z270 / LGA1151 / FORM FACTOR: ATX /
MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @ 4133 MT/S /
M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 2X M.2 / SATA SUPPORT: 4X SATA
6GB/S / REAR I/O: 6X USB 3.0, 1X USB 3.1 TYPE A, 1X
USB 3.1 TYPE C, INTEL GIGABIT ETHERNET, 5.1 AUDIO,
OPTICAL OUT, HDMI, DISPLAY PORT, 2X PS/2 PORTS.
G413 CARBON
www.msi.com £100
We’ve been using this keyboard for
a while, and it’s safe to say we’re in
love. The crisp aluminium finish is
lush, the no-fuss red backlight is
enjoyable, the clean design
outstanding and the USB
passthrough just what we need.
Couple that with Logitech’s own
Romer G switches, and a
relatively tidy price tag,
and you have us sold.
94 %
ROG GLADIUS II
www.asus.com £80
RGB for everyone. The Gladius is
on the lineup yet, we suspect that the its own entity now, and a far cry from
Ryzen 3 series may be APUs. the Deathadder clone we saw with the
first iteration of this model. The
CHIPSET/SOCKET: X370 / AM4 / FORM FACTOR: ATX / design is comfortable and well built,
MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @ 3200 MT/S / M.2 / U.2 the cable dependable and the palm
SUPPORT: 2X M.2 / SATA SUPPORT: 6X SATA 6GB/S / grip feels just right. The
REAR I/O: 2X USB 2.0, 4X USB 3.0, 1X USB 3.1 TYPE A, only hiccup? The fairly
84 %
1X USB 3.1 TYPE C, INTEL GIGABIT ETHERNET, 5.1 AUDIO,
OPTICAL OUT.
hefty price.
151
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 DIAMOND COOLER
Nvidia’s 10 series cards look good and
are a fantastic cooling solution. The blower
design excels in small form factor cases, and
those lacking suitable internal airflow.
2 OVERCLOCKING PROWESS
We took a retail sample all the way up
to 2.0GHz core clock and 12Gbps memory
bandwidth with ease, boosting performance
by near 15%.

3 GOOD VALUE?
Although Nvidia has been charging us
near £700 for the past year for the GTX 1080,
and £1,200 for the Titan, it still doesn’t feel
like we’re being short changed with this card.
4 1440P & 4K KING
Whether you game at high refresh rates
at 1440p, or just 4K, this card is the king.
We’re curious to see what’ll happen when we
put two of these beauties together…

NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI

www.nvidia.com £700
It feels like only yesterday we were sat here declaring the GTX 1080 as the true king of 4K gaming. But
honestly, the Ti was not something we expected. The 1080 was priced resolutely at £700 on average,
GPU
and the Titan X was sitting pretty at a huge £1,200 for a meagre 10-15% improvement in frame rates.

Now there’s this Frankenstein’s monster of a
graphics card solution. What do we mean by that?
Let’s compare the 1080 Ti and the Titan X. By
default the 1080 Ti has the same, fully loaded
GP102 core featuring 12 billion transistors, the same
3,584 CUDA cores, and the same 224 of texture
units as found in the £500 more expensive Titan XP.
However, that’s where the similarities end. The
VRAM in particular is the most intriguing. The
Ti loses 1GB of GDDR5X, dropping it down to
11GB total, on a 352-bit bus against the
Titan’s 384. Yet rather intriguingly, it has an
95%
11Gbps memory clock as opposed to the rest of the
10 series. All this on top of having higher, and tighter
base and boost clocks.
This card, if ever there was one, is the Titan killer
we all expected from AMD, not Nvidia. Not only does
it perform outstandingly at 4K (56fps in Far Cry
Primal, and 55 in The Division), but it’s also shunted
the rest of Nvidia’s 10 series down in price.
LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET / TRANSISTOR COUNT: 12 BILLION / CUDA
CORES: 3,584 / CORE/BOOST CLOCK: 1481 MHZ / 1582 MHZ / MEMORY:
11GB GDDR5X / DISPLAY CONNECTORS: DISPLAY PORT 1.4, HDMI 2.0(B)

152
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP

PRIME X370-PRO
www.asus.com £155

Asus’s Prime X370-Pro is the only

direct step down from the prestigious
CORSAIR K95 PLATINUM ROG Crosshair, and we’ve not been
impressed with it so far. Although the
www.corsair.com £200 connectivity and overall looks are
solid, memory performance has been
£200 for a keyboard. But this isn’t a keyboard designed for those on a somewhat flaky. It seems Asus’s ROG
KEYBOARD budget. The K95 Platinum takes all of the best from Corsair’s vast lineup of K development team pumps out
series keyboards and packs it into a svelte aluminium chassis. BIOS far faster and to a far
better degree than its
With your choice of either Cherry MX Corsair’s traditional clean crisp black Prime compatriots.
64 %
Brown or Speed switches, the K95 design, while the silver platinum of the
also comes with dedicated macro and media scroll wheel is stark against the
media keys, an exceptionally black aluminium backdrop.
premium-looking wrist rest, and, of
course, that plethora of RGB lighting. SWITCH TYPE: CHERRY MX SPEED / BROWN / KEY DURABILITY:
That’s not to say it isn’t flawed. 50 MILLION KEY OPERATIONS / FULLY PROGRAMMABLE
The coloured grey keycaps, and KEYS: YES / DEDICATED MACRO KEYS: 6 PT /
the garish overly gamer font
face are a step away from
81% RGB LIGHTING: 6 PT / N-KEY ROLLOVER: FULL /
PASSTHROUGH: USB AORUS GA-AX370-GAMING 5
www.gigabyte.us £205

This was the first Gigabyte offering

on the table, and what a beauty it is.
The satin white finish really helps this
board look the part in any colour
matched system. Couple that with its
solid BIOS and its plug-and-play
attitude, and Gigabyte has nailed it on
this one. Memory support is still
a little flaky this early on,
but that’s to be expected
at this stage.
85 %

ASUS ROG CLAYMORE

www.asus.com £200
X370 XPOWER GAMING
Asus is another brand yearning for £200 of your hard earned cash for its TITANIUM
latest keyboard. Well into its development cycle it’s a keyboard designed to be www.msi.com £300
KEYBOARD
as versatile as it is crazy to look at, but do we like the cut of its jib?
Don’t let the silver put you off – this
The Claymore’s biggest feature is a £60? Then get yourself a Core board’s aesthetic works a treat.
detachable numpad. Leave it on for version instead. The Claymore is a Couple that with M.2 support, a
your daily Excel spreadsheet tasks, well rounded bit of kit, but for £200, retweaked heat shield, and solid
but once you start gaming, pull it off you decide whether it’s worth it. (2666MHz) memory support, and it
and place it to one side, enabling you will look the part in any high end
some nice wide arcs for your low DPI SWITCH TYPE: CHERRY MX BLACK / BROWN / BLUE / RED / system. The added HDMI and
skill shot settings, and the better KEY DURABILITY: 50 MILLION KEY OPERATIONS / FULLY DisplayPort rear I/O hint at
ergonomics that come with it. PROGRAMMABLE KEYS: YES / DEDICATED MACRO APUs launching soon.
91 %
Don’t care for our numpad
friend and want to save yourself
83% KEYS: YES / RGB LIGHTING: YES / N-KEY ROLLOVER:
FULL / PASSTHROUGH: NO
That’s exciting.

153
 REVIEWS
Hardware

1 RYZEN 5
Expect to see Ryzen
5 drop later this year,
with better single core,
a stunning price,
and hopefully solid
1080p performance.

2 SUPPORT
Ryzen has support RYZEN 7 1800X
for up to 20 PCIe lanes
– 16 dedicated to the www.amd.com £500
GPUs, and four isolated
for PCIe SSDs.
With Ryzen it looks like AMD is finally back with its A game. The plucky processor manufacturing
underdog has brought to the table a 14nm eight-core, 16-thread rendering powerhouse at an astonishing
CPU
3 TEMPER ATURE
Temperatures are
a mixed bag, with the top
price, but is it the right fit for you?

end chip and a decent

AIO cooler idling at
50-60 degrees, yet only
reaching 70-75 degrees
under heavy load.
The 1800X is nothing short of incredible value. If
your main hobby is video editing, or game
streaming from a single system, this thing is a
dream. The Intel equivalent, the Core i7-6900K,
would set you back almost £950 in comparison.
Generally speaking, it’s a high-end-desktop part,
The big doozy, however, is game performance.
At 1440p or higher Ryzen’s 7 series shines with
most titles, matching Intel within 1-2fps on average,
(39 vs 41fps in Total War: Attila, and 75 vs 77 in Far
Cry Primal). But at 1080p things do get a bit ropey,
with reports of frame rates dropping by 10-15fps.

4 OVERCLOCKING
Overclocking also
seems nonexistent, but
priced at an almost mainstream level. Its single core
performance, although lacking in contrast to Intel’s
Core i7-7700K, is still at the same level as
That said, if you want to get into video editing/game
streaming the R7 1800X is the perfect choice.
we’ve seen overclocks
up at 4.1GHz, which gives
Haswell’s Core i7-4790K, and at an almost BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.7GHZ / 4.0GHZ / CORES/THREADS: 8/16 /

Intel’s Core i7-6950X a

run for its money.
identical level to Intel’s current generation
of Broadwell-E parts too.
93% LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM / CACHE: 20MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4
@ 2666MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 20

154
 HARDWARE
Reviews

ROUND-UP

SILENT WINGS 3 120MM

HIGH SPEED FAN
ASUS www.bequiet.com £20

CROSSHAIR VI HERO Another £20 fan hits our testing

block. Stylish, black, quiet, and as
www.asus.com £250 impressive as Noctua, Be Quiet!’s
Silent Wings 3 impressed us with its
In forcing new motherboards on us with every two processor gens, most of noise cancelling, swappable mounts,
MOBO
Intel’s powered systems are packed with the latest connection standards. low operating speeds and high
AMD, meanwhile, has predominantly been aimed at utilising the same socket. static pressure at 28 dB(A).
We very much like how 85 %
Welcome then to the first in a new well equipped, performs solidly and quietly it runs.
iteration of chipsets from Team Red, has even managed some world
X370. Featuring support for all of the record overclocks under LN2.
latest Ryzen processors, M.2 PCIe
SSDs, dual slot graphics cards, native CHIPSET/SOCKET: X370 / AM4 / FORM FACTOR: ATX /
USB 3.1 support, and a plethora of MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @ 3200 MT/S / M.2 / U.2
SATA support, Asus was first with a SUPPORT: 1X M.2 / SATA SUPPORT: 8X SATA 6GB/S
new motherboard. With a crisp / REAR I/O: 4X USB 2.0, 8X USB 3.0, 1X USB 3.1 TYPE A,
design, solid performance and
92% 1X USB 3.1 TYPE C, INTEL GIGABIT ETHERNET, 5.1 AUDIO, KRAKEN X52
only minor memory niggles, it’s OPTICAL OUT www.nzxt.com £140

With an infinity mirror, 240mm

AIO, braided cable, and solid
performance, it’s hard to imagine that
there’s a nicer looking liquid cooler
out there. The LED ring, fully
customisable through NZXT’s CAM
software, provides those perfect
finishing touches to any aesthetically
minded system builder. A
clear-panelled case is a
must with this bad boy. 92 %

ASUS
GEFORCE ROG
STRIX GTX 1080 A8G
www.asus.com £550 SOUND BLASTERX
SIEGE M04
We gave the original Asus GTX 1080 OC a bad rap for being a poor www.us.creative.com £70
overclocker and coming in at an astonishing £900, or so we thought. At the
GPU
time you could buy it for £720 from Scan, and so we have to stand corrected. Creative’s first foray into the world
of pointer peripherals, this mouse
All that aside, the recent launch of the the GTX 1080 is over the GTX 980. In features PixArt’s tried and true
GTX 1080 Ti has made GPU prices both Far Cry Primal and The Division PMW3360 optical sensor, on top of
across Nvidia’s range plummet, we saw frame rates up into the 70s, the usual barrage of extra buttons,
making it a perfect time to pick up maxed out, and a more than RGB lighting and multiple polling
this 1440p, 4K dominating GPU. comfortable 52 and 54fps at 4K too, ratings. It has a comfortable grip too,
Asus’s A8G comes with a super with just one drop in the AA settings. although the finish could use a
quiet tri fan design, with integrated little work, along with the
RGB lighting, and impressive GPU: PASCAL / LITHOGRAPHY: 16NM FINFET / quite frankly eye-watering 77 %
performance. It’s hard to argue
just how much of an upgrade
91% CORES: 2560 / MEMORY: 8GB GDDR5X /
MEMORY BUS: 320BIT
price. Ouch.

155
 HARDWARE
Buyer’s Guide

BUYER’S GUIDE
Build the best PC for your budget

ADVANCED

MID-RANGE

BUDGET

KEY
Budget build Mid-range build Advanced build
PC gaming is for everyone. Pick the parts you want to You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This You’re looking for the best PC on the market and
build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. recommended build will see you through. superior components. But you still want to spend smart.

156
 BUYER’S GUIDE
Hardware

MOTHERBOARD
Z370-A Pro
MSI £110
What better place to start than with MSI’s
Z370-A Pro? With plenty of expandability, it’s
perfect for any entry rig.

PROCESSOR
Core i3-8100
Intel £105
Intel’s new Coffee Lake processors add an
additional two cores to the lineup. Think of
this as a Core i5 processor, but cheaper.

GRAPHICS CARD
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
EVGA £270
Its prices are haywire due to cryptocurrency
mining, but this is still the best deal you can
get right now.

MEMORY
Ripjaws V Series 8GB
(2x4GB) – 2400
G.Skill £96
Memory prices are horrendous right now,
however this 8GB 2400 MHz kit is perfect.

POWER SUPPLY
500BQ
EVGA £56
It may be cheap, but this 500W PSU is more
than enough to handle any budget build. This
rig only draws 269W at maximum load, too.
SSD
A400 120GB
Kingston £38
A 120GB SSD will help with some zippy boot
times without breaking the bank. Just don’t
go installing too many games on here.
HDD

WD Blue 1TB 7200rpm

Western Digital £40
One terabyte of old-fashioned hard storage
is the perfect home for all of your media,
backups and storage-hungry games.
CASE

Neos
Bitfenix £34
The Neos provides decent airflow, good
support for 3.5-inch hard drives, and a fairly
painless build experience.
DISPLAY

VP247HA
Asus £100
1080p and 24 inches is a perfect match for
that GTX 1060 GPU. Expect an easy 60fps in
all of your titles, in crisp clear HD perfection.

BUDGET
EN NEW
KEYBOARD

450K
Y
TR

Cougar £40
Smart design, hybrid mechanical switches,

BUILD splashproof exterior and three backlighting

colour options make this a good pick.
MOUSE

Rival 100
SteelSeries £30
Enjoy 1080p gaming without SteelSeries’ Rival lineup is ideal for those
looking to get a quality gaming mouse at a
breaking the bank respectable price.
EN NEW
HEADSET

Cloud Stinger
Y
TR

HyperX £40
We love the HyperX Cloud, but at £70 it’s too
much for an entry-level system. The Cloud

T O TA L Stinger is the next best thing.

CONTROLLER

F310 Gamepad
£984 Logitech £25
It’s no Xbox 360 controller, but this cheap,
cheerful pad will help you power through all
the controller-friendly games in your library.

157
 HARDWARE
Buyer’s Guide

MOTHERBOARD
Z370 Tomahawk
MSI £140
This is a nice-looking bit of kit at a good
price. Couple that with two M.2 slots, and it’s
the perfect place to house that Core i5.

PROCESSOR
Core i5-8400
Intel £180
Intel’s latest boasts six of its Coffee Lake
cores, with great single-core performance. It
even gives last-gen’s i7 a run for its money.

GRAPHICS CARD
GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX
EVGA £530
Trying to balance prices, we’ve opted to drop
down to an SC Gaming card. Don’t worry, you
only lose out on a very minor overclock.

EN NEW
COOLER
MasterLiquid Lite 240

Y
TR
CoolerMaster £45
This 240mm, dual-fan, all-in-one liquid CPU
cooler is ludicrously cheap, but performs
well and stays quiet, too.

MEMORY
Ballistix Sport LT 16GB
(2x8GB) – 2666
Crucial £167
This is the cheapest 2666 16GB kit out there,
and perfect for any midrange build.

POWER SUPPLY
RMx 650W
Corsair £81
There’s nothing like having a quality power
supply. Get a decent cable kit for this one
and you can easily spice up your rig.
SSD

850 EVO 250GB

Samsung £83
Samsung retains its top spot on the SSD pile
with the fantastically priced, very speedy
850 EVO. Still the best price/performance.
HDD

WD Blue 1TB 7200RPM

Western Digital £40
SSDs are great, but they’re still far from
cheap. This 1TB HDD will hold as many
games as you will need.
CASE

Eclipse P400S TG
Phanteks £78
The clean lines, intuitive build features and
fantastic price cements the Eclipse as our
mid-range case of choice.

MID-RANGE
DISPLAY

EN NEW

AGON AG251FZ
Y
TR

AOC £300
Not only does this 1080p monitor have a

BUILD lightning-fast 240Hz refresh rate but it

produces decent image quality, too.
KEYBOARD

Alloy FPS Cherry MX Blue

HyperX £93
Our recommended build for This crisp keyboard from HyperX ticks all the
right boxes. It may lack RGB, but those clicky
playing the latest games keys will keep you happy for years.
MOUSE

Castor
Mionix £47
The Castor is a dream to use and supportive
like a glove. With clutter-free software and an

T O TA L optical sensor, it’s hard to go wrong.

HEADSET

HyperX Cloud
£1,854 Kingston £70
Despite the budget price, we recommend
this headset. There’s simply nothing better
for the money.

158
 BUYER’S GUIDE
Hardware

MOTHERBOARD
Crosshair VI Hero
Asus £220
The best Ryzen board out now. It provides a
stable backbone for any early adopter
looking to join the red core revolution.

PROCESSOR
Ryzen 7 1800X
AMD £290
The 1800X, combined with 32GB of
3200 MT/s, dominates both single and
multi-core tasks with ease.

GRAPHICS CARD
GTX 1080 Ti Strix
Asus £950
This is the height of efficiency. Silent and well
equipped to dissipate heat, the 1080 Ti GPU
will power any title you throw at it.

COOLER
Kraken X62
NZXT £ 130
The Kraken is the culmination of three of our
favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm
radiator and slick braided cooling.

MEMORY
Vengeance LED RGB 32GB - 3200
Corsair £400
Ryzen is the one processor that does benefit
hugely from higher frequency memory. This
kit is perfect for any would-be video expert.
POWER SUPPLY
HX750i 80 Plus Platinum
Corsair £135
Modular, custom cable kits, and a platinum
efficiency rating. What’s not to love about
this Corsair PSU? Nothing, that’s what.
SSD

960 Evo 250GB M2 PCIe SSD

Samsung £110
A cost-effective OS drive delivering
sequential read and write speeds of
3200MB/s and 1500MB/s respectively.
HDD

MX300 1.1TB SSD

Crucial £248
At 1TB, this SSD from Crucial is fantastic
value, and more than big enough for all of
your AAA gaming titles.
CASE

Enthoo Evolv ATX TG

Phanteks £175
The 5mm thick aluminium panels resonate
with svelte professionalism, and the interior
makes building inside this a dream.

ADVANCED
DISPLAY

AGON AG271QG
AOC £550
It’s £200 cheaper than Asus’s PG279QG, and

BUILD we can’t tell why. 165Hz, IPS, G-Sync, 4ms

response... this is the perfect screen.
KEYBOARD

K70 LUX RGB

Corsair £160

Go above and beyond with a PC Even when money is no object it’s hard to
argue against Corsair’s latest K70. A no-fuss,
powerful enough to end worlds solid piece of aluminium craftsmanship.
MOUSE

Rival 700
SteelSeries £60
Swappable sensors, back plates, 3D printed
rear guards and an OLED display. The most

T O TA L comfortable, adaptive mouse we’ve used.

HEADSET

ATH-AG1X
£3,708 Audio-technica £280
What’s life without a nice set of cans? The
ATH-AG1X set is the pinnacle of headphones,
and it’s super comfy to boot.

159









Every issue of your subscription, delivered direct to
your door. Print & digital editions available.


!

Store up to 13 issues of your magazine subscription in a coordinating slip case or ring binder.

myfavouritemagazines.co.uk
  #



!

"


From photography to music and technology to field sports,
there’s something for everyone.

Our magazines and binders make perfect gifts

too. And don’t worry if you’re not quite sure which
titles they’ll enjoy the most because we have a
great choice of gift vouchers available to buy.

No hidden costs Shipping included in all prices We deliver to over 100 countries Secure online payment

myfavouritemagazines.co.uk
Discover another of our great bookazines
From science and history to technology and crafts, there
are dozens of Future bookazines to suit all tastes

Get great savings when 1000s of great titles, many Worldwide delivery and
you buy direct from us not available anywhere else super-safe ordering
 P R E S E N T S

HANDBOOK
Bring your system bang up to date with the best hardware for all budgets

How to build a PC
Learn how to build your own custom rig with your
choice of hardware components
84
pages
Today’s best upgrades
Give your PC a new lease of life with our pick of the
best upgrades to boost your system
OF IN-DEPTH
REVIEWS
FEATURING THE
BEST PC KIT

Memory matters AMD versus Intel

With memory prices going mad, learn how to choose It’s head-to-head in the battle of the builds as we see which CPU
your RAM wisely and bag a bargain gives you more bang for your buck
9001

Screens

Accessories Controllers Headsets

9000