Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i Custom PC UK

If you’ve ever gazed at the photos of gorgeous water-cooled PCs on the Internet, with coloured coolant and lights, and thought ‘wow, I wish my PC looked like that’, then this issue’s main cover feature (see p76) is for you. Building a water-cooled PC certainly has its challenges, and you’ll want to set aside a decent chunk of time to do it, but the end result will be a cool, quiet and lush-looking system that you can proudly put on Instagram and say ‘I built this!’ We’re looking at this as your first step into a larger world (it’s best to imagine that line in Alec Guinness’ voice, obviously). We haven’t gone all-out on custom case modding and hard line water cooling for this PC – we’ve based it on…

CORSAIR WATER-COOLS SSD Corsair has launched a new range of high-performance PCI-E 4 NVMe SSDs, with the top model featuring a waterblock that can be plumbed into a custom water-cooling loop. The new range starts with the MP600 Core, which has stated sequential read and write speeds of 4,950MB/sec and 3,950MB/sec respectively, and comes in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. The two top models are the MP600 Pro and MP600 Pro Hydro X (pictured), which have a sequential read speed of 7,000MB/sec, and a write speed of 6,550MB/sec. The MP600 Pro has a heatsink, but the Hydro X model features Corsair’s new XM2 waterblock, which will also be available separately. Do you need a waterblock on an SSD? Nope, but the latest PCI-E 4 SSDs do get very hot, and…

SUPPLIER pcspecialist.co.uk PC Specialist’s Def one of the cheap seen with Nvidia’ RTX 3070, and in this case i specification of 5,120 CUD and base and boost clocks o The rest of the spec isn’ reasonable at this price. The Intel Core i7-2.2GHz with a turbo speed of up to 5GHz, and has six Hyper-Threaded cores. There’s also 16GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory clocked to a middling 2666MHz. Storage comes from a 1TB Samsung NVMe drive with solid read and write speeds of 3,520MB/sec and 3,070MB/sec, and networking is handled by Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band Wi-Fi 6. The Defiance is also enormously customisable: you can choose from dozens of memory and storage options, downgrade or upgrade the graphics, improve the networking, and choose keyboards in different languages. The Defiance also…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk We first looked at the Corsair K100 in a standalone review back in Issue 208, where we were impressed by its combination of premium features and impressive performance. Stacked directly up against the very best competitors, though, does it still impress? Perhaps most obviously, this keyboard has quite a few extras that put it above many of the others on test. Down the left edge of the keyboard is a column of six extra gaming keys, which are ideally positioned for firing off macros and other extra game commands. Then, in the top left corner, there’s a dedicated button and dial that works in conjunction with Corsair’s iCUE software to provide extra features, such as backlighting brightness control, skipping music tracks and switching apps. In this location there…

SUPPLIER logitech.com We first looked at the Logitech G915 TKL back in Issue 208 in the context of wireless mechanical keyboards, and were impressed by its design, compactness and features. However, now seemed like a good time to put it up against the thoroughbred typing tools tested elsewhere this month. The G915 TKL, along with its full-sized non-TKL siblings, represents the company’s flagship keyboards. Unlike the very pared-down feel of the Logitech G Pro X (see p56), this one is packed with extras. Along the top edge you get four buttons for switching between wireless and Bluetooth modes, turning on Gaming mode and adjusting backlight brightness. Four more buttons provide media playback control and a mute button, while a lovely grooved metal volume wheel sits at the top of the…

SUPPLIER steelseries.com There’s so much packed into the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL that it’s hard to know where to start. SteelSeries’ own adjustable OmniPoint switches? The built-in OLED display? The swish magnetic wrist rest? The illuminated USB socket? All are worthy candidates, but first impressions are so often what count, and it’s the design of this keyboard that strikes the first chord. The TKL layout helps here, as this more compact form factor always looks more appealing than the sprawling mess of full-sized models. The edges of the keyboard are also cleverly cut at various angles in order to slim down the overall look, although in practice the Apex Pro isn’t significantly more low-profile than the other models on test. The top also includes a slab of aluminium, with a…

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

DEVELOPER IO Interactive / PUBLISHER IO Interactive IO Interactive has chased the dream of perfecting the professional murder simulator for 20 years, and from the highs of Blood Money to the lows of Absolution, its success has been decidedly uneven. However, the studio finally nailed it with 2016’s Hitman, which offered some of the most majestic and elaborate sandboxes ever designed. Since then, it’s all been gravy for Agent 47. Hitman 2 was a fantastic follow-up to that experimental first game, and Hitman 3 is the culmination of all that effort. It provides six more assassination adventures that sees IO at the height of its programming powers. Well, mostly. We’ll get to that later, but let’s focus on the good for now, as there’s plenty of it. Hitman 3 kicks…

DEVELOPER Coatsink / PUBLISHER Oculus Studios Taking place two years after the events of the middling 2014 film, Jurassic World: Aftermath sees you play as Sam, a mercenary who joins a small expedition returning to the abandoned park on Isla Nublar to retrieve valuable research materials from the Park’s main compound. However, after your plane is brought down by aggressive Pterodactyls, the mission turns into an urgent fight for survival. Aftermath is primarily notable for achieving a lot with relatively little, starting with the presentation. A Quest-exclusive title, the game deftly sidesteps the headset’s limited rendering power by adopting a highly stylised cel-shaded aesthetic. The result is one of the sharpest-looking games on the platform, with hyper-vibrant colours and crisp, cleanly drawn lines, all packaged into a file just over…

There are a few ways to overclock your PC, especially when it comes to the CPU, but we’ll be covering the easiest and quickest ways to get more performance, especially as heat is far less of an issue with a water-cooled PC. To start with, you’ll need a copy of MSI Afterburner (guru3D.com) and AMD Ryzen Master (amd.com). You’ll also need a copy of  Prime95 (mersenne.org). Starting with the latter plus AMD Ryzen Master, run the smallestFFT test in Prime95 with all AVX options disabled and monitor the temperature through Ryzen Master. Your CPU should be well below 80°C to give you headroom for overclocking. Our Ryzen 9 5900X stayed below 65°C after five minutes of this test, giving us plenty of space for an overclock. We’re tending to move…

ClockworkPi announces DevTerm portable PC ClockworkPi, the company behind the modular GameShell (reviewed in Issue 184), has announced a follow-up product: the DevTerm, a portable PC inspired by the TRS-80 Model 100. The A5-footprint DevTerm includes an ultra-wide 1,280 x 480 display and a 65 per cent keyboard with a miniature trackball. You have the choice of driving it from an in-house Arm-based system-on-module, or a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+. A thermal printer module, which clips to the top of the system, is also bundled – just in case the device isn’t retro enough already. The DevTerm is available to order from clockworkpi.com now, starting at $219 (around £192 inc VAT) for a version where you supply your own Compute Module. BeagleBoard.org and Seeed Partner for RISC-V BeagleV Open…

After launching its RTX 3000-series of GPUs for laptops, Nvidia decided to remove the Max-P branding, allowing laptop makers to set the chips’ power draw and clock speeds in practically any way to fit their designs. The Max-Q branding stays, but you could be buying any of 28 variations of the RTX 3060, 3070 or 3080. This means an RTX 3080 with baseline 80W TDP would have a fraction of the performance compared with one with a full-fat 150W TDP, yet it still costs the same amount of money. Buying a mobile RTX 3080 only guarantees that you’ll get 6,144 CUDA cores – otherwise, the base clock ranges from 780MHz to 1350MHz, while boosts vary from 1245MHz to 1710MHz. Nvidia says you can find this information in the Control Panel,…

One more Valhalla test? While your recent graphics card reviews were interesting, I wondered if you might be able to do me a little favour and run one of your new tests on an old GPU. I currently have an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, and I’m very interested in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (I’m a Bernard Cornwell fan, and I love the idea of traipsing around Anglo-Saxon England). However, if I buy the game now, and it runs like a dog, I know I’m going to end up looking for a new GPU on eBay, and then I’m going to be much poorer. The new Radeons cope with the game surprisingly well – how do the old ones fare? You don’t happen to have an old Radeon RX 5700 XT…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Asus’ Zephyrus Duo SE GX551 is one of the first RTX 3080 laptops to come out the door, and Nvidia’s Ampere-powered portable GPU has a fearsome specification, including 6,144 CUDA cores and a 1545MHz boost clock and even up to 16GB of GDDR6 memory in the version used here. The mobile RTX 3080 is 2,560 CUDA cores short of the desktop card, but it’s still mighty for a mobile chip. This laptop also uses AMD’s latest Zen 3-powered Ryzen 9 5900HX laptop CPU, with eight SMT-enabled cores and 4.6GHz turbo peak. The GX551 has 32GB of 3200MHz DDR4 memory and a 2TB RAID 0 storage array, comprising a pair of 1TB Samsung PM981 NVMe PCI-E 3 drives. The array delivers stupendous read and write speeds of 6,961MB/sec and…

How we test Our case testing method is simple. We use real, overclocked hardware in a standard system to see how cases perform in terms of air cooling. We use an Asus TUF B450M-Plus Gaming motherboard, along with a Ryzen 5 1600 overclocked to 3.8GHz using a vcore of 1.365V. We also use a Palit GeForce GTX 1660 StormX with an open GPU cooler to better represent modern graphics cards, and we limit its fan speed to 60 per cent to prevent it from interfering with noise testing results, which we gauge with a sound meter. Meanwhile, our CPU is cooled by a Thermaltake Riing Silent 12 Sync 120mm cooler, but again, we’ve limited its fan speed using a 7V resistor cable to put more emphasis on each case’s cooling.…

How we test Whether you’re after a feature-packed game controller or a rugged typing tool, there’s a mass of choice available when it comes to mechanical keyboards. We’ve picked out eight of the more premium models available to gauge your options if you’re prepared to splash out. The first test of our assessment concerns style and build quality. While some keyboards opt for a basic design but solid build, others pack in all the bells and whistles but can sometimes come up short in terms of heft and solidity. Many people value weight and rigidity above other factors, while others might prefer a more portable option. Other build quality factors include the overall fit and finish of the board and the type of keycaps – cheaper boards use thinner, less…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk If you like the idea of the customisation aspect of a custom-made mechanical keyboard, but can’t afford (or don’t have the time) to build one from scratch, it’s worth having a look at what Ducky has to offer. The company produces a vast range of mechanical keyboards with multiple keyboard sizes, switch types and keycap sets available. UK retailer overclockers.co.uk lists 111 different flavours of Ducky keyboard. The keyboard brand with the next most numerous options at the same retailer is Vortex, with 30 options. The Shine 7 is Ducky’s flagship keyboard, with a full-sized layout, RGB backlighting and a design that’s capped by a beautiful thick slab of zinc alloy. The overall simplicity of the design makes for an attractively minimalist appearance, as does the fact that…

SUPPLIER logitech.com The latest addition to Logitech’s keyboard line-up is, like the company’s other G Pro peripherals, a hyper-focused gaming tool first and foremost, or at least that’s what Logitech would have you believe. In practice, the G Pro is simply a compact tenkeyless (TKL) keyboard with very little in the way of extra features, but crucially, it also comes with a surprisingly modest asking price. One area where this keyboard strongly nods towards its gaming peripheral siblings is that its removable cable has the same micro-USB plug on the end that fits into the G Pro Wireless mouse, so in theory, you can use the same cable to charge and use the mouse. However, the keyboard isn’t battery-powered, so if you unplug it to use the mouse, the keyboard…

This month I reviewed The Medium (see p72), the latest horror game I disliked from Polish developer Bloober Team. I’ve looked forward to every Bloober game I’ve reviewed, but never seem to get on with the final product. In the case of The Medium, I was nonplussed throughout, but there was a specific moment in the review process where my indifference turned to active distaste. It involves a puzzle in which one of the player characters must navigate through a hedge maze. It’s a dull puzzle, made worse by the game making you do it several times. But what really annoyed me wasn’t the repetitiveness. During the final iteration of the puzzle, the player character exclaims, ‘This is getting tedious!’ You can’t resolve a problem simply by pointing at it…

DEVELOPER Bloober Team/ PUBLISHER Bloober Team As a thoroughly middling horror game, The Medium is at least aptly named. It’s a classically styled horror adventure with an intriguing split-screen gimmick that sees you exploring two worlds at once. Set in Poland in 1999, players assume the role of Marianne. A young woman gifted (or cursed as she would put it) with psychic powers, Marianne commences the game preparing for the funeral of her foster-father. Yet the game dispenses with this setup almost immediately after Marianne receives a call from a man named Thomas, requesting her help at an abandoned Soviet holiday resort called Nisa. Despite not knowing anything about the man or the resort, she immediately abandons her funereal preparations and drives deep into the Polish forest. The Medium’s whole…

CPU AMD Ryzen 9 5900X £599 inc VAT overclockers.co.uk There’s a huge amount of choice out there right now when it comes to CPUs, for the simple reason that AMD has a full stack of winning models from the Ryzen 5 5600X all the way up to the Ryzen 9 5950X. In a reversal of roles, Intel is now dropping prices to remain competitive and the likes of the Core i5-10600K, Core i9 10850K and Core i9-10900K are suddenly a whole lot more competitive than they were a few months ago. They’re available too, which can’t be said for many of AMD’s CPUs, including the Ryzen 9 5900X that we’re using in this build. However, we’ve been reassured by retailers that it should be available soon – hopefully by the…

Mechanical keyboards are well established as the premium option for PC buyers, but just what is supposed to be so good about them and which model is right for you? With all the dozens of keyboard layouts, switch types, keycaps and other extra features to consider, the choice can seem overwhelming. Thankfully, though, armed with just a few key bits of information, you can much more easily whittle down your options. Membrane switches So-called mechanical keyboards are essentially those that use any sort of switch underneath the key other than rubber dome membrane switches. The latter are the cheapest sort of keyboard switch that you’ll find, and are used in the keyboards you can buy for well under £10. When the key is pressed, it pokes against a little dome…

PCI-E 4 riser cables are inbound I’ve mentioned in my column before about the pitfalls of using a PCI-E 3 riser cable when both your motherboard and GPU support PCI-E 4. With both devices trying to communicate in PCI-E 4 mode, your system will go haywire when you use a PCI-E 3 riser cable. In fact, a couple of graphics cards I’ve tested recently, such as Palit’s Game Rock RTX 3090, refused to output a display at all when used with a PCI-E 3 riser cable. The only option in both cases is to force your PCI-E graphics slot back to Gen 3 in the BIOS. However, in the case of the RTX 3090 I was testing at the time, it wouldn’t even let me do that – I had…

Like that Simpsons episode where the director’s commentary for The Postman is just Kevin Costner repeatedly apologising into his microphone, there needs to be a monument to the Penti 4 somewhere at Intel’s HQ to remind people how badly can get it wrong. You might think Intel is behind the competition now, being stuck on a 14nm node and a lack cores compared with AMD, but at least Comet Lake is decent microarchitecture. You’d struggle to say the sa the Pentium 4. It would leave existing CP looking like relics. At leas that was the idea Let’s put the Pentium 4 in its historical conte up with the Pentium brand to distinguish its pr the competition in the post-486 era, and it had worked. People looked for the Pentium brand…

If you only ever read product reviews it would easy to believe that AMD is currently giving Intel a thrashing in the desktop CPU market. However, while AMD’s Ryzen CPUs do lead the way in most benchmarks, there’s a lot more to success and failure than simple benchmark results. It’s no surprise to me that many gamers are still opting for a Core i9 over a  Ryzen 9 Price is a major factor, and a tricky one. Right now, there’s an approximate £100 price difference between the two bestselling high-end CPUs, the Ryzen 9 5900X and Core i9-10900K. On paper, the 5900X, with its two extra cores and outstanding multithreaded performance offers far better value for money. For gaming, however, the GPU is far more important when it comes to…

It’s been a year of pandemic. A year is a short time in science, and a huge number of amazing medical advances have been made very quickly that would otherwise have taken a decade, or perhaps never been funded at all. If governments and private pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma) throw enough money at a problem then positive things happen, such as the vaccines. In this case, Big Pharma is providing an expensive light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Big Pharma does lots of amazing, life-saving or life-improving things that cost a fortune to research, develop and test, and I fully support that. But they also do some ugly, profiteering, cynical or outright dangerous stuff (Ben Goldacre wrote a great book about this called Bad Pharma). Enter the…

SUPPLIER ebuyer.com One main reason why Intel’s CPUs haven’t been that competitive recently is their price. The Core i5-10600K and Core i9-10900K were good CPUs, but they were just too expensive, with the latter not leaving you with any change from £500, while the Ryzen 9 5900X offered two more cores for the same money. Intel’s answer is the Core i9-10850K – a 10-core CPU at a lower price. What’s more, it’s in stock in the shops, which is more than you can say for AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X. In the Core i9-10850K’s favour, it has the same ten cores and 20 threads as its more expensive siblings and surprisingly hefty frequencies, despite coming from lower-binned rungs of Intel’s production line. It has a 5.2GHz peak boost frequency, which is…

SUPPLIER dell.com Alienware’s AW2721D is built for fast-paced gaming, with a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate, a 3ms response time and Nvidia G-Sync Ultimate. It lives up to the hype, with no tearing or stuttering and noticeably improved responsiveness compared with 144Hz panels. We tested it in fast-paced games, including CS:GO, Rainbow Six Siege and Doom Eternal – and in BlurBusters’ benchmarks – and it was crisp and smooth. The 3ms response time can also be tightened to 2ms or 1ms with overdrive modes. However, these modes introduce noticeable inverse ghosting, so it's not worth using them. The only way to get a much faster refresh rate is to switch to a 360Hz display (see the Asus display opposite), but most  gamers will be sated by 240Hz.…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk As the cheapest case on test this month, the Fractal Design Meshify 2 might appear to be at a disadvantage when it comes to features, but this unassuming case is sizzling with useful bits and pieces that will both aid your build process and help you create a cool, tidy PC. It’s  much more grown up than its aging predecessor – the original Meshify – and the first feature we loved about it was the pull-open mesh door on the front, which reveals a filter and fan mounts behind it for easy access. We were also glad to see the return of the lift-out roof section we saw with the Define 7, which makes installing your hardware incredibly easy. Here, the roof section pops off with minimal force,…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk Cooler Master’s CK550 V2 is th latest addition to the compan’s keyboard range, and it includes RGB lighting and plenty of programmability. It has an attractive design with a smart, brushed aluminium-topped casing. The top folds over the edges in a similar way to the Ducky Shine 7, making for a slightly larger footprint than necessary, but it gives the keyboard a more interesting, angular look than usual. A welcome design touch is that the lock key indicator lights in the top right have RGB LEDs, so you can control their colour and brightness along with the rest of the keyboard. What this keyboard can’t really claim, though, is to have particularly high-end build quality. It weighs in at just 852g, and although the build is reasonably stiff,…

SUPPLIER keyboardco.com Sitting at the more affordable end of the mechanical keyboard scale than some of the models on test this month, the Filco Majestouch-2 is a solid, reliable, full-sized keyboard that’s available with a wide range of Cherry MX switches. It’s a no-frills keyboard, but its price and build quality will make it a tempting option for some people. The most obvious downside of this keyboard, though, is that the vanilla model isn’t much of a looker. Its all-black design is certainly unobtrusive, but there’s not a lot of finesse here – it looks more mundane than minimalist. You can buy the Majestouch-2 in a  few more whacky variants though. There’s one that has a case adorned with luminous skulls, with purple lock key indicator LEDs, a fully pink…

SUPPLIER razer.com The Razer BlackWidow V3 is the company’s latest conventional mechanical keyboard, by which we mean it does without the wireless connection of the BlackWidow V3 Pro (Issue 208), or the optical switches of the Hunstman range (Issue 193). What it lacks in fancy extras, though, it makes up for in value, style and performance. It’s a great-looking keyboard, with a slick, all-black look and an aluminium plate on the top finishing off the premium feel. It has a similar vibe to the similarly dark and moody Corsair K100, but just takes the win for style in our eyes. It isn’t the heftiest keyboard, though, lacking the weight and rigidity of the Filco and Ducky models on test. For features, the BlackWidow V3 is a much less outstanding example…

DEVELOPER Ape Tribe Games/ PUBLISHER Sold Out Stealth games are normally cautious affairs, where you’re creeping carefully through the shadows past guard patrols and surveillance cameras, but Disjunction doesn’t have time for such ponderous play. This top-down stealth game is all about speed and precision, as much inspired by Hotline Miami as Thief. Set roughly 30 years in the future in a cyberpunk vision of New York, Disjunction sees you play as three characters – detective Frank Monroe; boxer and former convict Joe Murphy; and a female hacker known as Spider. They each become entangled in a conspiracy that begins with a local community leader being framed for the murder of a police officer. It’s a familiar cyberpunk tale, but it’s well told. Both its plot and characters are acutely…

DEVELOPER Cyanide Studio / PUBLISHER Nacom Coming at you direct from 2007, Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is a bafflingly dated action game based on the White Wolf tabletop RPG of the same name. It puts you in the hide of Cahal, a werewolf who, along with his fellow lycanthropes, wages a  secretive war against an oil company named Endron. The plot is bolstered by heaps of back-story and lore from the aforementioned tabletop RPG, but you’ll struggle to care about any of it. The storytelling is rote and humourless, while Cahal has the personal charisma of a Bonio. This lack of personality extends to the general presentation. Aside from the dated graphics, Earthblood is stylistically grey and featureless. Nearly every mission involves infiltrating one of Endron’s facilities, which all…

One of the more original VR releases coming in 2021, Vanishing Grace is a sci-fi road trip adventure game. Vanishing Grace puts you in the role of Joel on a mission to track down his friend Grace, who disappeared in the desert while travelling. The game involves following Grace’s trail in your sand-skimming hovercraft, gradually piecing together what happened to her. Aside from its distinctive setting, which is partly inspired by Campo Santo’s gripping narrative adventure Firewatch, what makes Vanishing Grace interesting is its approach to systems and interaction. Much of the game revolves around the hovercraft itself, which you need to drive, maintain and power. This latter mechanic is especially unusual, as you need to collect resources by throwing a boomerang at strange, hovering rocks. Yes, you read that…

1 INSTALL COMPONENTS ON MOTHERBOARD Fit as much as you can on your motherboard before you install it in the case. Once you’ve installed it, everything else becomes harder to fit, especially once you’ve installed your water-cooling system, as getting at the ports and heatsinks will be fiddly. So, start by installing the waterblock mounts, the CPU and memory. The Corsair waterblock we’ve used handily comes with thermal paste pre-applied. 2 TEST HARDWARE It’s a very good idea to test your hardware out of the case to make sure it works. Dead-on-arrival components are rare, but you don’t want to spend a weekend building your water-cooled PC only to find your graphics card is flaky. Place the motherboard on its box, connect the power cables and graphics card,…

REVIEW BBC Doctor Who HiFive Inventor Coding Kit Regular readers will remember the launch of the BBC micro:bit (see Issue 154), a low-cost education-focused microcontroller board that formed the centre of a revived computer literacy programme at the nation’s oldest broadcaster. The rather clunkily named BBC Doctor Who HiFive Inventor Coding Kit is not, surprisingly, a new BBC micro:bit pack, but an entirely new device – based unabashedly on its seemingly departed predecessor. Like the micro:bit, the HiFive Inventor – put together by SiFive – has two front-facing tactile buttons and an LED matrix, as well as an accelerometer, magnetometer and thermometer as embedded sensors. The spec has had a bit of an upgrade though: the 5x5 red LED matrix of the BBC micro:bit is now a 6x8 RGB matrix; the…