Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Custom PC UK

I could draw up a mile-long list of things that are overly complicated. TV model names; bin collection schedules; changing the time on the oven; board games based on the lore of H.P. Lovecraft. You could now reasonably add CPU overclocking to that list, which is why we’ve dedicated our main cover feature to it in this issue (see p78). My beard is speckled with enough grey hairs for me to remember when CPU overclocking involved changing the jumpers on your motherboard using a pair of tweezers, with a few limited options for your bus speed and multiplier. You might think that moving all this to the BIOS or EFI would make it easier, and for a while it arguably did. However, AMD’s introduction of huge core counts to mainstream…

AOC LAUNCHES NEW GAMING PERIPHERALS Monitor maker AOC is expanding its gaming product line-up to include keyboards, mice, monitor arms and mouse mats with its new range of accessories. The flagship is the new AGON AGK700 keyboard (pictured), which has a choice of Cherry MX Blue or Red switches, a metal alloy top, per-key RGB lighting and a detachable magnetic wrist rest. The design also sports a column of macro keys on the left, and a large volume control wheel in the middle. The keyboard line-up is further filled out with the GK200, which the company claims has ‘mechanical feeling’ membrane switches, and the mechanical GK500 in the middle, which uses Outemu Blue or Red switches. Meanwhile, the mouse line-up tops out at the AGM700, which has a 16,000dpi Pixart…

Gigabyte’s Z590I Vision D is the first mini-ITX Z590 motherboard we’ve seen in the flesh, and it packs a wallop as far as features go. You’d hope so too, given that it costs nearly £300, but it’s likely a fair chunk of that price tag is taken up by the Z590I Vision D’s key feature, which is Thunderbolt 4 support. Gigabyte has two Z590 mini-ITX boards, with the other – the Z590I Aorus Ultra – costing less money but lacking Thunderbolt 4, although it does have a few extra power phases than the Vision D, so it may be better for overclocking or even handling the power-hungry Core i9-11900K at stock speed. Thunderbolt 4 can be really handy though. You can output practically every connection you’d usually hook up to…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The K65 RGB Mini i Corsair’s first fora into the 60 per cent keyboard market. As with all such keyboards, it eschews the numpad, F-keys and even cursor keys of larger-format keyboards, making for a footprint that looks great and sa However, the loss of so many k learning curve if you’re not used lost key functions are relegated t other keys, which are activated by with the required key. For instance, function of Backspace, and the F-k functions of the number keys. Most of these compromises are manageable but we struggled with the cursor keys being secondary functions of U, H, J and K. It’s bad enough that they’re secondary functions at all, but we found it too much of a stretch to reach the keys while…

SUPPLIER cyberpowersystem.co.uk CyberPower’s Infinity X119 GT rig includes an Intel Core i9-11900K, which is one of the beefiest new Rocket Lake-S chips – it has eight Hyper-Threaded cores, and its base speed of 3.5GHz can ascend to up to 5.2GHz using conventional turbo and 5.3GHz with Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost tech if the thermals allow it. It’s a muscular processor, and it’s paired with an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The Suprim X branding means the GPU has three fans and plenty of RGB LEDs, and its stock boost clock of 1710MHz has been significantly overclocked to 1905MHz. Those core components are a great start, and the rest of the CyberPower’s specification is reasonably impressive. There’s 16GB of 3200MHz memory, a 500GB Samsung 980 Pro PCI-E 4 SSD and…

SUPPLIER ebuyer.com Showing just what an impressive number of features and great value modern budget screens can offer, AOC kicks off this labs test with a bang. This £180 inc VAT screen includes a fully adjustable stand, speakers, a 4-port USB 3 hub and even has a VGA input. All this and it has a 1,920 x 1,080 (1080p) IPS panel that tops out at 165Hz and has a stated 1ms response time. Like all the other displays on test, it includes both a backlight-strobing blur reduction mode and adaptive sync support (FreeSync/G-Sync) that works with AMD and Nvidia GPUs. The 24G2U doesn’t disappoint when it comes to build quality and styling either. It’s not the best-looking bit of industrial design in this Labs, but it’s no ugly duckling either.…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk We’ve snuck something a little different into this group test with the BenQ EX2710. We set out to do a budget 24in monitor test, but BenQ wasn’t able to supply that size of model, so we let the  company send over a bargain 27in panel instead. The big compromise with opting for a  bigger panel is that you pay more, with this display costing £250 inc VAT. You also get a lower pixel density than the 24in screens on test, as the BenQ still has a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. In terms of overall features, the EX2710 is largely in line with the other panels on test, with its IPS panel sporting a 1080p resolution and a 144Hz maximum refresh rate. However, there is one feature that sets…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk LG has carved out a unique position in the gaming monitor market thanks to having the very latest and fastest-responding IPS panel technology, with the company manufacturing the panels itself. This same advantage is evident even in this cut-price model, but the same compromises seen on some other LG gaming displays apply here. Specifically, this monitor has a contrast ratio of just 700:1 according to LG and 778:1 according our measurements. That’s 30 per cent lower than the typical contrast for IPS panels, and although its not always dreadfully noticeable in brightly coloured games and the Windows desktop, you notice that lack of depth in darker games and movies. Further denting its appeal in these scenarios is the IPS glow that casts a subtle shimmering spread of light…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk We didn’t think it was possible for a mini-ITX case to land that improved upon traditional designs in a radical way, but Cooler Master’s MasterBox NR200P managed just that when we first reviewed it back in Issue 206. It's reasonably compact, although is far from the smallest case we’re reviewing this month, but Cooler Master has done a good job of making it flexible and designing it to make the best use of its interior. This flexibility is both the case’s greatest strength and its weakness, as the fact it can support SFX-L PSUs means it’s also a little larger than strictly necessary. The ability to use horizontal and vertical GPU orientations also means some added extras have to be included, such as a PCI-E 3 riser cable,…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk We’ve reviewed both of the Rocket Heavy’s predecessors from Kolink, and it looks as though the company is finally getting a handle on what it takes build a decent modern mini-ITX case. The Rocket Heavy maintains the good looks of its forebears, with a gunmetal grey chassis that sports hexagonal perforations, with the colour extending to the interior as well. This time, though, Kolink has sensibly made the move to 120mm fan support (the original Rocket only had 80mm fan support), with a pair of mounts in the roof and an internal mount next to the motherboard mounts. However, unlike the Jonsbo A4 and Cooler Master MasterBox NR200P, the base of the case lacks fan mounts despite having large vents in this location. The front panel’s vents are…

Remember Six Days in Fallujah, the cancelled tactical military shooter based on a large, infamous battle of the Iraq War? Well, it’s back. Peter Tamte, former CEO of Atomic Games (the defunct studio behind the cancelled original), has created a new publisher named Victura with the intent of resurrecting the project. The original game was cancelled due to Konami’s loss of confidence in the project after the reaction to its announcement. Concerns were raised about its ability to portray a battle in which the US military’s aggressive assault resulted in numerous civilian casualties, as well as America’s purported use of white phosphorous against non-combatants. Slaughtering enemies by the dozen makes nuanced discussion of morality rather difficult It would be tricky for any game to do justice to this event, let alone…

DEVELOPER Hidden Fields / PUBLISHER MWM Interactive Taking place on the slopes of an Alpine mountain with distinctive twin black peaks, Mundaun sees you play as Curdin, a young man who returns to his childhood home after learning that his grandfather has died, despite pleas from the local chaplain to stay away from the region. Upon arrival, Curdin discovers that his grandfather’s death is shrouded in mystery, tied to events in his past and a  mysterious force lurking beneath the mountain. Mundaun immediately distinguishes itself through its art style. Every texture has been painstakingly hand-drawn in pencil, resulting in a distinctive greyscale effect that lends the game a thick and oppressive atmosphere. Coupled with an eerie ambient score reminiscent of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s recent work on the Chernobyl miniseries, Mundaun uses…

Emulation platform RetroArch has announced that it’s branching into the hardware realm, starting with a USBconnected cartridge reader for Nintendo 64 games. ‘Playing the game should be as easy as just loading the ROM from this device,’ developer Daniel De Matteis explains. ‘But our hope is that with the RetroArch integration, we finally get the promise of a true cross-platform game console where you can take your games library with you, whether it’s digital or physical, and just use it across the devices that you already have RetroArch on.’ See libretro.com for more information.…

TOTAL PROJECT TIME / 2 HOURS When it comes to customising glass portions of your PC, etching is the easiest and safest way to do it. Tempered glass will shatter if you mess around with it too much, and it does so by design, leaving you with few options when it comes to customising glass side panels. Etching, though, is easy, perfectly safe, generates next to no mess and you can do it practically anywhere. However, it’s important that you get it right the first time. Masking off areas is easy enough, especially if you use a cutting machine. However, etching is permanent and can’t be reversed, even with copious amounts of polishing, so you need to be very sure before you apply the etching cream. The end result can…

While there’s not a huge amount happening in terms of consumer technology at the moment, there’s an awful lot happening behind the scenes in boardrooms and in the enterprise space, which is likely to have major ramifications for the PC industry as a whole. One significant change is the start of the reign of new Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. Hosting his first online keynote, he laid out his vision for Intel over the coming years. There were no were no product announcements, as it takes years not months to develop new integrated circuits (ICs). What was announced, however, showed real ambition to take Intel forwards after the short-term stewardship of Intel’s previous CEO Bob Swan. The transition to 10nm is multiple years behind schedule The most significant announcement is a…

From his now famous kitchen, Jensen Huang recently showed the world what he was cooking up for the future of Nvidia. Despite the name, sadly gaming graphics is no longer what the Graphics Technology Conference (GTC) is about. Instead, there was a lot of focus on AI, data centres, ‘accelerated computing’ and ‘intelligent networking’, with graphics served as a side dish. However, in discussion of Nvidia’s next-gen server chips, Jensen detailed a roadmap of CPU, GPU and DPU (essentially network processors) architectures, which showed a two-year cadence of each, with alternating years of CPU and GPUs. Last September, Nvidia’s Ampere GPUs launched, and this year, its Arm v9 architecture hits the streets. The next generation of GPUs is likely to land in the third quarter of 2022 That means the…

Radeon revival? While I understand why you’re listing eBay prices for GPUs on the Elite list now, I don’t understand where you’ve managed to find prices so low. In Issue 213, you list the GeForce RTX 3080 at a price of £1,200, but where on earth did you find it for that price?! Whenever I search ‘RTX 3080’ on eBay, they nearly all cost around £1,800, usually more. If I am going to be reduced to paying scalper prices (and let’s face it, that’s the situation if I want a new GPU right now), I wonder if I might be better off buying a Radeon RX 6800 XT instead – they seem to be going much cheaper than RTX 3080 cards, even if they’re still way overpriced. What do you…

SUPPLIER box.co.uk For several years Corsair’s mechanical keyboard line-up stayed relatively steady. After establishing a hit design with its original K70, it iterated on that design in numerous ways without fundamentally changing the formula. Just recently, though, the company overhauled its keyboard line-up, and the tenkeyless K70 RGB TKL is the latest to get an update. Like the other updated keyboards, the most obvious change is the styling. While the overall shape and feel is familiar, the very thick and coarsely brushed aluminium top plate has gone, replaced by a thinner, more smoothly brushed plate that still looks and feels premium, but lacks a  bit of the generous feel of the older design. The addition of a plastic panel on the top, into which is set an RGB-illuminated Corsair logo and a…

SUPPLIER ebuyer.com The main feature distinguishing the various different monitors in this Labs test is the choice of either an IPS or a VA panel. The former gives better viewing angles, generally smoother, more natural-looking colours and a faster response time for gaming, but has relatively low contrast and can suffer from IPS glow, where a distracting lightness can appear across the screen when viewed from an angle. Meanwhile, VA panels have high contrast and don’t suffer from IPS glow, but aren’t generally as good for accurate colour reproduction and have a very noticeably slower response time for gaming. We recommend IPS for image and video editing, and fast-paced gaming, while VA is great for watching videos and playing slightly slower-paced games – especially dark and moody ones that take…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk The MSI Optix G241’s big standout feature is its extended colour gamut, which stretches to 130 per cent of the sRGB colour space. What does that mean? Well, colours noticeably look more vivid, with bright reds and greens really standing out. In theory, this is ideal for HDR content, as HDR standards are designed to properly address a wider range of colours. However, this screen doesn’t support HDR. Instead, it just stretches the standard sRGB colour range to the wider gamut that it supports. That’s fine if you just want a generally bright and bold image, but it’s not so good if you also want a display that’s good for accurate image and video editing – if you alter colours in your work so they look accurate on…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk With SilverStone’s other entry this month retailing for under £100 inc VAT, we had to double-check the price of the Sugo 15, as it will set you back more than £60 more. That’s an awful lot considering they’ve both limited to mini-ITX systems of a similar size. However, the reason why this cube case costs so much more was immediately clear when we got our hands on it. It’s clad in thick aluminium panels, which feature shiny silver sprung thumbscrews, and every inch of the case is epically well made. The panels feature striking triangular vents, although they’re likely not that efficient in terms of letting airflow into the chassis, so we were interested to see if they hinder airflow. It’s also reasonably large in terms of footprint,…

DEVELOPER id Software/ PUBLISHER Bethesda Having brought the celestial realm of Urdak to heel in id Software’s first Doom Eternal expansion, The Ancient Gods Part One, the second part sees the Slayer embark on a roundabout journey to hell for one final confrontation with the Dark Lord, manifested as an evil version of the Slayer himself. The expansion’s three levels – The World Spear, Reclaimed Earth, and Immora, are the most colourful and varied of the game so far. Immora in particular offers a spectacular backdrop to the endpoint of the Slayer’s journey. An army of Sentinels joins the Slayer to fight the demonic hordes, while huge mechs do battle with gigantic beasts in the far distance. That said, Part Two’s levels are smaller than those in Part One, reducing…

DEVELOPER Redruins Softworks / PUBLISHER Hypetrain Digital, Redruins Softworks Imagine Subnautica set in space, but then fire Subnautica’s meticulously crafted survival mechanics and compellingly told story out of the airlock. Replace them with irritating humour, rudimentary crafting and confused design. Congratulations, you’ve just made Breathedge. The premise sees your character escorting his grandfather’s corpse on an interstellar journey in what’s basically a giant space hearse. However, the rocket takes a wrong turn and smashes into an asteroid field, killing everyone but you and your friendly pet chicken. Saved by your habitation pod’s built-in airlock, you must explore the wreckage, gathering together resources to escape. It does at least look fantastic. The wreckage-strewn asteroid field is a visually stunning and distinctive environment, while the vast chunks of spaceship drifting in all directions…

Ever since AMD shook up the CPU market with its first Ryzen CPUs, the debate has raged over just how many cores most users – and particularly gamers – need. In one fell swoop, AMD had doubled the core count for competitive mainstream processors (AMD previously had 8-core chips, but they weren’t good). Suddenly, the market had gone from the endless quad-core CPUs that Intel deemed sufficient for its top-end mainstream line to the eight cores provided by the Ryzen 7 1800X. However, despite a massive leap in this one area, AMD still couldn’t compete with Intel chips when it came to clock speed and instructions per clock, which was what really mattered for gaming then. Multi-core performance was clearly useful for some tasks but gaming apparently wasn’t one of them.…

The classic, Java-based Arduino IDE is dead; long live the Arduino IDE 2.0, which comes a lot closer to the experience you might expect from a modern integrated development environment. ‘It carries a modern editor and provides a better overall user experience thanks to a responsive interface and faster compilation time,’ the Arduino team promises of the update, which was available in beta form at the time of writing. ‘Don’t be afraid of trying it today: the upgrade will be frictionless and the interface will look very familiar.’ The latest release is available for free download at arduino.cc now.…

TOTAL PROJECT TIME / 3 HOURS Engraving requires a steady hand, patience and a good grasp of the design you want to create, but it also offers a relatively easy, cheap and mess-free way to customise your PC case. You don’t have to deal with any paint fumes, and it’s generally a fairly quiet activity too, so it’s unlikely to annoy any fellow housemates, especially if you can allocate a room to yourself for a few hours. You can engrave several materials found in PC cases, including steel, aluminium and acrylic. However, we suggest using our etching guide this month (see p102) if you want to deal with glass. To get started, you’ll need a rotary engraving tool with engraving attachments. A Dremel is ideal, especially if you have the…

How did this project start? What inspired you to build a PC inside a CRT monitor shell, and where did the name come from? János: One of my best friends asked for it. His company sells monitors and he wanted a special computer. The name was the company’s idea. Why did you pick that particular Sony Trinitron monitor for this project, and why has it been rebranded Asus? János: The CRT monitor was provided by the customer, just like the hardware that was built into it. All the hardware was made by Asus, so that’s the reason why it has been rebranded. How hard was it to gut the insides out of the monitor, and how did you go about dismantling it? János: At first it gave me a huge…

Non-fungible tokens are here! But a token for what? An arcade machine? An Overwatch loot crate? The jetwash at the BP garage? Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, will already be familiar to many of you, but for anyone who hasn’t yet wandered into the latest ‘under-construction’ intersection of art and technology, they’re tokens on a blockchain. You could buy an NFT hat and wear it both in-game and in-chair Where bitcoin is fungible, like paper money (if I lend you a tenner you don’t give me the exact same tenner back), nonfungibles are … well you get it. They’re unique. So in theory, when they’re applied to a piece of digital content (let’s say, an artwork, or a tweet), they create a way of securing ownership. Digital artists in particular are…

LGA1200 PROCESSORS INTEL ROCKET LAKE REVISITED Last month we just about managed to squeeze Intel’s 11th-gen Rocket Lake CPU coverage into Issue 213, reviewing the Core i9-11900K, Core i7-11700K and Core i5-11600K. The launch wasn’t easy for us to navigate under our time constraints, though, with our reviews using very early BIOS and software versions, which may have impacted on boosting, performance and overclocking. The most significant change, though, was that Intel announced its Adaptive Boost Technology just days before the launch, giving both us and motherboard manufacturers very little time to get to grips with it. We didn’t’ even have time to implement it in our testing, potentially painting the Core i9-11900K in a less positive light than it might have deserved. This month, now the dust has settled,…

With a price of £120 inc VAT, the be quiet! Silent Loop 2 is an expensive all-in-one liquid cooler, especially when you consider that it lacks the software control you’d find on Corsair and NZXT’s equivalents, while the Antec Neptune 240 can be had for £40 less. However, the Silent Loop 2 240 does boast some features that might help to justify that extra outlay. Firstly, it includes powerful fans, with the included pair of Silent Wings 3 fans able to spin up to a massive 2,200rpm – 600rpm faster than those on the Antec cooler. Despite this, while they’re definitely audible at full speed, they weren’t that much louder than those on the Neptune 240. A three-chamber pump has also been strapped to the setup, which be quiet! claims…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Vulcan Pro and Vulcan TKL Pro sit at the top of Roccat’s keyboard line-up and offer a premium, low-profile mechanical keyboard design based on the company’s own Titan switches. We’re looking at the tenkeyless (TKL) version here, which drops the numpad to make for a more compact and slightly cheaper option, although at £150 inc VAT, this is still a pricey typing tool. For all its many other intriguing qualities, the single most striking aspect of this keyboard is its design. While billed as low-profile, this mainly pertains to the keycaps themselves, which measure just 4mm thick at their front edge and 2mm thick at the back. These thin plates then sit on switches that don’t appear any more low-profile than more conventional Cherry MX style switches.…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk There was a time when Asus wasn’t hugely competitive at the lower end of the gaming monitor market, as it concentrated more on its high-end Republic of  Gamers (ROG) products. Its recent line of TUF monitors, though, have brought it right back into the game, offering competitive performance and value. The VG24VQ is just such a display. While it's on the expensive side in this Labs test, it still costs under £200. Plus, for that price, you get a fully adjustable stand, which is one of the key premium additions in this price range. Beyond the stand there isn’t too much in the way of physical extra features though. There’s no USB hub and while you do get speakers and a headphone jack, audio quality is basic, with…

SUPPLIER box.co.uk Like its VA panel-touting sibling on p47, the iiyama G-Master GB2470HSU offers a lot for its modest price. Despite being one of the cheapest displays on test, it still includes a height-adjustable stand, a USB hub and speakers, plus its IPS panel is rated to a 0.8ms response time and it has a 165Hz refresh rate. Crucially, this checklist of features is not hugely let down in practice. The only major black mark is the menu system. It uses a series of buttons that run down the right rear of the screen, and there’s a steep learning curve to remembering which button is which and how they correspond to navigating the on-screen display. It’s really infuriating to use at first, and while we did get used to it…

How we test We had a dilemma about testing this month, as half of the cases in this Labs test lacked any fans out of the box. This is clearly not the configuration in which they’d be used, and we absolutely wouldn’t recommend using any case without fans, never mind an already stuffy small form factor case. With this is mind, we decided to compromise. Cases that lacked any fans were equipped with two 1,500rpm Noiseblocker fans in order to assess how they would perform with some good-quality airflow, and make an accurate assessment against the rest of the field. Cases that had one fan also received a boost, gaining a single additional fan, while we left cases that already sported two fans at their stock configuration. That way, every…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk By volume the Jonsbo A4 is one of the smallest cases on test this month. It’s a great example of a mini-ITX case that focuses on one specific layout while leaning more towards aesthetics than cooling. It’s beautiful, but the fact it has glass side panels, while mounting the GPU on its side, means cooling is unlikely to be stellar. However, at least Jonsbo has provided two fan mounts in the base of the case to feed the CPU and GPU with cool air, plus two further mounts in the roof that can also house a 240mm radiator. All of the fan mounts are 120mm, so the A4 lacks the beefier 140mm mounts of the Cooler Master, Streacom and Lian Li cases this month, and sadly, the lower…

DEVELOPER Rebellion / PUBLISHER Rebellion Glance at any screenshot of Evil Genius 2, and you’ll be forgiven for thinking the game is just a big laugh. The cartoon style, the comedy traps, the fact that Rebellion has roped in Brian Blessed to play one of the Geniuses – it all makes it appear like silly knockabout fun. To  an extent, that’s true. However, behind Evil Genius 2’s pantomime presentation lies a cold and calculating criminal brain, one that simultaneously gives Evil Genius 2 much-needed depth, but also burdens its simple villainous pleasures with grind and bloat. A straight sequel to the 2004 management sim, Evil Genius 2 sees you once again trying to take over the world as a crackpot Machiavellian mastermind. You must build a base on your secret…

REVIEW HAND PHYSICS LAB / £7.49 inc VAT DEVELOPER Dennys Kuhnert / Holonautic / PUBLISHER Holonautic Hand Physics Lab is the first game to properly grapple with one of the Oculus Quest’s most interesting features – hand tracking. Letting you dispense with VR controllers, hand tracking lets you use your own paws to control VR apps and games. Using the Quest’s built-in cameras, the system tracks and then replicates your hand movements in VR space, down to the individual movement of your fingers and thumbs. Recalling the early days of VR gaming, when most games were essentially showcases for the tech, Hand Physics Lab is a collection of 80 different activities designed to demonstrate your manual manipulation ability. They range from painting and drawing with handheld pens, through solving classic…

REVIEW Solo V2 Conor Patrick’s Solo launched in October 2018 with a simple promise: an affordable security key, following the FIDO2 Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard. It would also have the added bonus of smartcard-emulating FIPS 201 PIV support, based on a fully open-source firmware – a far cry from the black-box proprietary nature of its competition. Originally designed as the ‘something you have’ to go along with the ‘something you know’ password in a two-factor authentication system, FIDO and FIDO2 aim to replace the old-fashioned, time-based one-time password (TOTP) systems, where a numerical code is read from a physical dongle or smartphone app, with a simpler idea. You insert a small USB key into a free port, tap a single button and you’re authenticated – if someone steals your…

How important is power efficiency? I have a love-hate relationship with power efficiency. That might seem strange – after all, who would want a product that’s less efficient than or more power-hungry than a competing product? Most of my time as a PC enthusiast has been about beating the heat as well, which is why I love water cooling, enjoy testing cases that boost air cooling and got into PC modding in the first place. However, there seems to be an unhealthy obsession with power efficiency among PC enthusiasts right now. Intel has had some bad press over the past few years because its CPUs are still made on a 14nm process. AMD got the same gibes when its CPUs drew too much power in the pre-Ryzen days. Both AMD…

Pity the poor PC of 1983-1984. It wasn’t the graphics powerhouse we know today. IBM’s machines and their clones might have been the talk of the business world, but they were stuck with text-only displays or low-definition bitmap graphics. The maximum colour graphics resolution was 320 x 200, with colours limited to four from a hard-wired palette of 16. Worse, three of those colours were cyan, brown and magenta, and half of them were just lighter variations of the other half. By this point, IBM’s Color Graphics Adaptor (CGA) standard was looking embarrassing. Even home computers such as the Commodore 64 could display 16-colour graphics, and Apple was about to launch the Apple IIc, which could hit 560 x 192 with 16 colours. IBM had introduced the Monochrome Display Adaptor…