Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i Custom PC UK

What’s the point of water cooling? The thermal benefits aren’t that important in a world where manually overclocking a 16-core CPU is largely pointless, and AMD’s latest gaming CPUs don’t even have unlocked multipliers (see p12). Custom water-cooling loops can be very quiet, of course, but so can a PC kitted out with decent Noctua air-cooling gear, such as the Gladiator Nocturnal on p36. That misses the point though. Of course you don’t need a PC with a custom water-cooling loop, just like you don’t need a fancy Swiss watch, a sports car or a fitted kitchen with a range cooker. That doesn’t prevent them from being very nice to have though. Let’s face it, water-cooled PCs look gorgeous, and there’s nothing wrong with spending both time and money on…

Razer has announced a new 60 per cent-sized gaming keyboard that uses the company’s Analog Optical Switches. The Huntsman Mini Analog features adjustable sensitivity presets for the keys, as well as the ability to double-map them. ‘This allows users to enjoy fine throttle-control or steering in racing games or assign two functions to a single key depending on how hard the key is pressed,’ says the company, giving players the ability ‘to have both walk and sprint on a single button in an FPS'. The Huntsman Mini Analog also features doubleshot PBT keycaps, an aluminium chassis and a detachable USB Type-C cable. It’s available to buy from razer.com now for £150 inc VAT.…

On 23 February, South America-based ransomware/hacking group Lapsus$ claimed responsibility for stealing a terabyte of proprietary information from Nvidia. As I write this piece, the sensitive data is being gradually disseminated into the wild, and the group asserts it has information on Nvidia’s upcoming hardware codenames, its DLSS technology, employee information, signed software certificates, GPU firmware and, supposedly, files that could divulge the core trade secrets of how its GPUs are designed. Less than a week after the hack the group made its first public messages, and to prove the leak was real, it released the names and chip codes of Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs. We already know that Nvidia will release GPUs based on its forthcoming (Ada) Lovelace architecture this year, but the leak gives us an idea of…

SUPPLIER ebuyer.com With many PCI-E 4 M.2 SSDs using the same flash memory and controller, it’s often down to each manufacturer’s firmware tweaks, pricing and durability to make their drives stand out. With a speedy Phison E18 controller under the hood, the Kingston Fury Renegade is certainly no slouch, and at less than £290 for 2TB and with a generous durability rating, it certainly seems to be competitively priced as well. Our review sample is the 2TB model, which boasts a massive 2,000 terabytes written (TBW) endurance rating, but even the 1TB model offers 1,000 TBW, which is significantly more than the WD Black SN850, Samsung 980 Pro and other Phison-based SSDs such as the Corsair MP600 Pro. Only the slower WD Red SN700 offers more, and that’s designed for…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Rocketek USB Hub takes the problem of USB cable carnage and deals with it at a hub level. The device itself is a simple 4-port, unpowered USB hub, but what sets it apart is the casing, which offers either four self-tapping screws or a big Velcro pad to allow you to stick the hub to any given surface. This approach works well – you get a hub in a favourable position that stays put, making it easy to keep track of what’s going where. The lack of a power connection rather limits the utility – you’ll be better off sticking to gamepads, headphones and other devices rather than external hard drives or other demanding kit. Also, the device is quite broad at 3.5cm, so there are some…

How we test One of the key attractions of mini-ITX cases is the diverse range on offer. Some are geared towards offering the best support for liquid coolers and radiators, while others focus on air-cooled prowess. Some even come with liquid coolers pre-installed and some attempt to solve the issue of flexibility by being expandable. For these reasons, comparing several mini-ITX cases can be tricky, as they’re likely to be good in some areas and poor in others, depending which route the manufacturer has taken. To get around the varied competition this month, we’re carrying out a couple of different tests. Firstly, we test all cases where possible with the same CPU air cooler and with a minimum of two fans installed. If a case has no fans as standard,…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk The new RGB lighting-equipped Phanteks Evolv Shift XT currently has a very tempting discounted price of £135 inc VAT on overclockers.co.uk at the moment, but how does it stack up against our favourite mini-ITX cases as well as some of the new kids on the block? For starters, it’s still one of the best-looking cases available – it even nearly persuaded our editor to build a small form factor PC too. It also has a unique feature in its vertically expanding roof section, so we were interested to see how its cooling performance compared with the competition. In Compact mode with the roof sections sat all the way down, there’s no space for internal case fans, while two can be fitted in Air Boost mode (with the roof…

SUPPLIER scan.co.uk Like other models of Razer mice, the Basilisk is available in several different variants that use the same core shape but with different features. However, with this mouse, Razer has taken the differences between models to extremes. Opt for the Basilisk X and you get a stripped-down wireless mouse with only a handful of buttons. Choose the Basilisk Ultimate and you again get wireless convenience but with loads of buttons, a charging dock, adjustable scroll wheel resistance and much more. Meanwhile, the Basilisk V3 we’re reviewing here rather confusingly doesn’t offer a wireless connection but does include 11 programmable buttons and a tilting scroll wheel – the latter can also be switched between notched or freewheeling modes. If you’re just after lots of features without spending extra money…

DEVELOPER Santa Monica Studio / PUBLISHER PlayStation PC LLC After five years of PS4 exclusivity, Sony has released its Norse epic God of War on PC. It sees players assume the role of Kratos, who, after several games spent mercilessly slaughtering the pantheon of Ancient Greek myth, has settled down for a quiet life in the realms of the Norse gods. After the death of his human wife Faye, Kratos sets out with his son Atreus on a personal quest to honour her final wish to scatter her ashes on the peaks of Jotunheim, the land of giants. What follows is a surprisingly personal tale of loss, parenthood and coming to terms with one’s past. The game centres around the frictional relationship between Kratos and Atreus, the latter desperate to…

DEVELOPER Sloclap / PUBLISHER Sloclap, Microids Sifu is a playable love letter to martial arts movies, a fast-paced and uncompromising action game that combines a rich and complex combat system with an emphasis on replayability. The story is a straightforward revenge plot that sees you prowling the streets of Hong Kong in search of five rogue martial arts masters responsible for killing your father. Each level sees you working through nightclubs, museums and back alleys, battling large groups of enemies in quickfire combat. The combat systems blend Sloclap’s previous work in multiplayer martial arts game Absolver with the counter-based combat of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Learning when to attack, which attacks to block and which to dodge is crucial. Enemies can be defeated by reducing their health to zero, but…

DEVELOPER IO Interactive / PUBLISHER IO Interactive After launching Hitman 3 with support for PSVR last year, developer IO Interactive has now extended VR support to the entire Hitman trilogy on PC. Now you can wander around iconic Hitman locations such as Sapienza and Miami, as well as all the levels from Hitman 3. It’s a wonderful free addition to an already excellent game, although there are undoubtedly areas where IO Interactive could have pushed its VR adaptation further, both visually and mechanically. On that first point, Hitman VR offers a substantial visual upgrade over the heavily compromised PSVR version. Distant objects are considerably more detailed, meaning PC VR gets much closer to replicating the epic sweep of Hitman’s levels and skyboxes. The PC version can also properly render Hitman’s…

This month we’re focusing on how to use some of the latest water-cooling hardware and combine it with Fractal Design’s fabulous new Torrent case. As getting specific graphics cards is still a lottery right now, we’ve just focused on water-cooling a Core i9-12900K using a 360mm radiator, but we will offer advice on how to pick the right waterblock for your graphics card and how to go about fitting it. CPU ▪ Intel Core i9-12900K While the Core i5-12600K and Core i7-12700K have more than enough grunt for most people, the added cores and threads as well as slightly higher boost frequencies mean the Core i9-12900K is a beast in every task. It needs decent cooling to tame it with low noise levels, and this is where our water-cooling system…

The Raspberry Pi 4 is a powerful device, and some form of cooling is recommended if you want to get the most out of it under sustained heavy workloads. The market is flooded with heatsinks and fans, from tiny stick-on accessories to impressively featured devices such as the Pimoroni Fan Shim (reviewed in Issue 194, alongside the Pimoroni Heatsink and 52Pi Ice Tower). Cyntech’s latest design sits closer to the ‘stick-on accessory’ end of the spectrum. It’s a hefty heatsink that takes up just over the footprint of the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 boards for which it’s designed to cool entirely passively. Oddly, Cyntech has opted to tie the design into its family of two-part plastic cases. Rather than attaching to a Raspberry Pi board directly, the heatsink is…

When’s the next issue out? custom PC Issue 226 On sale on Thursday, 5 May MAY 05 CPU overclocking – one foot in the grave I’ve just finished reading issue 224. Great stuff, as usual. Rarely do I drag myself from gaming long enough to communicate with other humans, and even more rarely do I agree with any of their opinions, but James asked us to reply on the subject of CPU overclocking, so this was one of those rare occasions. I’m an old-school overclocker and have been doing it since around 1993, when I built my first PC to play Doom. It was a 25MHz 486DX overclocked to 33MHz with 8MB of RAM. Decades later, I was an early member of the 5G Club, though that doesn’t mean much…

SUPPLIER hp.com Most laptop companies concentrate on 15.6in and 16in screens these days, but HP’s new Omen 17 shows that there’s still plenty to like about larger devices. Its 17.3in screen is immediately immersive, and the 2,560 x 1,440 resolution gives you more pixels than conventional 1080p panels. Combine the resolution with the 165Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time, and you’ve got a screen that’s well suited to gaming, despite the lack of adaptive sync. Quality levels impress too. The brightness level of 375cd/m² and black point of 0.31cd/m² are ample, and the contrast ratio of 1,210:1 provides good depth and vibrancy. The delta E of 1.83 and colour temperature of 6,424K ensure accurate colours, and the panel rendered 94.1 per cent of the sRGB gamut, so it can…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The MSI Force GC20 V2 has an exceedingly complicated name for what amounts to an exceedingly simple control pad. It’s a big, chunky, comfy unit, using the standard Xbox layout pattern. The comfort comes from its smooth lines and light weight, while its 2m wire and lack of batteries also help it to cut down on mass. The USB cable is a detachable micro-USB one, rather than a wire hooked straight into the pad, which is neater, replaceable and attaches with a satisfying clunk. The construction feels solid all round, with responsive, clearly labelled buttons and a powerful motor for feedback. Both triggers have a consistent, responsive pull, making them ideal for driving games and other times when you need precision. Visually, the design is simple elegant monochrome,…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk These tiny earbuds manage to pack a surprising amount of good into an almost comically small package. The Go Air Pop earbuds feel about as small as you could make an earbud without running the risk of losing it in your head. The sound quality delivered from these miniature devices is surprisingly good, and it’s easy to get a snug fit in your ears, with a variety of tip sizes included. They fall slightly short of what you might want for serious music fans, but for everything else, they hit the mark. The casing also has an unusual design – it doesn’t support contact charging and it doesn’t have any ports for charging wires – instead, it has its own USB cable attached that folds onto the bottom.…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk The fabulous Lian Li Q58, which we’ve already reviewed in Custom PC recently, is now available with a PCI-E 4 riser cable out of the box, although this addition sees the price rise from £125 to £150. Its mix of vented and clear split side panels makes it stand out and is also rather clever. You get at least some view of your shiny hardware, while air-cooled graphics cards and CPU coolers will also benefit from the lower mesh panel. If you want to go all-out with mesh, though, Lian Li offers replacement panels for the Q58, replacing the glass panels included as standard on both sides. We also love the Q58’s pop-on panels, which make it so much easier to open and close than the likes of…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk Despite packing in a grid of 12 extra thumb buttons on its side, the Corsair Scimitar RGB Elite is the second cheapest mouse on test this month. That potentially solves the problem of some buyers not wanting to use this style of mouse for everything, but instead wanting a second mouse dedicated to MMO-style gaming. If you’re only paying £45 rather than £70-£80, buying two mice is a much more palatable option. What’s more, although there are a few signs of a cost-cutting approach to mouse design here, such as the rather small feet and cheap-looking plastic on the underside, this mouse has a handful of premium touches. For a start, as the name suggests, you get RGB lighting in the form of an illuminated scroll wheel, plus…

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. 8-core system with integrated graphics 8-core CPU, basic gaming Needs a micro-ATX or ATX case. We recommend a 450W 80 Plus Bronze power supply. See Issue 218, p76 for an example build guide. 1,920 x 1,080 gaming 6-core CPU, 1080p gaming Needs…

DEVELOPER From Software / PUBLISHER Bandai Namco From Software’s challenging, enigmatic RPGs have for years enraptured players with their combination of meticulously designed worlds, rich combat systems, cryptic storytelling and ferocious boss fights. All its games excel, and at least two – Dark Souls and Bloodborne – are generally considered masterpieces. Elden Ring outdoes them all. From Software’s latest fantasy adventure takes the ingredients that made its previous games so captivating, and combines them with a true open world that astonishes in every sense imaginable – its scale, its beauty, its depth (both figurative and literal), and its capacity to surprise and delight over dozens of hours. This success was by no means guaranteed. Crucial to the design of Dark Souls and Bloodborne are their intricate geometry. Lordran and Yharnam…

Strange Horticulture puts you in charge of the Lake District’s most successful plant shop, which might not sound interesting, but beneath the foliage of this cosy premise is a spooky, atmospheric and brilliantly devised mystery game about murder, witchcraft and the occult. The game takes place over a series of days, with you serving customers who enter the shop at the ding of a bell. Most customers will ask for a specific plant, which you won’t know about because you’ve overseen the place for all of five minutes. Fortunately, tools for plant identification are at your disposal, such as a microscope and floral encyclopaedia. Using these, you must figure out which plant on the shelf is the correct specimen, and give it to the customer. Successfully identifying plants rewards you…

Developed by a studio named Pontoco, The Last Clockwinder is a puzzle game that uses body movement tracking to create Rube Goldberg-style contraptions. On the game’s Steam page, Pontoco describes the premise, saying: ‘You are on a mission to repair an ancient tower built into the trunk of a colossal tree. Inside, you find a pair of gloves that allow you to turn anything you do into a looping clockwork automaton.’ In other words, the game can record and replay your body’s movements. For example, you could record yourself picking fruit off a vine and then throwing it to another recorded clone, which then catches the fruit and passes it to another clone and so on, until the fruit reaches a canning machine. In this fashion, you create an elaborate…

Whether you’re trying to eke out a few extra frames per second to make a game playable on your aging hardware, or you’re looking to get blistering frame rates in the latest competitive games, knowing which in-game graphics settings and other software tweaks to perform can be more than a little bit confusing. That’s where this guide is here to help, as we assess the impact of a multitude of settings on a variety of games. We’ve tweaked basic settings such as resolution, along with changes to character models, texture settings and everything in between. Not all games include a wide range of graphical settings while many include many more than we’ve tested here. However, by the end of this feature you’ll be able to quickly zone in on the…

Thermal cameras are incredibly useful tools for a range of troubleshooting scenarios, from finding hotspots on a circuitboard when coming up with cooling systems, to spotting gaps in insulation without having to take apart your walls. Plus, if you’re the Predator, they help in the hunt. They’re also expensive. The FLIR ETS320, reviewed back in Issue 201, is a prime example. Designed for circuit analysis, it offers a high 320 x 240 thermal resolution and a clever adjustable stand – and comes with an eyebrow-raising £3,119 (inc VAT) price tag, which puts it well out of reach of all but the most well-heeled hobbyists. Dianyang Tech isn’t as well known a name, at least in the West, but it’s aiming to change that with the launch of the DytSpectrumOwl.…

AIO coolers sometimes need cleaning Last month I tested NZXT’s fabulous new H1 V2 mini-ITX case (see Issue 224, p28). I loved the original case, in spite of its PCI-E riser cable problem and issues cooling some graphics cards, especially Nvidia’s RTX 3000-series Founders Edition cards, as its tiny footprint and easy build process made it very appealing. It was also easy to spray-paint, and there are lots of custom parts available for it too. However, the comparison between the old and new version of the case hit a bit of a hitch when I tested it last month. Rather than using our usual mini-ITX test gear, I thought it more important to compare the original case with the new one to see if NZXT’s claims were true about improved…

SUPPLIER ebuyer.com It’s easy to get confused over WD’s naming schemes for its SSDs, but in general, if it’s Black it’s going to be fast, if it’s Blue it’s going to be not quite so fast and if it’s Red it’s going to have a decent endurance rating. The problem is that there are then different model names within those line-ups. The Black SN770 we’re reviewing here isn’t the only Black series SSD to sit in WD’s arsenal, with the monstrous Black SN850 being one of our favourite PCI-E 4 SSDs. As you’d expect, the Black SN770 also uses the PCI-E 4 interface, but at £125 inc VAT for a 1TB drive, it’s only £12 cheaper than the flagship SSD. Storage prices fluctuate, of course, but we’d expect to see…

SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk The Corsair K70 has been among the most popular mechanical keyboards since it first launched nearly ten years ago, and while it has gone through several design tweaks over the years, it’s only now getting a full makeover. Out is the thick slab of coarsely brushed aluminium on its top, and in is a sleeker overall look. What’s more, Corsair has added some premium extras, such as doubleshot PBT keycaps, an 8000Hz polling rate and a removable cable. The new keyboard retains an aluminium top plate but it’s nowhere near as thick or domineering as the previous version, with it no longer overhanging the plastic chassis below. We slightly miss the chunky quality of the older plate, but the new design certainly feels more pleasingly smooth. This general…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk The Aothia Desk Protector is what amounts to a very large mousepad, presented as a civilised piece of office furniture, rather than as the fragtastic killpal of a digital murderhobo with Monster energy drink for blood. Although the branding strategy may differ, the practicalities don’t so much. The Aothia is an 80 x 40cm desk surface on which you can put your keyboard, mouse and other computer accoutrements. The material choices are different, however. The Aothia is made of PU leather with a suede base to keep it still, and it works. It’s comfy to rest your wrists on the surface and it works fine with a gaming mouse, plus it has enough give in it to be a good writing surface. There’s definitely a period of waiting…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk Adding a useful blade to a keychain sounds like a clever idea until you run into the practicalities of having a sharp pointy thing bouncing around in your pocket. The KeySmart SafeBlade attempts to overcome this problem by being, as the name suggests, a safer sort of blade. In practice, this means you get a key-shaped box opener that you can slot onto your keyring, which enables you to open most packaging short of an armoured van, bank vault or plastic blister pack. The size and shape of the SafeBlade is key – literally, it’s shaped like a key, and it’s also smaller than a normal front door key. On a keyring with regular keys, the SafeBlade is less likely to protrude and jab you than usual pocket…

SUPPLIER amazon.co.uk Case manufacturer Geeek’s cases have proven a hit in mini-ITX circles thanks to decent build quality, highly compact and efficient designs, plus reasonable price tags. The G1 SE is one of several similar cases from Geeek, which comes with slightly different configurations. Our test model sports top and bottom 120mm fan mounts, aluminium construction and magnetic acrylic side panels. Its trump card is a supremely compact layout, with the case measuring just 33cm long and just over 14cm wide. The downside is that while this is perfect for a quartet of fans shifting air from bottom to top or vice versa with an SFX PSU and low-profile CPU cooler, it isn’t great for any other setups. The CPU cooler height limit is just 66mm, which severely restricts your…

How we test The recent trend for most gaming mice is to favour fewer features and a lightweight, comfortable design over lots of buttons and other extras. However, some games – and some gamers – just require more buttons. The most obvious example is the massively multiplayer online (MMO) genre of games, where many buttons are often desired in order to fire off a multitude of different commands and macros without having to take your hands away from their default keyboard and mouse positions. More broadly, such mice can also be useful for other games where you need to do more than just point and click one or two buttons, and the extra buttons can of course be useful for desktop use too. For a mouse to qualify as being…

DEVELOPER Techland / PUBLISHER Techland Dying Light 2 doesn’t want to be a better game than its predecessor; it wants to be a more important one. The sequel to Techland’s surprise 2015 hit strives to blend the free-running, zombie survival simulation of the original with a Witcher 3-style narrative, placing heavy emphasis on characterisation and world-changing choices. Unfortunately, Techland lacks the storytelling chops of The Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt Red, and the result is a ponderous mess that lacks much of what made the original game compelling. The sequel’s story takes place around 20 years after the original, centring around a young, white man called Aiden. Working as a ‘Pilgrim’, a sort of post-apocalyptic postman, Aiden is travelling the game’s world in search of his sister Mia, which leads…

Water cooling is practically mainstream these days thanks to all-in-one liquid coolers, but there are still some tricky obstacles to overcome if you want to build your own custom loop and build an effective, great-looking PC. What size radiator do you need to cool your hardware? How do you keep it quiet as well as cool? Will it fit in your case? We’ll be taking a look at all these aspects over the next few pages, as well as how to actually build a water-cooled PC, leak-test it, fill it with coolant, deal with rigid tubing and pick the best parts for your particular case. Our hand-picked components are guaranteed to work together, so you just need to select your own core components, add in our gear below and you’ll…

INSTALL CPU Start by installing the CPU in the motherboard and applying thermal paste in a cross pattern, as shown 1. FIT THE CPU WATERBLOCK The waterblock secures using screws integrated into a backplate. It’s extremely heavy, so place the waterblock onto the CPU and use one hand to hold it in place, aligning the screws with the socket mounting holes. Then turn the motherboard and waterblock over, and support the waterblock from underneath, allowing you to secure the backplate with it facing up 2. The waterblock is too heavy to reliably fit it any other way. Once it’s secured, you can then turn the motherboard over again 3. FIT HARDWARE INTO CASE Next install the motherboard in the case as well as the SSD, memory and graphics card 4,…

REVIEW ZimaBoard 216 Despite being a computer built onto a single circuitboard, IceWhale’s ZimaBoard doesn’t bill itself as a single-board computer. Rather, it’s called a ‘single-board server’ – and the company does a pretty good job of backing up that title with an impressive list of features. All three ZimaBoard models share the same overall design – a large metal upper body that doubles as a passive heatsink, the board and then a three-layer acrylic protective base on the underside. The front of the board has two SATA 6Gbps ports with a single power connector, while the rear plays host to a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 3 ports and a mini-DisplayPort 1.2 output capable of providing a 4K display at 60Hz. The side of the ZimaBoard hosts…

From a young age I’ve always been drawn to the Aliens universe. I remember my mum leaving me to dog-sit one evening and I couldn’t find anything to watch. I picked up the VHS of Aliens and threw it in our toploader thinking it would be fun. Being only 13, I was absolutely terrified, but I made it to the end. It left me intrigued and in total awe of such a brutal creature. My old PC had done me proud over the years but it was starting to struggle with today’s AAA titles, so it was that great time to build another. I have seen many, many builds over the years, but they all have (mostly) one thing in common – a square box with colourful fans in it.…