Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i Maximum PC

IF THERE’S ONE THING you can rely on in technology, it’s the ever-onward march to miniaturize anything with a power button. Looking at Nvidia’s 40-series graphics card range, you’d think Jensen Huang had missed the memo. But along come the 50-series cards, and compared to the chunky 40-series, they’re positively titchy. This can mean only one thing—it’s small form factor build season here at Maximum We’re taking a hammer to the laws of physics to squeeze a meaty, full-fat RTX 5080 GPU into a case the size of a box of cereal in our cover build (page 16). We’re talking about a console-conquering micro PC that could sit on your desk without scrimping on performance or cooling. Our guide will help you pick all the components, from the case through…

Price increases for American consumers are likely. So said Best Buy CEO Corie Barry in response to the recent reactivation of 25 percent tariffs on goods and services from Canada and Mexico, plus an extra 10 percent on China for good measure, adding to the 10 percent tariff the Trump administration applied back in January. Barry said China and Mexico are Best Buy’s top two import territories, with 55 percent and 20 percent of its products sourced from those countries. Meanwhile, the CEO of Target, Brian Cornell, said tariffs mean “prices will go up”. Cornell was speaking specifically about the impact of tariffs on Mexican goods. Admittedly, Target isn’t exactly a PC component specialist, selling only fully built PCs and laptops, so Cornell’s comments aren’t as directly relevant as Best…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: HARD WE LOVE A challenging build, and nothing comes close to a compact ITX system like this. There’s no denying this one, not one bit. If you’re building in the Era 2, you’re building a true SFF build. No fluff, no extra space inside; every cable route needs to be planned carefully, the components perfectly selected, and the build order needs to shift back and forth. Adapt, overcome, and improvise. The Era 2 is exactly what you expect it to be: super-slick, and jam-packed with features to make even the expert system builders out there happy, but it demands the excellence of its builder. It’ll be frustrating at times, and challenging at others, but the satisfaction you get at the end of it,…

IT TOOK A BIT LONGER than we were expecting, but Nvidia’s Blackwell RTX architecture and GPU family have finally arrived. We reviewed the RTX 5090 last issue, and test the RTX 5080 in this issue, but there’s a lot more to say about everything that’s going on under the hood. Blackwell RTX differs in several key areas from the data center Blackwell architecture, just as the Hopper architecture differed from Ada Lovelace design. As expected, AI and machine learning lands front and center for all the new GPUs coming out this year, which can be both good and bad. Beside the core architectural changes relative to the prior generation, Nvidia has overhauled its Founders Edition design, created new software tools and features, doubled down on frame generation as a way…

We’ve primarily focused on the desktop Blackwell GPUs, but Nvidia will naturally also have laptop variants. It has even announced the names and a few of the specifications, even though the actual laptops are still a month or two out. The various models are basically taking the same ‘desktop GPU minus 10’ approach as the RTX 40-series. The top mobile GPU will be the RTX 5090, with 82 SMs and 10496 CUDA cores. That’s basically the same as the desktop 5080, minus two SMs, and the 1824 ‘AI TOPS’ indicates boost clock speeds should also be similar. Real-world clocks, with a TGP of 95–150 watts, will likely be lower. But what’s most interesting is that the 5090 laptop GPU will have 24GB of memory on a 256-bit interface, meaning it…

All the RTX 50-series GPUs released so far require the use of a 16-pin 12V-2x6 connector. The graphics cards all come with the necessary 8-pin to 16-pin adapter, for people that don’t have an ATX 3.0 or later power supply with the necessary cable. 12V-2x6 was supposed to fix the problems with melting 16-pin connectors on cards like the RTX 4090, but reports have started to pop up about 5090 cards having meltdowns. There are some important caveats here, however. First, at least some of the reports come from people using third party 16-pin cables going straight to the PSU. Some of these may still be the older 12VHPWR variant, which was proven to be problematic. Second, the number of reported melting cables—so far—is far lower than what we saw…

Corsair Vengeance A7500 AMD’S RYZEN 7 9800X3D CPU isn’t just the gaming CPU du jour; it’s becoming a long-term legend. It’s no surprise, then, to find it at the beating heart of Corsair’s Vengeance A7500 desktop rig. As a cutting-edge gaming PC, it’s also no shock to find Nvidia’s latest RTX GPUs at its heart. These days, buying a prebuilt system like this might be one of the only ways to get a decent graphics card. It’s actually the rest of this rig—as opposed to the industry-standard, albeit excellent, core components—that really stand out. Corsair is unusual in being a system builder that also manufactures a wide range of PC components itself. Most PC builders might commission their own case design, then cobble together a bunch of third-party parts. Not Corsair;…

TIP OF THE MONTH RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH Google has for the last few months integrated Gemini into its search queries. Got a question? Chuck it to Google, and Gemini will give you a response. Be wary, though; Gemini still prioritizes pretending to be a human over accurate information, plus some of the data it pulls can be erroneous, out-of-date, or just incorrect. It’s worth searching a bit deeper and checking its answers, particularly if you’re asking deeper questions. COOLING ORIENTATION I’ve been having a lot of fun lately on a custom build inside NZXT’s H9 Elite chassis. It’s a curious case; dual-chamber design, covered in glass—even the roof. NZXT’s worked around that roof problem with some side ventilation, but it’s still a bit of a hindrance for cooling solutions. You’ve…

YOU’LL NEED THIS (https://jellyfin.org) comes as a server component for PC and Mac, plus client devices across all major mobile, desktop, and streaming box/TV platforms IF YOU PREFER OWNED MEDIA to paying expensive monthly subscription services for the likes of Netflix or Amazon, then why not have the best of both worlds? Self-hosted services like Plex and Jellyfin make it possible to present your media in a way that’s easy and quick to access—no navigating multiple platforms or disc menus. Plex may be the king, but many of its best features are hidden away behind the Plex Pass paywall. Thankfully, you can enjoy virtually all of Plex’s best features without paying a dime, thanks to the brilliant open-source Jellyfin. Since forking from another media server (Emby), Jellyfin has gone from strength…

IT’S HARD TO KNOW what to make of Dough. You want to like it as an independent start-up. But under its former name of Eve, it — or rather its—customers, suffered from some widely publicized stumbles. Whatever the company’s past, with the Dough Spectrum Black 32 OLED, you sense care and investment in terms of design and attention to things like the aesthetic and build quality that big brands just don’t give you. This 32-inch 4K OLED monitor sports a lush metal rear chassis and a gorgeous, beautifully engineered metal stand (an optional $100 extra) where monitors from mainstream brands tend to feel a bit cheap and plasticky, even at this premium end of the market. It also delivers the numbers, specswise. Dough has chosen the LG WOLED panel option,…

THE DELL XPS 13 is an old favorite. While its latest minimalist design is something of a divider in terms of aesthetics and keyboard, our high expectations remain. That’s doubly true thanks to its new Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, otherwise known as Lunar Lake. With the recent Snapdragon X Elite-powered Dell XPS 13 (9345) breaking records for battery life, the question is whether Intel can take the fight to Qualcomm. Let’s find out. Dell has kept the InfinityEdge bezels and flat keyboard deck of the previous few XPS models for the new Intel Core Ultra 200V-powered XPS 13. That’s either excellent or disappointing, depending on how you’ve felt about the last couple of generations of XPS 13 models. While this is a sleek look, it does lose some…

OWNERS OF THE Logitech G Pro Racing Wheel, rejoice—we can finally upgrade our sim racing setup as we always hoped, with new shifters, handbrakes, wheels, and wheel hubs. Logitech has two new racing wheels on offer: one designed for the track, and another for the rally—or even classic car—crowd. There are two parts to this latest release: the RS Wheel Hub containing the interface, paddles, and electronics to attach the wheel to the Pro Racing Base, and either the RS Track Wheel, as reviewed here, or RS Round Wheel, which are simply metal and a rubber-like plastic. You can use any pedals, shifter, or handbrake with the Logitech gear, provided you plug it into your PC separately. The Logitech stuff all combines into a single USB cable via the USB hub…

AMD HAS officially announced the RX 9000 series, starting with the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. The series and RDNA4 architecture were partially revealed at CES 2025 during AMD’s keynote address. However the company didn’t reveal in-depth technical information, partly due to the announcement taking place before Nvidia’s address concerning its GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. The specifications and pricing for the RX 9000 series were the subject of rumors and leaks, specifically that AMD had delayed its rollout. The company has now ended all speculation by releasing full technical specifications for both GPUs, along with its own performance benchmarks. Both cards feature 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit interface, running at 20 Gbps. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT has 64 compute units, while the RX 9070…

TRIUMPHS SIGNAL THREATENS TO LEAVE SWEDEN They will not cooperate with proposals by the government for backdoor encryption products. GTA V FOR PC UPDATES The Enhanced edition adds support for upscaling via Nvidia DLSS 2 and AMD FSR1/FSR3. RAZER RELEASES MINECRAFT ACCESSORIES The gaming brand is ‘Creepin’ it real’ with a Minecraft edition gaming mouse and headset. TRAGEDIES PASSWORDS STOLEN Troy Hunt, the owner of ‘Have I Been Pwned?’, has confirmed that the ‘ALIEN TXTBASE’ contains stolen credentials. UBLOCK ORIGIN DEAD ‘uBlock Lite’ lives on in Chrome, and uBlock Origin works in non Chromium-based browsers. APPLE DISABLES ICLOUD ENCRYPTION IN UK Apple has disabled the service for UK users rather than comply with the government.…

VIDEO-STREAMING SERVICE Twitch is on track to make some major changes to its monetization policies. According to CEO Dan Clancy, tools like subscriptions will be open to “most streamers”, even if their account doesn’t have ‘Affiliate’ or ‘Partner’ status. Currently, achieving ‘Affiliate’ status means meeting criteria like reaching 50 followers and maintaining an average of at least three concurrent viewers. While newer users are excited about the potential for immediate earnings, established Affiliates and Partners have been more circumspect, feeling it could devalue the hard work they put into achieving their statuses. Streamers have also raised concerns that this could lead to ads on all Twitch channels. Currently, only monetized accounts like Affiliate channels display ads. Subscribers to Twitch’s ‘Turbo’ service can also avoid pre-roll, mid-roll, and companion ads. Twitch’s…

AMD’s answer is RDNA 4, which walks back from the GPU chiplet architecture of the prior generation. Specifically, AMD has taken steps to make its ray tracing hardware viable, and beefed up the AI compute potential. After the RTX 20-series launched in 2018, this is what we wanted from AMD. Better late than never, I guess. To put things in perspective, the Navi 48 GPU at the heart of the RX 9070 XT has 64 RDNA 4 Compute Units (CUs) and a 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface with 16GB of VRAM clocked at 20 Gbps; nearly the same as the previous RX 7800 XT chip, with four extra CUs and a tiny bump to memory speeds. On paper, that looks pretty mediocre: 6.7 percent more shader cores and 2.6 percent more…

> Cloning M.2 drives > Rename files quickly > Fix sync errors Upgrade NVMe drive I want to swap out my M.2 NVMe 256GB boot drive for a 1TB one, as I’m constantly running out of space. I have one eye on a future PC upgrade, so I’m looking for a drive that will move with me. Can you recommend any models, and how would I go about transferring my Windows install from one to the other? —Bryce A Lawson THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Bryce’s mobo only supports PCIe 3.0, which maxes out his read/write speeds at around 3 Gb/s. However, most PCIe 4.0 drives, which can read/write at over 7.5 Gb/s, are backward-compatible with PCIe 3.0. There is a premium for those top speeds—Samsung’s 990 PRO 1TB costs around $116 on…

WE’VE REITERATED IT enough at this point, but it’s worth mentioning again. This was a hard build. It might not seem it, but chassis like these tend to draw blood during the construction, even for our experienced hands. They’re cramped, difficult to work in, and generally require considerably more thought, tact and expertize than what you’d find from a mid or full-tower chassis. That’s not a bad thing, though. The Era 2 is incredible to look at, and performs fantastically throughout the whole procedure. You’ve got to bear in mind when you’re looking at a chassis like this that it’s built with this massive volume constraint placed on its head, and yet it still needs to fulfil the modern-day requirements that a good case needs to have. It needs to support…

THE BEGINNING The Packard Bell name existed long before home computing ever started. The original Packard Bell Corporation was founded in 1933 by Leon Packard and Herb Bell. It was a producer of radios for homes and cars at a time when radios were covered in wood paneling and cars had swooping curves and chrome. The company later moved into other consumer electronics, such as television sets, and even military equipment. Of note to this story, in 1957, a subsidiary was formed to produce computers. However, in 1968, Packard Bell was bought out by an American industrial conglomerate, Teledyne Technologies, after which the name was essentially abandoned. The Packard Bell our readers may know began in 1986. A trio of Israeli-American investors—Beny Alagem, Jason Barzilay, and Alex Sandel—had plans for…

THE LINUX-BASED Steam Deck has revolutionized PC gaming with a console-like experience in handheld form. Valve has been promising to release SteamOS for general PCs—beyond just the Deck—for ages now, but some folks have got tired of waiting, and decided to take matters into their own hands. Whether you can’t afford a Steam Deck or just want SteamOS on another device, maybe one of these SteamOS imitators is just what you’re looking for. There are a number of competing gaming distros, several of which are SteamOS imitations. Right now, your choices are HoloISO, ChimeraOS, and Bazzite. All three are worthy of your attention, but we have chosen Bazzite because it supports the broadest range of hardware and form factors. Unlike HoloISO and ChimeraOS, which attempt to replicate the Steam Deck’s Arch-based…

YOU’LL NEED THIS MICROSOFT’S NEW GAME BAR WIDGET comes to the rescue of in-game web searchers FOR MANY YEARS, almost as long as there’s been an easily accessible internet and PCs could run two apps at once, gamers have been dumping themselves out of their games in order to search for info. Even in the era of cellphones that are themselves little supercomputers, people have preferred to use the desktop browser to look up cheat codes, boss weak spots, and more. While games are generally more forgiving of you hitting the Windows key or Alt-Tab, it’s still possible to get in a situation where the game refuses to restart after you switch back into it. This leaves gamers with a feeling of jeopardy—is the information you glean from switching to…

IT HAS BEEN a somewhat bizarre launch for Intel, with its Core Ultra desktop processors crashing and burning (thankfully not physically this time) in reviews, and sales figures are said to be poor. Indeed, it’s only because of ongoing microcode updates and fixes for Intel’s new Arrow Lake chips that we’d even consider opting for Intel’s new platform and a motherboard such as the new Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice. BIOS updates, driver updates, Windows updates—they’ve been coming thick and fast for Z890 motherboards in the hope of improving performance. It’s time to see if the latest tweaks for the platform—specifically the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice—make it worth considering, particularly when compared with its AMD X870 counterpart that costs a touch more and the review for which…

AS YOU SWIPE through this magazine, you’ll often be confronted by bulky amalgamations of metal and whatever the material they make circuit boards out of is. They’re heavy, they have bits that stick out, and they have colored lights and visible cables. They’re PCs meant for rendering polygons or housing large language models—not the sort of thing you can slip in a bag and take with you. The Asus Zenbook A14 is extremely slippable. It’s remarkably light at just over two pounds, and even though there’s a full-size 14in OLED screen on the front, it feels like it’s smaller, like Apple has re-released its 11in line of MacBook Airs. It’s that market-sector-creating release that the A14 is targeted at. If there’s a Windows machine that can compete with the Air…

IF THERE’S ONE BIG TREND in the world of PC peripherals that most folks can get behind, it has to be the ultralight gaming mouse. We've seen options emerge from the likes of Logitech and Glorious as some of the best gaming mice out there. The latest to give it a go is NZXT with its Lift Elite Wireless. As with the other peripherals released in this new Elite range, the Lift Elite Wireless is targeting an aggressive price point at $89. With the spec sheet on offer including a 26,000 DPI sensor, 57g weight and support for up to 4K wireless and 8K wired polling rate, that makes this quite the compelling option against the Logitech Pro X Superlight 2 Dex, and especially the Razer DeathAdder V3 Hyperspeed, our…

MICROSOFT’S FEBRUARY 2025 preview cumulative update (KB5052093) for Windows 11 24H2 comes with a range of bug fixes, enhancements, and features. The update (OS Build 26100.3323) introduces a PC Game Pass referral card. This can be accessed by users with a connected Microsoft account by opening the Windows settings home page. Microsoft originally introduced Game Pass for PC in 2019. Users pay a monthly subscription to access hundreds of games. Other perks include free trials of certain titles, as well as EA Play Membership. There are also new functions for ‘Narrator’ scan mode. Users can press ‘n’ to automatically skip to the text after a link. The comma and period keys can also be used to jump to the start and end of items respectively. Multiple apps can now access the…

In recent years, mini PCs have bulked up to become modest yet genuinely viable gaming platforms. Sure, if your chief requirements are top frame rates and detail settings beyond 1440p for the lowest outlay, you are better off self-building. But if you’re after a tiny, off-the-shelf PC with awesome everyday computing power and 1080p to 1440p gaming capabilities—well, you’ve come to the right place. 5 BEELINK SER9 It might be small, but inside this all-aluminum machine is the most powerful iGPU we’ve tested to date: the AMD Radeon 890M. It runs quietly and looks great, no matter where you put it. It’s an impressive performer, but you’ll have to pay to the tune of about $1,000. Ouch. It also has a beautifully svelte design with a chassis that’s stacked with…

From conception to evolution, how ITX changed computing ITX motherboards are amazing, when you think about it. There’s a similarity between them and that age-old technology adage: things get smaller, and more powerful as they do so. It’s that Moore’s Law-esque belief that holds precedent in the very idea of ITX. From cellphones to laptops to supercomputers and more, there’s a similar vein that runs through it. That’s arguably why the ITX and small form-factor fan base is as passionate as they are. ITX breaks the trend. It’s different; the very idea that you can take super-small systems, build a PC in a suitcase, or have a chassis the size of a toaster, and effectively cram it with the same top-tier hardware you’d find in a gargantuan full-tower and have…

YOU’LL NEED THIS EXIFTOOL (Optional) IN MARCH 2024, author Joanna Maciejewska tweeted: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” Her comments reflect the growing trend of using AI tools like LLMs (Language Learning Models) to generate text, images, and other types of media that mimic human creativity. Many LLMs are trained on existing content without the consent of the creator, so they aren’t always compensated properly for derivative works. In academic circles, bad actors sometimes pass off AI-generated content as their own to earn recognition and qualifications. What’s even worse is that AI doesn’t get things right all the time. Recent analysis…

YOU’LL NEED THIS KEEPASSXC (https://keepassxc.org) Google Account DEALING WITH THE DEATH of someone close is never easy. It’s even harder when you share finances with them and/or need access to their social media to manage their memorial page. On the face of it, the answer seems simple: just write down all your passwords and give them to a loved one in case something happens to you. However, it’s not always that easy. As you add new accounts and change passwords, paper lists can quickly become outdated. Certain platforms also support ‘legacy’ or ‘trusted’ contacts for situations like these. However, this is only a solution for accounts held by those services. In this guide, you’ll learn some more universal methods for passing on your credentials if something happens to you. You’ll…

HALF THE MONEY for half the GPU. We give you the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, the second coming of Nvidia’s Blackwell series, and by most measures an RTX 5090 sliced in half. It’s also uncomfortably similar to the last-gen RTX 4080 Super. You get just five percent more cores than the RTX 4080 Super, with 10,752 in total. Despite rocking the same TSMC custom N4 lithography, it’s actually the smaller chip, if only by a smidge. There are 45.6 billion transistors inside GB203, where there are 45.9 billion inside the older AD103 chip. Meanwhile, it’s the same 16GB of VRAM and 256-bit memory bus here as the RTX 4080 cards, except this time it’s GDDR7 instead of GDDR6X running at 30Gbps versus at best 23Gbps for the previous Ada cards.…

HP’S LATEST OMEN is a desktop tower that contains some serious power, yet unlike many other powerful gaming PCs, it doesn’t take up too much space. It’s not exactly compact—we’re not talking Micro ITX levels of miniaturization here—but it doesn’t feel large, even when it’s on your desk. Add to this its remarkably quiet AIO loop cooler and GPU fans, and HP has delivered a powerful PC that’s particularly easy to live with. The RTX 4080 Super that sits in the Omen 35L’s PCIe x16 slot is not known for being quiet, though it does depend on the manufacturer. The card is enclosed in a metal cage that matches the white coloration of the casing—and everything else apart from the motherboard—so it’s hard to tell who made it, but it…

AMD AND ITS MOTHERBOARD partners have recently launched cheaper chipset options for the AM5 socket. But a quick glance at the latest B850 boards sees quite a few retail for more than the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice, while also lacking features such as USB4 and high-end audio codecs. Long story short: this is a nicely featured board, given the price tag starts with a ‘2’. The X870 chipset is all about making features such as USB4 and PCIe 5.0 for SSDs and graphics cards accessible at more mainstream prices than the X870E. It too is a value play of sorts. Anyway, apart from the AMD CPU socket and chipset, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice has a nearly identical counterpart in the Intel Z890 camp, making for an…

MORE LIKE a series offshoot than a Civilization 6 sequel, Civilization 7 takes the venerated grand strategy series in a different direction from the past two games. Certainly, it’s the most streamlined and pared-back the series has been in a long time. But as we'll see, old Civ hands might yearn for the depth and diversity of its predecessors. Founded in the pre-SVGA age of gaming antiquity, Civilization’s randomized yet celebratory take on human history has stood the test of time. Over its first several entries, the series rapidly evolved to better encapsulate the vibrancy and madness of human history in a turn-based strategy format. But in more recent outings, it has become more about rejigging rather than revolutionising that cavemen-to-cosmos saga. The boldest idea that Civ 7 introduces are…

LAST ISSUE, we promised to test graphics software from the big three, and that’s what we’re delivering. Last time, we put both Nvidia’s freshly released ‘NVIDIA App’ (still hate that capitalization) and AMD’s Software: Adrenalin Edition into the Maximum PC labs to figure out who exactly was the king of the hill when it came to graphics setting tweaks. In perhaps a surprise to very few, AMD came out on top, slaughtering the green competition with an advanced suite of metric logging, performance tweaking, and better laid-out software than Nvidia could match—at least not yet. That’s not a surprise, because the Nvidia App relaunch is relatively new, and still under development. AMD Adrenalin has been iterated on time and time again since the Radeon 5000 series, and has developed some…

> Retro rewind > 8K reveries > Virtual realities New laptop, old-school gaming Hello Maximum PC. I’m a long time reader of the mag in its many forms over the years, and as that may suggest, I’m also a bit on the older side. I used to be a big gamer—we’re talking DOS and the 16-bit era—but I’ve fallen out of love with keeping up with hardware demands, and all the online 'live service' stuff just doesn’t appeal to me. But I still like to play the odd game from time to time, and even recently bought an Xbox-style controller to pair with my Dell XPS work laptop. Part of the inspiration was a friend who has told me about game emulation, and the ability to play Super Nintendo and…