With a £ price reduction since we first reviewed it a while ago, the Asus ROG Strix B550-I Gaming is now even more attractive, especially as it’s now £ cheaper than its X570 sibling too. This board give you an 8+2 power phase design and the same aesthetics as the Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming, but there’s no snazzy RGB lighting and … Read more
While NZXT has been dipping its toes into the pools of peripherals and motherboards recently, it’s better known for its cases and its ATX line-up has just received a refresh recently with a trio of new models. The range caters for three different markets, with the two cheaper models offering high-airflow or closed-panel designs, while the top-end model offers all-glass panels, … Read more
Z690 ATX MOTHERBOARD While it might be late to the Z690 party, NZXT’s N7 Z690 was an interesting item to land in our lab. It features a PCB cover in black or white, with our white sample just begging to be placed in a clean, white PC case, preferably with other white hardware. It’s also reasonably priced for a … Read more
If you prefer your motherboard to be free from RGB bling, and with a decidedly dark and moody theme, then you’re in luck, as there’s not an ounce of built-in lighting on the MEG Z690 Unify. You do get some RGB headers, including two 3-pin, one 4-pin and a single Corsair connector for hooking up … Read more
Si’s MPG Gaming Carbon range of motherboards has proved pretty popular among PC enthusiasts, with EK even teaming up with MSI to water-cool them for the Carbon EK X range of motherboards. As with many Z690 boards, though, while it looks like another solid effort on paper, the DDR5-based MPG Z690 Gaming Carbon WiFi will … Read more
One of the main benefits of an APU system is its potentially small size, so full-sized ATX Socket FM2+ motherboards such as MSI‘s A88X-G45 Gaming often seem like a bit of a contradiction. However, there’s a few reasons to consider this particular board. Firstly, it has some of the best power circuitry cooling of any … Read more
When Intel’s Broadwell-E CPUs were released a year ago, they didn’t offer anything particularly new, aside from the 10-core Core i7-6950X, along with its ridiculously expensive price that broke the £1,500 barrier. Charging that much money for a 10-core desktop CPU isn’t wise now though. This year, March saw the introduction of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, … Read more
A lot has changed with the introduction of Intel’s new X299 platform and Skylake-X chips. There are more CPUs than in the Broadwell-E line-up for starters, and potential owners have even trickier choices to make than with the X99 platform. Table of ContentsFrom Core i5 to Core i9Inside the chips From Core i5 to Core … Read more
INTEL LGA2066 PROCESSOR We’ll probably never know whether Intel’s extensive X299 CPU line-up is clue to AMD’s return to form, or If Intel was just trying to extend its high-end desktop platform’s reach, but there are some strange decisions in there nonetheless. Half the range is still missing a couple of months after launch, with … Read more
Apart from the odd surprise such as the Haswell-based, multiplier-unlocked Pentium G3258, Intel’s CPU offerings have been consistent in terms of overclocking abilities for a number of years. We usually get two K-series models per quad-core generation that are multiplier-unlocked – a Core i5 and Core i7, with a raft of non-K-series CPUs ranging from … Read more
We’re usually fond of Asus’ flagship motherboards, but while they’re usually dripping with features to make any enthusiast drool, very few people can afford them. Imagine, then, that both of those factors were multiplied several times over and combined in a wallet-crushing feature-fest of a motherboard. That’s essentially what Asus has done with the Maximus … Read more
If you dip below when buying an overclockable motherboard, it’s unlikely to be an Intel model, simply because only pricey motherboards based on Intel’s Z270 can take advantage of its K-series unlocked processors. However, AMD’s budget-focused B350 chipset allows you to overclock AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, providing scope to build cheap, overclockable systems. The micro-ATX Gigabyte … Read more