If you’re keen on lighting up your PC, you probably have a few sets of LED strips or cold cathodes in a drawer somewhere. The trouble is that as soon as you change PC cases or hardware, these lights invariably end up clashing with your new parts’ colours. Similarly, standalone kits usually have limited lighting … Read more
While ASRock’s X299-ITX/ac is the undisputed king of small form factor high-end desktop (HEDT) motherboards, micro-ATX still offers a handy space-saving size with the benefit of more ports and, unlike the ASRock board, the MSI X299M Gaming Pro Carbon AC can house full-sized DIM Ms in its quad-channel memory slots. It’s also over cheaper than … Read more
MSI Z370 SLI Plus review – We’re still waiting for Intel to release Coffee Lake chipsets other than the expensive Z370 model, not least so that its non-K-series CPUs can offer better value once you factor in the motherboard price. It seems we’ll have to wait a bit longer in order to pick up boards that … Read more
Z390 ATX MOTHERBOARD A very now and then a motherboard manufacturer goes all-out and leaves the rational worlds of value and price points far behind to create an ultimate flagship. We’ve already seen MSI’s MEG X399 Creation, with its air-cooled M.2 PCI-E card and mega power circuitry, and less recently. ASRock’s X99 Extreme 11, with … Read more
The Ryzen 3 2200G is a sizeable cheaper than its Ryzen 5 sibling – a huge amount of money at this end of the budget spectrum. Even after recent price cuts of AMD’s first- generation Ryzen CPUs, it still appears to offer good value for money, costing the same price as the Ryzen 3 1200. … Read more
While AMD’s new WX-series CPUs focus on giving Intel a run for its money in workstation software. AMD is also beefing up its credentials in the more traditional HEDT CPU market space, replacing both the Threadripper 1950X and 1920X with the new 2950X and 2920X. These chips will be the only new X-series models, with … Read more
Cooling a CPU with over20 cores can be a challenge, and when it comes to dealing with Threadripper CPUs, having a large enough contact plate to cover the giant heat spreaders on AM D’s high-end desktop CPUs is also important. Generally, coolers with these big heat spreaders perform better than those without them. At the … Read more
The fact we now have a 32-core desktop CPU in the shops is a remarkable achievement for AMD. Of course, the dies were essentially already in place to spring from 16 cores to 32 cores under the huge heatspreader, but the Zen+ architecture and its 12 nm manufacturing process has lowered power consumption and allowed … Read more
Owning a high-end desktop system is rarely cheap, but one advantage of Intel’s X299 high-end desktop platform over AMD’s equivalent is that motherboards can be bought for noticeably lower prices. It’s been around for a bit longer, but they were also a little cheaper to start. Of course, the much cheaper price of AMD’s CPUs … Read more
Table of ContentsINTEL LGA2066 PROCESSORPerformanceSPECIFICATIONSConclusionVERDICT INTEL LGA2066 PROCESSOR The 2017 CPU war is still raging, with the release of the most powerful and expensive desktop CPU ever – Intel’s 18-core Core i9-7980XE. The Skylake-X range also expanded downwards, with 12,14, and 16-core models stretching up from the Core i9-7900X – the 10-core CPU that launched … Read more
Asus ROG Strix X470-i Gaming MINI-ITX X470 MOTHERBOARD Since AMD’s X470 chipset was launched earlier this year, mini-ITX seems to be far more popular than micro-ATX, with not a single of the latter yet available with AMD’s AM4 socket. Asus’ ROG Strix X470-i Gaming is the most premium mini X470 board now. [content-egg module=Amazon template=custom/gallery_images] … Read more
SUPPLIER overclockers.co.uk With products in many PC categories, from liquid coolers to PSUs, it probably escaped most people that Phanteks doesn’t have an all-in-one liquid cooler to its name. Cases, air coolers and RGB lighting are just some of the other products it makes, as well as some very fancy water-cooling components, but it has … Read more