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AMAZING SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS

SHOP THE FULL RANGE WWW.MAGAZINESDIRECT.COM/SUBSCRIBE Offer open to new subscribers only. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery ofyour first subscription issue. Payment is non-refundable after the 14 daycancellation period unless exceptional circumstances apply. For full terms and conditions, visit www.magazinesdirect.com/terms. For enquiries please call: +44 (0) 330 333 1113. Lines are open weekdays between 9am-Spm UKTime or e-mail: help@magazinesdirect.com. Calls to 0330 numbers will be charged at no more than a national landline call, and may be included in your phone provider'scall bundle.…

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RELIABILITY IS KING

IT’S BEEN A STRANGE few months in the world of PC building. As you’ll have read in these pages, Intel had been quiet about a crucial flaw that was discovered in its 13th and 14th-gen CPUs, a flaw that was so serious, some game developers said it was only a matter of time before all those chips became useless. Intel was fairly quiet on the subject, which resulted in us taking the affected models out of our Blueprint systems at the back of this magazine until we found out more. Thankfully, Intel has acknowledged the issue, rolling out system updates to at least provide a temporary fix. They’ve also extended the warranty on these chips by two years, allowing users to get a replacement if they experience structural degradation. It’s…

RELIABILITY IS KING

Intel’s Raptor Lake liability

MONTHS AGO, some gamers in South Korea reported problems with their unlocked high-end Intel Core i9 processors, typically Core i9-13900K and 14900Ks. While playing Tekken 8, the game would shut down. More reports emerged involving other games, particularly titles using the Unreal engine. Chips were returned for replacement. Underclocking the chip slightly appeared to fix things. Motherboards were suspected of using overly aggressive voltage settings, while some claimed the chips weren’t capable of sustaining the frequencies Intel stated. In April, Intel issued a statement that it was “conducting analysis of the reported issues”. In May, Intel issued another statement blaming the motherboard manufacturers. A BIOS update calmed down the default settings, which Intel claimed were not in line recommended defaults. Things improved, but the issue never went away. Then, in…

Intel’s Raptor Lake liability

NEW RTX 4070 VARIANT

NVIDIA’S GEFORCE RTX 4070 is a popular card in the Ada Lovelace 40 series. It’s the cheapest of what you might call ‘proper’ gaming GPUs in the Ada range, though it’s still not truly affordable. The RTX 4070 was joined by a zippier Ti, Super, and Ti Super versions. Now, we are to get a new variation of the vanilla RTX 4070. The new card swaps out the GDDR6X memory used in all 4070 or higher series cards for regular GDDR6, as used in the 4060. As far as we know, everything else remains the same. The change means 20Gb/s modules with a maximum bandwidth of 480 GB/s, rather than 21Gb/s and 504GB/s. Performance is expected to drop by a sliver. Rumor has it that a batch of Micron GDDR6X…

NEW RTX 4070 VARIANT

ZEN 5 HITS 6GHZ

SOMEONE GOING BY ‘Skatterbencher’ has been overclocking AMD’s new Zen 5, and pushed a Ryzen 7 9700X to 5.8GHz on single-core. This is impressive, as it has a Fmax (frequency maximum) limit of 5.55GHz. He also reached 6.0Ghz using AIO water cooling. Much of this was achieved via AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive 2 toolkit. Meanwhile, the Zen 5 halo chip, the Ryzen 9 9950X, has received a lukewarm reception. The $649 16-core chip is no slouch, but not fast enough to match Intel’s current finest, the Core i9-14900K. Games, by some measures, are barely one percent faster. Multi-core productivity is decent, but for a top-dog chip, it failed to enthrall many early reviewers, and AMD’s Zen 5 launch has fallen a little flat. See what we think of its sister…

ZEN 5 HITS 6GHZ

Tech Triumphs and Tragedies

TRIUMPHS ✓ MAGNETIC GATES A paper has suggested that magnetic tunnel junctions could be used as faster and more efficient transistors. ✓ MASSIVE DRIVES SanDisk has revealed the world’s first 8TB SD card, and 16TB external SSD drive. ✓ CONSOLE COLLECTION A retro gaming enthusiast has connected 444 consoles to a single TV—a Guinness world record. TRAGEDIES × ARIZONA FAB WOES Production at TSMC’s Arizona plant has slipped. Practices like 12-hour days have not gone down well. × DON’T TAKE AI SERIOUSLY Microsoft updated its Service Agreement to remind that AI is not “to be used as substitutes for professional advice”. × RAM TO GET EXPENSIVE High-bandwidth memory demands mean DRAM production is scaling back.…

ARROW LAKE GETS BENCHMARKED

AFTER THE STOP-GAP that was Intel’s 14th-gen chips, we await the real next generation of desktop processors: Arrow Lake-S, or Core Ultra 200. We get a tile design, Intel’s new 20A process node, a new socket, backside power delivery, and more. Launch is rumored to be October 10, and chips a few weeks later. We expect 14 SKUs, and the specifications of 12 of these have appeared so far, divided into three groups with TDPs of 125W, 65W, and 35W. The top specification we know of is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. This has eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, while the base clock on the P-cores is 3.7GHz, with a boost to 5.4GHz, or 5.7GHz on a single cores. The lowliest chip so far is a Core Ultra…

ARROW LAKE GETS BENCHMARKED

GOOGLE IS A MONOPOLY

GOOGLE’S RISE to search engine dominance has been rapid. It has even become a transitive verb, and been added to the dictionary. Any company with such a grip on a market faces legal troubles, but this latest one has landed hard. The DoJ has ruled that Google has violated antitrust laws, effectively becoming a monopoly for internet search services through illegal practices, violating Act 2 of the Sherman Act. The ruling opens the way for legally enforced measures to restrict the monopoly. It was also hailed as “a historic win for the American people” by US Attorney General Merrick Garland. The White House press secretary said Americans “Deserve an internet that is free, fair, and open for competition”. What’s next is unclear. Among the options are divesting parent company Alphabet…

GOOGLE IS A MONOPOLY

Geekbench AI 1.0

PRIMATE LAB’S GEEKBENCH is one of the biggest benchmarking tools going. However, the rise of AI means there’s a gap in our assessment of PC performance. Enter Geekbench AI 1.0: a cross-platform benchmark that uses real-world machine learning to provide some hard numbers. It runs ten AI workloads, each with three data types, and gives single-precision, half-precision, and quantized scores (32-bit, 16-bit, and 8-bit). Tasks include object detection, image classification, and image upscaling. It tests CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs, and runs identical tests on all hardware. The point of reference is a Lenovo ThinkStation P340, which runs a Core i7-10700 processor. This is rated at 1,500. Version 1.0 supports a number of AI frameworks (the basic AI structure used to create the models). These include OpenVINO, ONNX, Qualcomm QNN, Samsung ENN,…

Geekbench AI 1.0

Cheap AMD V-Cache

Often, the first we hear of a chip is in a product database, or documents seeking regulatory approval before official announcement. This is where we are with the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D. It’s not a guarantee of existence, but it has appeared in paperwork for the Eurasian Economic Commission. The new arrival is a Zen 3 chip for AM4 socket boards, proving AMD’s commitment to older standards. It has six cores, 12 threads, and a base clock of 3.0GHz, plus a top boost speed of 4.0GHz. It also has AMD’s secret weapon for gaming goodness, V-Cache, which layers a fat 80MB of L3 over the cores for a total of 96MB. It has a slightly lower clock than the standard Ryzen 5 5500, but that extra L3 should compensate. The…

China’s H100 AI Rival

Huawei is testing its new AI chip, the Ascend 910C, pending full launch. The 910B sold well, as Chinese firms had little choice—thanks to trade sanctions, they can’t (legally) get Nvidia’s storming H100 chips. The fastest AI GPU the US government allows for export to China is the Nvidia H20. This has only 41 percent of the H100’s core count, but China is expected to buy $12 billion of them. The Ascend 910C is Huawei’s answer, and early reports claim it is ‘about’ as fast as the H100. A bold claim, perhaps, but adversity is the mother of invention, and US sanctions have been in place since 2018, providing plenty of incentives to accelerate chip development. The 910B sold about 550,000 units in China, despite some technical defects, against the…

Intel issues fix for Raptor Lake degradation

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I wrote about difficulties I was having with a Core i9-13900K processor (see MPC230 Tech Talk). Little did we realize that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg. While most complaints have involved the unlocked Core i9 Raptor Lake CPUs, it appears the instability problems build up and potentially impact many Raptor Lake—13th and 14th Gen Core—CPUs, with Intel identifying 22 different desktop parts. Everything from the Core i5-13600K and above rated for more than 65W base power, including i7 and i9 65W chips, is affected. That means T-class parts should be fine, as well as vanilla models like the Core i5-14600, but popular unlocked K-class processors are impacted. There are also reports of problems extending to server and laptop parts. Intel has a microcode…

Intel issues fix for Raptor Lake degradation

THE BEST MOUSE PADS FOR GAMING

THE BEST MOUSE PADS offer slick movement and awesome aesthetics, no matter what surface you prefer. At the most basic level, you want something that offers a smooth and precise surface for your mouse, which thankfully can be bought for not much more than a couple of coffees. Beyond that, you might want features like USB passthrough, RGB lighting, and maybe even less of a mouse pad and more of a deskpad. Here are our favorites. 5 NOVELKEYS DESKPAD If you’re the sort of person who feels constrained by a traditionally sized mousepad, then why not try a deskpad? NovelKeys does a lot of custom designs based on themes like Ghostbusters or Star Wars, but they feel good to use and last a long time. Most mouse pads come in at…

THE BEST MOUSE PADS FOR GAMING

AMD’s turn to drop the ball?

WITH INTEL’S RAPTOR LAKE CPUs falling over, the company firing around 15,000 employees, and cancelling its 2024 innovation event, AMD must have been enjoying the view—until its new Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs rolled out. So, is AMD’s CPU a minor stumble or game-changing fumble? When it comes to CPUs, as opposed to GPUs, AMD just keeps on rolling. The first Ryzen-branded CPUs launched way back in summer 2017. Admittedly, the Ryzen 1000 family and its Zen architecture didn’t immediately put AMD in a leadership position, but it was far more competitive than the chip it replaced. From there, AMD iterated, improved, and generally delivered. Each new Ryzen generation was an unambiguous step up from its predecessor. Okay, some were more impressive than others, but there were no significant missteps. That’s impressive,…

AMD’s turn to drop the ball?

> Music streaming > Switching to Linux > Duplicate removal Access web vault I read with interest your advice on how to use your WireGuard VPN to make it possible to take sensitive services ‘offline’ by making them accessible only through your network. My only disappointment was that it prevents me from accessing my Vaultwarden web vault remotely due to the issue with https. Is there really no workaround for this? —Sean F Maxfield THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: The Doc has done some extra digging and found one workaround you can use involving a domain name you own. The Doc assumes that you’ve followed our previous tutorials on configuring subdomain redirection using Nginx Proxy Manager, and that in this instance you have a subdomain (such as bw.domain.com) set up with an SSL…

Phantom of the Opera CPUs Unmasked

LET’S FACE IT, this industry isn’t exactly one that has avoided controversy over the years. The PC enthusiast landscape has always been riddled with, let’s call them, issues. In fact, right now, we’re witnessing one of those very moments rising up again, and most notably, that comes in the form of Intel’s hiccups (putting it politely) with its 14th and 13th generation of processors. The TL;DR is that the manufacturing process in the 13th generation chips potentially led to oxidization across certain transistor gates, leading to CPU malfunction, and the 14th gen’s micro-code, under extreme load and voltages would actively cause the chip to deteriorate with no hope of recovery once the damage had been done. All of this only came to light after extensive investigations by some seriously admirable…

Phantom of the Opera CPUs Unmasked

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

CPU AMD RYZEN 9 7900X WWW.AMD.COM What we’ve seen from early looks at the 9700X and 9600X doesn’t fill us with much hope in terms of massive IPC jumps. That makes the 7th gen an increasingly interesting value proposition right now. For $359, you can pick up the 7900X, complete with 12 cores, 24 threads, and a maximum boost clock of 5.6GHz. It’s also remarkably cool, with a relatively low power draw, along with some impressive efficiency. If gaming or single-core prowess is more your thing, you may opt for the 7900X3D with its expanded V-Cache (going from 64MB of L3 to 128MB), but that is $35 more than this little number. • $359 RAM 32GB (2X16GB) KINGSTON FURY BEAST DDR5 @6,000 MT/S WWW.KINGSTON.COM Ryzen’s Infinity Fabric is AMD’s name…

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 hours DIFFICULTY: Easy OKAY, HANDS UP, this is perhaps one of the easiest builds we’ve pieced together in the last few months, maybe even in the last year (bar perhaps the integrated GPU build). There’s no crazy new cable standards, no insane RGB cabling to deal with, and no wild and wacky cases to contend with. It’s just a plain old standard PC, complete with some juicy storage and a super-simple build process. If you’re new to PC building, or are nervous about building a second rig, given how challenging your first one has been, this system here is a fantastic way of diving back into your hobby, and realizing how easy it can be—if the parts and hardware are designed well enough, that…

SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION

ROOM TO MANEUVER

THERE YOU HAVE IT, folks—one seriously slick mid-range(ish) PC built in one supremely svelte chassis. Generally, we always try to take around 16 images or steps for these builds. We actually struggled with our NZXT build, predominantly because everything went incredibly smoothly. There was very little that proved a challenge, or difficult to work around. There were no clearance issues—everything just worked. The cable management and the details and considerations made to tighten up the build procedure in the H7 Flow is just exceptional. There’s little we can fault from a system build perspective at all. It even gives you options. There’s room here to install your AIO in the front if you so desire, and the liquid-cooling potential is immense, although you would have to think about how exactly to…

ROOM TO MANEUVER

PERFORMANCE REVAMPED

HOW WE TEST We’ve massively revamped our testing methodology for all of our builds moving forward. The aim is to provide a broad suite of benchmarks that consider how a system performs at both 1080p and 4K gaming, along with a range of benchmarks that push them to their absolute limits in traditional computational tasks, storage operations, and AI workflows. Additionally, we’ve expanded our testing to include power draw (utilizing a power meter and the same peripherals every time), alongside temperature monitoring throughout the benchmarking process. This should give us greater insight into how these systems perform against one another, and better visibility, regardless of what the budget is, or how much more potent one GPU is over another. THIS MONTH’S ZERO POINT For our comparison build this month, we’re…

PERFORMANCE REVAMPED

SYSTEM BENCHMARKS

For our system testing, we use a multitude of separate benchmarks. For our CPU tests, these include Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench 6.3.0. All results are indexes in this case. Multi-core per thread is achieved by dividing the total multi-core scores by the number of threads on the CPU. For storage testing, we’re taking advantage of CrystalDiskMark 8.0.5. The best scores are in bold, and all results are reported in MB/s. Throughout our entire benchmarking process, we test each system with a power meter plug running, and the latest version of HWMonitor installed and up as well. This allows us to report on maximum power draw and temperatures seen over the entire benchmarking process. CPU PERFORMANCE CINEBENCH 2024 & GEEKBENCH STORAGE PERFORMANCE CRYSTALDISKMARK 8.0.5 POWER DRAW & TEMPERATURE HWMONITOR & DEDICATED…

SYSTEM BENCHMARKS

GAMING BENCHMARKS

Game tests are performed on ‘Ray Tracing Ultra (Cyberpunk)’, ‘Ultra (Far Cry 6)’ / ‘Maximum (Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail)’ and ‘Ultra (Total War: Warhammer 3)’ graphics presets respectively. Three runs are performed per title, per resolution. Cyberpunk is tested with ray tracing enabled, regardless. Under its second set of conditions, DLSS/FSR/XeSS is enabled in Cyberpunk, dependent on GPU manufacturer, with upscaling set to ‘Quality’. Nvidia cards also have ‘AI Frame Generation’ enabled. FF XIV Dawntrail is utilizing FSR across the board regardless of GPU, with ‘LOD on Distant Objects’ enabled and dynamic resolution disabled. Far Cry 6 is tested with DXR disabled and the HD Texture pack downloaded and enabled. 1080P PERFORMANCE 1080P PERFORMANCE 4K PERFORMANCE…

GAMING BENCHMARKS

SYNTHETIC GAMING BENCHMARKS

For our synthetic graphics performance tests, we’re utilizing 3DMark’s latest Speed Way, Steel Nomad, Night Raid, and CPU Profile tests. Speed Way represents a DX12 title at 1440p, with ray tracing elements. Steel Nomad is DX12 4K without ray tracing, and Night Raid (DX12) is designed with integrated GPUs in mind at 1080p. CPU Profile acts as an additional CPU benchmark (reporting on Max Thread output only), but with specific gaming workloads prioritized. Each synthetic test is run a total of three times, and Indexes are reported on. In the case of Night Raid, only the overall score is listed. However, we do keep logs of Graphics and CPU as well to identify any erroneous elements or bottlenecks. 3DMARK PERFORMANCE…

SYNTHETIC GAMING BENCHMARKS

AI INFERENCE BENCHMARKS

For our AI testing, we’re utilizing UL Procyon’s Professional Benchmark Suite. The ones we’re focused on in particular are its AI Computer Vision benchmark, which gives us a gauge on how our systems operate when dealing with inference engine tasks, and AI Image Generation benchmarks. For Computer Vision, we report on the number of inferences performed, the average inference time, and the Index score across all tests. The Index score is more valuable, as it’s the time taken between Inferences that indicates performance. We run all tests on AI Vision utilizing Float16 precision. We test both the CPU and GPU under Microsoft’s ML API as standard, and if viable, include figures for testing the GPU under Nvidia’s TensorRT SDK, Intel’s OpenVINO toolkit, or Qualcomm’s SNPE run time (specifically for ARM devices),…

AI INFERENCE BENCHMARKS

OVERCLOCKING IN 2024 HAS THE END ARRIVED FOR HIGH VOLTAGE?

THERE’S SOMETHING inherently human about pushing technology to its limits. Companies do this all the time: building, developing, iterating on designs, new hardware, trying to eek out every last fleck of performance to beat the competition. The same can be said for amateur enthusiasts. There are very few people that don’t try to optimize how they work, their PC, or the hardware inside it. Overclocking, by its very nature, speaks to that. In essence, it’s a love language for your PC. In the same way that you can get attached to a car, tool, or fishing rod, you can also become attached to a processor. It’s a bit of a bizarre quirk of humanity, this attachment to objects, as if they have personality; a soul. The thing is, some processors…

OVERCLOCKING IN 2024 HAS THE END ARRIVED FOR HIGH VOLTAGE?

THE AMD PENCIL TRICK

Back in the early 2000s, it was possible to overclock AMD Thunderbird and Duron processors by using a pencil to fill in the contacts on the L1 Bridge. These tiny contacts limited the CPUs to only operate at a certain frequency straight out of the factory. With them penciled in, you could easily achieve 650-700 MHz on the Durons, and even as high as 900MHz on the Thunderbird chips. AMD did try to stop end-users from doing this on its next generation processors by applying a layer of varnish over those points. However, enthusiasts managed to bypass this by using a silver lacquer paint instead, again overclocking their processors by a considerable margin. As long as the cooling was sufficient, you could then adjust the multiplier in the BIOS to…

THE AMD PENCIL TRICK

MAXIMUM PC FACTS WITH ZAK

It’s a little known fact, but the reason Zak landed his first job at Maximum PC as a staff writer was partly because of his ability to overclock. In his portfolio, not only did he include a CV, cover letter, writing exercise and extensive photography of the build’s he’d produced, but also screengrabs of an Intel Core i5-2500K overclocked to a solid 4.6 GHz. A fairly reasonable overclock for the 2500K, what made that even more impressive, however, was the fact that it was managed on an ASRock Z77E-ITX motherboard, inside a Bitfenix Prodigy chassis, with nothing but a 120mm Corsair H60v2 CPU and a couple of fans, and still managed to keep itself cool at just 65 C. In fact. you can find Zak’s first ever feature, an ‘overclocking masterclass’ in…

MAXIMUM PC FACTS WITH ZAK

There’s another side to overclocking, and that is undervolting. This pursuit is a little different compared to just ramping up clock speed, volts and temperatures in that it generally involves reducing voltage from the chip itself, while trying to retain its performance and clock speeds as advertised. Now, why the heck would you do that? Admittedly, it is an incredibly niche scenario, but it’s often used in noise-sensitive systems that require absolute silence, or as close to as you can get. We did this with a liquid-cooled PC inside the NZXT Manta back in July 2016. The system featured an AMD Radeon Fury X alongside an Intel Core i7-6700K, one that was pre-binned by a third party, and capable of hitting 4.9GHz. Because the thermal capacity of the chassis was…

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BUILD AN IT SUPPORT HUB

AS A MAXIMUM PC READER, your expert knowledge of PCs no doubt makes you a popular target for technical support requests from friends and family. “It’s why I sent you to university,” this author’s mother used to say, forgetting he studied history and that he fell into technology journalism by happy accident. Trying to give tech support over the phone or by email is a nightmare if you’re constantly having to explain the basics or trying to imagine what’s on the screen of the ailing machine. This is where remote control software comes into its own—Microsoft’s Quick Assist tool is one option, but you’re tied to offering PC-to-PC support and it can’t handle administrative requests, which is useless when trying to access certain settings or install fix-it tools. In the past, the…

BUILD AN IT SUPPORT HUB

SET ACCESS PERMISSIONS

When rendering technical assistance to a friend or family member, ask them to carefully study the access request pop-up before clicking ‘Accept’. By default, the seven permissions buttons are all colored blue to indicate they’re all enabled. This effectively grants you full control over their device, so they may wish to review these buttons and then click any they’re uncomfortable with to turn the button gray and so disable it. The first row of buttons gives you control over their mouse and keyboard, plus access to their clipboard and audio output (so you can hear what’s going on). There’s also support for file copy/paste, which would enable you to transfer files to their device without having to go through the file transfer tool. The second row enables you to remotely…

SET ACCESS PERMISSIONS

MORE DISPLAY OPTIONS

RustDesk’s Display menu gives you a host of options for controlling your remote display, some of which—adaptive versus scaled, changing resolution—we cover in the main text. Other options are concerned with balancing the image quality with the speed of your connection. Explore the Image Quality submenu to experiment with bitrate and FPS settings if you find you need a trade-off between image quality and responsiveness of the mouse and keyboard. You can see the current state of your connection by checking ‘Show quality monitor’ from the Display menu—this opens a draggable pop-up inside the RustDesk client window that displays stats including connection speed, FPS, delay, and target bitrate. The Codec drop-down enables you to change video codec—recent updates have enabled hardware codec support, making x265 the new default on supported…

MORE DISPLAY OPTIONS

MAKE YOUR RUSTDESK SERVER REACHABLE

Anyone wishing to connect through your RustDesk server needs a permanent address to point at. This could be your public IPv4 address (visit http://whatismyip.com to find out what this is), but apart from being difficult to remember, it’s also likely that the address changes over time—for example, when you reboot your router. In previous issues we’ve talked about setting up a subdomain or dynamic domain (such as those offered for free at www.noip.com) to redirect to your public IPv4 address, updating as required with the help of a DDNS client such as ddclient (https://ddclient.net) or one supplied by your domain or dynamic DNS host provider. Because of the way RustDesk communicates—through its own unique set of ports—you don’t need to set up a dedicated subdomain. If you’ve followed one of…

MAKE YOUR RUSTDESK SERVER REACHABLE

INSTALL IN DOCKER/PODMAN

If you’re looking to provide a RustDesk server with 24/7 access, your Windows PC may not be the best choice to host it. The good news is that if you have a suitable server running Docker or Podman, you can get your RustDesk server up and running with the minimum of fuss. Example scripts for Docker users can be found at https://rustdesk.com/docs/en/self-host/ (select ‘Docker’ under ‘2.1 RustDesk Server OSS’), so we’re focusing on how you’d adapt those scripts for a rootless Podman installation, as we’ve outlined in recent issues. First, obtain the latest server image: Next, create a suitable folder inside which you’ll store your RustDesk configuration, including the all-important key—for example, the following line would create a hidden ‘rustdesk’ folder inside a ‘container-data’ folder within your home folder: Then…

INSTALL IN DOCKER/PODMAN

Dawn of a new era

IT’S FINALLY HERE. Notebooks, laptops, ultrabooks—all of them have led to this point in time. We’re finally witness to an immeasurable change in how our portable world of computing will be moving forward. The world of TN, IPS, and VA screens is coming to an end, and with it the advent of AI. We’re now at a point where OLEDs are so cheap, and AI processors too, that it’s hard to see a world where the two don’t exist in every portable powerhouse. Arm, Ultra Cores, Ryzen 8000 series—all feature AI, and all typically come with that OLED panel. That crisp screen, with rich color accuracy, insane frequencies, and rapid response times. Take the Asus Zenbook Duo we have here. By now, you’ll likely have read our words reviewing the…

Dawn of a new era

CPU Architecture DEEP DIVE

AMD AND INTEL have traditionally released new processors every year, often with the biggest updates arriving for the fall season. 2024 continues that trend, but there are new processors, and there are new processors. In what has become mostly a two-year cadence, both AMD and Intel have major architectural overhauls going on, promising bigger changes than the off-year refreshes. It’s not just about desktop CPUs, either. As another sign of the current state of affairs, where mobile solutions continue to outsell desktop parts, both companies have laptop-centric designs coming out. Intel even leads off with its mobile-focused Lunar Lake architecture, which has some important differences from the upcoming desktop-centric Arrow Lake designs that we’ll cover here. AMD likewise has its Granite Ridge line of CPUs that target desktops, with Strix Point…

CPU Architecture DEEP DIVE

TIP OF THE MONTH ALWAYS PERFORM A QUICK FORMAT Whatever you do with your SSDs, ensure that when formatting, you perform a quick format. If you try to do a full format on an SSD, it treats it like a traditional HDD, and Windows will run a full read/write cycle over every cell on the SSD, writing a 0 in every memory cell before deleting it. If your SSD only has a 600 TBW endurance rating, and it’s a 2TB drive, then you’ve immediately reduced that to 598 before writing anything to it. MAKE – USE – CREATE 62 Lock down your browser 66 Clear your PC of stalkerware 68 Boost your gaming VPN FROM SCEPTIC TO CONVERT I’ve always been a bit fascinated by Blade Runner 2049. One of…

presents: BACKGROUND Finnish mobile maker HMD, which owns and manufactures Nokia handsets, has made a pledge to offer more repairable phones. The Skyline aims to deliver on this promise. MAJOR TECH SPECS • Screen: 6.55 in 20:9, OLED, 144Hz refresh rate, 1000 nits peak brightness, FHD+ 1,080 x 2,400 • Cameras: Front: 50 MP, Rear: 108 MP Main AF with OIS, 13 MP, 50 MP Tele • Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.2 with LE Audio, USB Type-C, Analog audio output, WiFi 6e, NFC, 5G • Battery: 4,600 mAh (replaceable), 33W charging support (QC4.0 and PD3.0 PPS compatible), 15W magnetic wireless charging, 5w reverse wireless charging, Qi2 certified • Memory/storage: Internal: 128/256 GB, MicroSD card support up to: 512 GB, RAM: 8/12 GB RAM • CPU: Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 • Operating System:…

Lock down your browser

ADAPTIVE AND EVASIVE MALWARE, phishing domains, harmful links, and packet sniffing can all target a common point of weakness: your web browser. In May, Google was forced to release an emergency security update for the Chrome browser, which exploited a bug in the V8 JavaScript engine to allow remote code execution attacks. In August, vulnerabilities were also discovered in Edge that targeted out-of-bounds memory access in the ANGLE graphics backend to divert users to malware domains. 2024 has also seen a spike in ‘malvertising’ whereby legitimate-looking web page ads lead to malware. Given that browser developers are constantly releasing patches, it’s obvious that regular updates are one of the best ways to surf safely. Still, by default, most browsers display online ads without first checking their legitimacy. Sites are free…

Lock down your browser

A SECURE BROWSER

1. ANTI-TRACKING FEATURES The best browsers integrate features to automatically detect and prevent social media trackers, cross-site cookies, and cryptominers. You can also make exceptions so that trusted domains load correctly. 2. CONTAINERIZED BROWSING Firefox containers isolate browsing sessions using color-coded tabs. Web data in one container cannot be accessed by others. You can even sign in to multiple accounts on the same site. 3. FINGERPRINT RESISTANCE Some browsers, like Brave, have built-in features to provide websites with randomized fingerprints. For others, you can disable features that could be exploited by fingerprinting scripts. 4. VPN While we recommend using client software over a browser extension, VPNs provide a secure connection between your device and the VPN server. As your traffic is encrypted, it’s almost impossible to monitor. 5. SECURE EXTENSIONS…

A SECURE BROWSER

THE MANIFEST V3 CONTROVERSY

In late 2021, Google announced plans to deprecate its Manifest V2 API. As of June, browser extensions using Manifest V2 are no longer supported. This change has proved controversial, as Manifest APIs manage how extensions interact with Chromium-based browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Opera. V3 has introduced some changes, supposedly to make browsers safer and improve user experience. This means that all browser extensions must contain all the code they run. Extensions will require permission from Google to implement any in-browser changes. The consequences for ad blockers could be disastrous. Such extensions work by downloading lists of HTTP requests. Accessing and updating these quickly is an essential part of keeping ad blockers functioning. Manifest V3 forces browser extensions to use declarativeNetRequest API, with a limit of 30,000 coded ‘rules’. As…

THE MANIFEST V3 CONTROVERSY

Remove stalkerware from your PC

ACCORDING TO KASPERSKY’S LATEST ‘State of Stalkerware’ report, over 40 percent of those surveyed worldwide said they’d experienced stalking or suspected that they were being stalked. Stalkerware is a form of spyware, which is used by bad actors like domestic abusers to monitor people’s devices without their knowledge. While it’s most commonly found on mobile devices to harvest information like GPS data, your PC can also be infected. Keyloggers, which silently record your keyboard activity, are a good example. Other forms of stalkerware may monitor your personal files, or even spy on you via your webcam. Stalkerware is difficult to remove, as it’s deliberately designed to disguise itself as a legitimate program or system process. In this guide, you’ll discover how to reboot your machine to safe mode, so the…

Remove stalkerware from your PC

Boost your gaming VPN

IF YOU’RE A SERIOUS GAMER, you’ll be aware of the advantages of using a VPN. As traffic between your device and the server is encrypted, your ISP can’t monitor and ‘throttle’ it, slowing down your game. With the IP address hidden behind the VPN server, players are also better protected from DOS (Denial of Service) and ‘swatting’ attacks. Still, connecting to the internet through a VPN introduces an additional ‘hop’ in your traffic’s route, which can increase latency. This can be an issue if your chosen title only allows you split-seconds to shoot, slash, or jump. Many VPN providers claim to offer the very best servers in optimal locations, with swathes of bandwidth for the perfect gaming experience. In this guide, we’ll explore some ways to test such claims. This is…

Boost your gaming VPN

How to repair your graphics cards

WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE. Just picture it for a moment: you’re rampaging through your favorite game, decimating monsters left right and center, silver sword drawn, coated in oil, and then suddenly, pop! System crash. What the heck?! The PC reboots, you get back in-game, then five minutes later, the same again. Try one more time. Three minutes later, wham! The game closes to desktop. Frustrated, annoyed, and disgruntled, you shut the machine down. Time to sit down and actually do some work. We’re, of course, talking about the pitfalls and pain of graphics card failure. It’s one of the few components that can tell you it’s hurting before it keels, and we’ve become experts at repairing our trusty graphical boats. In this tutorial, we’re going to run you through our…

How to repair your graphics cards

Nvidia’s strangle-hold on AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has gone from buzzword to fascinating topic. Whether that’s in the form of data analysis, processes to make workflows more efficient, or debating with LLMs pretending to be Socrates, the ramifications are clear. I’d heard how much of Nvidia’s hardware stock is being pushed into AI development. I needed to understand why Nvidia had an edge. Thanks to the team at UL Solutions, I got access to their AI Computer Vision and Image Generation benchmarks. It is terrifying how much of an advantage Nvidia has. There’s a price difference of around 96 percent (if you pick up a 4080 Super, not our OC variant), and a performance delta of around 93 percent (with ray tracing) in stock testing. But in AI processing, it’s a whole other battle. Take…

Nvidia’s strangle-hold on AI

Editor’s Pick: Samsung Galaxy Watch7

IT MIGHT NOT surprise you that I love stats and data, particularly tied to measurable metrics that I can control and analyze. Fitness is a big passion of mine, and right now, I’m on a bit of a calisthenics hype. This is body weight training, pull-ups, push-ups, dips—things of that ilk. To get stronger in calisthenics, you can do one of two things: reduce your overall body fat levels, or increase muscle mass. Because of that, I like to keep an eye on as many metrics and stats as I can: steps, body composition, stress levels, heartrate. As such, I’ve advocated for smart watches since their conception. I had a Samsung Watch Active2 since 2021, decided it was about time to jump ship to a new one, and the Watch7…

Editor’s Pick: Samsung Galaxy Watch7

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

IT’S BEEN A BUMPY ROAD getting here, what with AMD recalling all stocks of the new Ryzen chips weeks before they were due to be sold, and all about jumping around motherboards, updating firmware, and endlessly fiddling about with settings. But at last, we can bring a review of AMD’s latest and greatest desktop CPU design—and it’s a little underwhelming. AMD has stuck to the same fundamental floorplan for the new Ryzen 7 9700X as the last-generation 7700X and even the Zen 3-powered 5700X. Underneath the heatspreader, you’ve got two chiplets: one CCD (Core Complex Die), which houses all the processing cores and cache, and one IOD (Input/Output Die) that’s home to a tiny integrated GPU, PCIe and USB hubs, and the RAM controllers. The 9700X comes with a fully…

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 16 Gen 9

THE LENOVO LEGION Pro 7i Gen 8 delivered a superb mix of performance, size, and price. We expected similar results from the Legion Pro 5i Gen 9. Instead, we’re feeling miffed by the new Gen 9 model. With impressive gaming performance, you’d think we’d be all over this thing, and yet we can’t get over its lackluster memory configuration and low storage capacity. First, the good stuff—the Pro 5i Gen 9 comes equipped with the Core i7 14650HX. A 24-thread processor, divided into eight P-cores (16 threads with Hyper-Threading) and eight E-cores. That’s a lot of processing power for what is ostensibly a gaming laptop on the more affordable end of the market. The GPU is very much a known quantity: the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 mobile, with 8GB of…

Lenovo Legion Pro 5i 16 Gen 9

Asus ProArt PX13

CAN A LAPTOP BE CUTE? This model from Asus certainly makes an attempt, behaving like a manga hero character, as it’s all chibi on the outside, but reveals great strength when put to the test. The ProArt PX13 is a 13-inch two-in-one machine, so needs to be comfortably graspable when in tablet mode. This means it can’t taper to the sort of edge that might make the machine useful as a weapon in the event of a zombie invasion, and results in a slab-sided look with widely rounded corners. This is a good thing, as not only does it allow you to pick it up and fold the keyboard back, so you can pretend you’re in Star Trek while all you’re actually doing is compiling a grocery list, but with…

Asus ProArt PX13

Gigabyte Aorus CO49DQ

WE’VE ALL DONE IT when buying a new PC: Let the imagination run wild and picture not only the case, studded with RGB fans and radiators, but the entire setup. The precise mouse we want, the keyboard with its mechanical switches, perhaps a headset positioned artfully nearby. Then there’s the monitor. No one goes into PC building hoping to push together two widescreen displays that they only bought because they were cheap. What we all want, deep down, is one of these. It rises on an elegant single foot from the desk, the cables connecting it to your PC (or PCs, since this is a fantasy) neatly hidden. There is no dividing line where two screens come together; instead your Windows desktop is smoothly continuous across the space two monitors…

Gigabyte Aorus CO49DQ

Acer Predator Helios 18

THERE’S BEEN A RACE to make laptops smaller for years now, with extreme thinness and lightness prized in portable machines. Acer has had enough of that, and its Predator Helios 18 is about as big as a mobile PC can get in 2024. Actually, is it mobile? This isn’t a laptop you’re going to want to throw in a bag and take with you, or have on your lap for very long. It’s heavy and gets hot, and while its components are absolutely ideal for any kind of rendering work, whether that’s in Alan Wake 2 or After Effects, its natural habitat is firmly on top of a traditional desk, rather than casually laid on a bed or balanced in the back seat of a car. This is the triumphant…

Acer Predator Helios 18

TAKE A LOOK at the Hyte Thicc Q60, and you might come to the conclusion that this is an all-in-one liquid cooler that pushes appearance over performance. That’s not strictly true, however. Yes, the Q60 is adorned with a 5-inch screen, a litany of RGB LEDs, and some tidy cabling, but there’s also a chunky CPU cooler beneath it all. The Q60 is a big beast. It comes with a radiator double as thick as some, coming in at 52mm. That’s reportedly to use space that’s not often utilized to its fullest in modern PC cases, according to Hyte—it’s opting for a thicker radiator in the place of a longer one. The Q60 is billed as a 240mm radiator on account of the two 120mm Thicc FP12 fans included, but…

Bag a software bargain

Norton 360 Premium for $29.99 WE’VE NEGOTIATED a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions; just a one-off bargain price of $29.99, compared to the regular $109 charge. That buys you 15 months of cover from the Norton Security suite across 10 devices Because it’s the Premium version, you get a host of extra tools. There’s 75GB of cloud storage for secure backups, plus the full version of Norton Secure VPN, both to protect your identity and provide a way of watching TV from home while abroad. Norton Parental Control provides tools to see exactly what your kids are up to on their various devices, and you also get GPS location monitoring for Android and iOS. To round things off, Norton Password Manager generates and stores passwords across all your devices,…

Bag a software bargain

NZXT C1500 Platinum

THE C1500 PLATINUM, the latest addition to NZXT’s power supply lineup, is priced at $370. That alone limits it to a niche audience, along with the few people who actually need that sort of power in 2024. 2025, with its rumored even higher-powered GPUs, could be another matter. However, if you do find yourself in that camp, you’ll be pleased with its exceptional performance and reliability. With features like fully modular black nylon-sleeved cables, a Sunon MagLev 140mm fan, two PCI Express 5.1 12V-2x6, and world-class electrical performance, it’s also designed to meet ATX 3.1 standards. Considering the tier of this PSU, its bundle is surprisingly minimalistic. NZXT provides only the necessary mounting screws, an IEC C19 AC power cable, and a purple bag for the modular cables. The highlight…

NZXT C1500 Platinum

BenQ X300G 4K Short Throw Projector

THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL piece of kit. The X300G from BenQ sits somewhere in the middle of its latest projector product stack. It’s complete with 4K 3LED projection lens, exceptional keystone accuracy, auto-adjustment, and impressive brightness and response times, all packed into a nice, attractive little box. It’s advertised as portable, and to a certain extent it kind of is, but it also very much kind of isn’t. We actually looked up the word 'portable' to find a modern definition. Google sums it up as a smaller version of something that can be easily carried. By that logic, the X300G is absolutely that: portable. Don’t confuse that with being able to use this anywhere and everywhere, however, at least without an electric hookup. There’s a notion in tech that 'portable'…

BenQ X300G 4K Short Throw Projector

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme

THE ROG AZOTH EXTREME is a $500 gaming keyboard. You’re probably reading this, mouth agape, wondering what it makes it worth anywhere near that price. In many ways, that’s how I’ve approached this review, because I didn’t get it at first, and to be honest, I still don’t. First impressions are very good. I lifted the lid of the box it arrived in, and it unwrapped itself like a cake in a Wes Anderson movie. Inside the second branded box—truly no expense spared here—sits the Azoth Extreme. I reach in and lift it out, which takes a little bit more effort than I was expecting, as it weighs 3.3 pounds. The first thing to notice is it’s a 75 percent size—the same as its predecessor, the ROG Azoth. The case is…

Asus ROG Azoth Extreme

IT HAS BEEN 16 YEARS since World of Goo squidged its way into our hearts and hard drives. The much-loved physics-based puzzle game was one of modern indie gaming’s earliest and biggest successes, but a lot has changed since then. Polished games from unfamiliar studios with barely a dozen staff members aren't some headline-grabbing curiosity anymore. They're absolutely everywhere, all the time. They're often discounted, bundled up, and at times even given away for free. Who needs more World of Goo, then, when the original was lovely and creative, and very much done and dusted years ago? Me, actually. I do. We all do, really. Playing this game is a lot like catching up with an old friend. It looks, feels, and plays in much the same way it did before.…

Nvidia DLSS vs AMD FSR

4K GAMING is a problem. It’s always been a challenge to render at that high a resolution. If anything, the res arrived long before any graphics card or console could touch it. The problem is simple: compared to 1080p, 4K represents a 300 percent increase in the number of pixels on display at any given time. We effectively quadrupled the total workload overnight by shifting to a 4K resolution. Not only that, but even in 2024, eliminating jaggies is as important as it ever was. Antialiasing efforts similarly are incredibly graphically intensive. Jaggies occur because games render textures in pixels, and because pixels are square, you end up with artifacts creating a jagged texture, often along the edge of a model. We ended up in a challenging situation where the…

Nvidia DLSS vs AMD FSR

> Irresponsible Intel > What the BTF? > AI, AI, Oh? Unsettled by Intel I read with intrigue and a small amount of concern in your September issue that you’d decided to drop Intel’s 13th and 14th generation CPUs from your Blueprint builds that issue, given the ongoing concerns around their stability. I was concerned, because I’d literally just used your mid-range blueprint to put together an Intel-based system using your recommended Intel Core i5-14600K processor. The chip is now in my system, and has been running fine, and I’m now outside of the return period where I can take it back to the retailer. Do you have any advice on what I should be doing? Should I be requesting a new chip from Intel? Should I be asking for…

Sponsored by BUDGET AH, 2024, a time of change. Here we have it folks, a new generation of CPUs. The cycle continues, and AMD has finally debuted its latest Ryzen 9000 generation chips to the masses. Only one problem: they’re a bit underwhelming on the price to performance front, and they’re currently beleaguered with some pretty significant Windows bugs, too, causing performance to be sub-optimal. This may change, but for the time being, given how great value the 7000 series is, we’re sticking with the last gen. This does mean that prices for everything else are ping-ponging around faster than a bat out of hell, which makes it particularly difficult to price these builds up. Nonetheless, we’ve come up with a list of six fine builds. Our budget systems have remained…

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