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48 Articles

THE STATE OF THE ARC

WELCOME to the February edition of Maximum PC, coming to you from the Las Vegas Strip, where I’ve just witnessed the next year of computing unfold before my eyes at the Consumer Electronics Show. We’ve had Nvidia show off its next generation graphics cards, which will be with us just after this issue goes on sale. AMD has confirmed its next-generation handheld processor, the Ryzen Z2 Series, as well as its next-generation GPUs, the Radeon RX 9000 series. And Intel has showed off its Core Ultra 200S line, which aims to bring AI smarts and lower power consumption to the desktop. I’m busy planning future cover builds starring these new components with our master builder, Zak, and you can get the full lowdown on all the CES news in our…

THE STATE OF THE ARC

Nvidia announces RTX 50 graphics

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang used the Consumer Electronics Show to announce the first batch of RTX 50 GPUs. Four models will deploy the company’s latest Blackwell graphics architecture. The flagship RTX 5090 Founders Edition is a two-slot GPU with 32GB of GDDR7 RAM, memory bandwidth of 1,792GB/sec, and 21,760 CUDA cores. It’s currently priced at $1,999. Nvidia began its Blackwell demo by showcasing gameplay of a next-gen Assassin’s Creed game to demonstrate the architecture’s ray tracing features. It has also shared a benchmarking video of Cyberpunk 2077. Using the RTX 5090, it ran at 242fps, compared to 109fps on the RTX 4090, at least with DLSS used. The RTX 5080 has a more modest price, the same $999 as the RTX 4080 Super. It comes with 16GB of GDDR7 memory…

Nvidia announces RTX 50 graphics

US TREASURY HACKED

IN A LETTER TO LAWMAKERS, the US Treasury department has claimed that a “major incident” occurred late last year, whereby its systems were accessed by a “threat actor”. The breach was discovered on December 8 when hackers compromised third-party cyber security provider BeyondTrust. They then stole a key that enabled them to remotely access US Treasury workstations and access unclassified documents. If true, this would be just one part of a recent cyber espionage campaign against US and other western governments. The Treasury attack certainly fits the pattern of known Chinese APTs in that it involved compromising a third-party security service. The hackers also used ‘living off the land’ techniques by exploiting tools to compromise systems, which matches the techniques of certain APT groups like Volt Typhoon. The Treasury is…

US TREASURY HACKED

OPENAI BEGINS 2025 PROFIT PUSH

OPENAI HAS REVEALED details about how it plans to adopt a new corporate governance model. This is to be achieved through restructuring the company as a PBC (Public Benefit Corporation). In theory, OpenAI exists to make profit, and for the public good. Rivals like Elon Musk’s xAI use a similar structure. The non-profit arm will live on. Owners will be given shares in the PBC to compensate them for no longer effectively being in control of the company. This addresses concerns raised when the non-profit’s board tried to remove chief executive Sam Altman in 2023. OpenAI founding member Musk has sued Altman and the company for supposedly putting profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good. The case is ongoing, despite OpenAI’s move to a PBC structure. The restructuring…

OPENAI BEGINS 2025 PROFIT PUSH

Tech Triumphs and Tragedies

TRIUMPHS MICROSOFT ASKS TO BE HACKED ‘Zero Day Quest’ will invite hackers to report bugs. Bounties range from $4,000 to $30,000. SONY KEEPS LIVE SERVICES CEO Hermen Hulst promises the company will continue releasing live service games. DOOM CAPTCHA BUILT Guillermo Rauch has recreated a secret level of the original Doom. Users must kill at least three monsters to prove they’re human. TRAGEDIES ASSASSIN’S CREED ORIGINS REVIEW BOMBED A Windows 11 update (24H2) made the game unstable and likely to crash. TESLA SALES DROP Overall annual sales for 2024 are reported to be one percent down from 2023. CHINA’S ROCKET FAILS The Kinetica-1 rocket lost altitude three seconds after third-stage ignition, leading to self-destruction.…

Tech Triumphs and Tragedies

AMD UNVEILS NEW GAMING AND AI CHIPS

AMD KICKED OFF CES with announcements for its Ryzen 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors. The Ryzen 9950X3D is a 16-core chip for gamers, using 16 of AMD’s Zen 5 CPU cores, plus 32 threads. It also has a 144MB cache, including 128MB of AMD’s 2nd Gen 3D V-cache. The maximum boost clock is 5.7GHz and the TDP is 170W, an increase of 50W over the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. AMD compared gaming performance of the 9950X3D and 7950X3D across 40 titles and claims an eight percent average improvement. AMD has also introduced the Ryzen 9000HX Series for laptops. This includes the flagship Fire Range Ryzen 9 9955HX3D with 16 cores, 32 threads, a 144MB cache, and a maximum boost of 5.4GHz. incorporating AMD’s Zen 5 architecture. AMD is also releasing two…

AMD UNVEILS NEW GAMING AND AI CHIPS

GOOGLE MAKES QUANTUM BREAKTHROUGH

IN 2019, Google researchers claimed to have built a machine capable of performing tasks that were not possible with traditional supercomputers. The designation of this machine as a ‘quantum computer’ was controversial, particularly as supercomputers became more powerful than Google’s creation. Now, the ball is back in Google’s court. The company claims its ‘Willow’ computer chip took less than five minutes to perform a mathematical calculation that one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers couldn’t complete in 10 septillion years. To put this into perspective, the universe is 0.013 septillion years old. In essence, Willow is a memory chip. Like its predecessor, Sycamore, it uses a superconducting super-cooled capacitor called a ‘Transmon’. This can combine multiple qubits into a single logical qubit. The challenge that has eluded quantum computer engineers for…

GOOGLE MAKES QUANTUM BREAKTHROUGH

US Supreme Court kills Net Neutrality

A FEDERAL APPEALS COURT has dealt a blow to net neutrality regulation by ruling that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to regulate ISPs as utilities. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declared that “broadband internet service providers offer only an ‘information service’”. This is significant, as classifying ISPs in this way gives the FCC much less authority to regulate their activities. As such, it effectively ends the Biden administration’s efforts to restore Obama-era internet regulations. This may be good news for big business, but not necessarily for US consumers. For instance, a provider like Comcast could prioritize its own ‘Peacock’ video streaming service, while reducing the quality of Netflix content. This precedent established that courts should defer to federal agencies when it came to interpreting their…

US Supreme Court kills Net Neutrality

LG Reveals bendable 5K OLED monitor

LG has cemented its reputation for cutting-edge monitors with the new addition to its UltraGear GX9 series. The 45GX990A is a 45-inch OLED that curves to a 900R radius. While this isn’t the first bendable OLED monitor, it’s the first with 5K2K (5,120 by 2,160 pixels) resolution. It also includes an upgraded version of LG’s dual mode, with customizable aspect ratios (21:9 or 16:9) and picture sizes (39, 34 or 27 inches). LG will also offer a non-bendable version of the monitor (45GX950A). The pricing and release dates of both models have yet to be confirmed. Although LG has promised to offer a variable refresh rate, it has yet to reveal what the refresh rate will be with the monitor’s native resolution.…

MediaTek unveils Dimensity 8400

MediaTek has announced its latest Dimensity 8400 chip, with the promise to bring the first all-bigcore chip design to the premium smartphone segment. The chipset has eight Arm Cortex-A725 cores with speeds of up to 3.25GHz. It also has a 44 percent peak power usage reduction compared to its predecessor. This is coupled with MediaTek’s NPU 880 for AI tasks. The chipset also includes the Arm Mali G720 GPU, which is 24 percent more efficient than the 8300 series. Other features include a 5G-A modem and NOS (Network Observation System) technology for switching between 5G and Wi-Fi networks. Xiaomi’s Redmi Turbo 4 is already using a customized version of the chipset, which it calls Dimensity 8400-Ultra.…

Nvidia RTX 50-series pushes AI to the forefront

The GB202 chip at the heart of the 5090 comes with 170 streaming multiprocessors, 21,720 CUDA cores, and 32GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit memory interface—clocked at 28 Gbps. That’s 1.8TB/s of memory bandwidth, about 80 percent more than the prior generation RTX 4090, 27 percent more raw compute, and 33 percent more VRAM capacity. But while the improvement in like-for-like compute may not be that significant, Blackwell also adds native support for FP4 to the tensor cores, running twice as fast as Ada’s FP8 code. That gives the 5090 up to 3.4 PetaFLOPS of FP4 throughput, which Nvidia classifies as ‘TOPS’ (teraOPS). Similar to the 40-series, the 50-series will depend on new features to distance itself from the previous-generation GPUs. Nvidia showed performance where the 5090 was over twice…

Nvidia RTX 50-series pushes AI to the forefront

EASILY THE MOST IMPORTANT part of a gaming notebook is its GPU, but choosing based purely on the model of GPU is sadly no longer enough. You now need to know how much power the laptop manufacturer is letting that GPU chow down on, commonly referred to as the TGP. That’s why our very favorite current mobile GPU isn’t necessarily the most powerful; it’s a bit more complicated than that. 5 AMD RADEON 890M ‘Integrated’ used to be a dirty word when it comes to gaming graphics, but AMD has recalibrated expectations in recent years, and its new Strix Point APUs with their RDNA 3.5 Radeon 890MiGPU is pretty damned impressive. We were already into the 780M and its 1080p gaming chops, but the new 890M of the Ryzen AI…

Fun and graphics card games at CES 2025

As the old saying goes, AMD never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. So it was at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. We were all expecting AMD to go big with the new RDNA 4 GPUs during its CES keynote. In the end, RDNA 4 was barely mentioned. There were more details on RDNA 4 in the pre-release materials handed to journalists prior to the keynote than in the actual keynote. AMD reps claimed the sparsity of info was due to time constraints. The organizers of CES, we were told, only allow for 45 minutes for such talks. AMD had a lot to announce, and RDNA 4 needed more than five minutes shoehorned into a broader presentation. Personally, I don’t buy that. In the pre-release slides given to journalists,…

Fun and graphics card games at CES 2025

> Save CCTV system > Multiple audio devices > Encrypted download Q-See CCTV replacement I have a self-installed security system by Q-See from 2012—eight QCN8093B cameras with motion detection, night vision, playback, and so on. Q-See went under during Covid, and although my system works, I would like to plan for when the computer system that came with it dies. The cameras are POE, and the computer is a proprietary system with 8TB of Western Digital HD storage. I could build a new system, but I don’t know where to start. I haven’t found software that seems to be able to collect data from multiple security cameras to do what this system does. Any ideas? I am not afraid to build a new computer if that’s what it takes, I…

THE ARC-FUL DODGER

IT’S BIT OF A STRETCH on that pun up there, but if we’re honest, Intel has pulled off an epic heist with its latest budget GPU, worthy of Jack Dawkins himself. Unlike its latest CPU escapades, the Arc B580 has caught the PC enthusiast community by surprise. Not only is it incredibly well positioned in the market, but it has also shattered performance expectations, all while outclassing pretty much every other budget to mid-range graphics card. It’s fast becoming Intel’s prodigal son for 2025. We should have seen this coming, of course. Intel’s first-gen line-up of its A700 series graphics cards equally represented an incredible-value proposition, thanks to solid 1080p and 1440p performance at a relatively minimal outlay. That had already ruffled the feathers of AMD and Nvidia in the…

THE ARC-FUL DODGER

BUILDING SIMPLICITY

LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY A LONG TIME AGO, back in Maximum PC’s earlier days, PC builds were a lot more complex than they are today. The avenues that you could go down and the things you could do were more intricate, far more varied, and far more difficult. There’s almost a weird homogenization going on right now, mixed with no small amount of refinement. As this particular hobby space has grown from a relatively small community to the mammoth gargantuan thing that it has become in recent years, it has lost some of that charm and that complexity as it’s done so. Simply put, it’s all about money. Not in a negative way; more people got into PC gaming; PC gaming blossomed; journalism, media, influencers, and…

BUILDING SIMPLICITY

PLEASE SIR, I WANT SOME MORE

WE’D CALL THIS A SIMPLE BUILD, but that ending was far more dramatic than it needed to be. That is inherently one of the risks you take when re-utilizing older hardware in a system like this. To be clear, that LED strip is no longer available for sale, and is upward of eight years old; however, it has now been relegated to the Maximum PC retirement farm for legendarily reliable componentry (namely a drawer somewhere in our home office), never to be used again. Bless. Power dramas aside, the build went incredibly smoothly, all things considered. The Hyte Y40 is becoming increasingly a favorite of ours; it combines slick, modern aesthetics and design motifs with a seriously easy build process that really does facilitate a whole host of hardware. It’s…

PLEASE SIR, I WANT SOME MORE

OF ARROWS AND ARCS

HOW WE TEST You know what we love at Maximum PC? Benchmarks, and lots of them. Datapoints to sink our teeth into, and really get to grips understanding the PCs and parts that we build with. It’s the cornerstone of good, honest tech journalism, and something that’s pivotal to our system builds, and for you to understand just how well or how poorly these PCs perform. Each and every build in these hallowed pages gets put through the wringer in our new benchmarking suite. We push it through all manner of both synthetic and real-world tests while simultaneously monitoring temperatures, power draw, and more. Each test is executed a minimum of three times, and averages are taken from those results to give us the final scores and figures. If there’s…

OF ARROWS AND ARCS

HAVE WE REACHED MAXIMUM PC?

Bought a new PC recently? Did you wonder why it was so similar to the one you’d upgraded from? Perhaps you researched components, and realized they’re just improved versions of the ones you bought 10 years ago. We’ve all been there. PCs have improved in the last decade or so, with increases in clock speeds, transistor counts, and power consumption, but there’s been no great leap; just hype about AI (and new architecture, thanks to Qualcomm). A PC you build today may look similar to one you’ve built previously, with no advances in compact cases; just more USB-C ports that do slightly different things. There are some interesting technologies on the horizon, however, such as photonic computing, increased cloud streaming, and software updates that attempt to take advantage of improved hardware.…

HAVE WE REACHED MAXIMUM PC?

THE EVOLUTION OF VIDEO GAME AI

ANYONE’S WHO ever played Space Invaders or one of its many clones remembers how the aliens relentlessly bear down on the player until they’re either destroyed or collide with your ship. This is one of the earliest examples of game AI (Artificial Intelligence), where developers made clever use of scripted responses to enemy NPCs capable of challenging players. These days, AI can be used to do much more than have the Pac-Man ghosts run around a maze. Innovations like procedural content generation can spontaneously generate in-game items and even entire worlds. LLMs can even be used to inform enemy and other NPC behaviors, creating more realistic interactions. Still, the course of in-game AI hasn’t always run smoothly. Here, we’ll chart its progress, from chess programs that were laughably easy to defeat,…

THE EVOLUTION OF VIDEO GAME AI

While Doom’s FSM resulted in the appearance of a sophisticated enemy AI, anyone who has played the game at lengths knows it has its limits. For instance, sounds from weapons can spread across sections, waking enemies up from the ‘spawn’ state and causing them to rush the player. For this reason, most level editors support a ‘Deaf’ flag to prevent enemies in different sections from activating before a player is ready. There’s also no hard-coded limit on most enemies’ line of sight, meaning flying enemies like the Cacodemon can detect and approach long before they’re visible to players. Typically, enemies react to being attacked by setting whatever injures them as the current target. Skilled players can use this to game the enemy AI and trigger ‘Monster infighting’. In essence, this…

PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION

The Forza franchise is an excellent example of how deep learning using ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks) can be used to adapt to player behavior, providing better replay value and a more enjoyable gameplay experience. In the case of the AI racing cars in Forza Motorsport, the process used is a form of ‘reinforcement’ learning by analyzing past player driving performance and trying out strategies to navigate obstacles like corners to find an optimal approach. Another exciting aspect of machine learning in videogames relies on using PCG (procedural content generation). One of the earliest examples of this was Rogue (1980). The game’s algorithm worked by generating a dungeon room into which the player would spawn. It would iterate at random through more rooms, determining if each was accessible by its neighbor, then placing stairs…

OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro IF YOU’RE a handheld fan, prepare to be a smitten kitten. No, not because of the fetching red clothing of this version of the new OneXFly F1 Pro. This colorway indicates the Evangelion EVA-02 version, which isn’t available outside of China. No, the real kicker is that this is the first gaming handheld PC we’ve got our paws on that sports AMD’s latest APU, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. Yup, it’s AMD’s Strix Point chip in a handheld. That new silicon is a bit of a game changer for handhelds, especially when you start to factor in all the other extras AMD has crafted that really play into the literal hands of PC gamers. Radeon Anti-Lag and Fluid Motion Frames 2 really are the key…

THE ULTIMATE WINDOWS 11 INSTALL GUIDE

Ah, Windows 11, you old devil. Microsoft’s latest iteration of its operating system line might be quite contentious these days, filled with advertising, data scraping, and enough bugs to make even a Tyranid Hive Fleet jealous, but it’s nothing if not a consistent thread throughout our custom PC building life. It represents the ultimate middle-ground OS—versatile and customizable enough to outpace the very best of MacOS, yet with more than enough compatibility and stability to give any Linux distro a run for its money. If you just want to get an install up and running quickly, tailored just how you like it, and compatible with 99.9 percent of all the programs out there, then Windows is the place to be. That said, it’s not without its pitfalls. In our anecdotal…

THE ULTIMATE WINDOWS 11 INSTALL GUIDE

MAXIMUM PC’S TIPS AND TWEAK

TWEAKS Armoury Crate, DriverHub, et al With Windows installed and your network connected (see Part One last issue), a variety of programs will start popping up with auto-installers. Asus, for example, will have DriverHub and Armoury Crate. DriverHub is incredibly useful, as it will point you toward missing installs and new versions of any chipset or drivers you’re missing. That said, if you hit ‘Install all’, it will also install a bunch of crud that we don’t want, such as Norton 360 Antivirus, AIDA64, and other superfluous programs. The same goes for MSI and Gigabyte, so be wary no matter what your motherboard. Now that we’ve done the majority of the legwork on our driver updates and clean install process, it’s time to tighten up the system a bit and…

MAXIMUM PC’S TIPS AND TWEAK

TIP OF THE MONTH WINDOWS EXPLORER RESTART Sometimes, things go wrong with the Start menu, with File Explorer, with my computer. It will lock up and freeze, or lag out. It happens. Windows can be a fickle thing. Don’t panic, though; it might not require a hard restart. Instead, hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, head to Task Manager, and find Windows Explorer in the process list. Right-click, hit restart, and hopefully it will resolve your taskbar issues. LG GRAM PRO 16 RESULTS Last issue, I had the joy of looking at the LG Gram 16 (page 80). Despite being a bit dubious on the build quality, I was impressed. However, it was very much a last-minute addition to the reviews segment, to the point that I couldn’t quite get all the benchmarks wrapped…

BACKGROUND Sony’s PS5 Pro has a new custom-made AMD processor on TSMC’s 5nm node, and Sony promises 45 percent faster graphics performance versus the original PS5. But what other changes are there inside, and is this new console any easier to pull apart and repair? MAJOR TECH SPECS • 8-core, 16-thread AMD Zen 2 CPU• 60 CU AMD RDNA 2 (with some RDNA 3 and 4 features) GPU, 16.7TFOPs• 16GB GDDR6 memory, 256-bit memory bus, plus 2GB DDR5• 2TB custom M.2 SSD, external storage via USB• 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x Ethernet, 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A• Wifi 7, Bluetooth 5.1• 3.1kg (6.8lbs), 388 x 89 x 216mm KEY FINDINGS • The biggest repairability news in the PS5 Pro is that you can change the CMOS battery by removing a single screw.…

Improve your memory with Windows Recall

YOU’LL NEED THIS A COPILOT+ PC Nothing to hide SINCE ITS ANNOUNCEMENT at Microsoft’s Build conference in May 2024, Recall has had a torrid time. Not only has it been criticized as being a privacy-busting nightmare, but at the time of writing, it’s restricted to the Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs, of which there aren’t many. It was removed from Windows 11’s preview versions while Microsoft worked on it a bit more. At the beginning of December, a Dev Channel version of Windows 11 24H2 appeared with Recall returned to its place in the System Tray. If you’ve managed to avoid all the Recall-based discourse, it’s a system that takes constant snapshots of your PC’s active app. These are literal, image-based snapshots; not the sort of snapshots associated with backup software. These are…

Improve your memory with Windows Recall

Create your offline data vault

YOU’LL NEED THIS A STABLE INTERNET CONNECTION Docker (optional) External drive (optional) IN MAX BROOKS' EPIC ZOMBIE apocalyptic horror novel, World War Z, the fictional author interviews a representative of ‘Radio Free Earth’. This was an initiative to transmit vital information to isolated communities, such as how to grow food, build shelters, and purify water. US residents caught in the wake of Hurricane Helene in September 2024 will also remember how Starlink had to set up internet hotspots due to telephone lines being down. Fortunately, this was just temporary, but in the event of a prolonged outage, it’s good to know that you have vital information at your fingertips. This is where Kiwix comes in. It supports creating copies of public domain websites like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, and TED Talks…

Create your offline data vault

Boost your Wi-Fi

YOU’LL NEED THIS USB WI-FI ANTENNA (optional) ROUTER with open source firmware (optional) WHEN WIRELESS NETWORKS were introduced in the 1990s, they were widely derided as being clunky, slow, and prone to interference. The first widely adopted wireless networking standard (802.11b) offered speeds of just 11 Mbps. In other words, it would have taken at least 12 minutes to copy a 1GB file from one network device to another. The introduction of subsequent Wi-Fi standards like 802.11n and 802.11ac welcomed new wireless bands, channels, and other features for optimizing wireless performance. That said, Wi-Fi can still be prone to slow speeds, dropped connections, and wireless interference. This is particularly true if you live in an area with multiple access points and devices that can crowd out existing radio frequencies very…

Boost your Wi-Fi

What’s new in Microsoft PowerToys?

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 OR 11 PC POWERTOYS 0.86 or later WE’VE COVERED POWERTOYS before in this magazine, but the beauty of Microsoft’s open-source approach to the software is that it’s constantly evolving, and new features are being added all the time. This means that if you already have the handy utility pack installed on your PC, it can be worth investigating its GitHub page or Settings window to see if an update has been posted since your last visit, as it doesn’t get them through Windows Update. Launched on GitHub in September 2019, but with a history going back much further, PowerToys for Windows 10 and 11 is an optional add-on aimed at power users. Even if you aren’t in this category, you can still get something useful…

What’s new in Microsoft PowerToys?

Maximum PC has lost one of its own

WRITING COLUMNS LIKE THIS is never easy. Maximum PC has lost one of its greatest editors. Gordon Mah Ung passed away at the end of last year after an arduous battle with pancreatic cancer, leaving behind his wife and two children. It’s difficult to put into words just how well respected he was in the industry. In many ways, he was the father of modern Maximum PC. For 16 years, Gordon’s voice, the way he wrote, and how he held the industry to account were pivotal to what Maximum PC would become: Minimum BS. Those two words line every cover we’ve ever produced, and Gordon was that voice; he’s the reason those two words are there. Many of you may know him from the ‘No BS’ podcast and his work…

Maximum PC has lost one of its own

Editor’s Pick: Tryx Panorama ARGB 360

I’LL SAY IT straight up. L-shaped AMOLED screen liquid cooler. This thing is absolutely awesome. I accidentally stumbled across this as well, like it’s such a niche product, and seemingly infinitesimally rare in the industry. I was perusing PC Part Picker one day, and happened to come across a build with a fantastically curved LCD AIO in it. I had no idea what the thing was; it wasn’t even listed on the product page. I had to dig into the comments to find out exactly what this marvel was, and here we have it. In short, this is the Tryx Panorama LCD cooler. On the surface, outside of the screen, there’s not a whole lot that’s obviously different compared to the competition. It’s only when you look at the finer…

Editor’s Pick: Tryx Panorama ARGB 360

IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING, but Intel’s second-generation Arc GPUs have finally arrived. Codenamed Battlemage, the new Intel Arc B580 looks decidedly less powerful than the existing A750 GPU, never mind the full-fat A770 16GB card. This new B580 board only has 20 Xecores, compared to 28 on the A750 and 32 on the A770. Even the lowly last-gen A580 has 24 Xe-cores. Well, it turns out that Battlemage brings a major architectural overhaul. Details include much-improved mesh and vertex acceleration, along with faster ray tracing. The latter is claimed to be between 1.5 times and 2.1 times faster per XE core. Another big change with Battlemage is the move to native SIMD16 (Single Instruction Multiple Data, 16-wide) instructions, compared to Alchemist’s SIMD32 units. Overall, Intel says Battlemage delivers…

Velocity Micro Raptor ES40

I LOVE A MINI PC. There’s something compelling and satisfying about a gaming PC with the power of a massive tower condensed into something with a footprint not much larger than a shoebox. Enter the Velocity Micro Raptor ES40 gaming PC, a compact rig with serious punch and a carry handle. Yes, the custom Velocity Micro NX2 mini-ITX chassis comes with its own pop-out carry handle. That’s neat, even if you’re more likely to find yourself fiddling around with it (handle goes up, handle goes down) than actually marching around with this PC. The chassis itself actually feels very Lian-Li, all black brushed aluminum and clean lines, but without the machined edges on which I always end up shredding my fingers. Its toolless design means you can pull both the…

Velocity Micro Raptor ES40

MSI Raider 18 HX A14V

LAST ISSUE, we took a look at MSI’s gargantuan Titan 18 HX gaming laptop. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, an absolute beast, complete with gargantuan form factor, a spec list longer than this journalist’s arm, and a price tag that would make even Jensen Huang blush (probably, we haven’t asked him). It’s an absolute monster, and you can price the thing up to $10,000 in its full-tilt configuration, complete with 24GB of PCIe storage and 128GB of DDR5 RAM. There’s a lot to like about it, too, once you get past the price tag. In its base config, complete with RTX 4090, full-fat 14900HX, and a beautiful screen, it’s a joy to use, albeit more of a desktop replacement than a laptop. But the price, and that…

MSI Raider 18 HX A14V

ASUS ProArt Display 5K PA27JCV

AS FAR AS CREATOR monitors are concerned, companies can charge as much as they like, safe in the knowledge that those who make a living from perfect color and extreme crispness will cough up. Hence the high prices, which can rise above $2,000 for a 27-inch 5K screen. This screen is also a 27-inch 5K, has an anti-reflection coating, and doesn’t cost anywhere near as much. Five is a lot of K to squeeze into a 27-inch diagonal—4K is often considered to be a bit much for a screen of that size, with 1440p a more normal amount of resolution, but this is for those who want to edit 4K video and still have some space around the edges, or want to give their graphics card the best workout they can.…

ASUS ProArt Display 5K PA27JCV

Acer Nitro V 15

YOU KNOW WHAT’S AMAZING in 2025? The fact that even now, we have so many laptops that are massively mismatched. Not from a competitive level, but rather from a pure hardware level. We’ve tested an absolute ton of gaming laptops over these hallowed pages in the last 12 months, and without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest problem they all have is that the graphics card in particular doesn’t match the screen. It just doesn’t. Let’s list the ones that this journalist has personally looked at: Acer Predator Helios Neo 14, RTX 4060 120W, 3,072x1920 @165 Hz screen. Acer Nitro 14, RTX 4060 100W 2560x1600 120 Hz display. Lenovo Legion Slim 5, RTX 4060 2880x1800 120 Hz OLED panel. You get the idea—at the $1,000-$2,000 price bracket, apparently everything…

Acer Nitro V 15

GAMING MONITORS are rapidly becoming the de-facto standard for a ‘good’ screen—they frequently come in decent sizes, with high resolutions and refresh rates, and make use of the best display technology to give your games all the brightness, contrast, and sharpness they deserve. Using a gaming monitor all day can be an excellent experience, though if you’re not pumping 240Hz into one, it can feel like you’re not using it to the best of its capabilities. BenQ has shown pity on people who spend their days looking at reams of text, but want a really nice screen to do it on with its Programming Series, of which the RD320UA is a member. It’s a 32-inch, 4K screen with an HDR400 rating and a lot of the usual high-end monitor features,…

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

THE FIRST TIME I put the Quest 3S on my head, I was met with a familiar sight. "This is quite a lot like the Quest 2," I thought. My opinion hasn't changed since I've got more familiar with Meta’s latest VR headset. Neither should it. It turns out that the Quest 3S and Quest 2 are practically the same when it comes to optics, but the new 3S does a few things a lot better than the Quest 2. The Quest 3S comes in two storage sizes: 128GB and 256GB, yours for $299 or $399 respectively. The larger capacity suits a decent library of games on the device itself, and thus use as a standalone headset. Anyway, the big change is the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor. This is…

Corsair K70 Core

YOU CAN SPEND as long as you like comparing the specs of mechanical gaming keyboards—and if you’re like us, you probably do—but there’s really nothing like actually getting your fingers on the QWERTY to see which parts of your brain light up in response to the switches under the key caps. Some like them quiet, and some like them clicky, with preferences as to how far a key moves before it activates, birthing a whole industry of customizable keyboards. There’s none of that here, beyond software tweaking, and there’s also none of the Hall Effect magnetic switching that we saw in the Corsair K70 Max. What you do get, for the first time ever, are Corsair’s pre-lubed MLX Red linear mechanical switches—and they’re fantastic. Keyboards live or die by the feel…

Corsair K70 Core

HyperX QuadCast 2

THE HYPERX QUADCAST 2 is aimed at content creators who want a simple plug-and-record USB microphone. Just plug it into your PC and, out of the box, it'll deliver great audio, with no tweaking of audio settings required. Part of that ease of use comes from the HyperX app not having many audio settings. This won't be a deal-breaker for less demanding users, considering the high-quality performance this mic delivers, but if you prefer having plenty of customization options, you may want to look elsewhere. The HyperX QuadCast 2 offers four recording options—basically the standard set you’ll find on other mics: cardioid, stereo, omnidirectional, and bidirectional. You can flick between them using the HyperX Ngenuity app, or by holding down the mic’s volume knob for two to three seconds. The…

HyperX QuadCast 2

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

I WASN'T OVER the moon about the prospect of a triple-A Indiana Jones game before starting The Great Circle. A new MachineGames joint—now that’s something I'd hang my hat on. But Dr Jones? How many stories could there be left to tell about the Connecticut-based archeologist named after Illinois' weird little neighbor? Well, it turns out that he had at least one damn good videogame left in the tank. Rather than the dual-wielding ultraviolence of Wolfenstein, The Great Circle is all about more brand-appropriate stealth, hand-to-hand brawling, exploration, and puzzle solving. There are guns, but limited ammo makes them more situational tools. The Great Circle has simple, line-of-sight stealth, meanwhile, without much in the way of sound propagation, visibility control, silent ranged takedowns, or tools for keeping track of enemies. None…

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

X (formerly Twitter) vs Bluesky

IT’S A DANGEROUS business, getting up each morning and heading onto the internet. If you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling what dark alley of Reddit you might be swept off to. Social media is divisive right now. From Meta announcing that it’s getting rid of its factcheckers, to AI profiles springing up and pretending to be human, to algorithms perpetually drip-feeding you 10-second dopamine reels, it’s a challenge to find somewhere that truly is ‘social’ by its very definition. With that in mind, and the mass exodus currently erupting from X (formerly Twitter), we decided that it was about time Maximum PC cautiously waded into the shallows and had a look at the founding father of microblogging in today’s age, and how it compares to the new kid…

X (formerly Twitter) vs Bluesky

> Getting flight sim savvy > The PC’s future is bright > Going behind the scenes Where’s the flight sim testing in Max PC? I think it’s great that Maximum PC uses applications like games to give us an idea of real-world performance expectations for builds and accessories. This is a blatant request for the inclusion of a flight sim game or two in the mix. The games you choose for your tests may be familiar to others who would be otherwise buying your sister PC games magazine, but most of the time, I have no idea what they are. I looked up a few of these to see how many people are actually using them. It was interesting to see that for the most part, they pale in comparison…

Sponsored by BUDGET IT FEELS LIKE EVERY MONTH, we’re bracing ourselves for a new set of hardware launches. With CES finally landing, we’re being graced with a whole heap of them all at once. New AMD and Nvidia cards, and new Intel GPUs have launched roughly at the same time, although admittedly the Intel ones a little sooner. That said, right now, they’re all a bit of a mystery in the world of Maximum PC; we’re still awaiting review samples and units to land with us, to figure out how exactly these cards tick. Nvidia has already announced that the RTX 5070 will deliver just as much performance as an RTX 4090, but at almost one quarter of the cost. Whether that’s true remains to be seen. The long and the…

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