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73 Articles

The PC market is unique in computing. You can keep your consoles and ready-made Macs, frankly: where they stay static and dull, PCs are fluid, every one individual, special, and imbued with the love and attention of its owner. The best PCs are hand-made, custom built to a budget or a dream, buffed and boosted to transform every possible unit of amperage into lurid pixels beyond the imagination of the PS4 and Xbox One. If your console isn’t up to scratch, you can’t exactly open it up and give it more pep. But a PC can give you more every month, if your budget allows. Upgrading can be incredibly addictive, as my bank manager will be all to quick to inform you. This guide represents a hive mind of extensive…

WHY BUILD YOUR OWN PC?

Over the last few decades the mass market has made us a little bit lazy. Prior to just buying whatever we needed, we would build it – a world of engineers, builders and grafters forging things with our bare hands. But nowadays, you know there’s someone sat somewhere in a factory on the other side of the world, churning out everything you could ever want, so you don’t have to. But doing it yourself has become more and more popular in recent years, and plenty of people are having a good at doing it themselves, whether it’s assembling a bicycle from scratch, turning a tree into a dining room table, and even – the reason why we’re here – building a PC. Making your own PC consists of buying the…

WHY BUILD YOUR OWN PC?

THE ESSENTIAL PC BUILDER’S TOOLKIT

If you’re not sure what you need to start your PC build, we’ve covered off all the essentials you’ll ever need, so now all you need is the parts and you can start putting it all together. ✓ Magnet-on-a-stick If you’ve ever worked on a car engine before, you’ll know that dropping a screw into the engine and not hearing it fall on the floor is every person’s worst nightmare. It’s not quite as serious if you do the same thing whilst building a PC, admittedly, but having a magnetic stick ready to retrieve any screws that have lodged down the side of a motherboard, or fallen inside the bottom of a chassis, could save you a whole load of time, as it will save you having to dissemble things…

THE ESSENTIAL PC BUILDER’S TOOLKIT

SET UP YOUR WORKSPACE

If you’re planning to get serious about building up your PC – whether it’s because you just want to do the best job you can, or because you’re planning on doing it regularly – it pays to prepare a great workspace, allowing you to work more comfortably and with all the right tools to do the job properly. ✓ Find some space Though the nearest floor might seem like an ideal place to begin assembling a PC, think about the consequences of what you’re doing. A floor is very low down, so if you’re working on a PC for some time it could give you terrible backache, so choose a surface that will allow you to work comfortably while you’re standing. Secondly, if you’re working near a floor with lots…

SET UP YOUR WORKSPACE

Building a PC is supposed to be fun, so while we don’t want to get you bogged down with boring statistics, we do want you to stay safe. So follow these simple tips and you and your PC will be in good shape for some time to come. ✓ Prevent static charge PC components are especially sensitive to static charge, and it can really do some damage if an excessive amount builds up – even fry your components, if worst comes to worse. So how do you prevent this from happening? Easy – you just need to prevent yourself from creating static charge in the first place. The first step is to prepare your workspace for PC building, which you can do by getting an anti-static mat to put your…

CHOOSE YOUR PC’S PERFECT COMPONENTS

Design improvements mean that it’s never been easier to build your own PC – but it’s still difficult to pick the right components for a brand new build. Choosing the wrong parts comes with a host of potential pitfalls. Some aren’t serious, but others could be terminal. Plugging an SSD into the wrong SATA port only limits speeds, but your PC won’t even boot if the processor and motherboard aren’t compatible. Picking a motherboard without certain chipsets or slots makes it tricky to fit future components – and choosing a power supply without much grunt will make a graphics upgrade difficult. This guide makes it easier to pick the correct components for any kind of PC – from bargain-basement machines to full-throttle gaming systems. Every major component is covered, and…

CHOOSE YOUR PC’S PERFECT COMPONENTS

The little details

Pay attention to the fine print as well as the big picture when building a PC, and you’ll be much happier. Some motherboards are littered with smaller features worth consideration. Check the heatsinks that surround the processor, for instance – they could make it difficult to install larger heatsinks. The same goes for the memory sockets, which can cause cooler conflicts if they’re too close to the processor. If you’re keen on tweaking, check the rest of the motherboard. Higher-end boards have on-board buttons, voltage monitoring points, dual-UEFI software modes and more options that are handy for enthusiasts. Before buying a case, check what fans are included – most include one or two. If you’re building a more powerful machine, consider investing in more cooling; most cases support two or…

The little details

Our rig has been designed to work well now while also offering plenty of room for future upgrades. It’s always worth keeping an eye on the future when putting together a new system, because it’s usually cheaper and easier to give an existing machine a boost than to buy a new rig. The motherboard is key to upgrading. If you’ve picked a board with a second PCI-Express x16 slot – and it runs at 8x speed, at least – then you’ve got enough bandwidth to fit a second graphics card, which can theoretically double gaming performance. Our MSI board has an LGA 1150 processor socket, which means that the Core i5 processor can be swapped easily for a faster chip. The same is true if you’re building on the AMD…

Our £699 system is an ideal mid-range PC, but it’s easy to modify the specification if you want to spend a little less or splash out to make it better. That’s true of any specification thanks to a host of easy upgrades and downgrades. Several cheap components can improve a new PC. Wireless networking cards don’t cost the earth and can take the hassle out of getting the system connected to the internet, and sound cards are another worthwhile addition – if you’ve got good speakers or high-quality headphones, they can take movies and games to the next level. Our Core i5 processor runs at stock speed and uses the standard Intel cooler, but it’s an unlocked chip that can run faster with overclocking. You’ll need a beefier cooler –…

ANATOMY OF A PROCESSOR

✓ Clock speed Processors function, deep down, because of a tiny quartz crystal that vibrates at a particular speed. That speed – the clock speed – governs the pace at which the processor can execute instructions. The speed of this cycle also influences the speeds of other components inside a computer. Hertz is used to measure clock speed, and we’re dealing with large numbers. Intel’s i-series CPUs use a 133MHz base clock, which represents 133,000,000 cycles per second. That base clock speed combines with the multiplier to determine a CPU’s final speed. This is the basis of overclocking; generally by increasing the multiplier, you’ll (all being well) be able to up the speed by multiples of that base clock number. Clock speed used to be an important performance measure in…

ANATOMY OF A PROCESSOR

Skylake Deep Dive

Well, here you have it folks. Skylake hath cometh to the people, and with it comes the absolute pinnacle of Intel’s microprocessing technology. Let’s just forget about Broadwell. Its short life time has been invaluable to us PC enthusiasts, but alas, it was never meant to be. Taking us from that blasted 22nm architecture down to 14nm was an incredible feat. But it was too little, too late. Ultimately, the little chip paid the price, doomed to retire to an early death. A victim of its own architecture’s difficult production methods. Broadwell’s glorious sacrifice, however, has given us one phenomenal gem – Skylake. If the X99 chipset and Haswell-E was the premium-grade reboot that PC enthusiasts needed, it’s safe to say that Z170 and Skylake is about to do the…

Skylake Deep Dive

ANATOMY OF A GRAPHICS CARD

✓ The core This refers to the method that wafers – and, therefore, the dies that create graphics cores – are produced. AMD and Nvidia contract external firms such as TSMC and GlobalFoundries to build these, and they’re always pushing to build wafers with smaller transistors. Transistor size is measured in nanometres, and reducing this number has several advantages. If transistors are smaller, more can be packed into a graphics card’s die – which means more raw processing horsepower. Smaller transistors have improved thermal efficiency, which means higher clock speeds – and, again, more power. It’s a constant challenge to produce smaller transistors consistently. Nvidia’s forthcoming Pascal GPU will be manufactured on a 16nm scale, which is the next leap in size. ✓ The fabrication process This refers to the…

ANATOMY OF A GRAPHICS CARD

The future of the GPU

THE GRAPHICS CARD is the component most responsible for PC gaming performance. Above everything else in your PC. You could have the most powerful, £800 octo-core Haswell-E CPU in your rig, but if you’ve got a weedy GPU backing it up, you’re never going to be hitting the graphical heights that today’s PC games deserve. And it’s a great time to buy a new graphics card right now. Both the leading lights of GPU development – Nvidia and AMD – have recently released brand new graphics card lineups, with highend, ultra-enthusiast GPUs and superefficient, lower-end offerings. And by the way, for ultra-enthusiast, read: eyewateringly ‘wtf-how-much?!’ expensive. While Nvidia has had it pretty much all its own way since the GTX 980 was released almost a year ago, AMD has finally…

The future of the GPU

Is NVLink the end for PCIe?

ALONG WITH the announcement of the Pascal architecture, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang also introduced the world to NVLink, an interconnect for its GPUs that could potentially offer between five and 12 times the bandwidth of the current PCIe 3.0 connection. Nvidia’s talking about NVLink offering DRAM-class speed and latency, which will allow for the use of Pascal’s unified memory across the entire PC. It will also improve performance between GPUs, so multi-GPU systems could end up getting a far more linear scaling in terms of gaming speed. As well as the NVLink connection on the GPU itself, it will also require dedicated silicon in the CPU if it wants to bypass the PCIe interface completely. From the outset though, that looks likely to be restricted to supercomputer-class high performance computing…

Is NVLink the end for PCIe?

Nvidia GTX Titan X Not winning this clash of cards NVIDIA’S GTX TITAN X is the pinnacle of today’s graphics card technology, a position it’s likely to maintain until Pascal tips up, waving its 16nm transistors all up in the GM 200 GPU’s silicon face. But that doesn’t make it the best card around. At launch, the £800 price tag seemed insanely, almost offensively, high. Sure, it was the first time we’d seen the much-vaunted GM 200 GPU appear in a form we could jam into our desktop machines, and it is most definitely head and shoulders above the GTX 980 in terms of gaming performance, but it didn’t have the same feel as the original Titan. It lacked the supercomputer, double-precision capabilities for a start, and we never warmed…

The High-Bandwidth Bomb

IN THE FUTURE, motherboards will be all about bandwidth. Actually, they already are. That’s because the big news for the PC platform is a whole bunch of new interconnects. And they’re all about boosting bandwidth. They’re also borderline baffling. Firstly, there’s the bonkers nomenclature. Whoever thought ‘SFF-8639’ was a goer needs to be strung up with SATA cables. More on that later. The confusing naming, that is, not death by middling-bandwith cable connects. Then there’s the fusing of multiple standards into one, plus the replacement of others with multiple options. Nightmare. Maybe it was always this way. Perhaps our spectacles are growing ever more rose-tinted. Until recently, it was just PCI Express for graphics, SATA for hard drives and USB for everything else. Wasn’t it? Okay, we had to keep…

The High-Bandwidth Bomb

U.2 comes to the PC

NO, the rock band everyone loves to hate hasn’t started shilling for Intel instead of Apple. Instead, if there is a musical connection, it’s the artist formerly known as Prince. For U.2 is the storage interconnect formerly known as SFF-8639. Yes, really, SFF-8639. We would ask who on Earth makes this crap up and expects consumers to have a clue what it means. But SFF-8639 was originally intended as an interconnect for enterprise-class systems, meaning that friendly branding our pretty little heads can cope with understandably wasn’t a top priority. However, SATA Express hasn’t taken off, and with SFF-8639 gaining some traction generally, Intel and the SSD Form Factor Working Group has decided to rebrand it ‘U.2’ to make it easier to grasp and also align it with the existing…

U.2 comes to the PC

ASUS X99 TUF SABERTOOTH

ASUS IS WELL KNOWN for its high-end componentry. Yes, it can come at a premium, but it’s often money well spent if you’re looking for feature-rich, reliable products. So, does TUF’s latest X99 Sabertooth board hit that mark? Oh yes. Since launch Asus’s TUF brand has focused on two things: reliability and consistency. And, although the RoG and Workstation series still exhibit these traits, it’s hard to argue with TUF’s reputation for being the workhorse of the breed. Certainly, over the three years since its first Z77 chipset and its first thermally armoured boards, these have been values that Asus has aggressively expanded upon. This board looks spectacular, hiding the vast majority of the all-black PCB under the thermal armour. This gives the Sabertooth an incredibly clean look. Whether or…

ASUS X99 TUF SABERTOOTH

ASROCK X99 E-ITX

INSANITY, thy name is ASRock. We don’t think there’s been many companies out there who have thought to themselves: “You know what we need to do? A 2011 socket, ITX form-factor, go!” The ASRock X99 E-ITX is nothing short of an engineering miracle, fitting an extreme edition processor into the ITX form factor represents a huge challenge. Considering the socket alone takes up a quarter of the entire PCB, ASRock has been left with little-to-no room to manoeuvre. So, has it delivered on the promise of an insanitypacked Mini-ITX powerhouse? Sort of… The board follows the traditional blue design SKU of the latest ASRock boards. Granted, you won’t see much of it once you’ve slammed in a graphics card and two sticks of DDR4, but for what’s it worth, it’s…

ASROCK X99 E-ITX

MSI Z97 GAMING 6

MSI GAMING, albeit a new line in MSI’s arsenal of products, has had a tangible effect on the marketplace. And you can tell. With so many manufacturers creating their own ‘gaming’ lines in response to MSI’s fiery dragon, it has quite the reputation to live up to. Is MSI’s Z97 Gaming 6 motherboard worthy of wearing the prestigious red garb in line with so many of its brothers? The board comes in at a lower price point in comparison to the alternatives in this supertest, even for this socket. As such, you tend to lose a lot of the flair you get from other higher-priced alternatives. This means smaller heatsinks, less glamorous cooling solutions and generally not a lot of colour beyond that. Despite that, however, it still features a…

MSI Z97 GAMING 6

ASROCK Z97 EXTREME6

WE’VE HAD A BIT of a good run with ASRock in this publication. Our “Overclocking Masterclass” (see page 150) is demonstrated using the Extreme4 edition motherboard, the little brother to this board here. We’ve also managed to achieve some insane overclocks on ASRock boards, notably 5GHz on its Z77 ITX motherboard, with a tiny little Corsair Hydro H60, so we’re expecting big things from this one. Anyway, we digress. This board is the Extreme6, the more feature-rich edition of ASRock’s professional line. ASRock has gone with a blue design style with the latest Z97 and X99 chipset that we all love here. It’s nice to see someone else take it on after MSI and Asus seemingly dropped it in the dust after the release of Sandy Bridge. However, unlike the…

ASROCK Z97 EXTREME6

MSI 970A SLI Krait Editi on

ONE SIMPLE QUESTION always hounds those who are about to embark on the creation of a new PC – do you go Intel or do you go AMD? Usually, those who are new to the world of PC gaming tend to opt for Intel. That’s at least partly down to how easy it is to identify what is new and what isn’t with Intel, a route that AMD hasn’t chosen to follow. Each time AMD releases a new CPU, instead of forcing a new chipset, it makes sure it’s backwards compatible so its customers don’t have to change out their motherboards. Decidedly then, this can become quite challenging to find out which AMD boards are new and which are old. And so to the matter at hand. MSI has brought…

MSI 970A SLI Krait Editi on

ASUS X99 TUF SABERTOOTH

THERE’S NO SHADOW of a doubt that if you’re looking for a motherboard that hits all the marks, Asus’s TUF X99 is a solid board. Not only is it a mean-looking workaholic, it also comes packed with more features and cooling support than you could shake a braided cable at. Asus’s TUF ICe fortifier is a fantastic piece of componentry in itself, improving cooling performance and fan curves to a degree that’s comparable to most aftermarket fan controllers. Granted, it’s quite the pricey mobo, but the fact Asus has managed to get so much onto a single motherboard, and still keep it looking so clean, is not something to be shunned. ACROSS THE BOARD The ASRock X99 ITX is a remarkable feat of engineering by the Taiwanese company. Unfortunately, however,…

ASUS X99 TUF SABERTOOTH

ANATOMY OF AN SSD

✓ NAND This is the flash memory that forms the basis of every solid-state drive. It’s similar to the memory used for computer RAM, but with one difference – it retains data, rather than losing it when power is lost. SSDs are built using different types of NAND. The two most common are MLC and TLC – the former acronym stands for multi-level cell, and the latter represents triple-level cell. The names indicate the amount of data and the number of voltage levels stored in the cells that make up NAND chips, and each type has its own pros and cons. MLC chips contain two bits of data per cell and four voltage levels, while TLC chips double these figures. The increased capacity of TLC means more data can be…

ANATOMY OF AN SSD

Super-Speed Storage

Once upon a time, there was just one simple solution when it came to computer storage. The everreliable, infallible spinning hard drive. That signature sound of those platters whirring into life undoubtedly roused the spirit of many a gamer, knowing that within mere tens of minutes they would be sitting comfortably, ready to load their favorite 32-bit game. It was a technology that, although archaic by today’s standards, developed exponentially for its time. First there was IDE, then there was SATA, then the second generation of SATA, and finally SATA revision 3.0, the pinnacle of SATA technology. An interconnect designed and developed to help support and provide compatibility for all future storage devices and drivers, for the next generation of HDD devices. But something happened, an event that would shape…

Super-Speed Storage

WAIT! WHAT HAPPENED TO SATA EXPRESS?

Well, as you probably already know, SATA 3 has always been the problem child of storage speeds. Hell, we’ve hit on that enough during this very feature. However, M.2 and tapping into PCIe lanes wasn’t the first solution to the problem. An additional physical interface came in the form of SATA Express. Essentially taking up two SATA 6Gbps lanes and some additional power, it’s an interface that enables speeds of up to 1,959MB/s read and write by utilizing the same PCIe lanes that M.2 and U.2 now occupy. Unfortunately, as a standard, it just never took off, certainly not in the way that PCIe storage or SATA originally did. There were a couple of SATA Express SSDs out there, but nowhere near enough to provide any form of available market.…

Pick the perfect desktop storage for your machine

PRACTICAL BUDGETING Choosing the perfect storage for your setup will ultimately always come down to how much cash you have to spare. If you’re looking for the absolute pinnacle of flash storage performance today, then no question, you need to utilize those PCIe lanes. That being said, even this chart isn’t representative of how you should actually go about your storage selection. If you’re a multimillionaire and money is no consequence then, of course, Intel’s 750 PCIe drive is a sure-fire bet. But in the real world, that’s less likely to be the case. You have to ask the questions: What does premium mean to you? How much budget do you have? And go from there. This is more a set of rough guidelines.…

Pick the perfect desktop storage for your machine

MUSCLE MEMORY MYTHS

Component lifespans are usually pretty easy to track. Processors get higher clockspeeds, more cores and smaller silicon; graphics cards get better clocks, more transistors and bigger heatsinks; and storage gets bigger and cheaper. Memory is another component that’s constantly evolving: faster speeds, bigger quantities, more channels. Conventional wisdom suggests that adding faster and larger amounts of memory will allow games and applications to run faster, but that’s not always the case, which is why we’ve examined this murky situation. THE MEMORY LANDSCAPEI Computer memory is divided into two main types: DDR3 and DDR4. The former is older, having debuted back in 2007, while the latter only hit the mainstream recently, with Intel’s X99 platform in 2014. They both work using the same principle – Flash chips store data that the…

MUSCLE MEMORY MYTHS

THE AESTHETICS OF MEMORY

Memory manufacturers try to sell expensive kits on the basis of their size or speed, but that’s not the only advantage that comes from shelling out on a high-end set of DIMMs – many of them are designed to look better than cheaper, plain-looking alternatives. Corsair’s Dominator Platinum range sits at the top of the firm’s product stack, and some of its key benefits are about the visuals. Corsair boasts of its industrial design and LED lighting – the top metal bar can be upgraded with different attachments, the LEDs can also be changed, plus the box has a goodlooking fan kit that can sit on top of the sticks to provide extra cooling. Expensive memory kits like this don’t just have aesthetic advantages – Corsair’s Dominator Platinum chips are…

THE AESTHETICS OF MEMORY

Pentiums, Celerons and APUs: buying memory for a Budget PC

Our tests have examined the effect of different memory on high-end machines, but if you’re building a budget rig, then different considerations should come to the fore at checkout time. For starters, don’t shell out on an expensive, fast memory kit if you’re going to be constructing a PC built around one of Intel’s Haswell-based Celeron or Pentium chips, as most of these only support DDR3 that runs at 1,333MHz. That’s slow enough to cause a performance hit in many benchmarks, but on a low-end rig, it’s unlikely you’ll be running the sorts of applications that’ll suffer with lesser speeds. AMD’s APUs are more accepting to faster memory, but you’ll still need to pay attention to speeds. A couple of its cheapest parts only handle 1,333MHz or 1,600MHz DDR3, but…

Pentiums, Celerons and APUs: buying memory for a Budget PC

ANATOMY OF A MONITOR

✓ Types of LCD Virtually all monitors are built with LCD screens, but different types of panel within this category can deliver different experiences and cater for different budgets. The most prevalent is IPS. This used to be one of the most expensive, but prices have dropped and these panels sit comfortably in the mid-range as well as the high end now. They’ve got superb viewing angles and excel when it comes to colour accuracy, but their response times can be mediocre. That makes them great for work and general use – especially if you’re going to do photo editing – but poor for high-octane gaming. TN panels are also popular. They’ve got lightning fast response times, which makes them tempting for pro-level gamers, but it comes at a cost…

ANATOMY OF A MONITOR

FLAT-PANEL PERFECTION

A FEW YEARS AGO, the market for monitors was as exciting as binge-watching The Best Of The House Of Lords. Maybe not quite that bad, but your choices basically boiled down to a couple of resolutions across a few screen sizes. There was the TN versus IPS thing when it came to panel technology, too, with VA thrown in as a wild card. And the introduction of LED backlights shook things up a bit. But the fires of innovation were hardly burning bright. Fast-forward to today, and you’ve got the opposite problem. There’s so much choice, it’s hard to know where to start. Size-wise, you can go all the way to 40 inches without even spending all that much cash. Resolutions up to full 4K are now affordable, too. And…

FLAT-PANEL PERFECTION

The last few years have seen innovation on an awesome scale. So, are we done, or can you expect more of the same in 2016? One thing is for sure: More pixels are likely to be on the 2016 menu. A few 5K screens have already popped up. Could 8K be the big thing in 2016? Maybe. LG and other makers of LCD panels are currently tooling up for 8K—that means 7,680 by 4,320 pixels, or no fewer than a grand total of 33,177,600 dots. Or if you count each RGB sub-pixel, we’re talking 99,532,800 coloured dots being refreshed at least 60 times a second. More likely to see wider mainstream adoption is quantum dot technology. Already popular in the HDTV market, it's not revolutionary—it’s about making LCD panels even…

Everything’s Cool

The first rule of thermodynamics is: you do not talk about thermodynamics*. The second rule of thermodynamics is: if you have a hardware problem, there’s a good chance heat is to blame. Heat is the nemesis of pretty much everything you’re trying to do with your system. Want to run your processor faster? Heat is holding you back. Speed up graphics? Heat will happily shut that door in your face. Pack more juicy components into your chassis? You’d better allow for good airflow or the whole lot will be brought to its knees gasping for air. The ways we tackle heat production has evolved over the years. Original PCs didn’t go in for all this active cooling malachy. Indeed it wasn’t too long ago (in human evolution terms at least)…

Everything’s Cool

INSTALLATION FUN AND GAMES

Installing CPU coolers is, we’re pretty sure, one of the circles of Hell described in Dante’s Inferno – as a chore to be carried out by telephone conmen who talk the elderly into installing viruses onto their PCs. Either way it can be a real pain. Often literally. Most closed-loop coolers are every bit as tricky as awkward air coolers on this front – the good ones use easily accessible clips and thumb screws, while the worst offenders have you stripping the skin off your fingers to actually attach the main block on top of your precious CPU. Removing your motherboard from the case is often a requirement, even if said chassis has a cutout on the motherboard mounting. Accept that you’re going to have to do this and get…

INSTALLATION FUN AND GAMES

WATERCOOLING 101

For much of recent history, water cooling has been shunned. Only a select few could afford to merrily dance with computing death, taking their chances with water-cooling hardware and components that weren’t even designed to work in the silicon environment. They’d ghetto-graft 1/4-inch plumbing fittings onto hardware and hand-mill various water blocks, all in the hope of creating a leak-proof, watertight system. A system that could efficiently and effectively transfer heat away from their component parts, to a far greater degree than traditional air coolers ever could. It was back in the noughties, a time when the average PC enthusiast was less concerned about how a PC looked. More important was how many frames per second they could squeeze from their beige box of dominance in Unreal Tournament. It was…

WATERCOOLING 101

DISPELLING THE MYTHS

MYTH 1 If I use deionised water in my loop, then leaks won’t matter or cause any damage. Answer Unfortunately, no. As soon as the water is introduced to the system, it will begin making contact with the various metals inside of the water blocks. It will soon be picking up positive ions, meaning it’ll be conductive within a couple of hours, at the very least. MYTH 2 What If I blow it up when I switch it on? What if there’s an instant leak? Answer Honestly, you’re seriously not going to damage anything. The best way to fill and test a loop is to make sure everything’s unpowered by using a PSU bridge. By using this bridge, you can switch on just the pump and that’s it. Leave this…

DISPELLING THE MYTHS

BUILD YOUR PERFECT PC

ONE OF THE JOYS OF OWNING A PC is that you can upgrade it as you go. Need higher frame rates in games? Drop in a newer graphics card. Want more power elsewhere? Grab a new processor or go for that old favourite: the memory boost. There’s a wealth of upgrades that can transform your machine, plus you can change slowly over time to suit your budget, so you rarely have to suffer a sluggish rig for long. Every now and then, the best possible upgrade is to dump your current rig and start afresh by building a whole new machine from scratch. What sort of machine should you build, though? Which items are important? Which work well together? How much should you be budgeting for? That’s a lot of…

BUILD YOUR PERFECT PC

✓ MOTHERBOARD MSI B85M-45 With the change in Gigabyte’s previously impressive B85M-D2V we’ve switched to the slightly better MSI board for our budget build. ✓ CPU COOLER Intel Stock Cooler The Pentium Anniversary chip is a very cool-running CPU, even when overclocked. We managed a stable 4.2GHz on this stock Intel cooler. ✓ MEMORY Crucial 4GB 1600 DDR3 Memory pricing continues to be incredibly volatile, but it’s still a great time to squeeze more sticks into your rig. You really should see 4GB as the minimum. ✓ GRAPHICS CARD MSI GTX 750 Ti OC Nvidia’s budget GPU is quite a feat of engineering because of the wonderful Maxwell architecture. The MSI card is a bargain. ✓ SOLID-STATE DRIVE OCZ ARC 100 240GB OCZ’s ARC 100 drive may not be the…

✓ MOTHERBOARD Asus Z97-A We’ve seen a lot of Z97 motherboards since this Asus offering landed, but nothing newer has managed to push it off this list. Great features at a great price. Simple really. ✓ CPU COOLER Enermax ETS-T40 Enermax has simply amazed us with this, its first CPU cooler. The performance is excellent, the price is astonishing, it’s easy to fit and it isn’t so big that it limits your case or mobo choices. ✓ MEMORY Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB This pair of 4GB sticks will give you all the performance you could ever want, and they’re in stormtrooper white. They’ll only take up two slots in the board for upgrading, too. ✓ GRAPHICS CARD XFX Radeon R9 290 In order to shift units out of the channel,…

✓ MOTHERBOARD Asus X99 Deluxe As usual this Deluxe board from Asus is absolutely stuffed with funky features. It’s one of the finest, and best-looking, X99 boards around and not a bad overclocker either. ✓ CPU COOLER Cooler Master Nepton 240M Why settle for a reasonable overclock when you can hit 5GHz? This kit is speedy, boasts incredible performance and is quiet in operation. Everything you’d want, in other words. ✓ MEMORY Corsair Vengeance 16GB The Haswell-E platform is the first to bring DDR4 to the consumer. That does come at a hefty price, but it’s damned quick. ✓ GRAPHICS CARD Nvidia GTX Titan X The dual-GPU R9 295X2 is still the quickest overall card, but the GM 200 in the Titan X makes it the best all-rounder. It’s almost…

Build A Budget Windows 10 PC

Windows 10. Ah, glorious Windows 10. You come bearing many gifts of silicon-enhancing joy. DirectX 12 and a reimagined Start menu, you beautiful things. Sorry, we’ve been a little bit distracted of late, betatesting Microsoft’s latest platform. It’s everything Windows 8 should have been. Still, no point crying over corrupt files. We’ve moved on. And what’s important about Windows 10, more so than any of the tinkering that Microsoft has done with the operating system or Cortana, is the inclusion of DirectX 12. Surely you’ve heard us rant about the new graphics API by now? To put it bluntly, think of DX12 as a free graphics card upgrade for everyone. But instead of going from a GTX 660 to a 670, it’s more along the lines of a GTX 660…

Build A Budget Windows 10 PC

Time To Get Building

1 PREPPING FOR YOUR BUILD IT’LL PROBABLY come as no surprise, but the best way to build a rig is to plan it well. The first and most crucial aspect of creating your new PC is setting up your build area. Make sure that wherever you decide to construct your machine, the area is free from distraction. Ensure you’ve all the tools you’ll need to put your wee beasty together (usually a Phillips screwdriver, some scissors and a set of needle-nose pliers for the fiddly bits). And last but not least, try to find a static-free area – avoiding woolly socks and carpets is usually best. If you’re paranoid, you can buy an anti-static strap. But if you can’t find one, or are feeling stingy, regularly touch the casing around…

Time To Get Building

TWICE AS NICE: QUIETLY DOES IT

LENGTH OF TIME: 1–3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM THE MISSION Here we’re building a nice gaming system that doesn’t break the bank, built inside a relatively conventional mid-tower case. But there’s still some new and interesting hardware in the mix, of course. Expect nothing less. We have minty-fresh gear from Fractal Design, Corsair and Asus for your perusal. This build is also oriented towards low noise, so those of you with sensitive ears will certainly want to check it out. NOT LOUD, STILL PROUD WHEN YOU’RE TRYING to cut down on noise generation, the biggest factor is your case. Fractal Design recently released the Define R5, which is a mid-tower with pre-installed noise absorption panels on the sides and front. The top of it uses the company’s ‘ModuVent’ system,…

TWICE AS NICE: QUIETLY DOES IT

LITTLE PC ON THE PRAIRIE

LENGTH OF TIME: 1–3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY THE MISSION A LETTER came in to us from retired army man Harley Roam, who expressed that he’s not one with deep pockets. Typically we tend to build rigs in the £1,000 range or more. Often, much more. But Harley was wondering if we could build a PC for under £500. Not just any PC, however. He likes a game, does Harley, so playing at 1080p is important, as is having lots of potential for the rig to evolve as the money drips in. Challenge accepted, we thought. Couldn’t be all that hard, now, could it? Sure enough, you can quite easily build a PC for that price. But it’s sluggish, and we don’t want that for Harley. Plus, there’s some…

LITTLE PC ON THE PRAIRIE

VIRTUALLY PREPARED: GETTING READY FOR OCULUS RIFT

LENGTH OF TIME: 1–3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM THE MISSION VIRTUAL REALITY is a hot topic for PCs right now, and everyone wants a piece of the action. It’s a Wild West free-for-all as different hardware and platforms are announced, so putting together a gaming rig that can handle the demands of the upcoming VR setups is a real concern. Oculus VR has recently helped clear the air by publishing the recommended specs for its Rift platform. Depending on your current system, the recommended hardware either looks moderately tame or outlandishly extravagant. The core components consist of the CPU, GPU and RAM: Core i5-4590, GTX 970 or R9 290 and at least 8GB. If you want to minimise on costs, you could easily build a complete Oculus-ready system for…

VIRTUALLY PREPARED: GETTING READY FOR OCULUS RIFT

IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

LENGTH OF TIME: 1–3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM TO CHALLENGING THE FLIGHT PLAN WHEN YOU’RE BUILDING a machine from scratch, compromises tend to hold you back from piecing together your perfect PC. Cost, if nothing else, is usually the limiting factor. But what if you don’t have to compromise? What if, this time, you can build your dream PC? That’s what we’ve done this issue; we’ve shot for the Moon. We’ve even themed it accordingly – going for a NASA finish that hints at the high-end components contained within. The components you’ll find in this rig are basically what we consider to be at the top of their game. We haven’t completely ignored the price – you can easily spend more if you so wish – but we’ve tried…

IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO AN OLD BOX

LENGTH OF TIME: 1 HOUR LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY THE MISSION HERE AT FUTURE TOWERS, we often build new rigs from scratch. We have the option of using just-in, bleedingedge, nerd-porn-worthy parts, or remixing a fresh build idea from our selection of parts we’ve already built and reviewed. Either way, builds usually use newer-generation parts. New! Shiny! This isn’t one of those builds. We know that not everyone can, or has, the desire to go out and build a whole new PC every time. In fact, one of the best parts of building a PC is the fact that you can upgrade a system as it begins to show its age. We were digging around in the pile of parts that is the PC Format Lab, and we found a…

BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO AN OLD BOX

CAGED POWER: ALL ON DISPLAY

LENGTH OF TIME: 2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM ASSEMBLING THE CAGE 2015 WAS A GOOD YEAR for new PC products, and we thought that including some of them here would be more than appropriate. It also helped that Max, from our video team, wanted to build a new rig into an open-air case by In Win that he’d bought. So we figured: Why not? Most of the time, our builds end up in PC cases that enclose the guts on all six sides. Even if there is a side panel window, five out of six sides remain mostly or totally opaque. That means that the case is on display, not the parts inside. Seeing as the case costs only a fraction of the price of the PC, it’s a…

CAGED POWER: ALL ON DISPLAY

OVERCLOCKING MASTERCLASS

Overclocking. It’s long been a part of a PC enthusiast’s toolkit when it comes to wringing every last ounce of power from our beloved machines. Whether you’ve opted to run AMD or Intel, overclocking has been a staple food group of the techie’s diet for as long as there’s been chips in PCs. The basic principle is simple: Add more voltage to the component part, provide it with sufficient cooling, either through water or air (or Ln2 for the more adventurous among us), and increase the Hz output of the hardware you’re trying to improve. But this doesn’t come without risk. While we’ve come a long way in the world of overclocking, it is still possible to fry your CPU, GPU, RAM or motherboard to the point where it’s more…

OVERCLOCKING MASTERCLASS

OVERCLOCKING YOUR CPU

Before crossing the start line, there’s a few basic principles to get your head around. The first one is heat. Inevitably, the more voltage you add to your components, the more heat that component is going to output. Second, the higher the clockspeed you’re trying to achieve, the more voltage you will need to power that attempt. And thirdly, there’s only so much voltage your PC part can take before you start to see detrimental effects. These could be a drop in frame rates for GPUs, corrupting processes on the CPU, or even a failure to boot at all. These, essentially, are the basic limits of overclocking. All chips are born equal, but some are more equal than others. You’ll often hear overclockers talk of ‘The Silicon Lottery’. In short,…

OVERCLOCKING YOUR CPU

PICKING A COOLER

The first thing to consider after you’ve decided on overclocking is what you’ll use to cool your components. To put it bluntly, the stock coolers that AMD and Intel provide simply won’t cut it when it comes to dissipating the excess heat that comes from adding more voltage. They’re designed to deal with what the processor can output at stock frequencies, and not a lot more. AIR The more traditional, easier solution would be to rely on air cooling for your CPU. There’s a huge list of air coolers out there, from a wide variety of brands, but it’s vital that you consider the size of the cooler versus the height of your RAM and the size of your case. The last thing you want is to buy a new…

OVERCLOCKING YOUR RAM

Yes. It’s true. Overclocking doesn’t just mean tinkering with your CPU. Other avenues exist if you’re keen to shove the boat out a little bit more. RAM speeds over the course of the last few years have almost tripled in frequency, meaning performance can be improved quite dramatically in certain computational programs. It’s important to bear in mind, however, that the higher you push your RAM frequency, the more your CPU will suffer. In other words, it might mean an overall lower final overclock for your little powerhouse. On the other hand, AMD’s APUs, despite being a lower-end graphics solution, will benefit hugely from an increase in those same frequencies. So, what does all this come down to? 1 WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY? Identifying the frequency of your RAM on purchase…

OVERCLOCKING YOUR RAM

OVERCLOCKING YOUR GPU

With DirectX 11, at least, OCing the GPU is the area of most benefit to gamers. But it’s also where overclocking has most dramatically changed. That’s because, with Nvidia’s GPU Boost and AMD’s Power Tune, it’s no longer possible to simply up the voltage and in turn increase cards’ core clockspeeds. It’s now often better to ignore the voltage and let the proprietary software do its own thing. This way you can avoid reaching the artificial power limits set by our GPU overlords – cores won’t throttle themselves in an attempt to control imaginary temperatures, that may or may not be present, even if they’re running on an aftermarket cooler, or water. Sounds ridiculous, right? You’re not wrong. Still, we’ll show you how far you can go with these cards.…

OVERCLOCKING YOUR GPU

Once you’ve got your cooling sorted, you also want to make sure you’ve got the best possible components that you can budget for in regards to stability. That means two items in particular – the power supply unit (PSU) and the motherboard. They are both imperatively important when it comes to overclocking. Perhaps most obvious is buying a motherboard that supports overclocking. For Intel, that’s any motherboard with the Z97 chipset. For AMD users, it’s currently any FM2 or AM3+ board. Concerning power supplies, you want to be looking at a PSU that has at least 20 per cent spare capacity, in terms of wattage, over what your system requires. Preferably, push as much money as you can into it. The higher-end power supplies not only feature better surge protection,…

Welcome to the world of overclocking, a place where dreams are realised, and where having just enough of those overclocking chops may mean the difference between a world recordbreaking benchmark or a session crying into a pile of burnt-out chips and GPUs. As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, OCing isn’t for the faint-hearted. You can do a considerable amount of damage to your CPU and other component parts, so it’s not something to be taken lightly. What’s more, in some cases, the performance gains are negligible. But, if you’re interested in eeking every last ounce of power from your machine, this is definitely the hobby for you. It’s something the vast majority of PC users will shy away from, and it’s understandable why – the thought of placing…

Benchmark your CPU

YOU’LL NEED THIS BECNHMARKING SOFTWARE We’re using NovaBench, but there are other tools out there. SYSTEM MONITORING SOFTWARE CPU-Z is a good tool to use to keep a check on your hardware. BENCHMARKING YOUR PROCESSOR, RAM and motherboard is a valuable endeavour for a number of reasons. The most obvious one is that it gives you an excellent overview of how well your PC is performing. It’s convenient too, as rather than having to run lots of different tests, or use your PC in certain ways to get gauge how it performs, most benchmark tests run a range of intensive tests that push your hardware as far as it goes, as well as replicating real world use. It means you can leavethe benchmarks to run unattended while you go and…

Benchmark your CPU

IMPROVE YOUR SCORE

Not satisfied with the benchmark results? then there are a few things you can do to improve your score without resorting to buying or overclocking your hardware. To begin with you should ensure that your PC is in as good a condition as possible before running the benchmark tests. This means scanning your PC for any viruses or malware that could impact the performance. Once you’re sure that your PC is clean make sure that all critical updates for your operating system are installed and up to date. Once done make sure all the drivers for your hardware are installed and up to date as well. Once done restart your computer and wait two minutes for all the start up programs and services to launch. Next you should make sure…

IMPROVE YOUR SCORE

Benchmark your GPU

YOU’LL NEED THIS THE LATEST DRIVERS Up to date software means your graphics card behaves at its best. BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE In this case, the Heaven benchmark. THERE’S A CERTAIN PANIC MANY PC GAMERS WILL BE WELL ACQUAINTED WITH. A brand new game is coming out with stunning graphics and you can’t wait to play it. But then the fear sets in; will your PC be capable of running it? This is where benchmarking your GPU comes in. It’s a great way to quickly and easily see how well your graphics card will cope with a variety of graphical demands and effects. A good graphics card benchmark will put your GPU through its paces, and the results will paint a good picture of what your GPU can and can’t do well.…

Benchmark your GPU

WHAT MIGHT IMPROVE IT?

If you’re graphics card isn’t getting the score you hoped for, there are a number of things you can do to improve the score before you resort to ripping out your GPU and replacing it with a newer model. First of all you should make sure have the latest stable drivers installed for your graphics card. You can check this by either going to the website of your graphics card manufacturer, or using a program such as GeForce Experience (www.geforce.co.uk/geforce-experience) for Nvidia cards to check that you’re running the latest drivers. If you are using experimental or beta drivers it might be worth rolling back to the last official stable release. Once done restart your computer and wait two minutes for all the start up programs and services to launch.…

WHAT MIGHT IMPROVE IT?

HOW TO BE A TECH GURU

Expert’ is a relative term – by which I mean it’s a term that our relatives use. “Ask Luis, he’s the computer expert,” my mother-in-law will say, to anyone who will listen. I’ve spent more than twenty years fixing other people’s problems, so I’m used to being called an expert, but the reality is that every family has its own expert. To qualify, you just need to be the youngest adult in the room that owns a PC. Sooner or later, your grandma or your uncle or your sister-in-law will mention that their laptop is broken or iTunes keeps crashing, and you’ll feel guilted into taking a look at it. Whether or not you ultimately manage to fix it makes no difference; you’ll still be the computer expert. After all,…

HOW TO BE A TECH GURU

Knowing the right answer isn’t an especially useful skill. Being able to find the right answer is much more valuable and recognising the right answer when you come across it, is even better. ‘Google-fu’ is a martial art that gets better with practice, but here are some quick tips to help you sharpen your searches. Don’t Google the question, Google the answer. “watch dogs crashes randomly” will give you dozens of forum posts from complaining gamers, but the answers will mostly be a mixture of bland boilerplate advice, requests for detailed crash logs, and suggestions of things to try, with replies saying that this didn’t help. Instead, Google “watch dogs patch notes” and you can quickly skim the list of bug fixes to see if any of them addresses your…

Avoiding the experts

The guy in the shop is not a computer expert; he’s just someone with good interpersonal skills who knows his way around the basics. If your mum wants to set up her Gmail account in Windows Live Mail, he can help. If you come to him with your weird Blue Screen error, you’ll be given some misleading flannel and then steered towards a sale. The woman in the call centre is not a computer expert, either. She’s working from a troubleshooting flowchart of simple solutions to the most common problems. Her goal is to get rid of you as quickly as possible, so she can keep her call stats up. These are not bad people, they just aren’t the droids you’re looking for. The truth is that there aren’t really…

Avoiding the experts

Learn to program

Programming is an extremely helpful skill for a Tech Guru. Lots of command line operations become easier if you know a little programming, particularly in Linux – but much more importantly, it teaches you what a computer really is. Programmers are like Neo: they don’t see files and icons, they see resource handles. Memory isn’t just a quantity, like the fuel in your tank; it’s a collection of discrete integers and floats and strings. When you understand how the house is built, you’ll know which walls you can safely remove and which will bring the ceiling down on your head. Programming means debugging, and the mindset you need to track down a tricky bug is exactly the same as the one you need to diagnose every other computer problem. Programming…

Learn to program

What should happen

When your PC is switched off but still plugged into the mains (or laptop battery), the motherboard still receives power on the 5-volt standby rail. This provides power to the circuitry that monitors the power button. Pressing this button signals the motherboard to tell the power supply (PSU) to fire up properly and also pulls the voltage to 0V on the reset pin for the CPU. This puts the CPU into a known start state, with default values loaded into all the registers, and sets the instruction pointer to the start address of the BIOS. Between 0.1 and 0.5 seconds later, the voltages from the PSU have stabilised and it signals this by putting +5V on the Power Good line (pin 8 of the ATX connector). The tells the motherboard…

What should happen

Diagnose boot issues

30 MINUTES PROJECT GOAL A stable PC Fix a system that won’t pass its POST, or at least find out why. REQUIRES Mobo manual You’ll need this to establish that your motherboard, RAM and chip are compatible, and see where everything plugs in. Pozidriv screwdriver For any disassembly necessary. Thinking cap Some problems might need a little brainwork to resolve. Damn, it’s dead. You’ve just pressed the power button and there’s little sign of life, let alone an operating system. You may see text from the BIOS, a blue screen or nothing at all. There may be silence, or a flurry of beeping and frantic fans. Never mind driver problems; this is more fundamental than that. Your box has failed at the first fence and the POST has bombed. The…

Diagnose boot issues

If you suspect a short on the case, it’s a good idea to get systematic by pulling everything out and starting afresh. It can also pay to run a system outside the case before you build it, especially if you’re recycling parts you’re unsure about. Sit the motherboard on a firm, clean and non-conductive surface, then plug in your power supply, processor and cooler, and fire it up by shorting the power pins with something metallic. It might not get far, but you should get some beeps that refer to memory (expected and good), or your processor (bad). Alternatively, there may be silence (possibly worse). Add your hardware until you find your problem – or not. It may be indeed have been your case. Just don’t touch anything when it’s…

If your box is beeping, it’s trying to tell you something important, so listen. You used to need a system speaker to hear these tones, but modern boards have their own little built-in beep-maker. A system speaker isn’t your regular sound system, either – it’s separate and specifically for error codes, and we haven’t seen one for years. codes. One long beep and two short, for example, means it can’t find a working graphics card. The BIOS makers have added to the error codes over the years. Unfortunately, there is no standard for what beeps signal which problem, and although there are some consistencies, (small numbers of short beeps are mostly memory errors), there are enough variations for it to be really annoying and require specific documentation. can use the…

What’s what and where on your motherboard

DIMM SLOTS Some very common problems are fitting the wrong RAM, putting it in the wrong slots, or using the wrong capacity. If this is a new build, then there’s a good chance your problems stem from here. RAM must be properly matched with your processor and board. Your manual will detail all this. Sticks can need firm coaxing to get into place, too. If the securing clips don’t engage cleanly, it’s not in properly. PROCESSOR SOCKET This is where the brain goes. It’s keyed to prevent you putting the chip in the wrong way, with an arrow, notch or dot on the chip to match a marked corner on the socket. You would have to be pretty ham-fisted to get this wrong, because generally it won’t fit any other…

What’s what and where on your motherboard

Are we all plugged in?

1 Is it really on? On the back of your PSU, there is probably an innocuouslooking black power switch, which is rarely touched in everyday use. It’s easy to forget about it and start worrying about dead components when all the time you haven’t switched on the juice. If this fails, try replacing the kettle lead; you may have a faulty one, or a blown fuse. 2 Processor power Chips get their own power supply, and it’s easy to forget to plug this in. It’ll use either an eight-pin block or a four-pin block. Often the power supply lead splits the eight-pin into two four-pins to make it compatible with both. It’s the socket next to your processor, often called ‘12v ATX’. Another easy miss is the power for your…

Are we all plugged in?

More than cables

1 Get in there Video cards can take considerable force to get properly seated, which can be worrying, as flexing your board is really not a good idea. Make sure the mobo is fully supported with stand-off posts before applying pressure. Many boards have securing clips for the card. If you can’t get these to click in neatly, the card needs pushing down further. Try removing and reseating if the angle is at all crooked. 2 Unwanted shorts If an electrical conductor touches your board, it can cause a short circuit on the fine network of tracks, which is guaranteed to cause trouble. Check the posts that the board sits on. Did you install them all in the correct places? There is no standard pattern and it’s easy to get…

More than cables

1 Re-seat your cooler Your processor cooler needs to be seated firmly in place and completely flush, or the chip will overheat. Are all the connectors snug and is the cooler level? Did you put a (tiny) bit of thermal paste on? The contact between the top of the chip and your cooler needs to be good and true. The motherboard’s thermal cut-out will trigger if it detects the temperature going too high, which may only take seconds. 2 Clear the BIOS It will wipe some useful information, but resetting the CMOS can fix some setting woes. The simple way is to go into the BIOS and restore the factory settings, but this isn’t much help if you can’t get into the BIOS setup. Most boards have a jumper or…

Power supplies are tricky to diagnose unless they start to smoke, or there are loose wires in the power blocks. PSUs are sealed and have fans, so they attract dust that insulates components and clogs fans. If your motherboard appears dead and you’ve checked that everything is plugged in, your PSU deserves suspicion; it may be that it just can’t reach operating voltages any more. Symptoms vary, and affect almost every other component. They are also easily confused with other failures. If it’s good enough to fire the box, but not for sustained use, a PSU failure can get nasty – unreliable supply during writes can leave unreadable junk smeared across your storage drive. This tendency to affect all components does at least give you a decent clue that power…

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