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Welcome
Custom PC Issue 166
3
Editorial
EDITOR
Ben Hardwidge
editor@custompcmag.org.uk
MODDING EDITOR
Antony Leather
GAMES EDITOR
Rick Lane
ART EDITOR
Bill Bagnall
www.billbagnalldesign.com
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Julie Birrell
CONTRIBUTORS
Edward Chester, Gareth Halfacree,
James Gorbold, Joe Martin,
Mike Jennings, Phil Hartup,
Richard Swinburne,
Simon Treadaway, Tracy King
PHOTOGRAPHY
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Gareth Halfacree, Mike Jennings
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4
CUSTOM PC / ISSUE 166
Highlights
12 Games: a gateway to
cybercrime?
Tracy King dissects a National Crime
Agency report that links game
modding with hacking.
20 AMD Ryzen 5
We look at AMD’s Ryzen 5 1600X,
which sports six cores and a very
tempting price.
23 AMD Radeon RX 580
AMD tweaks its manufacturing
process to clock up its Polaris chips,
but can they beat Nvidia’s GeForce
GTX 1060?
40 CPU cooler Labs
Can’t fit a 240mm cooler in your case,
but want more than a heatsink on
your CPU? We test the latest 120mm
liquid coolers on Intel and AMD rigs.
48 Hard drive Labs
There’s still life in mechanical hard
drives yet. We put some of the
latest platter spinners to the test
to find which drives offer the best
performance and value for money.
84 VR arcades
Joe Martin ponders whether virtual
reality arcades could help to bring
VR to a mainstream audience, or
whether they’re just a diversion.
96 Hobby tech
Gareth Halfacree tries out the new Pi
Zero W and shows you how to make
a CPU monitor with a BBC micro:bit.
104 How to make a PSU cover
Want to hide your power supply and
cables, clearing the clutter inside your
PC, but don’t have a new case with a
fancy PSU cover at the bottom?
Antony Leather shows you how to
make your own one.
Contents
Welcome to Issue 166
88 Build an 8-core Ryzen
PC for £975 inc VAT
Forget changing the market, AMD
clearly isn’t happy unless it’s
transformed it into an enormous
battle robot. The CPU industry has
a new warrior in town; AMD’s new
Ryzen 7 CPUs don’t just offer eight
cores and the ability to beat Intel’s
equivalent chips in some heavily
multi-threaded workloads, but they
also cost significantly less cash.
The result is that you can now build
an 8-core powerhouse for under a
grand. You don’t even have to skimp
on the rest of the build. This month,
we’ll show you how to build, set up
and overclock an 8-core Ryzen PC,
complete with 16GB of RAM, a
Samsung SSD, an Nvidia GeForce
GTX 1060 GPU, liquid cooling and
a swanky In Win case, all for just
£975 inc VAT.
48
COVER STORY
P88
40
110
104
102
96
Cover guideRegulars
8 From the editor
10 Richard Swinburne
12 Tracy King
14 Incoming
16 Letters
34 Custom kit
36 How we test
64 Elite products
75 Inverse look
82 The engine room
84 Virtual world
96 Hobby tech
101 RealBench leaderboard
102 Customised PC
104 How to guides
109 Your folding milestones
110 Readers’ drives
114 James Gorbold
19
Reviewed
this month
Reviews
MEMORY
19 Corsair Vengeance RGB
PROCESSOR
20 AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
GRAPHICS CARD
23 AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
MOTHERBOARDS
26 Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5
28 MSI X370 XPower Gaming
Titanium
CASE
32 BitFenix Portal
Custom kit
34 SteelSeries Stratus XL
35 Mindkoo Waterproof Wireless
Speaker
35 Brainwavz Truss
35 Thermaltake Galeru Mouse
Bungee
120mm all-in-one
liquid cooler Labs
41 ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120
42 Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120
43 Cooler Master MasterLiquid 120
44 Deepcool Captain 120 EX
45 NZXT Kraken X31
Hard drive Labs
49 Seagate Barracuda 4TB
50 Seagate Barracuda Pro 6TB
51 Seagate Firecuda 2TB
52 Western Digital Black 4TB
54 Western Digital Blue 4TB
PC system reviews
58 Zoostorm StormForce Lux
60 The PC Customiser XSplit
Streamer Pro X
62 Yoyotech Redback N6
Games
76 Mass Effect: Andromeda
78 Kona
78 Snake Pass
80 Thimbleweed Park
Hobby tech
96 Pi Zero W
100 Delete by Paul Atkinson
29
PRODUCTS
REVIEWED
5
26
104
40
88
76
8
OPINION
HEALTHIER TIMES
Ben Hardwidge welcomes some solid competition
back to the PC enthusiast scene, thanks to AMD
BEN HARDWIDGE / FROM THE EDITOR
Ihonestly don’t think I’ve worked on an issue of
Custom PC like this one for over ten years. Over the
next few pages you’ll see awards handed out to
various AMD-related products, including a CPU, GPU, AM4
motherboard and several CPU coolers. Not only that, but we’ve
dedicated a whole feature to building a PC based on a top-end
AMD CPU and put it on the cover. It’s a combination we haven’t
seen in this magazine since the Athlon 64 days, probably
before AMD bought out ATI.
After a bit of a shaky launch last month, we’ve now had some
time to get used to Ryzen. EFI updates have
started trickling down, and although
performance still needs to be optimised in a
few games and apps, I think we’re now at a
point where we can start seriously looking at
Ryzen as a competitor to Intel’s Core i7 CPUs.
It isn’t a smooth ride, of course – if you’re
building a Ryzen PC, you’ll need to understand
the platform’s various quirks, but that’s where
we can help. Our build feature on p88 doesn’t just show you
how to physically construct the PC; it will also tell you exactly
what gear you need and how to set up and your system. There
are still issues with memory compatibility, for example, but
we’ve now learned a few tips and tricks, and if you follow our
guide, you’ll be able to get it all working.
The reward for doing a bit of troubleshooting and tweaking
is well worthwhile. Just have a look at the £975 inc VAT price
tag on the cover. We didn’t even have to compromise on the
other specs to get the price down – our sub-£1,000 PC includes
16GB of RAM, a Samsung SSD, a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics
card and even a fancy In Win case. All you need is the know-
how and you can build an overclocked 8-core PC that can
outperform a machine costing twice as much money in
heavily multi-threaded software - the results in our Handbrake
video encoding test and Cinebench are just amazing.
Intel still has wider compatibility on its side, and that’s going
to be a prime factor for businesses wanting to buy reliable
workstations, as well as novice users. For us enthusiasts,
though, Ryzen is looking very promising indeed, particularly
if you’re on a tight budget.
What’s more, we’re now seeing AMD’s 6-core Ryzen 5 chips
appearing (see p20), which can’t compete with Intel’s Kaby
Lake CPUs on clock speed, but significantly
outperform them in heavily multi-threaded
software, and for a very reasonable price too.
Finally, AMD has also surprised us with its
new Radeon RX 580 GPU (see p23). I say ‘new’
– it’s really a rebadged Radeon RX 480 with a
refined manufacturing process, but it turns out
that was all AMD’s Polaris architecture needed
to make it really competitive. With some driver
optimisation, higher clock speeds, slightly improved power
efficiency and competitive pricing, the RX 580 is now a better
option than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060.
In the space of just a couple of months, AMD has beaten
Intel’s equivalent CPUs in terms of both price and performance
in some software, and taken on Nvidia’s Pascal chips too. In an
industry that was growing stagnant, it’s fantastic to see some
solid competition again, and I’m now really looking forward
to seeing what AMD’s forthcoming Vega GPU can offer.
As I’ve often said before, though, AMD’s next step needs to
be improving support and compatibility. Enthusiasts are
happy to tweak, but mainstream users need a much more
solid, predictable experience.
Ben Hardwidge is the editor of Custom PC. He likes PCs, heavy metal, real ale and Warhammer 40,000. editor@custompcmag.org.uk @custompcmag
You’ll need to
understand Ryzen’s
various quirks, but that’s
where we can help
OPINION
10
GOOD NEWS ALL ROUND
Recent developments from Intel, Nvidia and AMD show a promising future
for the PC over the next couple of years, says Richard Swinburne
RICHARD SWINBURNE / VIEW FROM TAIWAN
B y most accounts, AMD’s Ryzen launch appears to have
been successful. Software support is lagging at the
moment, but it takes time for the ripples of a totally
new platform to reach the wide parts of the PC ecosystem, so
this delay is inevitable. Let’s also remember that AMD is a tenth
of the size of Intel, so it has much more limited resources when
it comes to working with partners and software vendors to
optimise their products.
From past experience, I can say that motherboard makers
need a good six months to tweak their EFI systems for reliability
and performance. In particular, optimising the new DDR4
memory controller is important, as it’s now directly tied to the
performance of AMD’s Infinity Fabric
interconnect (what we used to call a ‘bus’). As a
result, faster DDR4 memory and controller speeds
have a greater positive effect on overall system
speed than on Intel platforms. The good news for
early adopters is that the performance of AMD
motherboards should continue to improve as the
engineers continue to test and learn.
AMD has also recently updated Ashes of the Singularity with
Ryzen-specific optimisations, and the benchmark results show
significant improvements. While that’s a good result in isolation,
though, Ashes of the Singularity isn’t a current AAA title or
most-played game. Thankfully, in February, AMD also announced
a ‘long-term strategic partnership’ with Bethesda, as well
as increases in the minimum frame rate in DOTA 2. Ryzen may
have had a shaky start, but it’s good to see AMD committing to
gaming performance.
Next up is Nvidia, by way of manufacturing partner TSMC.
For Nvidia’s new GPUs this year, TSMC has several potential
avenues: 10nm production is ready, but right now, the firm is
committed to producing smartphone chips. A new 12nm process
is also ready, but it isn’t expressly tailored for the ‘high
performance’ that GPUs require. Finally, TSMC has also made
improvements to its 16nm process, offering better performance
without shrinking the chips.
As such, I’d expect Nvidia to remain with 16nm GPUs this year.
AMD has also stuck with GlobalFoundries’ 14nm process for its
Radeon RX 500-series GPUs. Without being able to shrink the
chips and add more features in the GPUs, both firms need to look
for architectural updates or increased clock speeds to improve
performance. Meanwhile, TSMC is testing a 7nm process, with
production due next year. TSMC confidently claims that its 7nm
process is its ‘finest technology’, so we could
expect to see 7nm GPUs next year!
Finally, we come to Intel. At a recent event, Intel
announced yet another round of 14nm products
among its eighth-generation products later this
year (that’s four now: Broadwell, Skylake, Kaby
Lake and Coffee Lake). This process is dubbed
14nm++ and represents Intel’s third generation
of 14nm production.
However, while Intel still won’t be shrinking its CPU dies, it
claims that the 14nm++ process offers its best transistor
performance ever – even better than the company’s first and
second-generation 10nm transistors. As a result, it will likely
take Intel nearly 2.5 years (into the second half of 2019) before
we see appreciable transistor performance gains from its 10nm
transistors. Okay, so another round of 14nm Intel chips isn’t
massively exciting, but hopefully some competition from AMD
will push Intel into making some more interesting CPU designs,
and it’s great to see so many new chips and technologies on the
horizon from the big players.
Richard has worked in tech for over a decade, as a UK journalist, on Asus’ ROG team and now as an industry analyst based in Taiwan @Bindibadgi
We could expect
to see 7nm GPUs
next year!
OPINION
12
A GATEWAY TO
CYBERCRIME?
Tracy King dissects a National Crime Agency report that
suggests a link between game modding and hacking
TRACY KING / SCEPTICAL ANALYSIS
You probably know the phrase ‘gateway behaviour’
from various clichés about marijuana being a
gateway drug. No one ever calls eggs a gateway food
to custard, or Baileys a gateway drink to absinthe, or at least not
until now. Enter the National Crime Agency, the UK’s law
enforcement body for various crimes including hacking, which
just published a report suggesting that game modding is a
gateway to serious cybercrime.
The report, available on the NCA website, has problems, not
least that subjects were criminals and may have biases or reasons
for being dishonest. Two types of interviews were
carried out, the first being a ‘debrief’ of people who
had received a caution, community sentence or
imprisonment for cyber-related crimes.
The report says that ‘all debrief subjects were
interviewed with their full knowledge and
consent as to the purpose of the interview. The
debriefs followed a semi-structured format with the lead officer
guiding the conversation whilst allowing the subject to describe
their journey into cybercrime in their own words’.
The problems are immediately obvious. A bias is created when
the subject knows the purpose of the questions, and gives them
time to think about the ‘right’ answer. Then there’s the claim that
the lead officer guided the conversation. This is a huge research
no-no and can easily lead to the subject being unwittingly (or
wittingly) biased or led to a specific answer. I’d be inclined to
entirely disregard these debriefs, which is even more advisable
given there were only eight of them.
The second type of interview was carried out during ‘cease
and desist’ visitations. The average age of the subject was 19. One
of the questions, answered by 23 subjects, was ‘how did you first
become involved with tech and computers?’ Not surprisingly,
more than half the subjects said gaming. No way! Who knew
teenagers would mainly get drawn to technology via the most
fun part of it!? Certainly, we wouldn’t want to draw any hasty
lines between gaming and cybercrime, particularly as the report
itself notes that half of the population play games. It’s a
meaningless question.
Another question, this time asked of users of Blackshades
malware, was ‘how did you hear about it?’ – 20 subjects said
hackforums, eight said ‘gaming or other’ and two
said ‘Google’. Again, it would be very odd to infer
any conclusions about the link between gaming
and cybercrime from those eight responses, other
than that people who use the Internet for one task
also use it for another. Aside from the sample size,
subjects may have also had a motive to lie and give
a harmless-sounding answer such as ‘gaming forum’ to avoid
further trouble. We also aren’t informed about how the NCA
classifies ‘gaming forum’ and who decides what qualifies as one.
According to the report, one subject on these forums ‘met
people who would cheat on games by modding them. He wanted
to be able to have these skills and began to learn about
programming’. From here he turned into a hacker and was jailed.
Again, no way! You gain skills and knowledge via something
simpler – that’s how learning curves work – and like any learning
curve, people can end up in many different places. A tiny
percentage will experiment with crime; probably the same
percentage of shoppers who also shoplift. You might as easily
claim that Linux is a common pathway to cybercrime.
Gamer and science enthusiast Tracy King dissects the evidence and statistics behind popular media stories surrounding tech and gaming @tkingdot
No one ever calls
eggs a gateway food
to custard
14
COMING SOON / NEWS
Incoming
We take a look at the latest newly announced products
EK launches quick-disconnect couplings
Removing and adding components in your water-cooling loop
could now become a whole lot easier thanks to a neat idea from EK
– quick-disconnect fittings. The EK-QDC couplings were first used
on the company’s Predator coolers, enabling users to easily add
other components to the loop, but the company is now making
them available to everyone to use in their own custom loops. The
coupling has a standard 10mm barb fitting on either end, and
pressing a button in the middle section unlocks the two ends,
enabling them to come apart.
The couplings can’t be used with rigid tubing, and you’ll need
tubing with a 10mm inner diameter. The couplings are available
from www.ekwb.com for €29.46 inc tax (around £25).
Corsair unveils
customisable mouse
Whatever style of mouse grip you prefer,
Corsair reckons it may well have your needs
covered by its new customisable gaming
mouse. The Glaive gives you a choice of
three swappable magnetic grips, with
options for a rubberised finish, a smooth
curve or a wide thumb rest. The Glaive also
sports six programmable buttons, three
zones of programmable RGB lighting and
a custom 16,000dpi PixArt optical sensor,
which was developed specifically for Corsair.
The Corsair Glaive is available now from
www.scan.co.uk for £70 inc VAT.
Nvidia releases new Titan
After predictably irritating buyers of its last Titan X (Pascal)
card with the release of the cheaper and faster GeForce
GTX 1080 Ti, Nvidia has now unleashed another Titan card
with an equally baffling moniker – the Titan Xp. The new
super-high-end GPU features 3,840 stream processors
with a 1582MHz boost clock, and the card bolsters the
GPU with 12GB of GDDR5X memory running at 11.4GHz
(effective). The company claims the card offers
‘irresponsible amounts
of performance’,
although it also
comes with an equally
irresponsible price tag
of £1,159 inc VAT from
www.geforce.co.uk
AMD RX 480 cards flashable
to RX 580
Various enthusiasts around the world have been experimenting
with their AMD Radeon RX 480 cards, finding that some of them
can be effectively turned into Radeon RX 580 cards via a BIOS
flash. The experimentation appears to have been kicked off on the
www.techpowerup.com forum, after user TonybonJoby flashed
an XFX RX 480 card with a Sapphire RX 580 card’s BIOS, and the
card then ran at the Sapphire card’s settings.
The Radeon RX 580 (see p23) has the same GPU structure as
the RX 480, and in our tests, RX 480 cards have indeed been
overclockable to the same level as stock RX 580 cards. However,
there’s risk involved, as the RX 580 is built with AMD’s refined FinFET process,
enabling it to safely reach much higher clock speeds, so there’s no guarantee
that the process will work on every card. Flashed RX 480 cards are also likely to
draw more power and need more cooling than genuine RX 580 cards.
SILVER CROW
Silver Crow G-Master GB2783QSU
2560
x
1440
gmaster.iiyama.com
Panel
Response time
Features
Inputs
Audio
Height adjustment
TN LED / 2560x1440, QHD
1 ms, 60Hz
FreeSync™, OverDrive, Black Tuner,
Blue Light Reducer, Predefined and
Custom Gaming Modes
DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort
speakers and headhpone connector
13 cm
ENTER ANEW DIMENSION IN GAMING
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16
FEEDBACK
Letters
Micro-ATX audio
I’ve always enjoyed good PC sound.
I remember configuring my new
Gateway PC (remember Gateway?)
with top-of-the-range Boston
Acoustics 2.1 speakers. Just as Ben
said about enjoying the amazing
scenery in modern games, I feel
that good sound falls into that
category, except that you can
continue playing while enjoying
the sound!
I’ve been thinking about what
I could usefully lose from my
machine when downsizing to
micro-ATX, and decided the Asus
DX sound card could be spared; I
could instead use and enjoy the
motherboard’s on-board HD Audio
chip. I thought that the six years
between upgrades would have
resulted in major advances with
on-board audio from the Realtek
889 chip on my old board. Wrong!
Of all the micro-ATX boards I’ve
seen, from Gigabyte to ASRock, the
audio codec is either a measly
Realtek ALC887 or ALC892. I think
the more desirable ALC1162 codec is
featured on the mega-expensive
Fatal1ty ATX board, but that’s it.
What’s gone wrong? Why has
sound provision virtually stood still
over the past five years? People
have suggested to me that it’s not
the codec that’s important, but how
the board manufacturer has
implemented it, but that seems
only partially believable to me.
You’ve tested and listened to lots
of boards – can you share your
wisdom to guide someone who
codec used on a board that doesn’t
cater for it properly anyway.
If you want a micro-ATX Z270 board
with half-decent audio, Asus’ ROG Strix
Z270G Gaming will deliver the goods.
It isn’t cheap, but it uses a tweaked
version of the ALC1220 codec, along
with Texas Instruments RC4580 and
OPA1688 op-amps. The audio results
we measured were fantastic, with a
dynamic range level of 113dBA and
noise level of -108.9dBA. We haven’t
reviewed a micro-ATX Socket AM4
board yet, but when we do, we’ll
definitely test the audio as well.
The media box
Ben’s editorial in Issue 163 echoed
exactly the problem I faced a year
ago – my HTPC just wasn’t right for
a 4K TV. I was delighted to hear that
I wasn’t alone in my quest to get
the most out of my telly. In answer
to a couple of your musings, it is
possible to install Synology DS
Video on an Amazon Fire TV; it just
needs side-loading, which requires
a little tinkering, but readers of
Custom PC shouldn’t have any
trouble with it. Also, that brings me
to my second point, which is that
you can also side-load Kodi.
Of course, Kodi is a perfectly legal
open source media software, but
it’s being vilified at the moment
because people are using it to
Please send us your feedback and correspondence to
letters@custompcmag.org.uk
simply wants to hear on-board
sound as it should be heard in 2017?
RICK BILLSON
Ben: That’s really interesting, Rick –
from my perspective, audio seems to
be one of the major areas where
motherboards have really progressed
over the past couple of years, but that
may be because we rarely review
boards that cost under £100. If you read
our motherboard reviews, though,
you’ll see that we always measure the
dynamic range and signal-to-noise
ratio of the on-board sound system
used – it’s not in the graphs, but it will be
mentioned in the Performance section.
Both the codec and the quality of the
implementation (shielding, op-amps
and so on) are important, but in most
cases, we rarely see a very high-quality
WHEN’S THE NEXT
MAG COMING OUT?
Issue 167 of Custom PC will be on sale
on Thursday, 15 June, with subscribers
receiving it a few days beforehand.
Asus’ ROG Strix
Z270G Gaming
offers fantastic
on-board audio
quality with its
ALC1220 codec
It’s possible to side-load Synology’s DS Video app onto a FireTV
17
Send your feedback and correspondence to letters@custompcmag.org.uk
source illegal content. However, as
it’s peer-supported, you can bet
someone else wants a feature you
want, and it will be available as a
plug-in – various formats of lossless
audio are covered, for example.
The digital (multiformat) audio
comes via HDMI, which could
either go to a dedicated AV amp, or
be passed through a TV’s digital
audio output if required.
In fact, I think the media box you
want has been invented; it just
needs different software. I would
love to see an article on all the
positives that could be achieved
with such a setup, rather than the
negative aspects so commonly
featured in the media.
CHRIS HOLLOWAY
Ben: Thanks, Chris. I currently have a
setup that works – it’s been a bit of a
faff, but combining a Chromecast with a
smart TV and a decent Net-connected
AV amp with HDMI ARC support has
pretty much got all my video bases
covered now. I’m now just using my old
HTPC for lossless audio playback with a
Cambridge Audio DAC. I have no doubt
that I could stream most of my music
via my Synology NAS, but my other half
has bought loads of music from iTunes
with DRM, plus I’m reluctant to mess
around with our massive iTunes library
and playlist now that we’ve finally got it
all set up. As a side note, the iTunes
visualiser looks great on the TV!
I think you’re right though – all the
hardware is already there in some
format or another, and if you’re vaguely
tech-savvy you can tweak it to your
requirements – making the media box
really just means adding intelligent
software that works with a variety of
standards. We’ll look into doing another
Twitter highlights
Follow us on Twitter at @CustomPCmag
dadstillfrags Just
finished off Issue 164,
where’s your 1080p gaming
monitor recommendation?
I suggest the MG248Q as
candidate for best 1080p
gaming monitor at decent
price point … really feel the
mag missed this category.
Ben: You’re right, we
recommend a standard 24in
1080p monitor, but not a
gaming model. I’ll add it to
the list of future Labs tests!
ads0608 just broke
into the top 1000 on the
folding@home leader board
off to hit top 500 soon
#folding
Ben: Nice work!
Pc_Shed Smashed 300
Million Target & 16K
WU early @CustomPCMag @
bittech @foldingathome
Team, thanks to @
OverclockersUK EVGA
Classified GTX 1080s.
Ben: Wow, that’s a massive
load of work units – thank
you so much for folding for
our team.
SimonWyatt1 Even @
CustomPCMag can’t
escape talking about Brexit
as their hardware column
discusses the effect of the
2016 Sterling devaluation
on tech.
Ben: We’ve tried to avoid
expressing an opinion one
way or another about it,
simply because it’s so divisive
and PC enthusiasts come
from a variety of political
backgrounds. There’s no
escaping the result the
referendum had on the value
of the pound, though, and the
subsequent hike in the price
of hardware for us.
rci Just got your June
mag, great read! Just
wondering: do all the AM4
motherboards support
DDR3? (Pages 48-53)
Antony: My bad. Not sure
how that got in there. Haven’t
used DDR3 for two years!
DominicNeagle Got the
latest edition of
@CustomPCMag early today.
Gotta love having a
subscription. Thanks for the
Xmas pressie @lipglossgirl86!
Ben: @lipglossgirl86 has an
excellent eye for a good
present.
media article, including taking a proper
look at Kodi and side-loading apps onto
a Fire stick, at a later date.
What’s 8Pack’s secret?
I’m interested in 8Pack’s
achievements on the Custom PC
RealBench 2015 leaderboard. He
records a CPU clock speed of
5.5GHz on an Intel Core i7 5960X.
No one comes near to matching
that clock speed.
How does he do it? Why hasn’t
there been an article on his/her
achievement? After all, it’s a superb
overclock, or has there been an
article and I’ve somehow missed it?
ANDREW GULLAND
Ben: Ian ‘8Pack’ Parry is indeed an
overclocking wizard – I remember
looking at the settings he’d changed in
the EFI systems on the OCUK entries in
our Dream PC Labs a couple of years
ago and he tweaks almost everything.
We talk with him now and then, and
we’ve tried to arrange an interview a
few times, but it’s always fallen through
for one reason or another. It could well
be time to rectify that though – I’ll see
if we can get an interview with him
soon. I’ll warn you, though, that he
(understandably) doesn’t like to share
all the secrets of his trade!
Would you try to
steal this man’s
overclocking
secrets?
Why has sound
provision virtually
stood still over the
past five years?
18
Reviews
Our in-depth analysis of the latest PC hardware
Reviewed this month
Corsair Vengeance RGB p19 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600X p20/
AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB p23 / Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5 p26/
MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium p28/ BitFenix Portal p32 / Custom kit p34
19
T he first RGB memory kit we reviewed – GeiL’s
Evo X – wowed us with the ability to
configure the colours in your
RAM’s lighting array. However, while it
was first out of the starting blocks,
the Evo X suffered from a
serious issue – it required
cables to power and control the
lighting. This situation meant you
had to deal with a mess of string
trailing across your motherboard, but
thankfully Corsair has found a way around
this problem with its new Vengeance RGB
DDR4 memory.
It’s available in both dual-channel and quad-channel kits,
in 16GB and 32GB capacities, although
due to recent DDR4 RAM price hikes, the
added premium of RGB lighting means
the kits retail for £148 and nearly £300
respectively. That said, the standard
Vengeance LED kits at the same
frequency retail for £130 and £260, so
you only need to spend a little more
money to get full RGB lighting.
Once you’ve set the XMP profile, or
manually inputted the timings and
voltage, in your motherboard’s EFI, the
only other installation job is to install
Corsair’s LINK software. This software
communicates with the memory’s
controller units on the DIMMs
themselves using the System
Management Bus, eliminating the need
for additional cables. It’s a great idea,
although it’s likely that kits will be limited
to frequencies of around 3000MHz without additional
voltage being required.
The LINK Software gives you great control over the
colours and lighting effects, which can be synchronised
across all the DIMMs. There’s a great-looking rainbow
effect, but there are also colour-shift, pulsing and static
modes, all of which can be tweaked in terms of speed and
colour, while choosing colours from the full RGB spectrum.
The colour effects are configurable, with the
ability to cycle through up to seven different
custom colours on a per-module basis.
Lighting level control isn’t available, although
simply setting a darker shade in the RGB colour
palette has a similar effect. Colours are vivid and
accurate too, so you’ll definitely be able to fine-
tune the modules to match your case’s colour
scheme. What’s more, anyone with a Gigabyte
Corsair Vengeance RGB /
£148 (16GB, 3000MHz, dual-channel), £296 (32GB, 3000MHz, quad-channel)
SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
Frequency 3000MHz
Timings 15-17-17-35
Voltage 1.35V
Height (from base) 49mm
Lighting Yes (RGB)
DDR4 MEMORY
RGB-ready motherboard will be able to control the modules
through the company’s RGB Fusion software too.
Timings are similar to the GeiL kit at 15-17-17-35,
compared to 16-16-16-36, although the Evo X was rated at
3200MHz compared to 3000MHz for both Corsair kits.
What’s more, we weren’t able to overclock the Corsair
Vengeance memory beyond its 3000MHz rated speed
without raising the timings. However, you see diminishing
returns above 3000MHz on Intel systems, while AMD AM4
motherboards currently struggle with running memory
beyond 3000MHz anyway.
Conclusion
Despite their higher price compared with the standard
Vengeance LED kits, the premium is absolutely worth it for
the extra control over the lighting on the Vengeance RGB
modules. You’ll need to splash out an extra £20 or so for the
16GB dual-channel kit and around £40 more for the 32GB
quad-channel kit compared to the standard LED modules.
However, if you’re a modder, and lighting and aesthetics are
just as important a speed, then the Vengeance RGB
memory is the best lighting-equipped memory you can buy.
ANTONY LEATHER
VERDICT
Great lighting control and a lack of cable clutter for just
a little extra money over fixed-lighting memory. The
best LED memory you can currently buy.
PERFORMANCE
23/30
VALUE
39/45
DESIGN
24/25
OVERALL SCORE
86%
Colours and
lighting effects can
be synchronised
across all DIMMs
HOW WE TEST
PAGE 36
20
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
W hile AMD’s 8-core Ryzen 7 CPUs are certainly
worth considering if you need the multi-threaded
grunt provided by eight CPU cores, most of us
don’t need all that parallel power. For the same reason,
we usually recommend Intel’s K-series Kaby Lake
CPUs for mid to high-end gaming PCs, as four
cores are enough for most of us, while Intel’s
X99 platform is much more expensive all
round. AMD’s cheaper Ryzen options,
such as the Ryzen 5 1600X, are interesting,
then, potentially offering six cores for
less money than a Core i7-7700K quad-
core processor.
The Ryzen 5 1600X is AMD’s flagship mid-
range option, and it costs £60
less than the Ryzen 7 1700. More
interestingly, though, it sports the
same L3 cache as the more expensive
Ryzen 7 CPUs and its base frequency
is 600MHz higher than that of the
Ryzen 7 1700 too.
In addition, it has a 300MHz higher
Precision Boost speed than the Ryzen
7 1700, and benefits from a 100MHz
XFR boost too, meaning it can reach the same lofty
4100MHz frequency as the Ryzen 7 1800X, although across
all cores at the same time. Even the 95W TDP matches the
flagship Ryzen 7 CPU, so only the core and thread counts
differ, with the Ryzen 5 1600X offering six cores and 12
threads. Its nearest competitor in terms of specifications is
Intel’s Core i7-6800K, which sports the same
core and thread count, but costs £160 more.
That’s a substantial amount of money and,
worryingly for Intel, Ryzen has proven to be just as
fast, if not faster, in some scenarios too. The Core
i7-6800K also lacks the full 40 PCI-E lanes of its
more expensive siblings, so you won’t be able to
offer full bandwidth to two graphics cards in SLI or
CrossFire either, and the same is true of AMD’s
Ryzen CPUs.
More significantly, though, the Ryzen 5 1600X is
a 6-core CPU with 12 threads, while the similarly
priced Core i5-7600K only offers four cores and
four threads. It’s obvious which chip would win in
a heavily multi-threaded fight, but Intel’s Kaby
Lake K-series CPUs have proven to be very good
overclockers, while most Ryzen CPUs we’ve
tested have struggled to add more than a few
hundred megahertz to their boost frequencies.
The Ryzen 5 1600X isn’t alone either. There’s
a Ryzen 5 1600, 1500X and 1400 as well, and
they’re all overclockable – we’ll be looking at the
rest of the Ryzen 5 bunch next month, but there’s
also the Ryzen 3 range to consider, which is being
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X /£240 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
Frequency 3.6GHz
Turbo frequency 4GHz
Core Zen
Manufacturing process
14nm
Number of cores 6 x
physical (12 threads)
Simultaneous
MultiThreading Ye s
Cache 16MB L3 cache,
3MB L2 cache
Memory controller Dual-
channel DDR4, up to
2400MHz
Packaging AMD Socket
AM4
Thermal design power
(TDP) 95W
Features Precision Boost,
SMT, SMEP, AMD64,
FMA3, F16C, SHA, BMI /
BMI1 + BMI2, AVX2, AVX,
AES, SSE4a, SSE4, SSSE3,
SSE3, SSE2, SSE, MMX
AMD SOCKET AM4 PROCESSOR
released later this year and is set to include overclockable
quad-core chips for under £170.
Performance
In our image editing test, the extra clock speed of the Core
i7-7700K was enough to claim the top spot, with Gimp
clearly not taking advantage of several CPU cores. The
Ryzen 5 1600X sat around 14,000 points lower than the
Core i7, along with the equally mediocre Core i7-6860K.
In the video editing test, though, the Ryzen 5 1600X was
not only much faster than the Core i7-7700K, but managed
to pip the Core i7-6850K to the post by 6,000 points too.
The multi-tasking test is another part of RealBench that
favours multiple cores reaching high frequencies, as well as
fast memory speeds. So with our standard Intel system
sporting memory that runs nearly 300MHz faster than our
Ryzen system could achieve, it was no surprise to see Intel’s
CPUs taking the top two podium places in this test. However,
the sheer amount of power on offer from the Ryzen 5
Worryingly for Intel,
Ryzen has proven
to be just as fast in
some scenarios
21
1600X did give it a healthy lead over the Core i5-7600K in
this test.
The system score doesn’t really tell the whole picture, but
the Ryzen 5 1600X edged out both the Core i7-7700K and
Core i5-7600K, while coming fairly close to matching the
VERDICT
A much cheaper and sometimes faster
alternative to Intel’s 6-core CPUs. It can’t
compete with Intel’s Kaby Lake chips on
clock speed, but it’s a great all-rounder.
OVERALL SCORE
87%
SPEED
41/50
VALUE
32/35
FEATURES
14/15
Core i7-6850K, which can only be seen as a victory for AMD
given the Ryzen CPU’s price.
However, the bulk of this score was achieved in multi-
threaded tests, with the Intel quad-core chips being much
faster in the image editing test.
Minimum Average
DX12 CPU test
DX12 CPU test
CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000
51,312
51,997
51,505
73,012
73,147
50,509
48,925
47,288
47,445
58,931
63,758
49,303
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
0 140,000 280,000 420,000 560,000
383,751
501,527
282,303
352,391
386,612
366,090
452,223
462,115
236,193
319,637
360,714
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
HEAVY MULTI-TASKING
0 60,000 120,000 180,000 240,000
165,283
169,465
164,525
159,358
196,630
187,503
153,380
154,502
159,258
135,178
183,658
183,077
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
SYSTEM SCORE
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
154,103
132,685
159,723
161,251
145,952
169,001
172,445
111,426
145,944
152,618
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY
(STOCK SPEED)
ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY
(OVERCLOCKED)
TOTAL SYSTEM POWER CONSUMPTION
0 12 24 36 48
fps31
fps31
fps32
fps32
fps43
fps44
fps27
fps28
fps30
fps28
fps39
fps40
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
0 12 24 36 48
fps33
fps33
fps33
fps35
fps45
fps46
fps29
fps30
fps30
fps31
fps41
fps42
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
Idle
Load
0 31 62 93 124
73W
66W
75W
64W
73W
121W
57W
57W
70W
50W
50W
91W
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
0 70 140 210 280
203W
236W
264W
188W
184W
220W
158W
132W
220W
102W
129W
178W
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
CINEBENCH R15
0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000
1,299
1,759
1,754
814
1,079
1,296
1,241
1,399
1,557
666
990
1,209
Intel Core i7-6850K
Intel Core i7-7700K
Intel Core i5-7600K
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
Stock speed Overclocked
Stock speed Overclocked
Lower is better
Lower is better
494,350
182,970
181,124
/TEST KIT
Asus Crosshair VI Formula
motherboard, 16GB Corsair 3000MHz
Vengeance LED DDR4 memory, 256GB
Samsung 850 Pro SSD, Corsair RM850i
PSU, Windows 10 Home 64-bit
HOW WE TEST
PAGE 36
22
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
The same was true in Cinebench, where the Ryzen 5
1600X beat the Core i7-6850K 7700K convincingly. Ashes
of the Singularity is a bone of contention for AMD, as it’s one
of several games that suffer from lack of optimisation for
Ryzen CPUs, although some Ryzen optimisations have
been released in a more recent DLC version of Ashes of the
Singularity, which shows some sizeable improvements.
We hope to test these
optimisations soon, but for
now, it’s clear that some
games will perform better
than others on Ryzen chips,
especially in titles where CPU
optimisation is important.
Overclocking was disappointing
though; we could only get our chip to
3.95GHz, with a vcore of 1.425V, and
adding more voltage didn’t see any improvement until the
chip became too toasty. With all cores sitting at nearly 4GHz,
the video encoding score rose from 366,090 to 383,751,
while the Cinebench score was boosted from 1,241 to 1,299.
The Intel Kaby Lake chips were all faster in the image editing
test, though, where clock frequency is a key factor.
Conclusion
There are a couple of situations where a higher-clocked
Intel CPU will be better than the Ryzen 5 1600X in terms of
performance and extra overclocking headroom – in any task
that doesn’t take advantage of more than four cores, they’re
likely to have an advantage. If your primary interest is
gaming, then you’ll be better off with a Kaby Lake CPU.
In any task where multi-threaded performance is
important, though, the AMD CPU is a better bet – it’s not just
quicker than the LGA1151 CPUs, but also the Core i7-6850K.
If you’re on a tight budget and do a mix of multi-threaded
work, such as rendering or video encoding, plus games and
other apps, the Ryzen 5 1600X is a fantastic all-rounder. It’s
quick at stock speed, and it offers even better value if you
overclock it and put all its cores and threads to work.
ANTONY LEATHER
The Ryzen 5 1600X
came fairly close
to matching the
Core i7-6850K
23
A MD’s new Radeon RX 580 might have a higher
number in its name than the RX 480, but it’s not
a new GPU. If you were expecting this card to
feature AMD’s new high-end Vega GPU architecture then
you’re going to be disappointed. Instead, the RX 580 is
based on what AMD calls its ‘second-generation Polaris
architecture’, which features an ‘updated product definition
for 2017 that includes higher clocks, an updated FinFET
14nm process, and the latest advances in Radeon Software’.
That’s a bit cheeky, you might think. The RX 580’s
fundamental GPU architecture hasn’t changed from that of
last year’s RX 480 – there are still nine of AMD’s compute
units, giving you a total of 2,304 stream processors, plus 32
ROPs. However, it’s important not to
underestimate the significance of a
refined manufacturing process. As
more chips are produced and the
process becomes refined, AMD will
get a higher yield of GPUs that can
efficiently reach higher clock speeds.
The underlying GPU might be divided
into the same blocks, but we’ve seen a
refined manufacturing process make
a significant difference to the performance and efficiency of
previous GPU line-ups.
In fact, these small updates could be exactly what AMD’s
Polaris architecture needs in order to take on Nvidia’s
GeForce GTX 1060 GPUs. In our last mid-range GPU Labs
test (see Issue 159, p40), the 8GB RX 480 couldn’t quite
play some of our test games without dropping below 30fps
at 2,560 x 1,440, plus it was comparatively pricey for the
performance on offer. It was clear, though, that it was right
on the edge – will a boost in stock speed be enough to
catapult it past the GTX 1060 6GB?
Clock speeds
The main difference between the RX 580 and
the RX 480 is the GPU clock speed – the stock
GDDR5 memory frequency of 2GHz (8GHz
effective) remains unchanged. While the RX 480
had a base clock of 1120MHz with a 1266MHz
boost clock, those figures rise to a 1257MHz
base clock and a 1340MHz boost clock on the
Radeon RX 580.
What’s more, AMD’s board partners are
pushing these figures even higher – the
PowerColor Red Devil sample we reviewed will
boost up to 1380MHz, although we tuned it
down to 1340MHz in Radeon WattMan for
testing, in order to gauge stock performance.
Performance
AMD’s small tweaks to both its manufacturing
process and Radeon software (we tested with
AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB /£220 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
Graphics processor AMD
Radeon RX 580
Base clock 1257MHz
Boost clock 1340MHz
(stock), 1380MHz
(PowerColor sample)
Pipeline 2,304 stream
processors, 32 ROPs
Memory 8GB GDDR5,
8GHz effective
Bandwidth 256GB/sec
Compatibility DirectX 12,
Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5
Outputs/inputs 1 x DVI-D, 1
x HDMI 2b, 3 x DisplayPort
1.4 (PowerColor sample)
Power connections 1 x
6-pin, 1 x 8-pin (PowerColor
sample)
GRAPHICS CARD
Crimson 17.4.4) seem to have reaped some significant
dividends. For a start, AMD’s driver team has clearly been
working on optimising its drivers to improve performance
in The Witcher 3 at High settings, where the RX 580’s
minimums were at least 10fps faster than those of the RX
480. The resulting minimum of 69fps at 1080p is superb,
meaning the RX 580 won’t drop beyond 60fps in this game.
Its 49fps minimum at 2,560 x 1,440 is also a great result,
being even quicker than Nvidia’s GTX 1060 6GB.
Not surprisingly, the RX 580 also shone in Deus Ex:
Mankind Divided, which is an AMD Gaming Evolved title.
Even so, it never dropped below 30fps in this game at either
1,920 x 1,080 or 2,560 x 1,440, using the Very High preset,
while the GTX 1060 6GB languishes at a barely playable
26fps minimum at the latter resolution. Enabling DirectX 12
also gives you a small frame rate boost on the RX 580,
bumping up the minimum to 32fps at 2,560 x 1,440.
Nvidia returns fire in Doom, where the GTX 1060 6GB is
massively quicker than the RX 580, but it’s important to get
some perspective here. The Nvidia GPU’s Deus Ex result is
HOW WE TEST
PAGE 36
The RX 580 is
based on AMD’s
second-generation
Polaris architecture
24
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
barely playable, but the RX 580’s results in Doom are fine.
The minimum of 68fps at 1080p looks much lower than the
Nvidia GPU’s 90fps result on a graph, but you’re unlikely to
notice the difference in play. The GTX 1060 wins a round of
applause for hitting a 60fps in Doom minimum at 2,560 x
1,440, but while the RX 580 can’t quite manage this feat, its
49fps minimum is still perfectly smooth and well above the
playable minimum.
In fact, the RX 580 never dropped below 30fps in any of
our test games at 2,560 x 1,440, and it’s this achievement
that launches it past its predecessor. The RX 480 could only
manage borderline playable frame rates below 30fps in a lot
of these games at this resolution – a performance lag you’re
likely to notice in play. The GTX 1060 had the upper hand in
this respect last year, but the RX 580’s improved clock
speeds and software allows it to overtake the GTX 1060
when it comes to minimum playable frame rates.
Overclocking and cooling
One concern about increasing the clock speeds so far
was that we might not be able to tweak the RX 580 much
further, but it turns out these concerns were unfounded.
Our PowerColor Red Devil test card had no trouble adding
another 250MHz (1GHz effective) to the memory clock,
and the card was still stable with a 1450MHz boost clock too
– a 110MHz overclock over the stock frequency.
As a point of comparison, we could only overclock the
original RX 480’s GPU boost clock to 1375MHz before it
became unstable, so it’s clear that AMD’s tweaked
manufacturing process has had a tangible effect on the
GPU’s headroom.
One of our other complaints
about the original RX 480 was
that AMD’s reference blower
cooler made a horrible racket
when the fan got going, and
we’re pleased to see that the RX
580 is mainly being given proper
cooling treatment from AMD’s
board partners. Our PowerColor
Red Devil sample we used for
testing is a prime example, with
a 1.5mm backplate and a large
heatsink with eight copper
heatpipes and a pair of very quiet
fans, which only spin up when
the GPU temperature goes
beyond 60°C. Even when the
fans spin up, though, the noise
levels are surprisingly quiet.
Power consumption
The PowerColor Red Devil test card also has a pair of PCI-E
power sockets – one with six pins and one with eight pins.
Comparatively, the stock RX 480 only had one 6-pin
connector, although there are RX 580 cards with lower clock
speeds and a single 8-pin PCI-E power connector too.
In our testing, the RX 480 cards’ power consumption also
regularly spiked to surprisingly high levels during games,
though, and we were interested to see how the increased
clock speeds affected the RX 580’s power draw. Again, we
saw the power draw spiking in the second and third runs of
our Unigine Valley stress test, but interestingly not to the
same degree as on the RX 480.
In general, the RX 580 draws a little more power than the
RX 480, but when it peaks, the power draw is lower by 11W.
Either way, efficiency is an area where Nvidia’s Pascal
architecture still has the upper hand. The GTX 1060 6GB’s
power draw doesn’t suddenly start spiking after a while of
stress testing, and our test system’s peak of 258W with the
GTX 1060 6GB installed is much lower than the 312W with
the RX 580 8GB installed.
Conclusion
We weren’t expecting the Radeon RX 580 to blow our socks
off, but it shows the difference that can be made by some
software tweaks and a refined manufacturing process. In
this case, these small tweaks were all that was needed to
catapult the RX 580 not only past the RX 480, but also
beyond Nvidia’s GTX 1060 6GB. The RX 580 can play every
one of our test games at 2,560 x 1,440 at decent settings
without dropping below 30fps, and that’s a superb
achievement for a card in this price league.
Prices vary between manufacturers, but a Sapphire 8GB
card currently goes for £220 inc VAT on www.scan.co.uk,
with the PowerColor Red Devil card we tested going for just
under £250 inc VAT. The only fly in the ointment is the power
efficiency compared with Nvidia’s Pascal chips, but its power
consumption still isn’t obscene. If you’re looking for a card
for 1080p and 2,560 x 1,440 gaming, the Radeon RX 580
will do it all for a very reasonable price.
BEN HARDWIDGE
The RX 580 uses
the same GPU
structure as the RX
480, with 2,304
stream processors
25
VERDICT
The Radeon RX 580 8GB plays all our
test games at 2,560 x 1,440 without
dropping below 30fps, making it the new
affordable GPU king.
OVERALL SCORE
90%
1920 SPEED
29/30
EFFICIENCY
7/10
2560 SPEED
28/30
VALUE
26/30
DOOM
1,920 x 1,080, Ultra settings
2,560 x 1,440, Ultra settings
0 30 60 90 120
fps90
fps87
fps110
fps74
fps70
fps68
fps65
fps90
fps57
fps57
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED
TOTAL SYSTEM POWER DRAW
1,920 x 1,080, Very High detail, DX11
0 30 60 90 120
fps58
fps58
fps45
fps42
fps32
fps47
fps47
fps38
fps34
fps26
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
2,560 x 1,440, Very High detail, DX11
0 30 60 90 120
fps38
fps37
fps30
fps28
fps21
fps30
fps29
fps26
fps23
fps17
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
2,560 x 1,440, Very High detail, DX12
0 30 60 90 120
fps38
fps38
fps32
fps32
XFX Radeon RX
480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
1,920 x 1,080, Very High detail, DX12
0 30 60 90 120
fps59
fps49
Radeon RX 580 8GB
0 30 60 90 120
fps61
fps58
fps71
fps48
fps44
fps49
fps47
fps60
fps40
fps37
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
3,840 x 2,160, Ultra settings
0 30 60 90 120
fps31
fps31
fps26
fps26
XFX Radeon RX
480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
FALLOUT 4
1,920 x 1,080, Ultra detail, TAA
2,560 x 1,440, Ultra detail, TAA
0 30 60 90 120
fps62
fps58
fps68
fps52
fps41
fps50
fps47
fps55
fps41
fps35
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
0 30 60 90 120
fps40
fps37
fps43
fps33
fps27
fps30
fps29
fps34
fps25
fps21
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT
1,920 x 1,080, High detail, Nvidia HairWorks off
2,560 x 1,440, High detail, Nvidia HairWorks off
0 30 60 90 120
fps84
fps73
fps78
fps35
fps47
fps69
fps57
fps66
fps52
fps39
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
CRYSIS 3
1,920 x 1,080, Very High detail, 0x AA
0 30 60 90 120
fps78
fps71
fps79
fps62
fps49
fps67
fps58
fps66
fps52
fps41
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
2,560 x 1,440, Very High detail, 0x AA
0 30 60 90 120
fps57
fps49
fps52
fps43
fps32
fps49
fps39
fps45
fps35
fps28
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
3,840 x 2,160, High detail, Nvidia HairWorks off
0 30 60 90 120
fps30
fps29
fps27
fps26
XFX Radeon RX
480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
0 25 50 75 100
fps48
fps52
fps43
fps51
fps50
fps38
fps31
fps40
fps45
fps37
fps42
fps42
fps32
fps26
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
0 100 200 300 400
312W
360W
323W
258W
293W
179W
61W
61W
95W
85W
90W
81W
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Radeon RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Radeon RX 480 8GB
Radeon RX 580 8GB
Stock speed min Stock speed avg Overclocked avgOverclocked min
Idle Load Overclocked loadOverclocked idle
Lower is better
26
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
W ith all the commotion over AMD’s Ryzen, it’s
easy to forget that Intel launched new CPUs
and motherboards recently too, and its Core
i5 and Core i7 K-edition processors are still excellent
choices even compared with Ryzen CPUs in situations
where clock speed is important.
As usual, the mini-ITX crowd was rather late to the
party, and while Gigabyte’s Z270N-WiFi featured in
our recent mini-ITX motherboard Labs test, its more
premium offering – the Z270N-Gaming 5 – only hit
the shelves recently.
However, while other premium models, such as
the Asus ROG Strix Z270i Gaming, retail for around
£180, the Z270N-Gaming 5 costs a
more reasonable £158. Thankfully,
Gigabyte hasn’t cut back on features or
aesthetics either. In fact, the Z270N-
Gaming 5 looks fantastic. It’s the only Z270
mini-ITX motherboard with a rear I/O panel
shroud that covers all those ugly ports, and
the shroud is made of metal too, with a funky
angular design that’s mirrored by the VRM and
PCH heatsinks.
You also have a steel-plated PCI-E slot, which adds some
silver to the equation, as well as rigidity, with the balance of
colour coming from the orange DIMM slots and PCI-E slot.
The orange may be a little polarising if you’re trying to
colour-match the board to your PC, but it would go very well
with a white case such as a Bit Fenix Portal or NZXT Manta.
The Gigabyte has just one heatsink for the CPU power
circuitry, though, so the Asus ROG Strix Z270i Gaming
definitely has better cooling, plus the latter has a heatsink
for one of its two M.2 slots as well.
The Z270N-Gaming 5 only has one M.2 slot,
and it’s located on the rear of the PCB, but that’s
not too much of an issue. You still get on-board
802.11ac Wi-Fi and four SATA 6Gbps ports, but
sadly all of the latter are located to the left of the
DIMM slots, so you may find cable routing a
challenge if you use SATA drives.
The rest of the layout is excellent, though,
with all of the three 4-pin fan headers located
at the edge of the PCB to the top of the CPU
socket, and both the power sockets for the PSU
are on the edge of the board, as are the USB 3
and front panel headers.
Unlike the Asus board, the Z270N-Gaming 5
also has a USB 2 header, so you can cater for
software-controlled all-in-one liquid coolers. A
slightly more niche feature is support for
Gigabyte’s optional OC Touch panel, which uses
the large port to the right of the DIMM slots. This
panel provides six additional fan headers, as
well as buttons for power, reset and clear-
Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5 /£158 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.box.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
Chipset Intel Z270
CPU socket Intel LGA1151
Memory support 2 slots:
max 32GB DDR3 (up to
4266MHz)
Expansion slots One 16x
PCI-E 3
Sound Realtek 1220
Networking Intel Gigabit
LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi
Overclocking Base clock
80-500MHz, CPU multiplier
8-127x; max voltages, CPU
1.8V, RAM 2V
Ports 4x SATA 6Gbps (Z270),
1 x M.2, 7 x USB 3, 1 x USB 3.1
Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2
x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround
audio out, line in, mic,
DisplayPort, HDMI
Dimensions (mm) 244 x 244
MINI-ITX Z270 MOTHERBOARD
CMOS functions, plus overclocking buttons and voltage
readout points. We’re not sure how many people will use
the Z270N-Gaming 5 for extreme overclocking, but the
standard buttons and extra fan headers will be welcome to
many enthusiasts.
Rounding off the usual premium features are USB 3.1
Type-A and Type-C ports on the I/O panel, plus RGB
lighting. You get several LEDs on the board itself, which can
be configured in two separate lighting zones, plus there’s a
5-pin RGBW LED strip header. You can use Gigabyte’s RGB
Fusion software to control the lighting, and it’s also
compatible with Corsair’s Vengeance RGB memory. Other
useful bits of software include EasyTune – a Windows-
based overclocking utility, which allows extensive tweaking
of the CPU, base clock, power and DDR settings, plus
System Information Viewer, which provides a very slick
utility for controlling the CPU and system fans, including
the ability to turn off system fans under low loads.
Performance
The Z270N-Gaming 5’s system score of 147,137 was
excellent, as it bettered all the other mini-ITX Z270 boards
we’ve tested, including the previous winner – Asus’ ROG
Strix Z270i Gaming. There were no issues in the storage
tests either, with the Z270N-Gaming 5 pushing our
Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD to its limits with read and write
speeds of 3,446MB/sec and 1757MB/sec respectively.
Audio performance was very strong too, with the latest
drivers from Gigabyte’s website enabling it to dish out a
dynamic range of 112.4dBA, which was higher than the top-
scoring Asus ROG Strix Z270i Gaming, while its noise level
was competitive too at -107.1dBA. Add these results to the
super-low total harmonic distortion of 0.0013, and the
Gigabyte is one of the best Z270 boards we’ve seen so far
for on-board audio, making good use of the Realtek
ALC1220 codec.
It’s the only
Z270 mini-ITX
board with a
rear I/O shroud
27
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
020,000 40,000 60,000 80,000
72,530
72,502
72,957
66,185
64,637
66,615
Asus ROG Strix Z270i
Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
090,000 180,000 270,000 360,000
322,596
310,832
317,067
Asus ROG Strix Z270i
Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
060,000 120,000 180,000 240,000
197,635
196,630
194,321
184,357
181,963
184,486
Asus ROG Strix Z270i
Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
HEAVY MULTI-TASKING
SYSTEM SCORE
0 45,000 90,000 135,000 180,000
159,286
158,550
157,448
147,137
142,883
145895
Asus ROG Strix Z270i
Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY
DX12 CPU benchmark, 1,920 x 1,080, High Settings
TOTAL SYSTEM POWER CONSUMPTION
Idle
Load
0 17 34 51 68
55W
50W
65W
53W
43W
58W
Asus ROG Strix Z270i
Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
0 45 90 135 180
149W
169W
172W
118W
116W
142W
Asus ROG Strix Z270i
Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015
Stock speed Overclocked
Stock speed Overclocked
0 12 24 36 48
fps43
fps46
fps43
fps46
fps43
fps44
fps39
fps41
fps39
fps41
fps39
fps41
Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi
Asus ROG Strix
Z270i Gaming
Gigabyte Z270N-
Gaming 5
Stock speed min Stock speed avg Overclocked avgOverclocked min
352,225
349,657
347,760
We had to enable the extreme loadline calibration mode
to achieve to our maximum overclock, but once that was
done, the Z270N-Gaming 5 had no problem getting our
Core i7-7700K to 5GHz. What’s more, it only needed a 1.3V
vcore for stability, which is the lowest vcore we’ve seen from
any Z270 motherboard to achieve this overclock.
While we had to enable loadline calibration, the Z270N-
Gaming 5’s overclocked power consumption is the lowest
result we’ve seen, at just 149W, with the other boards we’ve
tested needing at least 169W thanks to higher vcores. This
overclock also allowed the Z270N-Gaming 5 to cement its
first place in the system score, beating its sibling by nearly
1,000 points to claim the top spot again.
Conclusion
We’re delighted that Gigabyte has come up trumps with
the Z270N-Gaming 5, which has proved to be an excellent
mini-ITX board for a high-end overclocked system.
What’s more, the price tag is lower than that of any of
other premium mini-ITX boards and its overclocking
performance is exceptional. Its looks might not be as
colour-neutral as the excellent Asus ROG Strix Z270i
VERDICT
It might not have two M.2 ports, but the
Z270N-Gaming 5 is a fantastic mini-ITX
motherboard in every other way.
OVERALL SCORE
93%
SPEED
34/35
VALUE
28/30
FEATURES
31/35
1
The I/O shroud
is made of metal
too, with a funky
angular design
2
On-board 802.11ac
Wi-Fi is provided by
this card next to the
SATA po rt s
3
The PSU power
sockets are
sensibly located on
the board’s edges
1
2
3
Gaming, and it only has one M.2 port, but otherwise, it’s an
exceptional, feature-rich motherboard for a great price.
ANTONY LEATHER
ELITE
NEW ENTRY
P64
28
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
W e’re finally seeing some stock of AM4
motherboards filling etailers’ shelves, and while
there’s no official explanation for why it’s taken so
long, one guess is that many manufacturers were simply
unhappy with their boards’ performance given the short time
they’d had to optimise their EFI systems. Thankfully, we
had no such problems with the MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium; we installed the latest
E7A31AMS.144 BIOS at the time of testing, and
the board was easily the fastest-posting AM4
sample we’ve seen yet, with some taking a
weirdly long time to boot from cold.
At £300, though, the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium
is the most expensive AM4
motherboard we’ve seen; even
Asus’ Crosshair VI Hero will leave
plenty of change in your back pocket
by comparison.
MSI has adopted its own method of
handling XMP profiles, called A-XMP.
However, as with some of the other
memory profiling methods we tried
last month, this system didn’t appear
to set the correct memory voltage or timings, with our PC
failing to boot afterwards. Manually inputting the settings
worked, though, which takes just a few seconds thanks to
MSI’s excellent EFI. It’s also worth pointing out that the X370
XPower Gaming Titanium recovered superbly from any
over-zealous tweaking, and we never needed to reach for
the clear-CMOS button.
Speaking of overclocking and testing tools, you get nearly
everything on this board, including power and reset buttons,
an LED POST code display and a Game Boost
knob that applies a quick overclock. As well as
10-phase CPU power delivery, there are also
extra power connectors for the CPU and
graphics cards should you wish to do some
extreme benchmarking. However, you don’t get
the OC Dashboard that comes with its Z270
counterpart, which costs around £30 more.
Instead, you get a USB 3.1 header, which might
not be particularly useful at the moment, but
there are one or two cases that offer a USB 3.1
Type-C port on their front panel.
The board also includes MSI’s M.2 Shield
heatsink for one of its M.2 ports, and it’s also the
first AM4 board we’ve seen with two M.2 ports.
The heatshrink-clad port is rated at full 4x PCI-E
3 speed, but the lower slot is only PCI-E 2, so you
get half the bandwidth. Still, it might be useful for
housing a SATA-based M.2 SSD, sitting
alongside a Samsung 960 Evo in the top slot.
The X370 XPower Gaming Titanium also
sports MSI’s usual titanium-coloured PCB,
MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium /£298 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
Chipset AMD X370
CPU socket AMD Socket
AM4
Memory support 4 slots:
max 64GB DDR4 (up to
2667MHz)
Expansion slots Three 16x
PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E 2
Sound Realtek ALC1220
Networking Intel Gigabit LAN
Overclocking Max CPU
multiplier 63x; no base clock
overclocking; max voltages
CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V
Ports 6 x SATA 6Gbps
(X370), 2 x M.2, 8 x USB 3, 1 x
USB 3.1 Type-A, 2 x USB 3.1
Type-C, 7 x USB 2, 1 x LAN, 6
x surround audio out, line in,
mic, DisplayPort, HDMI
Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244
X370 MOTHERBOARD
which looks fantastic and super-clean. Adding to its aesthetic
prowess is a chrome-plated shroud around the DIMM slots
and steel-plated 16x PCI-E slots too, which prevent sheering
if you move your PC around. There’s no on-board RGB
lighting, but there is a 4-pin RGB LED header, with an
extension cable included in the box if you want to use MSI’s
Mystic Light software to control a separate LED strip.
Meanwhile, the rear panel offers seven Type-A USB ports
in total, one of which has USB 3.1 bandwidth, while three of
them are USB 2 and four of them are USB 3. One of the USB
2 ports also moonlights as MSI’s USB BIOS Flashback+ port.
Finally, the on-board audio is Realtek ALC1220-based and
there are five analogue ports plus an optical output on the
I/O panel.
Performance
With the early and rather wobbly EFIs now seemingly behind
us, the latest EFI tweaks often offer better performance as
well as stability, so many of the scores in this review (and in
last month’s Labs test) will likely improve. Even so, the MSI
kept pace with the best results we’ve seen, getting the
second spot in the image editing and multi-tasking test tests
out of all the AM4 boards we’ve tested, resulting in a
reasonable system score.
Audio performance was excellent too, with the second
highest dynamic range level we’ve seen at 111dBA, and third
lowest noise level at -107dBA. The X370 XPower Gaming
Titanium easily pushed our Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD to
its limits too, with 3,350MB/sec read and 1,828MB/sec
write speeds, the latter being noticeably quicker than the
Crosshair’s result of 1,774MB/sec. As expected, the second
M.2 port yielded some fairly lowly numbers by comparison –
just 1,836MB/sec read speed and 1,555MB/sec write speed.
We used our Ryzen 7 1700 to gauge overclocking
performance, and applying a 1.425V vcore – a little lower than
The board was
easily the fastest-
posting AM4
sample we’ve seen
29
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
015,000 30,000 45,000 60,000
52,599
51,997
51,863
46,561
47,288
44,710
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
0125,000 250,000 375,000 500,000
420,100
452,223
428,158
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
HEAVY MULTI-TASKING
SYSTEM SCORE
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
181,186
182,850
158,386
157,552
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
0 45,000 90,000 135,000 180,000
158,278
163,490
150,161
154,502
141,274
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY
DX12 CPU benchmark, 1,920 x 1,080, High settings
TOTAL SYSTEM POWER CONSUMPTION
Idle
Load
0 20 40 60 80
59W
66W
58W
55W
57W
55W
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
0 65 130 195 260
255W
236W
241W
130W
132W
124W
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015
Stock speed Overclocked
Stock speed Overclocked
0 10 20 30 40
fps31
fps34
fps31
fps34
fps
31
fps33
fps28
fps32
fps28
fps32
fps28
fps31
Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
MSI X370 XPower
Gaming Titanium
Stock speed min Stock speed avg Overclocked avgOverclocked min
169,465
497,799
494,350
499,979
182,970
169,001
AMD’s maximum recommended benchmarking voltage of
1.45V, saw our CPU get to 4GHz, which was a little lower than
the Crosshair VI Hero’s 4.05GHz. Thankfully, applying the
overclock was a breeze thanks to MSI’s snappy and clear
EFI, although its fan control section and Windows-based
equivalent are a little dated compared with Gigabyte’s efforts
these days.
The overclock saw some sizeable gains in the
benchmarks, with the video encoding score increasing from
420,100 to 497,799 and the system score rising from
158,386 to 181,186.
The X370 XPower Gaming Titanium also managed to
stretch to a 3200MHz memory speed, but only using
Samsung-based GeIL Evo X memory – kits from G.Skill and
Corsair and most other manufacturers refuse to go higher.
Conclusion
The X370 XPower Gaming Titanium is a fantastic-looking
premium board with loads of features. It has a few extra
features compared with the Crosshair VI Hero and is the
best-looking AM4 motherboard we’ve seen, but you pay
a high price for the privilege. Undoubtedly, most people will
VERDICT
Matches great looks with a massive feature
set and a solid EFI, although you pay a high
price for the privilege.
OVERALL SCORE
85%
SPEED
32/35
VALUE
21/30
FEATURES
32/35
1
The big red
Game Boost
switch applies a
quick overclock
2
MSI’s M.2 Shield
heatsink is included
for one of the
board’s M.2 ports
3
A chrome-plated
shroud surrounds
the DDR4
memory slots
1
2
3
be better off saving some money and buying a cheaper
board, but if you have the cash, the X370 XPower Gaming
Titanium is the best Ryzen board we’ve tested.
ANTONY LEATHER
32
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
B itFenix’s mini-ITX Prodigy made a big impact
when it was unleashed a few years ago. It was
large for the form factor it supported, but its funky
design and fantastic water-cooling support meant it was a
huge hit. The company hasn’t had too much success with
mini-ITX since then, with the Phenom unable to match the
original Prodigy’s design in terms of cooling or looks.
However, BitFenix hasn’t given up on mini-ITX, with its new
Portal chassis being clearly influenced by Valve’s Portal
games, with a clean, futuristic look and a unique design.
The really interesting part of the design is that the front
area of the aluminium shell, including the stand, is actually
separate to the internal cage that mounts the hardware.
Only the front panel cables are attached
to the outer shell. The inside section
can roll out on a rather neat set of
runners, giving you an easier way to
install your hardware.
As such, the shell itself is
practically a single-piece object,
and is very solid. Thanks to the
generous use of aluminium, the case
weighs under 6kg too, but we can’t help
wondering if glossy plastic would have been cheaper and
a little more Portal-esque.
Meanwhile, the exterior is fairly featureless apart from
a large front power button, while two USB 3 ports, a pair of
audio jacks and a reset button sit on the side.
The Portal comes in black or white with the option of a
windowed model that offers a view through the roof over
your graphics card, which sits with the cooler facing
upwards. The motherboard is inverted inside this case, but
that setup doesn’t pose any issues. One more general
potential pitfall, though, is the case’s size. Measuring
411mm deep and 382mm high, it towers over the likes of
the Raijintek Metis Plus we reviewed recently.
However, BitFenix has at least kept down
the width. The main chassis cover’s width
comes in at under 19cm – the same width as
the Metis Plus – mainly thanks to the Portal
being limited to using SFX PSUs. However,
there’s also a large metal stand that protrudes
at the sides, increasing the width to a much
bulkier 25cm. Visually, it looks quite compact,
but you’ll need to clear a little more desk
space than you might think.
Despite its size, the Portal can’t match the
Prodigy’s cooling setup either. There’s a single
120mm front fan mount and just a single rear
80mm mount, with fans for both positions
included and the 80mm acting as an exhaust.
The front fan draws air through a mesh in the
outer shell, which doesn’t have particularly
generous venting, so it may hamper cooling
SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
Dimensions (mm) 185 x 411 x
382 (W x D x H)
Material Steel, aluminium,
plastic
Available colours Black, white
Weight 5.8kg
Front panel Power, reset, 2 x
USB 3, stereo, mic
Drive bays 2 x 3.5in/2 x 2.5in,
1 x 2.5in
Form factor(s) Mini-ITX
Cooling 1 x 120mm front fan
mount (fan included), 1 x 80
rear fan mount (fan included)
CPU cooler clearance 125mm
Maximum graphics card length
300mm
MINI-ITX CASE
here. However, the 120mm front fan mount has clear space
behind it, so it would be possible to use both a 120mm all-in-
one liquid cooler, or even a custom water-cooling system,
as the base offers just enough room to mount a large pump.
For storage, there’s a fixed drive mount at the front of the
case that supports two 2.5in SSDs or 3.5in hard disks, while
there’s a dedicated 2.5in mount above it. BitFenix has
missed a trick here, as not only is the drive mount fixed with
rivets, but the front section could also easily house another
120mm fan mount, allowing for the installation larger
radiators or potentially better air cooling. The maximum
CPU cooler height is 125mm, so an all-in-one liquid cooler
will be needed for hefty overclocks. Graphics cards up to
300mm in length are supported too, although they’ll need
to be no bigger than a dual-slot design.
Building a PC into the Portal can be a tad tricky though. A
portion of the outer shell is attached to the inner hardware
cage and comes with it as you slide it out. However, this part
of the shell blocked access to two of the motherboard
mounting holes, requiring us to remove the outer shell
section. Also, the front panel cables are extra-long, as they
need to stretch out from inside the outer shell when you
remove the inner section of the case, and getting them to
fold up inside when you insert the hardware section can be
a little fiddly.
Performance
The included fans were fairly quiet, and thankfully the rear
80mm fan shifted a reasonable amount of air, and it was
also placed directly next to our CPU cooler, so it definitely
aided airflow. The Portal’s CPU delta T of 57°C was actually
slightly cooler than the Fractal Design Define Nano S’ result,
most likely due to the slightly better fan placement at the
The inside section
can roll out on a
rather neat set
of runners
BitFenix Portal /£120 inc VAT
33
rear in relation to our top-down Zalman flower test
cooler, while the Define Nano S is better suited to tower
coolers. The Portal’s CPU result was also cooler than both
temperatures we recorded for the Raijintek Metis, but the
Fractal Design Core 500 was significantly better.
The GPU delta T of 56°C was less impressive, though with
no vents near the roof-facing graphics card, resulting in a
temperature that was 9°C warmer than the Define Nano S’
result and 13°C north of the Core 500’s reading. However, it
was still cooler than the GPU results from the Phanteks
Enthoo Evolv ITX and Raijintek Metis Plus.
Conclusion
There are clearly better mini-ITX designs available for
higher airflow and better cooling, which will appeal to
people who want to keep their hardware as cool as possible.
The temperature results are far from failures for the BitFenix
Portal though. It offers solid CPU cooling, even with an
VERDICT
A fantastic-looking mini-ITX case with an
innovative design, but it’s expensive and your
graphics will need a decent cooler too.
OVERALL SCORE
78%
COOLING
21/30
DESIGN
27/30
FEATURES
14/20
VALUE
16/20
overclock applied, and it’s really only the graphics card that
gets a little toasty. We’d definitely suggest opting for a card
with a third-party cooler rather than a reference blower,
though, as our reference test card did struggle a little.
The use of aluminium also results in a hefty price tag, but
the Portal is mostly focused on aesthetics, where it scores
very highly, especially if you have an attractive graphics card
cooler in the windowed model (which costs the same
amount as the non-windowed version).
The Portal is an attractive case, and we applaud its
innovative design and excellent build quality, but there’s also
no getting around its few shortcomings, as well as the fact
that it’s a little large for a mini-ITX case, the price is high and
BitFenix hasn’t maximised the potential of the interior.
However, if you can afford it, and you like its looks, the Portal
remains a decent case – just make sure your graphics card
has a decent cooler.
ANTONY LEATHER
3
CPU LOAD DELTA T
0 16 32 48 64
57°C
59°C
51°C
59°C
61°C
62°C
Phanteks Entho
Evolv ITX
NZXT Manta
Fractal Design
Define Nano S
Fractal Design Core 500
Raijintek Metis Plus
(reversed fan)
BitFenix Portal
0 15 30 45 60
56°C
56°C
43°C
47°C
48°C
58°C
Phanteks Enthoo
Evolv ITX
NZXT Manta
Fractal Design
Define Nano S
Fractal Design Core 500
Raijintek Metis Plus
(reversed fan)
BitFenix Portal
GPU LOAD DELTA T
Lower is better Lower is better
1
The shell is
separated from the
cage that mounts
the hardware
2
Cooling comes
from a 120mm
front fan and a rear
80mm spinner
3
BitFenix has
reduced the width
by using an SFX
PSU mount
2
1
HOW WE TEST
PAGE 36
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
Custom Kit
Phil Hartup checks out the latest gadgets, gizmos and geek toys
34
GAMEPAD
SteelSeries Stratus XL /£49.99 inc VAT
The SteelSeries Stratus XL is a hefty Bluetooth gamepad based on
the PlayStation 4 controller’s layout – with the analogue thumbsticks
sitting front and centre – while the D-pad is positioned in the upper
left. This layout means that the pad handles slightly differently to pads
with the Xbox layout pattern, but the buttons are bound identically.
The Stratus XL owes a significant amount of its heft to being a
Bluetooth pad and thus having to contain batteries, but the pad has
a reassuring weight and solidity even without the batteries.
The action on the buttons and sticks feels
precise, and it feels like a well-made and
robust pad in your hand – it will likely
withstand more than a couple of
tantrums after losing Rocket League
ranked matches.
The choice of a Bluetooth interface
is an interesting one that brings both
advantages and disadvantages.
The advantages over a wired
pad are clear enough – there’s
no cable to tangle and there’s a
very long reach. There’s also the
neat side effect that if games
want to default to using a
gamepad, but you want to use
a keyboard and mouse instead,
you don’t have to unplug any gear or change any settings – you just
turn off the pad and the job is done.
Although there’s no rechargeable battery, the lifespan of a pair of
AA batteries is rated at 40 hours, and we had no trouble with battery
life in our testing. It’s a shame you don’t have the option to plug in the
pad if your last set of spare batteries has run out though.
Setting up the pad isn’t as easy as with a USB pad either. Before
you start, prepare yourself to expect to search for instructions, follow
them, install a firmware update and muck about
with yet another piece of support software
you’ll need for five minutes.
That said, the only reason the setup
process is even noticeable is that the
basis for comparison is plugging in
a USB gamepad. Once the setup is
out of the way, you won’t have to
think about it again.
Bluetooth setup issues aside,
though, the Stratus XL strikes a
very good balance.
It’s tough yet precise, and built
to last while not being retrograde
in its use of technology.
SUPPLIER www.scan.co.uk
35
Seen something worthy of appearing in Custom Kit? Send your suggestions to editor@custompcmag.org.uk
HEADSET HANGER
Brainwavz Truss /£15.99 inc VAT
The Brainwavz Truss is a simple and convenient bracket designed so
you can hang up to two headsets from it. The Truss attaches to the
underside of a desk, or whichever other object to which you might
want to stick it, by way of some extremely sticky double-sided tape, so
it’s very easy to install. By that same token, however, it’s very easy to
install in the wrong place, or at the wrong angle, or in the way of an
object you hadn’t considered before mounting it. As such, the
Brainwavz Truss is very much a measure twice, cut once affair. If
you do nail the installation on the first try, though, it does its job very
efficiently, putting unused space to work and keeping your headset out
of the way when it’s not in use.
SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk
WIRELESS SPEAKER
Mindkoo Waterproof
Wireless Speaker /£19.95 inc VAT
Music in the shower without the risk of electrocution or singing is a
good idea in theory, and it turns out it’s a decent one in practice too.
The Mindkoo is a compact Bluetooth speaker in a rubbery,
splashproof casing, which can hang from hooks and rails, and is
designed to be used primarily in or at least near the shower. To this
end, the casing is a one-piece affair – there are no joins for water to
get inside it, and the only openings are at the bottom, where the
concave speaker faces downwards, and the USB charging port,
which is under a cover. The sound quality is good given the size, and
the limited (but functional) controls are ideal for being operated by
somebody groping around a cubicle with their eyes full of shampoo.
SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk
CABLE TIDY
Thermaltake Galeru
Mouse Bungee /£12.99 inc VAT
A desktop gizmo to keep your mouse cable from getting snagged in
whatever grot has accumulated in your gaming space might have
you scratching your head at first. Surely it’s better to simply have a
clean and tidy gaming space without the aforementioned grot, rather
than adding to the grot in order to mitigate said grot’s effects.
As such, the efficacy of the Thermaltake Galeru Mouse Bungee is
already debatable; you only need one if your desk is a mess and if
your mouse has a wire running through it. What the Galeru gets you
in that situation, though, is the ability to secure a length of mouse
cable above the chaos to give you exactly as much slack as you want,
and to minimise the risk of tangles or the
cable catching on any clutter.
The Galeru is weighty enough to feel
stable, and it grips the cable tenaciously. It’s
transportable too; the arm can be removed,
which gives the Galeru a more agreeable
shape for packing, and you can then
reattach the arm with a magnet
when it’s needed.
The Galeru isn’t for
everyone, but if you have a
messy desk, it definitely
presents a solid alternative
to keeping your desk tidy.
SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk
36
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
How we test
Thorough testing and research is the key to evaluating whether a product
is worth buying, and deciding whether or not there’s a better alternative
TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015, Cinebench and a variety of games. We also test the power draw of the test PC with the CPU
installed. These tests reveal a broad range of performance characteristics, from image editing to gaming and video encoding to 3D
rendering. We run all tests at stock speed and again when overclocked to its highest frequency.
Graphics cards are mainly evaluated on how fast they are for their price. However, we also consider the efficacy and
quietness of the cooler. Every graphics card is tested in the same PC, so all results are directly comparable.
The graphics card
we’re reviewing
4.4GHz Intel
Core i5-6600K
Intel
LGA2011 -v3 CPU
AMD AM4 CPU
Intel
LGA1151 CPU
Asus Rampage V
Extreme 10 Edition
Asus Crosshair VI
Formula
MSI Z270 Gaming
Pro Carbon
Samsung SSD
850 Pro
Samsung SSD
850 Pro
16GB Corsair Vengeance LED
3200MHz DDR4
16GB Corsair Vengeance LED
3200MHz DDR4
16GB Corsair Vengeance
LED 3000MHz DDR4
Asus Maximus VIII
Hero
Windows 10
64-bit
INTEL LGA2011-V3
AMD AM4
INTEL LGA1151
+
+
+
= SCORES
PROCESSORS
GRAPHICS CARDS
+
+
32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX
2666MHz DDR4
500GB Samsung
SSD 960 Evo
+
+
+
+
+
+ ++
COMMON
COMPONENTS
Windows 10
64-bit
AMD Radeon R9
390X
37
The
Awards
EXTREME
ULTRA
Some products are
gloriously over the
top. These items of
excellent overkill
earn our Extreme
Ultra award.
PREMIUM
GRADE
Premium Grade
products are
utterly desirable –
we’d eat nothing
but beans until we
could afford them.
PROFESSIONAL
Products worthy of
the Professional
award make you
and your business
appear even more
awesome.
APPROVED
Approved products
are those that do a
great job for the
money; they’re the
canny purchase for
a great PC.
CUSTOM KIT
For those gadgets
and gizmos that
really impress us,
or that we can’t
live without,
there’s the Custom
Kit award.
TESTS: We use Custom PC RealBench 2015 and Ashes of the Singularity, and also test the board’s
SATA and M.2 ports. We try to overclock every motherboard we review by testing for a maximum
base clock as well as overclocking the CPU to its maximum air-cooled level.
TESTS: By using the fast PC detailed on the left, we can be sure that any limitations are due to the
graphics card on test, rather than being CPU limited. We test Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Doom, Crysis 3,
Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at their maximum detail settings, in their highest DirectX mode, at
several resolutions. High-end cards should be able to sustain playable frame rates at 2,560 x 1,440,
while 1,920 x 1,080 is more important for mid-range cards; we also test at 3,840 x 2,160 for 4K
monitors, and try to overclock every graphics card we test to assess the performance impact.
Intel
Core i7-7700K
AMD Ryzen 7
1700
Intel Core
i7-4790K
Intel Core
i7-6850K
Motherboard
on test
Motherboard
on test
16GB of Corsair
2400MHz
DDR3
Motherboard
on test
Samsung
SSD 850 Pro
16GB Corsair Vengeance
LED 3200MHz DDR4
16GB Corsair Vengeance
LED 3200MHz DDR4
(running at 2933MHz)
240GB
OCZ
150
32GB Corsair Vengeance
LPX 3200MHz DDR4
AMD
A10-7850K
8GB of Corsair
2133MHz
DDR3
256GB
Plextor
M5 Pro
Asus
A88X-Pro
2 x AMD Radeon
R9 390X
Windows 10
64-bit
INTEL LGA1151
INTEL REFERENCE
INTEL LGA2011-V3
AMD AM4
AMD REFERENCE
Our benchmark suite,
co-developed with
Asus, simulates how
people really use PCs
– a higher score is
better. You can
download them from
www.asus.com/
campaign/Realbench
MOTHERBOARDS
CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015
500GB Samsung
SSD 960 Evo
500GB Samsung
SSD 960 Evo
Asus
Maximus
Gene VII
Nvidia
GeForce GTX
780 3GB
++
+
+
+
+ +
+ + + =100%=100%
+ + + +
++
Samsung
SSD 950 Pro
+
+
Windows 10
64-bit
Windows 10
64-bit
AMD Radeon R9
390X
AMD Radeon R9
390X
+
+
+
+
+
40
How we test
T his month we’re looking at the
latest 120mm all-in-one liquid
coolers, covering a range of
budgets, and for the first time we’re
including results for AMD Ryzen CPUs
on Socket AM4 too, as well as our usual
LGA115x and LGA2011 results. Our AMD
system sports a Ryzen 7 1700 overclocked
to 3.8GHz using a 1.3V vcore on a Gigabyte
AB350-Gaming 3 motherboard, 16GB of
3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX
memory and an XFX R9 390 graphics
card, along with a Crucial MX100 SSD.
Our LGA115x test rig uses an Intel Core
i7-4790K overclocked to 4.4GHz with a
1.275V vcore, a Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H
motherboard and 4GB of 1600MHz Crucial
Ballistix DDR3 memory. Alongside these
components sit a 240GB Intel SSD 730 and
an AMD Radeon HD 5770 1GB graphics
card. Meanwhile, our LGA2011 system
sports an Intel Core i7-3960X overclocked
to 4.2GHz with a 1.275V vcore, an MSI
X79A-GD45 motherboard, 16GB (4 x 4GB)
of G.Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz RAM and a
Samsung 830 SSD. We’ve also rehoused
our test PCs in a Corsair Carbide 400C case
and installed Windows 10 on them.
We use CoreTemp to measure the CPU
temperature, before subtracting the
ambient air temperature to give us a delta T.
This method enables us to test the cooling
abilities of these coolers in a lab that isn’t
temperature controlled. We use Prime95’s
smallfft test to load the CPU, and take the
temperature reading after ten minutes.
In addition, we’ve taken sound readings
from a 70cm distance at maximum volume
to help us gauge each cooler’s efficiency in
delivering cooling while minimising noise,
although the results are only comparable
within the confines of this group test.
To obtain a final score, we apply a
weighted calculation to the cooling, design
features and value score. There’s a
separate score for each CPU socket to
take different cooling and mounting
mechanisms into account, as well as value.
The feature score includes aspects such as
software control, lighting, expansion
potential and PWM fans, the design score
considers installation, noise and the
aesthetics, while the value score takes all
the results into account, as well as the price.
Contents
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 / p41
Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120 / p42
Cooler Master MasterLiquid 120 / p43
Deepcool Captain 120 EX / p44
NZXT Kraken X31 / p45
Results graphs / p46
Can’t fit a 240mm cooler in your case but want more than a heatsink on your
CPU? Antony Leather looks at the latest 120mm all-in-one liquid coolers
Liquid gold
LABS TEST
41
VERDICT
A fantastic cooler that offers great value for
money, low noise levels and superb cooling.
D espite working with a sub-£60
price tag, ARCTIC has managed to
include not just two 120mm PWM-
controlled fans with the Liquid Freezer 120,
but also a 49mm-thick radiator. This radiator
is much thicker than the half-height efforts
from Deepcool, Cooler Master and NZXT,
and should mean that, all other factors
being equal, the ARCTIC can offer the
same cooling as its competitors but at
lower noise levels. The downside is
that the total depth sits at 155mm, so
you’ll need plenty of clearance in the
rear or roof of your case to fit it.
There are a couple of useful features
too. The NZXT Kraken X31 (see p45) is the
only cooler on test this month to have
software control, but the Liquid Freezer 120
does at least include a three-way splitter
cable, meaning you can power the pump and
both its fans from a single fan header for a
neater cabling arrangement. Both fans have
4-pin connectors, so they can be controlled
using most motherboard 4-pin PWM headers
to tune down the noise at low load levels.
The Liquid Freezer 120 looks a little basic
compared with the Deepcool Captain 120 EX
(see p44) with its funky tubing, and the build
quality is slightly lacking compared with the
exquisite Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120 (see p42).
However, the ARCTIC is still solid enough, and
its standard Asetek mount is much easier to
fit than Be Quiet! Or Deepcool’s equipment.
Out of the box, the Liquid Freezer 120 isn’t
AM4-compatible, but ARCTIC offers a free
adaptor plate on providing a proof of
purchase. Installation was simple on all
sockets, especially on LGA2011 where you
don’t need to contend with a backplate. The
pump section is compact, the tubing is flexible
enough to allow it to fit into tight spaces, and
you just need to deal with four socket pins and
thumbscrews to fix the cooler in place.
At full speed, the fans and pump were the
quietest on test, with a reading of 36dBA at
70cm from the case – a considerably lower
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 /£57 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.aquatuning.co.uk
reading than the next quietest coolers, which
were the Deepcool Captain 120 EX and NZXT
Kraken X31 at 39dBA. The pump can’t be
controlled in software like ARCTIC’s more
recent 140mm siblings, but despite having a
3-pin power plug, most boards (including the
Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 we used for AM4
testing) can alter its speed between 1,300rpm
and 5,500rpm, so it can be tuned to
extremely low noise levels if required.
Thankfully, the low noise didn’t impact on
cooling, as the Liquid Freezer 120 managed
the best result in our LGA1150 system, with a
delta T of 63°C, and it came joint second in our
LGA2011 system, with only the Be Quiet! Silent
Loop 120 managing to knock another two
degrees off its delta T of 42°C. Finally, it
managed the best result in our AM4 system,
albeit by just one degree.
Conclusion
We didn’t expect much from the Liquid
Freezer 120 at this price, but it offers fantastic
value for money, along with excellent
OVERALL
SCORE
92%
OVERALL
SCORE
88%
OVERALL
SCORE
92%
VALUE
19/20
VALUE
18/20
VALUE
19/20
COOLING
39/40
COOLING
36/40
COOLING
39/40
FEATURES
15/20
FEATURES
15/20
FEATURES
15/20
FITTING
EASY
FITTING
EASY
FITTING
EASY
DESIGN
19/20
DESIGN
19/20
DESIGN
19/20
LGA115x SCORES LGA2011 SCORES AM4 SCORES
/SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3,
LGA115x, LGA1366; AMD: Socket AM4, AM3/+,
AM2/+, FM2/+, FM1
Radiator size with fans (mm) 120 x 155 x 99
(W x D x H)
Fans 2 x 120mm
Stated noise Up to 0.3 sones
performance across all three of our test
systems compared with other 120mm all-in-
one liquid coolers. Best of all, it’s quiet at full
speed and very discreet indeed at low loads.
The NZXT Kraken X31 is slightly cheaper,
but it’s also a little louder at idle and load, and it
was two degrees warmer in our AM4 system
too. As a result, the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120
is an excellent buy, whichever motherboard
you own.
ELITE
NEW ENTRY
P64
42
LABS TEST / CPU COOLERS
W e looked at Be Quiet’s Silent Loop
280 in our 280mm cooler Labs (see
Issue 160, p50), and concluded that
it was a superb liquid cooler, but a tad on the
pricey side. Sadly, the latter also seems to be
true for the 120mm model – at £90 inc VAT,
it’s the most expensive cooler on test by far,
costing nearly twice the price of the NZXT
Kraken X31, which features software control.
That said, Be Quiet! hasn’t simply set a lofty
price tag because it’s greedy. The Silent Loop
120 is an exquisite liquid cooler that has
superb build quality and looks very smart
indeed. It sports gloss black metal fittings and
anti-kink springs over the black tubing, plus a
black brushed aluminium fascia for the pump
section. There’s no lighting involved; it’s just a
great-looking cooler.
Two Pure Wings 2 fans are also included,
which retail for around £8 each if bought
separately. They use Rifle bearings and offer
speeds up to 1,500rpm, but can be PWM-
controlled via their 4-pin connectors. Be
Quiet! includes a splitter cable for them too, so
you can power both of the fans from a single
CPU fan header. The pump section is powered
by a 3-pin connector, though, so your
Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120 /£90 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
motherboard will need to have the ability to
control 3-pin fans if you want to tune down
the pump at low loads.
The Silent Loop 120 is also compatible with
AM4 sockets out of the box using clip-on
mounting plates for all CPU sockets. However,
these plates proved to be very stiff and hard to
remove. Thankfully, unlike ourselves, you’ll
likely only have to deal with them once. The
mounting gear was a little fiddly – you have
to contend with numerous screws, washers
and springs, but it shouldn’t take more than 15
minutes or so to get it all mounted.
Our Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 AM4 board
was able to tune down the pump and fans to
near-silent noise levels at low loads, so this is
a great cooler if you want your PC to be seen
and not heard while writing essays or
browsing the Internet. However, the fans hit
44dBA at full speed – the highest result on
test. On the plus side, the top speed provided
excellent cooling. The Silent Loop 120 was the
best-performing cooler in our LGA2011 rig,
beating the NZXT Kraken by 1°C with a delta T
of 40°C. It also came second in the AM4
results, behind the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120
and a close third in the LGA1150 system.
Conclusion
Once again, the main issue for Be Quiet! isn’t
the quality of its product, but the price. With no
software control or stand-out features, the
Silent Loop 120’s £90 price tag is just too high
compared with the rest of the field in most of
our test systems.
However, depending on your priorities, it’s
still worth considering if you’re building an
Intel LGA2011 system in a cramped case, as it
offers fantastic cooling, plus premium looks
and quality, as well as exceptionally quiet
noise levels at low to medium loads.
VERDICT
Great looks, superb build quality and good
cooling, but it’s pricey and noisy at full speed.
OVERALL
SCORE
80%
OVERALL
SCORE
82%
OVERALL
SCORE
80%
VALUE
13/20
VALUE
14/20
VALUE
13/20
COOLING
38/40
COOLING
39/40
COOLING
38/40
FEATURES
15/20
FEATURES
15/20
FEATURES
15/20
FITTING
MEDIUM
FITTING
MEDIUM
FITTING
MEDIUM
DESIGN
14/20
DESIGN
14/20
DESIGN
14/20
LGA115x SCORES LGA2011 SCORES AM4 SCORES
/SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3,
LGA115x, LGA1366; AMD: Socket AM4, AM3/+,
AM2/+, FM2/+, FM1
Radiator size with fans (mm) 128 x 153 x 95
(W x D x H)
Fans 2 x 120mm
Stated noise Up to 36.9dBA
43
W e first looked at Cooler
Master’s MasterLiquid
120 last month, but
now it’s time to pitch it against
the latest competition, and also
see how well it deals with
cooling an overclocked AMD
Ryzen 7 1700. Out of the box, the
cooler is compatible with AM4
too, thanks to the fact that it
uses the existing plastic clips
on AM4 motherboards. These
clips are compatible with older
coolers, as they’re identically
placed to the ones on previous
AMD motherboards.
As a result, the MasterLiquid
120 is by far the easiest cooler
on test to install on an AM4
motherboard, so if you want to get
up and running quickly with your shiny new
Ryzen system, the Cooler Master is the cooler
to buy. Installing the MasterLiquid 120 on Intel
sockets is relatively painless too, although
you need to fiddle around with screws and
clips to construct a backplate on LGA115x
motherboards, whereas Asetek-based units
require less work.
Two fans are included with the
MasterLiquid 120, although it only has a half-
height radiator, which is likely to limit its
cooling prowess compared with some of the
other coolers on test with thicker radiators.
The fans included in the box are MasterFan
120AB models, which can spin up to
2,000rpm, but they have 4-pin plugs, so they
can drop down to 650rpm when they’re
controlled by your motherboard. The pump
sports a 4-pin connector too and, as we
found out in our review last month, it runs at
supremely quiet noise levels at low loads.
It’s also a fairly smart-looking unit, sporting
good build quality and an illuminated Cooler
Master logo on the pump section. There’s a
square shroud encasing the radiator, with
thick, braided tubes that proved to be very
Cooler Master MasterLiquid 120 /£65 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.dinopc.com
flexible. The tubes connect to rotating fittings
where they meet the pump section, so you
can adjust the fittings to make your life easier
wherever you choose to mount the cooler.
The MasterLiquid 120 fared reasonably well
compared with the competition, with a decent
result on our LGA2011 system, where it was
just a couple of degrees off the top spot. A
similar story played out on our AM4 rig, where
it was 2°C warmer than the best result on test,
despite using a far less elaborate mount than
the other coolers. Its LGA115x result wasn’t
stellar though - it was 7°C warmer than the
top-performing NZXT Kraken X31, which also
costs close to £20 less money.
At full speed, the Master Liquid 120 was
noticeably quieter than the Be Quiet Silent
Loop 120, but it still tipped the scales at 41dBA,
which is louder than the remaining three other
coolers. That’s a shame when you consider its
quiet noise levels at low speed.
Conclusion
A reasonable cooling result, extremely simple
installation and a fairly low price compared
with the likes of the Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120,
mean the Cooler Master MasterLiquid 120 is a
solid CPU cooler on all sockets, but especially
on AMD’s AM4 socket, where it can be
installed in less than five minutes.
However, when you add the competition
into the equation, it isn’t the best option when
it comes to Intel sockets, with some cheaper
options now offering lower noise levels and
better cooling.
VERDICT
A solid cooler that makes life easy for
owners of AM4 motherboards, but the
competition is a little better on Intel sockets.
OVERALL
SCORE
80%
OVERALL
SCORE
82%
OVERALL
SCORE
88%
VALUE
15/20
VALUE
15/20
VALUE
17/20
COOLING
34/40
COOLING
35/40
COOLING
37/40
FEATURES
17/20
FEATURES
17/20
FEATURES
17/20
FITTING
MEDIUM
FITTING
MEDIUM
FITTING
EASY
DESIGN
14/20
DESIGN
15/20
DESIGN
17/20
LGA115x SCORES LGA2011 SCORES AM4 SCORES
/SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3,
LGA115x, LGA1366; AMD: Socket AM4, AM3/+,
AM2/+, FM2/+, FM1
Radiator size with fans (mm) 120 x 157 x 77
(W x D x H)
Fans 2 x 120mm
Stated noise Up to 30dBA
44
LABS TEST / CPU COOLERS
I f we have one complaint about
many all-in-one liquid coolers, it’s
that they look similarly bland.
However, Deepcool has made a valiant effort
to jazz up its Captain 120 EX, which features a
little piece of bent rigid acrylic tubing that runs
around the outside of the pump. Combine this
feature with some illumination, courtesy of a
glowing red backlight in the centre of the
pump section, and the Captain 120 EX is easily
the snazziest-looking cooler on test.
Deepcool only includes one fan with the
radiator, though, and screws aren’t included to
support another fan, so while it’s extremely
compact, it’s no doubt limited in cooling
capacity compared with some of the other
coolers on test. The radiator does have a
much tighter array of fins compared with the
likes of the Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120, though,
which may help to compensate a little. Its
single 120mm hydro bearing fan also sports
anti-vibration mounts, and can spin up to
1,800rpm, or down to just 500rpm using
PWM, so it should cover a lot of bases.
The pump can operate as low as 6V too,
so if your motherboard can tweak 3-pin fan
voltages, you can potentially reduce noise
further. However, the Deepcool’s pump is also
one of the quietest pumps we’ve heard on an
all-in-one liquid cooler, and it was inaudible
once you got over 12in away from it, even at
full speed. As such, the ability to reduce the
pump speed is probably a moot point anyway,
and the Captain 120 EX is definitely worth
considering if you want your PC to be as
quiet as possible.
Installation was decidedly fiddly, though,
and sees you contending with a backplate,
pins, thumbscrews and mounting plates.
Thankfully, the pump section comes pre-
equipped with sprung screws, so installing the
pump is very easy once you’ve secured the
other parts to the motherboard.
With the fan at low speed, the Deepcool
was one of the quietest coolers on test,
making it a great option for keeping noise to
Deepcool Captain 120 EX /£70 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.amazon.co.uk
a minimum at low to medium loads. The fan
noise wasn’t unpleasant at full speed either,
although the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 was
quieter at 36dBA compared to 39dBA for the
Captain 120 EX. As we expected, though, the
cooling results weren’t spectacular and we
suspect the low noise from the pump also
means it’s not particularly powerful. That said,
it was only 5°C off the pace on our LGA1150 rig
compared with the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer
120, and just 3°C warmer on AM4, again with
the Liquid Freezer 120 taking the top spot.
Conclusion
There are cheaper options than the Deepcool,
such as NZXT’s Kraken X31 and ARCTIC’s
Liquid Freezer 120, which offer similar or
better cooling for less money, and the latter
is quieter too. That said, the Captain 120 EX is
still a decent cooler, benefitting from a quiet
pump and pleasantly quiet fans at low loads.
Then of course you have the lighting and
red acrylic tube, which look fantastic
compared with your average bland all-in-one
coolers. If you have a bit of slack on your
budget, Deepcool’s offering is worth
considering if you like its looks and prioritise
low noise, especially on AMD’s AM4 socket
where its highest cooling score was achieved.
For everyone else, though, you can get a
better deal elsewhere.
VERDICT
A great-looking, quiet cooler with lighting
and solid cooling, but more effective and
quieter coolers are available for less money.
OVERALL
SCORE
82%
OVERALL
SCORE
82%
OVERALL
SCORE
86%
VALUE
15/20
VALUE
15/20
VALUE
15/20
COOLING
32/40
COOLING
32/40
COOLING
36/40
FEATURES
19/20
FEATURES
19/20
FEATURES
19/20
FITTING
MEDIUM
FITTING
MEDIUM
FITTING
MEDIUM
DESIGN
16/20
DESIGN
16/20
DESIGN
16/20
LGA115x SCORES LGA2011 SCORES AM4 SCORES
/SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3,
LGA115x, LGA1366; AMD: Socket AM4, AM3/+,
AM2/+, FM2/+, FM1
Radiator size with fans (mm) 120 x 154 x 57
(W x D x H)
Fans 1 x 120mm
Stated noise Up to 31.3dBA
45
W e were amazed to find that NZXT’s
Kraken X31 costs just £48 inc VAT,
undercutting every other cooler on
test by a sizeable margin. The price is even
more impressive when you consider that it’s
also the only cooler on test to offer software
control via its USB 2 header connector and
free CAM software, which enables you to
tweak the profile curve of up to two fans.
These fans can be hooked up to the pump,
which dishes out the power, although only
one 120mm fan is included in the box.
Thankfully, there are screws for a second
fan also included in the box, plus a vacant
connector for it. The included fan spins at up
to 2,000rpm and can drop down to 800rpm
using the software, although sadly, unlike
NZXT’s more expensive Kraken coolers, you
can’t also control the speed of the pump. In all
honesty, though, a lot of motherboard
software is capable of adjusting the voltage
applied to 3-pin power headers these days,
and as the pump makes a distinctive noisy
buzz, it would be better to go down this route
than using the CAM software anyway.
Meanwhile, the radiator’s pins are packed
even tighter than those on the Deepcool
Captain 120 EX (see p44). As such, while it’s
just a half-height mode with one fan, the
Kraken X31 should still be able to perform well
at high fan speeds. The Kraken X31 isn’t
compatible with AM4 out of the box, but as
with the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 (see p41),
you just need to enter some details online and
the company will send you a free adaptor.
This adaptor comes in the form of a dual-
purpose AM4 and AM3 mounting plate, which
has wider holes for the larger AM4 mounting
points. The rest of the installation uses
identical hardware to other Asetek-based
coolers from the likes of Corsair, with a plastic
backplate, mounting pins and thumbscrews.
Amazingly, despite only having one fan, the
Kraken X31 managed to achieve the second
best results on test on our LGA1150 and
LGA2011 rigs, beating much more expensive
NZXT Kraken X31 /£48 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
coolers. The quieter ARCTIC Liquid Freezer
120 was a little cooler on the LGA1150
machine, while the Be Quiet! Silent Loop 120
was more potent on LGA2011, and the Kraken
X31 was just 2°C off the pace in our AMD
system. Noise-wise, it was one of the quieter
coolers under load, but the sound meter didn’t
tell the whole picture, as the pump’s noise
was noticeable at low and high fan speeds. It’s
only likely to be an issue if the rest of your
system is very quiet, though, and the pump
noise is drowned out by the fans when they’re
running at full speed anyway.
Conclusion
The NZXT Kraken X31 offers fantastic bang for
your buck, costing less than £50 and offering
great cooling at reasonable noise levels under
load. However, it’s very basic, and while it has
software control, this software can’t deal with
the relatively noisy pump. It’s a great buy for
those on a budget, but the ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120 has the edge on noise and
cooling. If you’re on a tight budget, though, the
X31 delivers the goods for a very reasonable
price, particularly on LGA115x systems.
VERDICT
A bargain 120mm liquid cooler, although its
pump can be noisy at times.
OVERALL
SCORE
88%
OVERALL
SCORE
86%
OVERALL
SCORE
87%
VALUE
19/20
VALUE
19/20
VALUE
19/20
COOLING
38/40
COOLING
36/40
COOLING
37/40
FEATURES
17/20
FEATURES
17/20
FEATURES
17/20
FITTING
EASY
FITTING
EASY
FITTING
EASY
DESIGN
14/20
DESIGN
14/20
DESIGN
14/20
LGA115x SCORES LGA2011 SCORES AM4 SCORES
/SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3,
LGA115x, LGA1366; AMD: Socket AM4, AM3/+,
AM2/+, FM2/+, FM1
Radiator size with fans (mm) 120 x 155 x 55
(W x D x H)
Fans 1 x 120mm
Stated noise Up to 34dBA
46
0 20 40 60 80
Deepcool
Captain 120 EX
Cooler Master
MasterLiquid 120
Be Quiet! Silent
Loop 120
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
NZXT Kraken X31
INTEL LGA1150 TEMPERATUR E
Delta T (°C)
61
63
64
68
68
0 12 24 36 48
Deepcool
Captain 120 EX
Cooler Master
MasterLiquid 120
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
NZXT Kraken X31
Be Quiet! Silent
Loop 120
INTEL LGA2011 TEMPERATURE
Delta T (°C)
40
41
42
44
45
0 10 20 30 40
Deepcool
Captain 120 EX
Cooler Master
MasterLiquid 120
NZXT Kraken X31
Be Quiet! Silent
Loop 120
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
AMD AM4 TEMPERATURE
Delta T (°C)
35
36
36
37
38
0 12 24 36 48
Be Quiet! Silent
Loop 120
Cooler Master
MasterLiquid 120
NZXT Kraken X31
Deepcool
Captain 120 EX
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
NOISE LEVEL
Full speed (dBA)
36
39
39
41
44
Lower is better Lower is better
Lower is better Lower is better
LABS TEST / CPU COOLERS
Liquid Freezer Series
Prizewinning
WaterCooling
Soluon
Liquid Freezer 120 Liquid Freezer 240 Liquid Freezer 360
Mul-Compa ble All-in-One CPU WaterCoolers
•Compa ble with AMD Ryzen and Kaby Lake
•Push-Pull-Configuraon
•Minimum noise level
•Most efficient pump
•Various models forall needs
48
How we test
T he ever-decreasing price of SSDs
has resulted in hard drives playing
a less significant role in PCs. Just a
few years ago, it was still standard practice
to buy a 128GB SSD boot drive and a larger
hard drive for bulk data, but a 500GB SSD
now costs under £150, so you can store
more of your data on the faster drive.
Still, while some people have the budget
(and limited data needs) to fully do away
with hard drives, most of us still can’t afford
to replace them all just yet, as media libraries
grow larger and the likes of 4K video
become commonplace. The question, then,
is which hard drive should you buy? Is there
still a place for performance hard drives, or
should you just go for the cheapest model?
Over the next few pages, we test the five
major PC hard drive models that you can
now buy. With just two major manufacturers
still making drives – Hitachi and Toshiba are
bit players these days – we have Western
Digital’s two main drive brands and three
drives from Seagate. They consist of the
budget and performance lines from both
companies plus Seagate’s hybrid SSHD that
combines an SSD and a HDD in one.
Both companies also offer other variants,
such as NAS drives to cope with being
powered on all the time, or models with
RAID-specific compatibility enhancements
and longer warranties. These drives may be
worth buying for those purposes, but they’re
not necessary for typical PC use.
We look at three key factors: speed, cost
per gigabyte and bang for buck. To test
speed, we run AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark
to give us an indication of raw performance,
while PCMark 8’s storage benchmark uses
the data traces of several real apps to see
how they would perform on these drives.
The key goal is to get a sense of whether
the faster hard drives will make much of a
difference in everyday use, or if the extra
performance is insubstantial.
Cost per gigabyte is self-explanatory,
while the bang for buck score is a ratio of the
cost per gigabyte and performance.
We also consider a couple of other factors
in the reviews, such as the warranty and
rated usage.
Contents
Seagate BarraCuda 4TB / p49
Seagate BarraCuda Pro 6TB / p50
Seagate FireCuda 2TB / p51
Western Digital Black 4TB / p52
Western Digital Blue 4TB / p54
Results graphs / p56
Hard drives still rule the roost if you want to store loads of data, but which model
should you buy? Edward Chester tests five of the latest models to find out
Hard and fast
LABS TEST
49
Seagate’s entry-level hard drive
range is looking particularly long in
the tooth now, at least as far as
capacity is concerned. While the Western
Digital Blue range (see p54) is available in 5TB
and 6TB capacities, the BarraCuda tops out at
just 4TB.
What’s more, this 4TB version has a
particularly odd configuration. While the 3TB
BarraCuda comprises three 500GB platters
and a modest 64MB of cache for a claimed
sustained sequential read/write speed of
210MB/sec, the 4TB model uses just two 1TB
platters, which it combines with 256MB of
cache to end up with a read/write speed of
190MB/sec.
This drive doesn’t represent the first time
we’ve encountered a situation where a
higher capacity drive is slower than its lower-
capacity equivalents, but it does seem odd
that Seagate hasn’t subsequently released a
6TB version that uses three 1TB platters for
faster overall performance.
The other odd factor about all of Seagate’s
current BarraCuda drives is their spindle
speed of 5,900rpm. The benefits of this
spindle speed are unclear, as it’s such a small
boost over 5,400rpm that you’d only expect
minimal gain, and it’s still a long way off the
7,200rpm speed of pricier drives. However,
Seagate does claim that all the other
BarraCuda drives in the range will read and
write at 210MB/sec, which is quick when you
consider that some of the Western Digital
Blue drives can go as low as a claimed speed
of 126MB/sec.
Otherwise, the BarraCudas are typical hard
drives. Like all the other drives on test, they
look utterly unremarkable, as there simply
isn’t the market for attractive-looking internal
hard drives any more – they’re simple,
perfunctory commodities. The BarraCudas
also have a competition-matching warranty
of two years, with a data throughput rating of
55TB/year, and they’re designed to be
powered on for 2,400 hours per year.
The BarraCuda is comparatively power-
efficient, though, coming out on top when
compared with the Western Digital Blue, with
standby usage of 0.25W, idle usage of 2.5W
and operating usage of 5W, all of which are
slightly lower than the Blue.
However, in our tests, all the claimed
advantages of the BarraCuda listed above –
the spindle speed, cache and the claimed
sequential speeds – didn’t amount to a
Seagate BarraCuda 4TB /£120 inc VAT
MODEL NUMBER ST4000DM005 / SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
performance lead. Aside from sequential
read/write and access time in AS SSD, the WD
Blue came out on top. The real telltale test
was PCMark8. Almost across the board the
WD Blue is nippier, with a bandwidth figure of
12.87MB/sec compared to 10.87MB/sec for
the BarraCuda.
The BarraCuda’s noise level of 37dB is also
higher than that of the Western Digital Blue.
A difference of 0.6dB isn’t huge, but it was
noticeable to our ears. Making up for these
deficiencies is the fact that the Seagate drives
are slightly cheaper, so if you really do just
need capacity over every other factor, a
BarraCuda will serve you well enough.
Conclusion
The Seagate BarraCuda range does the job,
but this 4TB model in particular offers slower
performance and louder operation than the
4TB Western Digital Blue. Its cheaper price
means it’s a better choice for anybody who is
purely after capacity for the cheapest price
possible, but if you want a slightly quieter,
faster, large-capacity hard drive, the Western
Digital Blue is the better choice at this end of
the market.
VERDICT
Adequate performance and a rock-bottom
price make the Barracuda a tempting value
option, but the Western Digital Blue is slightly
quicker and quieter.
OVERALL SCORE
76%
SPEED
18/30
BANG/BUCK
29/40
COST/GB
29/30
The 4TB model uses
1TB platters, which it
combines with
256MB of cache
50
LABS TEST / HARD DRIVES
Seagate and Western Digital both
offer two main choices of normal PC
hard drive: one range is optimised
for lower power and one range is optimised
for speed.
The BarraCuda Pro is Seagate’s
high-speed option, which is designed to
provide responsive performance for high-
demand situations without worrying too
much about power consumption and noise.
Available in sizes ranging from 500GB
to 10TB, the BarraCuda Pro is the most
capacious PC drive you can buy, and it
matches this capacity with impressive
performance figures. Seagate claims this 6TB
drive can offer sequential read and writes
speeds of 220MB/sec. While an extra
20-30MB/sec over slower hard drives may
not sound like much, the Pro range also offers
faster access times than slower models, and
combining these two factors make for a
responsive drive.
Crucial to this speed is the use of a
7,200rpm spindle speed which, unlike a few
years ago, is no longer the standard rotational
speed of your common or garden hard drive.
The fastest 10,000rpm spin speeds are now
used for the fastest, enterprise-orientated
drives, while 5,400rpm is typical for
mainstream drives.
The BarraCuda Pro is quite chunky, with
almost totally uniform cuboid casing.
Otherwise, it looks just like any other drive.
Again, internal hard drives rarely have any
adornment to mark them out – they’re
functional commodity goods, and they’re
designed as such.
One factor that does mark out this drive,
though, is that the higher spindle speed and
more aggressive head movement means it’s
noticeably louder than slower drives (we
measured the noise at 39.4dB from 30cm
away). If you want your main PC drive to be
as quiet as possible, then a slower, 5,400rpm
bulk drive will suit you better.
On the flip side, the extra performance
this drive provides is substantial. On
average, it wipes the floor with every other
drive on test. It trails the Western Digital
Black in a couple of tests, but it’s the overall
performance leader.
There are a few key numbers. The first is
the sheer sequential read/write speed.
This drive hits near to 240MB/sec in both
AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark, while the
Western Digital Black can only hover around
Seagate BarraCuda Pro 6TB /£253 inc VAT
MODEL NUMBER ST6000DM004 / SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
200MB/sec, and every other drive trails even
further behind.
The second key figure is the access time,
which is the metric that’s so crucial to the
speedy feel of SSDs, as their access times
are several orders of magnitude faster than
hard drives.
The BarraCuda Pro can’t quite claim to
match an SSD, but it’s this figure that appears
to makes the 7,200rpm drives so useful.
The Western Digital Black is actually even
quicker than the BarraCuda Pro in these
tests, but both drives are far faster than the
5,400rpm models.
The third figure is the overall PCMark 8
storage benchmark bandwidth score. This
test gives a great indication of how all the
individual characteristics of this drive’s
performance come together to make it just
feel fast. Along with all this speed, the
BarraCuda Pro also comes with a longer
warranty than entry level drives, with a full
five years. What’s more, you also get two
years of free data recovery.
Conclusion
If you’re still relying on hard drives for storage
of data that requires relatively quick access,
such as video files that you’re editing, or
massive game installs that won’t fit on your
SSD, the BarraCuda Pro is the drive to get. It’s
pricey and comparatively noisy, but it’s built for
serious speed.
VERDICT
The fastest drive on test, the Barracuda Pro
proves there’s still a place or performance
hard drives, although it isn’t cheap.
OVERALL SCORE
82%
SPEED
27/30
BANG/BUCK
32/40
COST/GB
23/30
51
Seagate’s FireCuda range is the last
hurrah of hybrid desktop hard drives
that combine a traditional hard drive
with a small SSD. While they’re still a viable
option for laptops where there’s sometimes
only room for one drive, they’ve failed to take
off in the desktop PC space, as the lack of
space restrictions and tumbling prices of
SSDS means it simply makes more sense to
buy a separate SSD and hard drive.
The FireCuda is facing tough odds in this
market, as it tops out at just 2TB. However, the
drive only costs £90 inc VAT, so even the
cheapest SSD and hard drive combination
would struggle to compete on the price front.
Then again, that’s because you can’t buy SSDs
this small. The FireCuda uses just an 8GB
portion of NAND flash memory for its SSD
buffer, which is rather pitiful, whichever way
you look at it.
The drive works by keeping tabs on which
files are accessed most often and storing
them on the SSD portion, potentially resulting
in faster boot and app-loading times.
However, even if you allow for the fact that not
all of the circa-20GB of space that Windows
10 occupies would be accessed regularly, it’s
still a given that 8GB wouldn’t allow for all
many of your favourite apps and games to be
speeded up by the SSD.
What’s more, the NAND is only of the
multi-level cell (MLC) variety, so it isn’t even
particularly speedy or long-lasting, although
Seagate does provide a five-year warranty
with these drives, so the NAND should last at
least that long with typical use.
The hard drive, meanwhile, is a two-platter
configuration spinning at the bog-standard
speed of 5,400rpm, with Seagate claiming
sequential read/write speeds of 210MB/sec
and similar power consumption figures to the
BarraCuda, while the noise level hits 36.5dB.
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in
the eating, and for all our dismissive tone
above, the FireCuda does a reasonable job,
sometimes. For some reason, this drive
doesn’t get on with AS SSD, with it returning
an appalling sequential read figure of just
60.9 MB/sec and having the slowest access
time on test. However, in CrystalDiskMark, it
was largely on a par with the other cheaper
drives for sequential workloads, and sat at the
top of the table for random writes.
In PCMark 8, it beat all and sundry in nearly
all the tests and had a huge lead in overall
bandwidth. This result reflects the fact that
Seagate FireCuda 2TB /£90 inc VAT
MODEL NUMBER ST2000DX002 / SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
PCMark is the closest to a real-world test, as
it focuses on app loading times and repeats
each test three times, giving the drive a
chance to learn what data is being accessed
frequently and optimise it appropriately.
As such, if you’re planning to build a
tiny system in which performance isn’t
the biggest concern, but want a decent
amount of storage space, the FireCuda is
worth considering.
Alternatively, if you just like the idea of
getting a little bit of a speed boost but don’t
want the hassle of two drives, and you don’t
want to pay the extra money for faster hard
drives, then the FireCuda has its place too,
especially given its lengthy warranty.
Conclusion
The Seagate FireCuda occupies a small
niche that won’t interest to many desktop
PC users, but it has potential if you’re in that
niche. There’s a handful of scenarios where
its hybrid approach will prove useful, and its
low price and long warranty sweeten the deal.
It’s just a shame that Seagate doesn’t offer
these drives in larger capacities with larger,
faster NAND. A 4TB version with 32GB of
NAND could be a killer product.
VERDICT
Most desktop users will be better served by
a separate SSD and hard drive, but there’s a
handful of scenarios where this hybrid drive
proves handy.
OVERALL SCORE
73%
SPEED
23/30
BANG/BUCK
29/40
COST/GB
21/30
The FireCuda uses an
8GB portion of NAND
flash memory for its
SSD buffer
ELITE
NEW ENTRY
P64
52
LABS TEST / HARD DRIVES
W ith the demise of Western Digital’s
Velociraptor range of 10,000rpm
drives, the WD Black has been the
go-to choice for performance hard drives for
years now.
While Seagate and other manufacturers
have made fast drives, the Black range’s
consistently good performance and
recognised brand has enabled Western Digital
to hold onto its crown. However, with these
latest drives, that crown has slipped a little.
Let’s cut right to the chase. The Black 4TB
model we’ve tested here is consistently and
comfortably outperformed by the Seagate
BarraCuda Pro 6TB drive – unfortunately,
Seagate was only able to supply a 6TB drive
for testing, and we’d have preferred to review
a 4TB model for the sake of comparison. Now,
it’s a given that some of that performance
advantage is simply down to the higher
capacity, especially as at 6TB and above the
BarraCuda Pro moves to 256MB of cache, but
the performance gap and its consistency
suggests that the Seagate BarraCuda Pro
would still maintain a lead even if the
capacities were the same.
What’s perhaps most striking is that this
Western Digital Black doesn’t pull that far
ahead of its Blue brother in some of the tests.
In particular, in PCMark8’s real-world tests,
there’s never more than a ten-second
difference between the two drives, while the
Seagate BarraCuda Pro can be in excess of
30 seconds faster at completing the tests.
On the plus side, the Black does run at
consistently fast sequential read/write
speeds, and it offers the fastest access time
of all the drives on test. We’re not talking
about a small margin here either. It’s 25 per
cent faster than the BarraCuda Pro and over
4x and 3x faster than the Blue and BarraCuda
drives respectively. As well as making this
drive consistently snappier than cheaper
models, the faster access time does
sometimes result in performance victories
against the BarraCuda Pro too, such as the big
lead in 4KB random reads in CrystalDiskMark.
Overall, however, the Black’s performance
isn’t consistent enough to make it the better
option over the BarraCuda Pro.
One small victory for the Black, though, is
that it’s a touch quieter than the BarraCuda
Pro. We measured it at 38dB when spun up
but not accessing data, compared to nearly
40dB for the Seagate BarraCuda Pro.
Otherwise, this drive ticks all the right boxes.
Western Digital Black 4TB /£203 inc VAT
MODEL NUMBER WD4004FZWX / SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
It’s still relatively fast, has a five-year warranty
and it’s rated for continuous and heavy use,
although Western Digital doesn’t provide
exact usage figures.
Nonetheless, the Black is ideal for anyone
seeking a speedy drive for storing bulk data
that will be accessed and changed frequently.
You also get a free copy of Acronis True
Image WD Edition for easily cloning and
backing up your drives. However, you do
miss out on the two years of free data
recovery of the BarraCuda Pro.
This particular 4TB drive consists of five
800GB platters accessed by ten read/write
heads and accompanied by 128MB of cache.
The range tops out at 6TB, though, while the
Seagate BarraCuda Pro range goes all the
way up to 10TB.
The 6TB Black drives uses four 1.2TB
platters, with Western Digital claiming it offers
slightly higher sequential read/write speeds
of 227MB/sec, compared to 202 MB/sec for
this 4TB model, but it’s otherwise identical,
with no extra cache or other features.
Conclusion
The Western Digital Black range is still good
for people looking to save money on bulk
storage, but don’t want to compromise too
much on performance. It can’t match the
Seagate BarraCuda Pro for overall speed but
it’s still slightly quieter and has the fastest
access times of any conventional hard drive.
VERDICT
Quiet for a high-performance drive, and with
fast access times, but the Seagate BarraCuda
Pro is now the overall performance king.
OVERALL SCORE
75%
SPEED
25/30
BANG/BUCK
30/40
COST/GB
20/30
54
LABS TEST / HARD DRIVES
Where Seagate has the BarraCuda
and BarraCuda Pro, Western Digital
has its Blue and Black drives, with
the Blue being its mainstream model. The
clearest indication of its status as a non-
performance drive is its spindle speed of
5,400rpm rather than 7,200rpm. In fact, in
terms of rotational speed, it slightly trials its
main rival here, as the Seagate BarraCuda
has a spindle speed of 5,900rpm.
It also trails some way behind the
BarraCuda when it comes to claimed
sequential read and write speeds. The Blue
range’s claimed speed tops out at 175MB/sec
and this 4TB version hits just 150MB/sec,
while Seagate claims the 4TB BarraCuda can
hit up to 210MB/sec. Elsewhere, this drive’s
modest status is highlighted by having just a
two-year warranty. Western Digital doesn’t
provide specific figures for its workload rate
and power-on-hours per year, but these
mainstream drives aren’t designed to be used
in systems that are powered on all the time
and hammered regularly.
If you’re going to place high data reading
and writing demands on your PC, you’ll want
to step up to the performance drives, or the
NAS and surveillance drives if performance is
less of a concern.
The main benefit of the Blue, though, is its
very tempting price tag, and it also offers
comparatively low power consumption and
quiet operation. In standby mode, this drive
consumes just 0.4W, while at idle, this figure
rises to just 3.4W, and only hits 5.3W in
operation. Admittedly, performance drives
only double these figures, making overall
power consumption still a drop in the ocean
compared with other components in your PC,
but you’ll notice the difference if you’re
running a stack of drives.
As for noise, this drive hit 36.4dB from
30cm away while idle. That 3dB difference
between the Blue and the BarraCuda Pro may
not look like much, but decibels aren’t a linear
scale, and your ears will notice it. The Blue is
barely audible over moderate fan noise, while
the BarraCuda Pro is clearly distinguishable.
The Blue range starts at a capacity of
500GB and tops out at 6TB. This 4TB model
consists of four platters with eight read/write
heads and is joined by a seemingly modest
64MB of cache. Those specs aren’t surprising,
but what is surprising is that the Blue
performs far better than its stats would
suggest. Although its AS SSD sequential read
Western Digital Blue 4TB /£131 inc VAT
MODEL NUMBER WD40EZRZ / SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
(135.7MB/sec) and write (129.8MB/sec)
speeds are by some distance the slowest on
test, and its access time is also slower than
the Seagate BarraCuda, it comfortably beats
the cheap Seagate drive when it comes to 4K
random read and write tests.
This performance is reflected in the
real-world app-loading tests in PCMark 8,
where the Blue is faster across the board,
being quicker at loading the likes of World
of Warcraft, Photoshop and Battlefield 3,
which results in a comfortable lead in
overall bandwidth.
As such, this drive would be our choice for
low-cost bulk storage where performance
isn’t a concern, especially as its available in up
to 6TB capacities.
Conclusion
The Western Digital Blue 4TB is ideal for
people seeking as much capacity as possible
without spending too much cash. Although it’s
slightly pricier than the Seagate BarraCuda, its
random-access performance makes it a little
nippier in general use, and it’s very quiet too.
VERDICT
Unspectacular in synthetic tests, but its quiet
operation, low price and slightly better real-
world performance than the competition
make the Blue a good value option.
OVERALL SCORE
78%
SPEED
20/30
BANG/BUCK
31/40
COST/GB
27/30
The Blue is barely
audible over moderate
fan noise
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56
LABS TEST / HARD DRIVES
CRYSTALDISKMARK
Sequential read 32-queue-depth (MB/sec)
0 65 130 195 260
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB 241.1
201.7
187.7
185.5
180.4
CRYSTALDISKMARK
Sequential write 32-queue-depth (MB/sec)
0 65 130 195 260
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB 236.1
208.0
203.4
182.2
179.1
CRYSTALDISKMARK
Random read 32-queue-depth, 4 threads (MB/sec)
0 1 2 3 4
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB 3.2
2.9
2.4
1.7
1.6
CRYSTALDISKMARK
Random write 32-queue-depth, 4 threads (MB/sec)
0 1.5 3 4.5 6
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB 4.9
3.2
2
2
1.4
AS SSD
Sequential read (MB/sec)
0 65 130 195 260
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB 226.8
187.6
167.9
135.7
65.5
AS SSD
Sequential write (MB/sec)
0 50 100 150 200
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB 187.5
185.7
162.3
146.9
129.9
AS SSD
Access time read (seconds)
0 5 10 15 20
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
17
16.1
15.7
14.6
11.9
AS SSD
Access time write (seconds)
0 6 12 18 24
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
20.7
13.5
8.8
3.4
2.8
PCMARK 8
Microsoft Word trace (seconds)
0 12 24 36 48
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB 35.5
37.5
40.2
40.9
44.1
PCMARK 8
World of Warcraft trace (seconds)
0 30 60 90 120
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB 87.5
95.4
102.5
109.3
109.9
PCMARK 8
Overall
0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB 3,365
3,270
2,861
2,816
2,610
PCMARK 8
Battlefield 3 trace (seconds)
0 75 150 225 300
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB 227.8
250.9
262.8
263.4
288.6
PCMARK 8
Photoshop Heavy trace (seconds)
0 115 230 345 460
Seagate BarraCuda
4TB
Western Digital
Blue 4TB
Western Digital
Black 4TB
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB
Seagate FireCuda 2TB 402.1
414
426.9
431.7
455.2
Lower is better
Lower is better
Lower is better
Lower is better Lower is better
Lower is better
LABS TEST / HARD DRIVES
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andeverythingin between
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58
Z oostorm’s StormForce the Lux
is one of the most wallet-
friendly gaming PCs we’ve
seen for some time, and it takes aim at
1080p and 2,560 x 1,440 gaming. Its GTX
1060 card comes from KFA2 and is one of
the company’s EX OC models, which ups
the GPU clock to 1657MHz and replaces
the default 6GB of GDDR5 memory with
8GB of GDDR5X memory, which has a
wider 256-bit bus and a faster 10GHz
(effective) clock speed.
The graphics card is paired with an Intel
Core i7-7700. Unusually, that’s the vanilla
version of this chip – not the K-branded
model. That means there’s no unlocked
multiplier, so it will only run at its stock
speed of 3.6GHz. That’s still a decent
frequency, and this chip still has four Hyper-
Threaded cores, but its performance will be a fair way behind
overclocked CPUs. It’s also likely to be slower than an
overclocked K-series Core i5 CPU, which would
be the preferable choice at this price – it doesn’t
have Hyper-Threading, but clock speed is often
the key factor for games.
Elsewhere, there’s the expected 16GB of
memory, although it runs at a middling speed of
2400MHz, and there’s a 256GB Western Digital
Black NVMe SSD. There’s a cavernous 3TB hard
disk too, and Wi-Fi – although it’s only a single-
band 802.11n card.
Meanwhile, the Asus Prime H270-Pro
motherboard uses the Intel H270 chipset, which
has a couple of restrictions when compared
with the Z270 chips found in most gaming PCs.
For a start, it doesn’t support CPU overclocking,
although this machine’s CPU can’t be
overclocked anyway. It also has 20 PCI-E lanes
rather than 24, and it supports fewer M.2 and
USB 3 connectors. The vast majority of users
won’t be worried by these limits, but it’s worth
remembering if you plan numerous expansions.
Elsewhere, the motherboard is a middling
affair. It has pairs of USB 3 and USB 3.1 ports, but
there’s little in the way of enthusiast features. Its
memory support tops out at 2400MHz, and it
doesn’t support SLI either, plus its second PCI-E
slot only offers four lanes anyway. It’s fine for
Zoostorm StormForce Lux /£1,300 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
/SPECIFICATIONS
CPU 3.6GHz Intel Core
i7-7700
Motherboard Asus Prime
H270-Pro
Memory 16GB Kingston
HyperX Fury 2400MHz
DDR4
Graphics KFA² GeForce GTX
1060 8GB
Storage 256GB Western
Digital Black M.2 SSD; 3TB
Western Digital Blue hard
drive
Case StormForce Lux
Cooling CPU: StormForce air
cooler with 1 x 120mm fan;
GPU: 2 x 100mm fans; front:
3 x 120mm fan; rear: 1 x
120mm; top: 1 x 120mm
PSU FSP500-60HHN
500W
Ports Front: 2 x USB 3, 2 x
USB 2, 2 x audio; rear: 3 x
USB 3.1, 2 x USB 3, 2 x USB 2,
1 x PS/2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet,
3 x audio
Operating system Microsoft
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Warranty Three years parts
and labour collect and return
GAMING PC
this machine, but there isn’t much room
for tweaking and upgrading beyond the
norm. The PSU won’t set the world
alight, either. It’s a 500W FSP model that
isn’t modular, although it does at least
have 80 Plus Bronze certification.
Meanwhile, the chassis is a
Zoostorm-designed ATX tower that
looks more outlandish than most third-
party cases on the market. Its three main
panels are made from tinted, tempered
glass, with another small slab of the
material on top, and the entire case is
ringed with bright metal held in place by
exposed screws. Buttons on the top
adjust the lights that are found in the five
case fans, and in an RGB strip alongside
the front of the enclosure.
The outside looks the part, but the interior is disappointing.
The PSU’s multi-coloured, unbraided cables are strewn
around the case with the minimum of cable tidying, and
there aren’t any rubber grommets around the cable-routing
holes. The two spare hard disk caddies also use flimsy
plastic, plus there’s a little too much give in the PSU shroud.
There’s nothing special about the cooling either: three
120mm intake fans and a single exhaust spinner sit on
either side of the chassis, while the Zoostorm-branded CPU
cooler has its own 120mm fan. Still, you don’t expect to get
everything in a £1,300 PC - if you want braided cables, a
smarter case and fancier cooling, you’ll need to spend more
money, but we’d expect a little more care to be taken with
the build either way. The warranty is better. The StormForce
is covered by a three year collect and return deal that covers
parts and labour for the duration, which is a good deal.
Performance
The beefed-up GTX 1060 made quick work of our 1080p
gaming benchmarks. Its 61fps minimum in The Witcher 3 is
a cracking result, as is its 57fps minimum in Fallout 4 and its
42fps minimum in Deus Ex. The Zoostorm also managed
to play all our test games at 2,560 x 1,440. Its weakest
minimum here was a 29fps result in Deus Ex, but a little
tweaking in the graphics settings will easily get that
minimum beyond 30fps. Not surprisingly, 4K gaming was
beyond this machine’s reach, but its performance in games
at lower resolutions is fine.
The stock-speed processor delivered reasonable pace
too, but it’s still unable to compete with overclocked parts.
PC system reviews
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
59
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
LUXMARK OPENCL
HEAVY MULTITASKING
015,000 30,000 45,000 60,000
52,965
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
070,000 140,000 210,000 280,000
275,751
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
018,000 36,000 54,000 72,000
70,503
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
040,000 80,000 120,000 160,000
157,211
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
SYSTEM SCORE
033,000 66,000 99,000 132,000
125,006
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
FALLOUT 4
1,920 x 1,080 Ultra Detail TAA
Minimum Average
CPC REALBENCH 2015
INTEL REFERENCE: 109.22%
020 40 60 80
67fps
57fps
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
020 40 60 80
42fps
34fps
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
020 40 60 80
78fps
61fps
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
020 40 60 80
53fps
47fps
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
020 40 60 80
51fps
42fps
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
020 40 60 80
35fps
29fps
Zoostorm StormForce
Lux
2,560 x 1,440 Ultra Detail TAA
THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT
1,920 x 1,080 High Detail HairWorks off
2,560 x 1,440 High Detail HairWorks off
DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED
1,920 x 1,080 Very High Detail DX11
2,560 x 1,440 Very High Detail DX11
The Zoostorm’s image editing score of 52,965 is almost
15,000 points behind the Yoyotech BlackBox SP (see Issue
161, p60 ), with its Core i5-7600K overclocked to 4.7GHz.
Even our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake video encoding
benchmark was quicker on the overclocked Core i5 machine,
despite not having Hyper-Threading support.
The StormForce isn’t slow, of course, but Zoostorm has
missed a trick by not including an overclockable CPU and
chipset. At least the modest components meant the
Zoostorm didn’t have any thermal or noise issues. The peak
CPU and GPU delta T results of 51°C and 53°C are very cool
indeed, and the fans delivered a low whirr that isn’t irritating.
Meanwhile, the Western Digital SSD delivered read and
write speeds of 1,459MB/sec and 1,043MB/sec. That’s
several times quicker than any SATA drive, although it can’t
match Samsung’s current NVMe SSDs.
Conclusion
The improved GTX 1060 delivers solid 1080p and 2,560 x
1,440 gaming from this £1,300 rig, and the machine
remained cool and quiet throughout our testing. If you’re
after a mid-priced PC that looks striking then it isn’t a bad
machine. However, there are several niggles. It’s not the
neatest build inside, and the choice of CPU and motherboard
VERDICT
Decent gaming performance and cool, quiet
operation, but it’s hit hard by the lack of a
K-series CPU and a Z270 motherboard.
OVERALL SCORE
74%
SPEED
18/25
HARDWARE
17/25
DESIGN
18/25
VALUE
21/25
limit performance and restrict your options. A K-series Core
i5 CPU, a Z270 motherboard and more attention to build
quality would make the Storm Force Lux a solid choice, but
its current spec is too restrictive at this price.
MIKE JENNINGS
1
2
3
1
A standard Core
i7-7700 CPU sits
under a Zoostorm-
branded air cooler
2
The tweaked GTX
1060 card played
all our test games at
2,560 x 1,440
3
There aren’t any
rubber grommets
around the cable-
routing holes
60
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
T he PC Customiser’s new XSplit Streamer Pro X is
a high-powered rig designed for top-tier gaming
and game video streaming, as the name suggests.
It’s full of powerful components and includes a one-year
subscription to live game video recording and streaming
software XSplit, which is worth £50 alone. The key
components are fast, familiar parts. The GTX 1080 graphics
card comes from the Asus Strix range, which means the
GPU has been overclocked from 1607MHz to 1671MHz in its
default Gaming mode, and the OC mode ups the core
frequency to 1695MHz.
The GPU is paired with a Core i7-7700K, which is a great
gaming CPU, thanks to its high clock speed and unlocked
multiplier, while its four Hyper-Threaded cores mean it’s
quick in multi-threaded software too. The PC Customiser
has also gone one better than most rivals by overclocking
the chip to 5GHz. Those two parts connect to an Asus ROG
Maximus IX Hero motherboard, which is again one of the
most ambitious components available. It wields Intel’s
new Z270 chipset, and offers loads of features, including
SupremeFX audio, on-board buttons and a POST display,
and it has two Aura headers for RGB lighting. There’s also
support for Asus’ niche 3D printing additions, you can fit a
Wi-Fi card in the rear I/O panel, and it has clear-CMOS and
BIOS Flashback buttons on its backplate.
However, the Scan 3XS Vengeance Ti also
provides most of these features – it’s only
missing high-end additions such as on-board
buttons on the motherboard, and that won’t
bother everyone on a pre-overclocked machine.
Scan’s machine also only costs an extra £100
but includes a top-end GTX 1080 Ti GPU that’s
been overclocked to 1605MHz, although its
Core i7-7700K runs at a slightly lower clock
of 4.8GHz.
The Streamer Pro ticks the right boxes in
other departments though. It has 16GB of
3200MHz DDR4 memory, and its storage
system pairs Samsung’s super-fast 960 Evo
M.2 NVMe SSD with a 2TB hard disk. Meanwhile,
the Corsair RM750x is 80 Plus certified and fully
modular, while its 750W rating gives you
enough headroom to add a second GPU later.
It’s all mounted in an NZXT S340 case with
a front panel ringed with blue metal, and that
colour carries on to the interior. The PC
Customiser has done a great job: blue LEDs are
hidden beneath the window to illuminate the
rig, while two SP120 quiet fans on the Corsair
Hydro H100i water-cooling unit are ringed with
blue. The Corsair Vengeance LED memory,
motherboard heatsinks and GPU all display blue
The PC Customiser XSplit
Streamer Pro X /£2,000 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.thepccustomiser.com
/SPECIFICATIONS
CPU 4.2GHz Intel Core
i7-7700K overclocked to
5GHz
Motherboard Asus ROG
Maximus IX Hero
Memory 16GB Corsair
Vengeance LED 3200MHz
DDR4
Graphics Asus ROG Strix
GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
Storage 250GB Samsung
960 Evo M.2 SSD; 2TB
Seagate Barracuda hard
drive
Case NZXT S340
Cooling CPU: Corsair Hydro
H100i V2 with 2 x 120mm
fans; GPU: 3 x 80mm; rear:
1 x 140mm
PSU Corsair RM750X 750W
Ports Front: 2 x USB 3, 2 x
audio; rear: 4 x USB 3, 1 x USB
3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1
Type-C, 4 x USB 2, 1 x Gigabit
Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF,
5 x audio
Operating system Microsoft
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Warranty Three years parts
and labour, collect and return
GAMING PC
too. There are even blue braided cables for the motherboard
and graphics power connections.
The PC Customiser has done a great job of keeping cables
tidy too – they’re discreet at the front and routed well around
the rear. That helps to keep the various upgrade paths easily
accessible too, with memory slots, PCI-E slots and a second
M.2 connector all vacant, plus another free hard disk bay
around the back. Comparatively, Scan’s pricier machine used
a Corsair Crystal 460X case. It’s a more modern enclosure
that offers smart glass panels and slightly better build
quality, but both chassis offer similar accessibility and
upgrade paths.
As the company’s name suggests, you can also tweak the
spec of this machine to your requirements, although some
components, such as the PSU, can’t be changed. There’s a
great warranty, with parts and labour covered for three years,
including collect and return cover.
Performance
The overclocked Asus GTX 1080 card is a solid performer. It
blasted through 1080p titles and easily handled games at
2,560 x 1,440: its weakest minimum here was a 50fps result
in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and that’s still superb. It can just
about handle 4K too. It easily handled The Witcher 3 with a
minimum of 45fps, and it squeaked over our playable target
with a 28fps minimum in Fallout 4 and 27fps in Deus Ex.
Scan’s machine, though, serves up an overclocked GTX
1080 Ti, and that graphical leap made a big difference at 4K,
with 36fps and 35fps minimums in Fallout 4 and Deus Ex,
plus an amazing 63fps minimum result in The Witcher 3. If
you’re looking to play games at 4K, the Scan is the better PC.
The Streamer Pro proved an excellent performer in
application benchmarks too. Its 5GHz overclock helped its
61
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
LUXMARK OPENCL
HEAVY MULTITASKING
018,000 36,000 54,000 72,000
70,288
XSplitStreamer Pro X
090,000 180,000 270,000 360,000
343,771
XSplit Streamer Pro X
022,000 44,000 66,000 88,000
83,627
XSplit Streamer Pro X
050,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
184,125
XSplit Streamer Pro X
SYSTEM SCORE
040,000 80,000 120,000 160,000
153,727
XSplit Streamer Pro X
FALLOUT 4
2,560 x 1,440 Ultra Detail TAA
Minimum Average
CPC REA LBENCH 2015
INTEL REFERENCE: 134.31%
025 50 75 100
74fps
58fps
XSplit Streamer Pro X
025 50 75 100
35fps
28fps
XSplit Streamer Pro X
025 50 75 100
96fps
84fps
XSplit Streamer Pro X
025 50 75 100
51fps
45fps
XSplit Streamer Pro X
025 50 75 100
61fps
50fps
XSplit Streamer Pro X
025 50 75 100
33fps
27fps
XSplit Streamer Pro X
3,840 x 2,160 Ultra Detail TAA
THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT
2,560 x 1,440 High Detail HairWorks off
3,840 x 2,160 High Detail HairWorks off
DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED
2,560 x 1,440 Very High Detail DX11
3,840 x 2,160 Very High Detail DX11
image editing score of 70,288 creep ahead of the Scan, and
its 343,771 result in our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake
video encoding test shows that this machine can handle
multi-threaded workloads too. Meanwhile, the Samsung
SSD delivered cracking read and write speeds of 2,619MB/
sec and 1,816MB/sec – both excellent results that outpace
the Scan’s slower Intel drive. We didn’t encounter any issues
in thermal and noise tests either: the CPU and GPU delta Ts
of 69°C and 61°C are hot, but no cause for concern, and the
machine only made a low rumble during our toughest
gaming benchmarks.
Conclusion
The Streamer Pro X ticks every box that gaming
broadcasters and content creators will require: it’s fast in
games, its Hyper-Threaded quad-core processor can handle
multi-threaded workloads and it has rapid storage and RAM.
The XSplit subscription is a welcome addition, and the entire
rig is well-made, with good looks and quiet operation.
The only problem is the competition. Scan’s machine
costs £100 more and doesn’t have the faster storage or
extra motherboard features, but it does have a GTX 1080 Ti,
which makes it noticeably quicker in games. The Scan is a
better option if you’re after pure gaming speed, especially at
VERDICT
Well-built, quiet and good looking. The XSplit Streamer
Pro X is a great gaming machine, although there are
better options in this price league for 4K gaming.
OVERALL SCORE
87%
SPEED
21/25
HARDWARE
22/25
DESIGN
23/25
VALUE
21/25
4K, but the Streamer X Pro remains an excellent choice if you
want a fast PC that’s packed with features, and you’re not
planning on pushing your games beyond 2,560 x 1,440.
MIKE JENNINGS
1
2
3
1
The PC Customiser
has done a great job
of keeping cables
tidy and discreet
2
The overclocked
Asus Strix GTX
1080 card is a solid
performer in games
3
A Corsair Hydro
H100i cooler keeps
the 5GHz processor
in check
62
REVIEWS / NEW KIT
A MD’s new Ryzen processors have shaken up the
CPU market, and despite some initial teething
troubles, they offer tremendous value over Intel’s
top-end chips for heavily multi-threaded workloads. The
Yoyotech Redback N6 is the first Ryzen PC we’ve seen,
sporting the top-end Ryzen 7 1800X, which has eight cores
that support 16 concurrent threads.
It’s based on AMD’s new Zen architecture, which sees
the firm moving to a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process,
upping the core count and moving from DDR3 to DDR4.
AMD says Zen delivers a 40 per cent increase in instructions
per clock (IPC) compared with its previous CPU architecture.
Despite being the flagship Ryzen chip, though, the 1800X is
only clocked at 3.6GHz, and Yoyotech has only overclocked it
to 4GHz, which is already its Turbo peak. In this machine, the
1800X is chilled by an NZXT Kraken X31 set up as an intake,
with a 120mm fan on either side of its radiator.
The Yoyotech’s memory also only runs at 2400MHz, but
that’s not a massive surprise given the problems we’ve seen
with Ryzen systems running memory at high frequencies.
We have no issues with the storage system, though, which
consists of a Samsung 960 Evo NVMe SSD and a 2TB hard
disk. Meanwhile, graphical grunt comes from Nvidia’s great
new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, courtesy of an EVGA-made
Founders Edition card that runs at stock speed.
It’s all plugged into an Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero
motherboard, which uses AMD’s new X370 chipset,
supporting new features such as DDR4 memory and M.2
connections. The board also offers enthusiast features,
such as on-board buttons, a POST display
and SupremeFX audio. It also has heatsinks
full of RGB LEDs, and its backplate offers a
BIOS Flashback feature and over a dozen
USB ports.
Yoyotech has used a Game Max Onyx
chassis. This unfamiliar brand has developed a
case that looks like most of its rivals: its panels
are made from tinted, tempered glass, and the
top edge has USB ports and lighting controls.
Three 120mm fans at the front are fitted with
RGB LEDs that circulate through numerous
colours and can be seen through the front
panel’s neat honeycomb pattern.
Elsewhere, power cables are hidden beneath
a sturdy shroud, and there’s a sole spare hard
disk bay and a couple of 2.5in mounts.
The cable-routing holes are rubber-ringed,
and Yoyotech has done a decent job with the
build – cables aren’t braided, but they’re neat.
The only odd issue is the lack of an exhaust or
roof fan.
Meanwhile, power comes from an EVGA 650
GQ, which is a decent, semi-modular PSU with
an 80 Plus Gold rating. The warranty could be
Yoyotech Redback N6 /£2,150 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.yoyotech.co.uk
/SPECIFICATIONS
CPU 3.6GHz AMD Ryzen 7
1800X overclocked to 4GHz
Motherboard Asus ROG
Crosshair VI Hero
Memory 16GB G-Skill Flare X
2400MHz DDR4
Graphics EVGA GeForce GTX
1080 Ti 11GB
Storage 256GB Samsung Evo
SSD; 2TB Toshiba hard drive
Case Game Max Onyx RGB
Cooling CPU: NZXT Kraken
X31 with 2 x 120mm fans;
GPU: 1 x 70mm fan; front:
2 x 120mm fans
PSU EVGA 650GQ 650W
Ports Front: 1 x USB 3, 2 x
USB 2, 2 x audio; rear: 8 x
USB 3, 2 x USB 3.1, 4 x USB 2,
1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical
S/PDIF, 5 x audio
Operating system Microsoft
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Warranty One year parts and
labour collect and return,
followed by two years labour
only return to base
GAMING PC
more generous though. There’s a year of parts and labour
cover, with a collect and return service, but it then reverts to
just two years of labour only return to base cover.
Performance
The new AMD silicon offers stunning performance in
heavily multi-threaded software, as demonstrated by the
Yoyotech’s superb result of 501,317 in our Handbrake test –
the Core i7-7700K-based PC Customiser XSplit Streamer
Pro X (see p60) could only score 343,771 in this test.
However, the 1800X’s lesser clock speed sees it falling
behind in our image editing test, where the Yoyotech’s
result of 52,310 is close to 20,000 points behind the XSplit
Streamer Pro X. Also, we found last month that you can get
almost identical performance from a cheaper Ryzen 7 1700
CPU overclocked to the same level.
This AMD machine returned mixed results in games too.
Its best pace came in Fallout and Deus Ex’s 4K tests, where
its minimums of 36fps and 35fps matched those of the Scan
3XS Vengeance Ti (see Issue 165, p62). However, it only
managed a minimum of 34fps in The Witcher 3 at 4K, which
was miles behind the 63fps of Scan’s Intel-based machine.
AMD says it’s currently working on patches for games that
are sluggish on Ryzen, but that result is still disappointing.
The AMD machine powered through our 1080p and
1440p benchmarks too, never dropping below 60fps,
although again, the results from the Intel-based Scan
machine were often even better. Yoyotech’s machine is
hardly slow, but Intel machines are consistently faster right
now. The machine occasionally crashed during testing too.
On the plus side, the SSD returned rapid reads and writes of
2,643MB/sec and 1,785MB/sec.
As we discussed in our Ryzen coverage last month, the
temperature readings from AMD chips are currently offset
63
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
LUXMARK OPENCL
HEAVY MULTITASKING
015,000 30,000 45,000 60,000
52,310
Yoyotech Redback N6
0130,000 260,000 390,000 520,000
501,317
Yoyotech Redback N6
030,000 60,000 90,000 120,000
90000
106,594
Yoyotech Redback N6
045,000 90,000 135,000 180,000
175,124
Yoyotech Redback N6
SYSTEM SCORE
050,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
183,746
Yoyotech Redback N6
FALLOUT 4
2,560 x 1,440, Ultra Detail, TAA
Minimum Average
CPC REALBENCH 2015
030 60 90 120
93fps
76fps
Yoyotech Redback N6
030 60 90 120
46fps
36fps
Yoyotech Redback N6
030 60 90 120
120fps
82fps
Yoyotech Redback N6
030 60 90 120
66fps
34fps
Yoyotech Redback N6
030 60 90 120
78fps
63fps
Yoyotech Redback N6
030 60 90 120
43fps
35fps
Yoyotech Redback N6
3,840 x 2,160, Ultra Detail, TAA
THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT
2,560 x 1,440, High Detail, HairWorks off
3,840 x 2,160, High Detail, HairWorks off
DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED
2,560 x 1,440, Very High Detail, DX11
3,840 x 2,560, Very High Detail, DX11
by 20°C on X-series chips, so you have to subtract 20°C from
any temperature results. That’s a relief, as the overclocked
1800X looked as though it was running at 102°C at load when
we first checked it.
The actual temperature of 82°C is within thermal limits,
though, equating to a delta T of 59°C – 10°C lower than the
CPU delta T in the PC Customiser XSplit Streamer Pro X, with
its 5GHz Core i7-7700K. The GPU delta T peaked at 62°C,
and noise wasn’t a problem – the PC has the Kraken X31 set
to Silent mode by default, and it’s practically inaudible.
Conclusion
AMD’s Ryzen 7 1800X really shines in heavily multi-
threaded tasks, and while its gaming performance lags
behind Intel systems in places, Yoyotech’s use of a GeForce
GTX 1080 Ti means this system can still cope with 4K
gaming. Couple these components with quiet operation and
a tidy build, and you have the makings of a decent system.
There are some missed opportunities though. The use
of the 1800X unnecessarily drives up the price, when you
can overclock cheaper Ryzen 7 chips and get similar
performance, and the system could also do with an exhaust
fan, a GPU overclock and a more inspiring case. There are
also concerns about stability and performance in some
VERDICT
Fantastic multi-threaded performance for the
money and a smart build, but a few issues mean
this PC isn’t quite in award-winning territory.
OVERALL SCORE
82%
SPEED
22/25
HARDWARE
20/25
DESIGN
20/25
VALUE
20/25
games. Ryzen 7 clearly has loads of potential, especially if
you use lots of heavily multi-threaded software, but a few
issues mean this PC isn’t quite in award-winning territory.
MIKE JENNINGS
1
2
3
1
An NZXT Kraken
X31 keeps the
overclocked Ryzen
CPU cool
2
Graphical grunt
comes from
Nvidia’s new GTX
1080 Ti GPU
3
Cables are hidden
behind a sturdy,
Yoyotech-branded
PSU shroud
64
ELITE / THE BEST KIT
Elite
Our choice of the best hardware available
Build a budget gaming PC
The parts you’ll need to build a budget machine capable of playing the latest games at decent settings on a 1080p monitor.
The machine has a discrete graphics card, a Kaby Lake dual-core CPU and DDR4 memory. The Core i3-7350K also has an
unlocked multiplier, so it can be overclocked to 4.8GHz and beyond. See Issue 163, p86 for a guide on how to build this PC.
Custom PC Strips.pdf 1 30/03/2017 09:20:16
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Intel Core i3-7350K www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 163, p20 £159
Asus Prime Z270-P www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 163, p43 £114
8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz DDR4
(CMK8GX4M2A2666C16 ) www.scan.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £66
Zotac GeForce
GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Mini www.scan.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £140
Aerocool Aero 500 www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £36
Raijintek Rhea www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £16
XFX XT Series 400W 80
Plus Bronze www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £35
240GB SanDisk SSD Plus www.amazon.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £77
Seagate Barracuda 1TB (ST1000DM003 ) www.box.co.uk Issue 163, p86 £45
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Retail USB drive www.scan.co.uk Issue 146, p17 £96
TOTAL £784
65
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
In Win 303 www.novatech.co.uk Issue 166, p88 £80
Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 www.cclonline.com Issue 166, p88 £104
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 www.ebuyer.com Issue 166, p88 £295
16GB Corsair Vengeance
LPX 3000MHz DDR4 www.ebuyer.com Issue 166, p88 £115
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 www.aquatuning.co.uk Issue 166, p88 £57
Corsair CX450M 450W www.ebuyer.com Issue 166, p88 £50
OcUK GeForce GTX 1060
Reference Design 3072MB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p88 £180
250GB Samsung 850 Evo www.ebuyer.com Issue 166, p88 £87
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Retail USB drive www.scan.co.uk Issue 146, p17 £96
TOTAL £1,064
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Build an 8-core AMD Ryzen PC
The parts you’ll need to build a cut-price, 8-core PC for dealing with heavily multi-threaded software, such as 3D rendering
and video encoding packages. The PC includes an overclockable AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a basic SSD and a
GPU that can handle games at 1,920 x 1,080. For a full guide on how to build this PC and overclock it, see p88.
Upgrades
Replace the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card with another GTX 1070 card to properly enable 2,560 x 1,440 gaming at high
settings, and add a hard drive for more data storage space.
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
2,560 x 1,440 and some 4K gaming graphics card
Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC www.ebuyer.com Issue 156, p24 £420
Hard drive
Western Digital Blue 4TB (WD40EZRZ) www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p54 £131
66
ELITE / THE BEST KIT
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Glass www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p24 £90
Asus Strix Z270F Gaming www.scan.co.uk Issue 162, p47 £170
Intel Core i5-7600K www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 162, p20 £230
16GB Corsair Vengeance LED 3200MHz
DDR4 (CMU16GX4M2C3200C16 ) www.ebuyer.com Issue 162, p32 £141
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 www.aquatuning.co.uk Issue 166, p41 £57
EVGA SuperNova GS 550W www.cclonline.com Issue 146, p50 £78
Western Digital Blue 4TB (WD40EZRZ) www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p54 £131
Samsung SSD 960 Evo 500GB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p19 £249
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Retail USB drive www.scan.co.uk Issue 146, p17 £96
TOTAL £1,242
Build a mid-range PC
Work PC
The parts you’ll need to build a solid quad-core PC with plenty of upgrade potential. This kit list gives you a Cooler Master
all-in-one liquid cooler and a K-series Core i5 Kaby Lake CPU, meaning you can overclock it and get some serious
processing power. We’ve managed to get the Core i5-7600K Kaby Lake CPU up to 5.1GHz, so it has some great performance
potential. Also included is a solid EVGA PSU, a fast M.2 SSD and 16GB of high-speed DDR4 memory. The core work
configuration assumes you won’t be doing any serious gaming, however, and it relies on Intel’s integrated graphics.
Gaming PC
The graphics card you’ll need to play current games at their maximum settings at 1080p and 2,560 x 1,440.
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
1,920 x 1,080 and some 2,560 x 1,440
AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB www.scan.co.uk Issue 166, p23 £220
2,560 x 1,440 and some 4K
Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC www.ebuyer.com Issue 156, p24 £420
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67
Build a performance PC
Work PC
The parts you’ll need to build a high-quality, fast PC that’s ideal for multi-threaded workloads. This kit list features a high-
quality, well-built case, a feature-rich motherboard and an Intel Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K CPU. This processor’s support
for Hyper-Threading splits the resources of the CPU’s four physical cores into a further four virtual cores, meaning it can
effectively handle eight threads at once. There’s also a solid Corsair 750W PSU, giving you plenty of headroom for
overclocking and adding another GPU, 16GB of DDR4 memory, a high-speed M.2 SSD and a liquid-cooling system.
Gaming PC
The graphics card you’ll need to play current games at their maximum settings at 2,560 x 1,440 and beyond.
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
1,920 x 1,080 and some 2,560 x 1,440
AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB www.scan.co.uk Issue 166, p23 £220
2,560 x 1,440 and some 4K
Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC www.ebuyer.com Issue 156, p24 £420
Smooth 4K
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition www.scan.co.uk Issue 165, p30 £670
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Cooler Master Cosmos SE www.scan.co.uk Issue 144, p41 £115
Gigabyte Aorus Z270X-Gaming 7 www.scan.co.uk Issue 162, p49 £225
Intel Core i7-7700K www.scan.co.uk Issue 162, p19 £329
16GB Corsair Vengeance LED 3200MHz
DDR4 (CMU16GX4M2C3200C16 ) www.ebuyer.com Issue 162, p20 £141
Alphacool Eisbaer 240 www.aquatuning.co.uk Issue 157, p28 £99
Corsair RM750i www.aria.co.uk Issue 146, p55 £118
Western Digital Blue 4TB (WD40EZRZ) www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p54 £131
Samsung SSD 960 Evo 500GB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p19 £249
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Retail USB drive www.scan.co.uk Issue 146, p17 £96
TOTAL £1,503
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68
ELITE / THE BEST KIT
Build an Intel Core i7 6-core PC
Multi-threaded PC
The parts you’ll need to build a PC with serious power in multi-threaded software, such as 3D rendering apps, video
editing programs and optimised distributed computing software. The kit list features a 6-core LGA2011-v3 CPU, which is
overclockable using the motherboard and top-end cooler listed. Also supplied is 16GB of RAM, a super-fast M.2 SSD, 1TB of
extra solid state storage and Asus’ superb X99 Deluxe II motherboard.
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe www.awd-it.co.uk Issue 144, p53 £127
Asus X99 Deluxe II www.ebuyer.com Issue 156, p43 £386
Intel Core i7-6850K www.aria.co.uk Issue 156, p26 £585
16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz DDR4
(CMK16GX4M4A2666C16 ) www.scan.co.uk Issue 136, p14 £131
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB www.ebuyer.com Issue 161, p20 £128
NZXT Kraken X62 www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 160, p52 £150
Corsair RM750i www.aria.co.uk Issue 146, p55 £118
Samsung SSD 960 Evo 500GB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p19 £249
Samsung 850 Evo 1TB www.ebuyer.com Issue 141, p51 £309
Lite-On IHAS324 www.shop.bt.com Issue 99, p108 £15
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Retail USB drive www.scan.co.uk Issue 146, p17 £96
TOTAL £2,294
Gaming PC
Replace the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card with GTX 1070 card to play games at 2,560 x 1,440 with high settings, or
even replace it with a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti card to enable 4K gaming on this system.
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
2,560 x 1,440 and some 4K
Asus Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC www.ebuyer.com Issue 156, p24 £420
Smooth 4K
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition www.scan.co.uk Issue 165, p30 £670
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Build a mini PC
Core components
This kit list gives you a solid PSU, 16GB of RAM, a liquid cooler and Windows 10 Home 64-bit. Also included is a graphics card
that can play current games at their maximum settings at 2,560 x 1,440, and some games at 4K, as well as a high-speed M.2
SSD. See Issue 164, p84 for a full guide to building mini-ITX PC.
Mini-ITX PC
The parts you’ll need to build a pint-sized powerhouse.
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Fractal Design Define Nano S www.scan.co.uk Issue 153, p22 £56
Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5 www.box.co.uk Issue 166, p26 £158
TOTAL £1,626
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Fractal Design Define Mini C www.scan.co.uk Issue 161, p26 £80
Asus ROG Strix Z270G Gaming www.scan.co.uk Issue 163, p22 £185
TOTAL £1,677
NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Intel Core i7-7700K www.scan.co.uk Issue 162, p19 £329
16GB Corsair Vengeance LED 3200MHz DDR4 www.ebuyer.com Issue 164, p84 £141
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 120 www.aquatuning.co.uk Issue 166, p41 £57
MSI GTX 1070 Armor 8GB OC www.ebuyer.com Issue 164, p84 £359
Samsung SSD 960 Evo 500GB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p19 £249
Western Digital Blue 4TB (WD40EZRZ) www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p54 £131
Corsair CX450M 450W www.ebuyer.com Issue 164, p84 £50
Microsoft Windows 10 Home Retail USB drive www.scan.co.uk Issue 146, p17 £96
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Micro-ATX PC
The parts you’ll need to build a mini PC that doesn’t take up as much room as a full-sized desktop.
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ELITE / THE BEST KIT
Cases
Graphics cards
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Budget ATX NZXT S340 www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 137, p54 £67
Sub-£100 ATX
performance
Phanteks Enthoo
Pro M Glass www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p24 £90
Sub-£100
ATX quiet Fractal Design Define R5 www.scan.co.uk Issue 137, p20 £97
Sub-£150 full-
sized ATX quiet Nanoxia Deep Silence 5 www.quietpc.co.uk Issue 144, p50 £136
Sub-£150 full-
si zed ATX Phanteks Enthoo Luxe www.awd-it.co.uk Issue 144, p53 £127
Sub-£150 mid-
si zed ATX Cooler Master Cosmos SE www.scan.co.uk Issue 144, p41 £115
Premium ATX case Cooler Master MasterCase
Maker 5t www.box.co.uk Issue 162, p32 £230
Mini-ITX tower Fractal Design
Define Nano S www.scan.co.uk Issue 153, p22 £56
Mini-ITX cube Fractal Design
Core 500 www.scan.co.uk Issue 150, p20 £58
Micro-ATX Fractal Design
Define Mini C www.scan.co.uk Issue 161, p26 £80
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
1,920 x 1,080
gaming
Nvidia GeForce
GTX 1060 3GB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 159, p43 £180
2,560 x 1,440
gaming
AMD Radeon RX
580 8GB www.scan.co.uk Issue 166, p23 £220
2,560 x 1,440 and
some 4K gaming
Asus Strix GeForce
GTX 1070 OC www.ebuyer.com Issue 156, p24 £420
Smooth 4K gaming GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Founders Edition www.scan.co.uk Issue 165, p30 £670
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71
Power supplies
Networking
Storage
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Mid-range 550W EVGA SuperNova
GS 550W www.cclonline.com Issue 146, p50 £78
High-end 550W Super Flower Leadex
Platinum 550W www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 146, p52 £103
Mid-range 750W Corsair RM750i www.aria.co.uk Issue 146, p55 £118
High-end 1.2kW Corsair Professional Series
AX1200i www.box.co.uk Issue 111, p40 £295
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Router Netgear Nighthawk
X4S R7800 www.ebuyercom Issue 160, p44 £174
Multi-storey
home router
Netgear Orbi Whole Home
Wi-Fi System www.maplin.co.uk Issue 163, p26 £330
Wi-Fi adaptor Asus PCE-AC68 www.scan.co.uk Issue 128, p88 £66
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Mainstream
hard disk
Western Digital
Blue 4TB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p54 £131
Performance
hard disk
Seagate BarraCuda
Pro 6TB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 166, p50 £253
500GB SATA SSD Samsung 850
Evo 500GB www.ebuyer.com Issue 158, p44 £150
1TB SATA SSD Samsung 850
Evo 1TB www.ebuyer.com Issue 141, p51 £309
High-performance
M.2 SSD
Samsung SSD
960 Evo 500GB www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 161, p19 £249
NAS box Synology
DS216j www.ebuyer.com Issue 154, p28 £146
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ELITE / THE BEST KIT
Peripherals
Monitors
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Mechanical gaming
keyboard
Cooler Master MasterKeys
Pro L White www.scan.co.uk Issue 165, p55 £80
Premium mechanical
gaming keyboard
Corsair Gaming K70 RGB
Rapidfire www.ebuyer.com Issue 154, p21 £150
MMO keyboard Corsair Gaming K95
RGB Platinum www.scan.co.uk Issue 164, p26 £179
Budget gaming
mouse
Cooler Master
Xornet II www.box.co.uk Issue 149, 28 £14
Gaming mouse Logitech G403
Prodigy www.amazon.co.uk Issue 161, p53 £60
Ambidextrous
gaming mouse Roccat Kova www.box.co.uk Issue 150, 28 £45
MMO gaming mouse Corsair Scimitar
Pro RGB www.box.co.uk Issue 164, p24 £75
Wireless gaming
mouse
SteelSeries
Sensei Wireless www.box.co.uk Issue 139, p61 £100
Steering wheel and
pedals
Logitech G920
Driving Force www.currys.co.uk Issue 159, p55 £180
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
24in monitor Dell UltraSharp
U2417H www.ebuyer.com Issue 162, p58 £229
27in 2,560 x 1,440
FreeSync monitor
Acer Predator
XF270HU www.ebuyer.com Issue 155, p46 £430
27in 2,560 x 1,440
G-Sync monitor
Asus ROG
Swift PG279Q www.scan.co.uk Issue 155, p48 £760
27in 4K FreeSync ViewSonic
XG2700-4K www.amazon.co.uk Issue 157, p26 £562
27in 4K G-Sync
monitor
Asus ROG Swift
PG27AQ www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 151 , p42 £800
34in ultra-wide
curved G-Sync
monitor
Asus ROG Swift
PG348Q www.ebuyer.com Issue 157 , p42 £1,030
Custom PC Strips.pdf 1 30/03/2017 09:20:16
73
Systems
Audio
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
Kaby Lake PC Scan 3XS Z270
Vengeance SLI www.scan.co.uk Issue 162, p66 c.£3,000
Dream PC Scan 3XS
Barracuda www.scan.co.uk Issue 145, p58 c.£9,499
Sub-£2,000
gaming PC
Palicomp Infantry
Brigadier www.palicomp.co.uk Issue 165, p64 c.£1,999
Mini-ITX
gaming PC
CyberPower Hyper
Liquid 100
www.cyberpower
system.co.uk Issue 158, p60 c.£1,999
Premium mini-ITX
PC
Overclockers
8Pack Asteroid www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 154, p56 c. £3,990
Premium PC Scan 3XS X99
Carbon Fluid GL SLI www.scan.co.uk Issue 156, p64 c.£4,100
Water-cooled PC Overclockers
Infin8 Toxicity www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 150, p58 c.£3,414
4K gaming PC Scan 3XS X99
Carbon X SLI www.scan.co.uk Issue 158, p64 c.£4,500
High-performance
gaming laptop
Scan 3XS LG17
Carbon Extreme www.scan.co.uk Issue 159, p30 c.£2,550
Thin and light
gaming laptop
Scan 3XS LG15
Vengeance G-Sync www.scan.co.uk Issue 153, p51 c.£1,480
TYPE NAME SUPPLIER FEATURED PRICE
(inc VAT)
PCI-E sound card Asus Strix
Raid DLX www.scan.co.uk Issue 148, p28 £173
2.1 speakers Acoustic
Energy Aego³ www.amazon.co.uk Issue 164, p49 £189
Soundbar Razer
Leviathan www.overclockers.co.uk Issue 142, p57 £200
Headset HyperX
Cloud II www.box.co.uk Issue 142, p46 £70
Surround-sound
headset
Asus ROG
Centurion www.cclonline.com Issue 163, p49 £220
Custom PC Strips.pdf 1 30/03/2017 09:20:16
74
Games
Contents
Inverse look p75 / Mass Effect: Andromeda p76 / Kona p78 / Snake Pass p78
Thimbleweed Park p80 / The engine room – Thumper p82 /
Virtual world p84 / Indie corner p86
75
A
ll our graphics tests are performed
on a high-end Ivy Bridge system,
which feaics cards in SLI or
CrossFire configurations configurations
We’ve tested each card in four separate
games. Our Battlefield 4 test uses a
60-second sequence from the start of the
sin
Ra nosse pre
electoribus apideli
tiandam quatur,
occum estotatur?
Quidebitis si
How we test
75
OPINION
HEADING HERE
PLEASE
Standfirst here please Standfirst here please Standfirst here please Standfirst
here please Standfirst here please
BEN HARDWIDGE / FROM THE EDITOR
W ow, I’d better make sure I have an Nvidia card in 2014, I
thought, as I watched the Witcher 3 PhysX demo last
proprietary GPU feature would actually persuade me
to go with one company’s GPU over another’s since the 3dfx days.
Graphics card companies have been coming up with these
unique selour own judgment call, according to your priorities.
What are your priorities when.
Ben Hardwidge is the editor of Custom PC. He likes PCs, heavy metal, real ale and Warhammer 40,000. editor@custompcmag.org.uk @custompcmag
Ci debis vel iliquam sam
sam serovides doloris
utaque volectas
CASTLES MADE
OF BLAND
The open-world genre has forgotten its sandbox roots, says Rick Lane
RICK LANE / INVERSE LOOK
I always feel bad when an open-world game turns out
to be mediocre. When a game such as Ghost Recon:
Wildlands or Mass Effect: Andromeda offers sprawling
landscapes to explore, each rendered in exquisite detail, I almost
feel like a spoiled brat for dismissing it. These games require vast
amounts of resources, and so much time and effort from their
development team to create. I don’t relish turning around and
saying ‘sorry, but it’s a bit rubbish’.
Unfortunately, this obsession with environment size and
visual fidelity is partly the reason why an increasing
number of open-world games are failing to excite
players. As each release competes to be larger and/
or more detailed than before, the question of how
the player is supposed to occupy themselves in these
worlds becomes neglected. The result is games that
offer the same 30-minute feedback loop across a
hundred hours (such as Ghost Recon), or games that
bog down their core mechanics with dozens of
identical side activities (such as Mass Effect).
Both games suffer from the same issues; their approach to
open-world design amounts to distracting the player with cut-
and-paste activities, rather than offering a range of mechanics
with which the player can create their own enjoyment. Before
‘open-world’ became the descriptor of choice for this genre, these
games were generally described as ‘sandboxes’.
The core idea of a sandbox game is that it provides a range of
tools and systems for the player to create their own fun. It doesn’t
apply exclusively to open worlds – Rollercoaster Tycoon or Elite
Dangerous could also be termed sandbox experiences, but open-
world games are in the sandbox vein, or at least they should be.
A good sandbox game treats its environment as a space for
the player to create unique experiences using the mechanics to
hand, as opposed to treating it as a big list of chores to complete.
There have been several great sandbox open worlds in the past
few years. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor had a relatively small
open world, but it used it to great effect through its Nemesis
system, which saw you playing political gamesmanship with
its ranks of evil Orcs. Metal Gear Solid V, meanwhile, used its
open world as the basis for an astonishingly deep and dynamic
stealth simulation. The Far Cry series also features
great emergent play through its thrilling and
unpredictable first-person shooting.
All these games feature similar side missions and
activates dotted over their maps, but they generally
act as nodes around which the systems revolve. The
problem is that open worlds have become the go-to
genre for mainstream developers, but not every
game is equipped with the systemic depth needed
to create that sandbox emergence. The result is games with
hundreds of hours of content, but only a small percentage of that
time amounts to a meaningful experience before it repeats itself.
Open-world games are one of the industry’s crowning
achievements; a playground for the imagination that no other
art form can offer. However, to return the genre to greatness,
developers need to stop thinking about their games in terms of
size, and start thinking about how the player uses that game
world. I’d much rather play a 20-hour game that was constantly
changing and surprising me, than an 80-hour game that
essentially had me doing the same task over and over again with
incrementally cooler equipment.
Rick Lane is Custom PC’s games editor. @Rick_Lane
It amounts to
distracting the
player with cut-
and-paste activities
OPINION
75
/ VERDICT
Mass Effect:
Andromeda
sacrifices the
series’ its usual
pacey storytelling
and compelling
characters for an
open-world
structure that
simply isn’t worth
your effort.
Mass Effect: Andromeda /£50 inc VAT
DEVELOPER BioWare /PUBLISHER EA /WEBSITE www.masseffect.com
OVERALL SCORE
57%
76
If the Mass Effect series has taught us
anything, it’s that less is sometimes
more, especially when you’re
starting with a lot in the first place. The first
Mass Effect was a big, stodgy space opera that
combined a weighty narrative with open-world
exploration, and it didn’t completely work.
Mass Effect 2 and 3 stripped out many of the
first game’s wonkier elements, and focused on
improving both the combat and characters.
Both games were superb.
For Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare
has decided to reinstate the open-world
exploration from the first game, and
concentrate on making it even bigger and better. It’s
certainly much bigger than any other Mass Effect
game so far. Sadly, the improvements made to the
open-world segments come at such a huge cost to
the game elsewhere that the change simply isn’t
made worthwhile.
As you can no doubt guess, Mass Effect: Andromeda
is set in our neighbouring galaxy. Your character is still
human, however. Choosing between siblings Scott and
Sarah Ryder, you assume the role of a Pathfinder – a
kind of explorer/diplomat/soldier hybrid. Your job is to
find a new home for the thousands of individuals who
have made the 600-year journey across dark space to
explore this new cluster of stars.
This is, of course, no mean feat. What’s more, your
task is made considerably harder by how events have
changed since you departed the Milky Way. The planets
initially pipped as potential habitats have been rendered
uninhabitable by a dangerous space anomaly named
the Scourge. Meanwhile, several of the fleet’s colony ships
are missing in action, and those that made it are under
constant attack from a race of beings known as the Kett.
To keep your expedition afloat, you must travel to several
planets in your local area of space (known as the Heleus
cluster) and make them viable for colonisation. You achieve
this job by exploring the vast, sweeping maps of each of
these planets, activating gigantic atmosphere generators
that ‘it just so happens’ an ancient race of beings left in its
wake. They’re switched on by activating three pylons dotted
around the map, and then descending into a secret vault
triangulated by the pylons to press a planetary reset button.
BioWare’s environment design is absolutely stunning.
From the crystalline freezer world of Voeld, to the sweeping
sand dunes of Elaaden, exploring BioWare’s alien
landscapes both on foot and inside your Nomad all-terrain
vehicle is a genuine pleasure. Yet for all the attention to
these worlds’ aesthetic design, their systemic design is
severely out of date. They’re crammed with cut-and-paste
GAMES / REVIEW
77
activities and MMO-style ‘fetch three objects’ quests.
Worse, these activities include the terraforming component
of the game, which is arguably Andromeda’s central
mechanic, and effectively turns each new world into a
largely similar checklist of intergalactic chores.
Also, the emphasis on terraforming planets for your
citizens, establishing your colonies and looking out for your
allies means that the minor fact that you’re in a new galaxy
gets overlooked. For a game that’s all about pushing into
the unknown, Andromeda spends a huge amount of time
looking over its shoulder, to the point where many of its
supposedly new elements are rehashed from the original
trilogy. The Kett, for example, is basically a more religious
form of the Collectors from Mass Effect 2, while the
Remnant, Andromeda’s new robotic race, is very
similar in concept to Mass Effect’s Protheans.
By far, Andromeda’s biggest problem is
its writing and characterisation. Your
supporting party, which has historically
been one of the series’ strongest elements,
is a mixed bag. Of the six characters who
accompany you, only the aging Krogan
warrior Drack and absent-minded
archaeologist PeeBee come close to the
previous characters. Others, such as
starting character Liam Kosta, are such
astonishing personality voids they could
absorb nearby light. The voice acting is
also highly inconsistent, particularly
affecting Andromeda’s third new race,
the Angarans. These characters are
supposed to be a deeply emotional
race, yet their acting carries all the
emotional resonance of your phone’s
voice commands.
It isn’t all doom and gloom. BioWare has
made further improvements to the combat
system. A slick dodging manoeuvre has been
added, you can mix and match class powers, and even
link together skills to pull off devastatingly powerful
combos. In terms of combat, it all adds up to one of the
most satisfying third-person shooters we’ve played.
There are still annoying little issues here though.
Despite having a huge range of powers from which
to choose, you can only equip three at any one time,
which makes experimenting difficult, especially
when you’re faced with lots of powerful enemies
later in the game.
Andromeda is filled with these small yet infuriating
design decisions. The galaxy map, for example, has
been changed so that it’s less efficient than before,
now requiring you to manually ‘fly’ between planets
rather than simply clicking from one to the next.
Also, you can’t board your ship without
departing a planet entirely, which is absurdly
annoying if you only popped back to check an
email. Worst of all is the lousy Sudoku
minigame you’re forced to play when
activating the terraforming devices.
At up to 70 hours long, Mass
Effect needs a progress-
obstructing minigame like a
camel needs an anorak.
There are some wonderful
moments within Mass Effect:
Andromeda, with its alien
worlds that fire the imagination
and missions that get the blood
pumping. If you were lucky enough
to hit all these moments in
sequence, you could have a great
time. Overall, though, Andromeda is
an overlong, repetitive and deeply
haphazard RPG, going an awful long
way for little reward at the end.
RICK LANE
78
GAMES / REVIEWS
/ VERDICT
With a small yet
detailed open
world and a
gripping mystery
to unravel, Kona is
the first proper
first-person
detective game.
Kona /£14.99 inc VAT
DEVELOPER Parabole/ PUBLISHER Parabole/ WEBSITE http://konagame.com
/ VERDICT
Snake Pass can’t
quite wriggle to
greatness, but its
revolutionary
central mechanic
is brilliant.
Snake Pass /£15.99 inc VAT
OVERALL SCORE
70%
OVERALL SCORE
90%
I t’s tempting to give Snake Pass full marks simply
because it’s a 3D platform game that involves no
jumping. Its central character is entirely legless, in
a good way – Noodle the Snake is a bright-eyed, charmingly
lackadaisical serpent who must find navigate the rocky
platforms and bamboo ladders of his jungle home. The
central concept is learning how to overcome your lack of
appendages and turn it into an advantage, which makes for
a truly fantastic game for at least the first couple of hours.
Controlling Noodle involves holding down the left
mouse button to move forwards, and using WASD to
change direction. However, Noodle moves extremely
slowly in a straight line, so you speed up by slithering from
left to right, using your coiled muscles to build up
momentum. These coils are also used for climbing. By
wrapping himself around the conveniently placed bamboo
poles that cover Snake Pass’ maps, Noodle can grip onto
surfaces and then reach his head over higher platforms.
It’s an absolutely superb traversal system, combining
an almost magical blend of weighty physics and subtle
animation with a surprisingly responsive and easy-to-learn
control scheme. It’s even easy to use with a mouse and
DEVELOPER Sumo Digital/ PUBLISHER Sumo Digital/ WEBSITE www.snake-pass.com
K ona is a very clever game. It looks like an open-
world survival game, and indeed adopts a fair few
ideas from that genre, but it’s really a first-person
adventure game, with a scripted storyline and a specific
mystery to be solved.
It places you in the gumshoes of Carl Faubert, a private
detective who has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to
investigate a case of vandalism.
When he travels to the remote French-Canadian
village of Atamipek Lake, however, Faubert finds
himself solving a very different mystery. He finds the
industrialist dead at the local general store, while the
rest of the town’s inhabitants have disappeared in a
strange and powerful snowstorm.
Kona blends watered-down survival gaming with
complex layers of puzzle solving. Faubert doesn’t need
to worry about eating or sleeping, but he does have to
contend with the intense cold of the snowstorm.
Building fires is crucial to staying alive and staying
focused on the job.
The wilderness is also prowled by wolves, which you
can either fight using a limited number of weapons, or
distract using items such as raw meat.
Amitapek Lake comprises around a dozen points of
interest, each with a little mystery built around it that helps
to complete the broader picture. Faubert chronicles his
investigation in a notebook, which binds these smaller
mysteries together. You can tackle these points in any order,
but the puzzles also dictate a specific route. At the general
store, for example, you must find a way to power the petrol
pumps so you can refill your truck and move around town.
Kona does a fantastic job of using an open-world
structure to tell a smaller, more intimate story. It’s carefully
keyboard, which isn’t Snake Pass’ ideal control scheme
(a gamepad is preferred), but it works far better than we
expected. The satisfaction gained from simply moving
around Snake Pass’ maps is enormous, leading
you to wonder why we consider limbs so
important anyway.
Unfortunately, while Noodle gets around
fine, Sumo Digital fails to take the concept
anywhere meaningful. The game comprises
roughly 16 levels, each of which is based on the
same structure. You must collect three crystals in
order to open the portal to the next map. There are other
items dotted around the map to collect as well, but they’re
optional and have no meaningful effect on the overall game.
The formatted nature of Snake Pass’ levels means it soon
begins to feel repetitive, and the mechanics never evolve
scripted, but also feels dynamic and player-driven. It’s
also wonderfully atmospheric. You can almost feel the
cold of the biting blizzard, while the abandoned buildings
and sprawling wilderness have an eerie quality that
threatens horror.
There are a couple of problems, however. There’s a
limited inventory system that forces you to backtrack
unnecessarily to collect important items. Also, the narrator
comments dynamically as you explore the area, which is a
fantastic idea, but both the script and the narrator’s vocal
inflections feel slightly out of tune with the game’s
atmosphere. There’s a wry, nostalgic quality to the writing
that jars with the subject matter.
These issues aside, though, Kona is a huge leap forward
for first-person adventure games. It combines open-ended
exploration and dynamic systems with a compellingly
plotted mystery and smartly designed puzzles. There’s
nothing quite like it, although that hopefully won’t be the
case for long.
RICK LANE
either. The environmental puzzles become increasingly
difficult, but you’re given no new methods of dealing with
them. In addition, although there are four differently
themed worlds through which to progress, such
as water and fire realms, the differences are
superficial; a slightly different colour scheme
here, a new hazard to avoid there.
Nevertheless, Sumo Digital has made
Snake Pass hard to dislike. The vibrant visuals
and brightly animated characters lend the game
a cartoonish charm, and simply watching Noodle
move around the game world offers a joy all of its own.
Noodle the Snake is a masterpiece of game design; it’s just
a shame that the first game in which Noodle stars isn’t quite
so accomplished.
RICK LANE
79
/ VERDICT
Thimbleweed Park
isn’t quite a return
to the golden age of
adventure games,
but it’s still an
excellent story
with some
interesting twists.
Thimbleweed Park /£14.99 inc VAT
DEVELOPER Terrible Toybox / PUBLISHER Terrible Toybox / WEBSITE www.thimbleweedpark.com
OVERALL SCORE
77%
80
GAMES / REVIEW
T hree decades after creating Maniac Mansion, Ron
Gilbert and Gary Winnick have come together
again to develop Thimbleweed Park, a weird and
wonderful throwback to the 1980s. It sets itself up as a
murder mystery. A body is found in the river near the
tumbledown town of Thimbleweed Park, and Agents Ray
and Reyes are despatched to investigate. But the story
quickly evolves into a broader tale about the town. What’s
going on at the old Pillow Factory? What’s with the clown
who never leaves the abandoned circus? And why does the
sheriff end all his sentences with a teeth-gratingly
annoying ‘a-reno’?
Thimbleweed Park is mostly a traditional adventure
game, even using an archaic verb-based interface for
interactions, but it also shakes up that old formula in
some interesting ways. Most notably, it puts you in
control of five characters, including the two agents,
Ransome the Insult Clown, MMucusFlem game
developer Dolores Edmund and her father Franklin
Edmund, who is a ghost trapped in the local hotel.
These characters can be used to explore the town
and solve the game’s puzzles to unravel the mystery.
You can approach several puzzles at any given time,
and most of the characters can access most of the
game’s areas. The solutions aren’t open-ended,
however. Ultimately, there’s only one route to success,
and it can be tricky to track. The first half of the game is
fairly forgiving, but once you get to decoding a will written
in binary, you may want to have a brick wall on standby for
head smashing.
Thimbleweed Park never lets go of logic completely,
though, and it’s worth persevering through the harder
puzzles, because there’s a genuinely excellent, smartly
plotted story filled with kooky characters and dramatic
twists. There’s humour too, but it has more of cynical,
sarcastic tone than the original LucasArts adventures.
Ransome epitomises this approach, being a caustic and
thoroughly detestable individual whose shtick is to go
around being nasty to everyone and everything.
In fact, Thimbleweed Park’s biggest flaw is pushing the
characters too far towards this darker edge. Agents Ray and
Ransome are the most interesting characters, but they’re
also too unpleasant to gain much player sympathy. The
other characters, meanwhile, are a bit dull once you get
beyond their jobs and skills. You also can’t interact with the
other playable characters, so there isn’t much camaraderie
between the group.
Fortunately, Thimbleweed Park contains so many
other cranks and weirdos that the lacklustre central cast
doesn’t hurt the game too badly. Meanwhile, the gripping
plot and brain-overloading conundrums make up for the
downplayed humour. Thimbleweed Park may not have
you laughing out loud, but it will keep you entertained.
RICK LANE
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82
GAMES / ANALYSIS
Rhythm games are
rarely noted for their
technological prowess –
they’re usually fairly simple, with a
well-established structure. Rhythm
games only require the player to hit
certain buttons in time to music, and
frame a scoring system around that
concept. They don’t need to render
vast worlds, or feature realistic,
cutting-edge graphics. Most of the
innovation happens on the
hardware side, such as the false
musical instruments used to control
the game. Thumper isn’t your
standard rhythm game, however.
Rather than playing along to your
favourite songs, Thumper sees
players attempting to survive an
audio/visual assault, navigating a
gleaming insectoid creature through
a black, hellish dimension at
blistering speeds. What’s more,
Thumper’s soundscape is created by
the player as they blast along the
track and scythe around its corners.
Conceptually, aesthetically and
audibly, it’s unlike anything else in
the genre, so it’s little surprise to
discover that it’s technologically
unique as well.
Thumper was created by Marc
Flury and Brian Gibson, two
developers who previously worked
at Harmonix (creator of Rock Band
and Dance Central). Flury was the
programmer and code designer on
the project, and when the pair
decided to create Thumper, they
opted to design their own engine
from the ground up. Partly, the duo
wanted to teach themselves engine
design, but it was also an artistic
decision. ‘We just thought that if we
had our own tools, and we could
really customise them, we’d end up
with different, and maybe more
interesting, results,’ Flury explains.
Initially, the duo planned to create
a general-purpose engine, with a
view to using it for multiple games in
the future. ‘Every engine has to have
tonnes of stuff that’s not really genre
specific. You’ve got to have a
renderer, file system, all this kind of
stuff,’ Flury says. However, they soon
found that trying to think in the
vague long-term meant their tech
wasn’t fit for purpose when they
came to use it. ‘I rewrote tonnes of
different parts of the engine many
times … and the best results we
always got were when we did
something specific to the game we
were making.’
Alongside the basic engine
building blocks, Flury and Gibson
began to design specific tools and
technologies for their project. This
work began with their level editor.
‘For Thumper in particular, it’s a
pretty simple game; you’re cruising
Thumper
RICK LANE / THE ENGINE ROOM
Rick Lane goes behind the scenes of this unique rhythm game
Much of Thumper’s
aesthetic and systemic
design derives from its
vertex shader
83
down this one-lane highway, there’s
a stream of visual information and
the audio gameplay is in sync with
it,’ Flury says. ‘The system that was
really effective was just a step-
sequencer – a bunch of different
linear streams of data where we
could sequence gameplay, music and
graphics all together.’ Thumper’s
editor can even be paused and
advanced frame by frame, which
allowed the developers to examine
and alter effects and animations at
the microscopic level.
Seamlessness is a key facet of
Thumper’s design, and one of the
main ways in which Flury and
Gibson wanted to differentiate it
from other rhythm games. Most
rhythm games use a type of grid
structure to represent the music
visually. Initially Thumper adopted a
similar approach, building its world
from squares and cubes. But they
decided this approach was too
conservative for the game they
were trying to make. ‘Brian as an
artist really wanted to explore how
to make things look more seamless
and smooth,’ Flury says.
Their solution was to create a
vertex shader that allowed them to
deform the meshes of static in-game
objects. This approach in turn
enabled them to bend and twist the
central track in real time, so that one
object mesh fitted perfectly with the
next one. ‘This was really key to
making the game feel and look good,’
says Flury, ‘Brian went really far with
this technology, and it’s actually used
for tonnes of stuff in the game, such
as the decorative elements, the
tentacles you see on the side and a lot
of the boss characters.’
The bespoke vertex shader had
a cascade effect on Thumper’s
aesthetics. The team programmed
Thumper so that the game’s normal
vectors, which handle lighting
information, would deform
alongside the object meshes. ‘Then
we could bend any shape and still
make the lighting look nice on it,’
says Flury.
With the normal vectors in place,
they then used reflection maps to
ensure that the game’s reflections
followed suit. In the process, they
discovered the reflection maps lent
Thumper a slick and futuristic look,
and doubled down on them to create
Thumper’s unique, glossy aesthetics.
They topped off this system with
some targeted post-process effects,
such as film grain and bloom. ‘There
are actually two blooms,’ Flury
points out. ‘There’s a wide, soft one,
and a more focused, small one. The
latter is more [computationally]
expensive to perform, but makes it
look much better.’
Thumper’s audio is similarly
unconventional, with no authored
tracks. Instead, there’s an ambient
backing track that the player
punctuates with beats and rhythms
by interacting with objects in the
game world. Most of the audio was
created using the middleware FMOD,
but there are a few interesting
innovations hidden within
Thumper’s soundscape. For example,
the whooshing noise you hear upon
approaching a turn has a random
pitch and timbre that’s never the
same twice. Flury says these types
of parts are added so that they’re
subconscious to the player, but will
make sure they’re not ‘getting tired
of hearing the same thing’.
Thumper was also launched as
a VR-enabled game, but readying
Thumper for VR meant narrowing
the field of view from the developer’s
preferred 150 degrees to around 100.
‘Everything feels closer to you [in VR],
and it feels like you’re moving
slower,’ Flury says. To solve this
problem, Flury and Gibson used their
vertex shader to stretch the game so
that it was twice the length. ‘So, in VR
you’re actually moving through
game world space twice as fast as in
2D, but it feels like you’re going at the
same speed, which is really cool.’
In an age when there are so many
general-purpose tools available to
today’s game developers, Thumper
demonstrates the advantages of
building your own technology,
especially when you’re a small unit
with a clear idea of what kind of
game you plan to make. ‘It’s really
tough hitting the right level of
abstraction in your tools,’ Flury says.
‘At first, I was really trying to recreate
things that were in Unity and stuff
like that; general purpose tools, but
by doing that you lose the one
advantage of having a small team,
which is that you can do a few very
specific jobs really well.’
The bosses and mini-
bosses at the end of certain
levels use the vertex
shader in their animations
Thumper’s normal
vectors are in sync
with the vertex
shader, so light
bounces off objects
in a realistic fashion
Thumper’s editing tool includes step-
sequences, enabling Flury to examine
complex animations frame by frame
84
GAMES / ANALYSIS
Maybe it’s just my Internet
cookies, but it seems I
can’t go for five minutes
lately without seeing a video
about a VR arcade. My social
networks, particularly LinkedIn,
are awash with featurettes about
VR theme parks where you run on
omni-directional treadmills, don
haptic vests to suffer simulated
gunshots and run through mixed-
reality mazes.
Such theme parks undoubtedly
offer a more immersive version of VR
than most people can replicate at
home. The issue is that there aren’t
very many of them. The world’s most
ambitious VR theme park, The Void
(www.thevoid.com), currently only
has two locations – one based at
Madame Tussauds in New York, the
other in Dubai.
Tickets cost approximately £25
per person, per hour and there’s
only one game available to play. It’s
clearly far off breaking through to
the mainstream.
JOE MARTIN’S
Virtual world
Joe Martin asks if virtual reality arcades offer a way for VR to hit the
mainstream, or whether they’re just a diversion with problems of their own
That’s just one side of the
VR-as-a-commercial-attraction coin,
however. More modest VR arcades
are in larger supply and there are
entrepreneurs opening branches in
most major UK cities. Most of them
offer a similar experience to a home
installation and pricing that’s much
more palatable.
VR arcades definitely fill an
interesting niche for people who
want to try VR before they buy, but it
remains to be seen if they can find a
long-term foothold in the market at a
time when even traditional arcades
are struggling. Plus, even if VR
arcades can stick around long
enough, what does that mean for
VR-at-home?
Fiscal reality
Gateway VR is just one of many VR
arcades that have sprung up over the
past year. Owner Andrei Stefan is a
lifelong gamer whose passion for VR
led him to launch Gateway in
September last year as a second job.
He charges approximately £10 an
hour (or £3 for ten minutes) and is
committed to staying open long-
term. Yet success is far from assured,
and he admits he’s yet to break even
on his monthly running costs.
‘In my best month I made about
1,200 LEI (£220), but the future is
looking a lot better,’ he says. ‘I started
out with this scenario in mind, so
thankfully I didn’t have to close
down after two months. Monthly
income has been steadily increasing.’
Gateway VR has been financed so
farby Stefan’s day job as a project
manager for EA, in addition to a
business loan for day-to-day
expenses. It’s a modest venue
compared with The Void – three HTC
Vives, one Oculus Rift, a PSVR and
around 40 games that are all
available at retail.
Even this modest setup was
prohibitively costly, however – Stefan
estimates it cost around £17,000 to
get the business up and running,
with half of that sum spent just on
equipment and £5,000 reserved for
marketing. He tried to keep costs low
by doing the shopfitting himself and
sidestepping the commercial
licences he’s supposed to use.
Commercial licences would be a
significant outgoing, says Stefan.
Like cybercafés and other venues, VR
arcades are supposed to buy monthly
licences for each game and each
machine. The cost is usually around
£10-£15 per game, per machine, per
month, but packages of popular
games can cost much more. With 40
or so games on offer, licensing costs
quickly become untenable –
Games such as
Starseed have
apparently
struggled to catch
on in VR arcades
Buy a haptic vest
and you too can look
this dorky!
85
especially once you factor for other
running costs.
‘I will probably change my
business model to only have a couple
of games available each month,’ says
Stefan. His approach means he has
some insights into the types of
games people prefer, which will
enable him to transition smoothly,
but none of the popular games is
arcade exclusives.
In fact, his most popular game is
Quivr – an archery simulator that’s
still in Steam Early Access. ‘The
games have to be simple and get
people going fast,’ says Stefan.
‘Games such as Onward, ADR1ft
and Call of the Starseed don’t catch
on – there are few people playing
those [games].’
All of which brings us back to the
million dollar question: are enough
people interested in VR arcades to
make them a viable business? My
gut tells me that the economics just
doesn’t stack up, and that VR arcades
may be a distraction from VR’s real
potential, but I also have to remind
myself that many new businesses
don’t turn a profit for a long time.
Maybe the potential
is there, but if that’s
true then it’s a still a
little way off, and the
top problem VR
arcades face is the
same as for VR more
broadly: education.
Stefan has sunk
£5,000 into marketing
so far this year, and
that’s a drop in the
ocean compared with
how much HTC and
Oculus have spent, but growth is
slow. It’s lavish locations such as The
Void that continue to dominate the
discussion, representing VR to many
as an arcane luxury that requires
mazes, treadmills and vests. ‘Digital
marketing sucks,’ says Stefan. ‘People
don’t know what VR really is.’
Follow Joe on Twitter at @JoeThreepwood for real-time updates of onjects he knocks over while exploring virtual worlds.
BUILDING A VR ARCADE
Building a VR arcade isn’t easy. There are
all sorts of extra complications that normal
arcades don’t need to consider, such as safety,
cable management and the cost of extravagant
hardware. Rather than relying on a professional
shopfitter, Andrei Stefan enlisted some friends
and designed Gateway VR himself to keep the
costs down.
1
The first step was to hide the ugly, bare
walls. VR arcades can’t have much in terms
of clutter or furniture, so Andrei spruced up the
room with simple polystyrene panelling, which
would help to cushion any customers who walked
into walls.
4
Gateway VR includes an area for seated VR
experiences too. VR racing is popular with
some customers, says Stefan, but he also says it’s
the main cause of motion sickness for adults. In his
experience, it’s less of a problem for kids.
3
Rather than hiding the PCs completely,
Stefan turned them into decorative features.
Mounting them in the walls also means cables
aren’t spooling around players’ feet, while also
making it easier to choose games.
5
The finished site is clear of trip hazards, with
rubberised floor mats added for comfort and
safety. Space is still an issue, so staff are always
on hand to stop entanglements. The guard dog is
an optional extra.
2
Gateway VR can accommodate up to three
HTC Vive players at once, but Stefan found
the lighthouse sensors would get confused if
there were too many of them. He uses just two
sensors to track all three players at once.
VR treadmills are a
hit on Facebook, but
they’re only found in
the priciest arcades
86
GAMES / ANALYSIS
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86
Rick Lane breaks down the latest indie games
GAMES / ANALYSIS
Oxygen Not Included
DEVELOPER Klei Entertainment / RELEASE Out Now (Early Access Alpha)
As well as currently working on playful platforming game Hot
Lava, talented cherry picker Klei Entertainment is delving into
one of the most complex game styles of all, the colony sim.
Examples of games in this genre include the likes of Dungeon Keeper,
Dwarf Fortress and Prison Architect.
In these games, you construct a base to house your little minions
and help them to prosper while they battle enemies, the elements, the
environment and their own needs and desires. Oxygen Not Included
sees you controlling a team of astronauts and scientists attempting to
establish a colony inside an asteroid.
You need to construct rooms and place useful objects in them for
your colonists, and ensure they have a plentiful supply of food and
water to keep them alive. However, you also need to supply them with
oxygen, while battling with a detailed gas simulation.
There are multiple gases inside the asteroid, all moving around
according to their density. Some, such as Oxygen, are vital to your
survival, while others such as Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide, are
hazardous. Much of the game concerns managing these gases,
successfully mining for Oxygen without accidentally hitting a CO2 seam
and suffocating all your colonists. Klei has proved to be a master of
stylistic flair and systemic depth, but creating a great colony sim is a
challenge, creating a unique story for the player via detailed mechanics
working in unison.
The Long Journey Home
DEVELOPER Daedalic Entertainment / RELEASE TBA
Once rarer than pulsars, we’re now spoiled for space
simulators that let us explore vast galaxies and procedurally
generated alien worlds. The Long Journey Home is another
game within this vein, but while most space sims are happy to let the
player make their own fun, The Long Journey Home has a more specific
goal in mind. The clue is in the title. You control a spaceship that, after an
exploratory mission gone awry, finds itself stuck on the far side of the
galaxy, and must find a way back to Earth.
Of course, the emphasis is on the journey rather than the destination.
As you gradually wend your way toward our solar system, you’ll have
the opportunity to explore hundreds of procedurally generated planets,
meet up with alien races and delve into mysterious, ancient ruins from
lost civilisations.
Indeed, The Long Journey Home is less of a trading and combat
simulator, and more of an RPG, with emphasis placed on the character
of its galaxy and the creatures you’ll encounter while exploring. The
game plays from a 2D, top-down perspective, designed to make
navigation easier. Meanwhile, the game’s script is being penned by
none other than former Custom PC columnist Richard Cobbett.
Many of the game’s more detailed systems are still under wraps, but
a more storied space exploration game could be what the genre needs,
after No Man’s Sky proved that a good procedural algorithm isn’t
enough to make a great game.
87
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parum, sunt harum sit, ut ut
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87
The Pedestrian
DEVELOPER Skookum Arts LLC / RELEASE Summer
Side-scrolling puzzle-platformer The Pedestrian has a unique
art style based on signs (as in road signs, not messages from
the afterlife). You play as one of the silhouetted people in
the aforementioned signs, and you have the unique ability to teleport
between the aforementioned signs to move through the game world.
The Pedestrian is an absolutely gorgeous-looking game. Its signs
form part of realistic-looking environments that are colourfully
rendered and fully animated. However, there’s more to The Pedestrian
than a simple aesthetic gimmick. As the game progresses, you learn to
connect signs together in different ways, transforming the game into a
dynamic jigsaw puzzle in which you can build your own solutions to
each level.
The game’s level-building concept turns what would otherwise be
a pretty but pedestrian platformer into a much more intriguing prospect.
There are concerns, however, that giving the player so much freedom
over crafting specific challenges around the sign-hopping concept risks
making the game too easy.
In addition, there’s the question of how Skookum Arts will evolve
the concept over the duration of the game. There are multiple
environments to explore, ranging from busy sidewalks to construction
sites. However, the way these environments tie into the game’s
mechanics will ultimately be more important than how they look.
Mothergunship
DEVELOPER Terrible Posture Games / RELEASE TBA
Mothergunship is a ‘bullet hell’ game, which basically means a
first-person shooter that’s overdosed on horse testosterone.
The eponymous bullets are usually the size of large dogs,
and pretty much everything fires them – the enemies, the environment,
even the bullets probably fire smaller bullets that nip at your heels.
In Mothergunship, your character is abducted by a star fleet of alien
robots, and it’s your job to stop them using, yep, you’ve guessed it,
bullets! The game adopts a semi-random structure. There’s a
progressive series of levels, but each one is randomly generated and
never the same twice.
The enemies are also randomly generated, and a most of them are
basically guns. There are walls made of guns, towers made of guns,
guns made of guns. Oh, and there are fixed bosses, most of which are
the size of a house, and probably gun-shaped.
Mothergunship is all about momentum; you’ll need to dodge dozens
of projectiles at any given moment, while firing hundreds back at your
alien overlords. In an interesting twist, Mothergunship enables you to
construct your own weapons in-game, via an extensive crafting system
that lets you build pretty much anything you want, as long as it’s a gun.
Terrible Posture Games looks likely to deliver on its ‘bullet hell’
promise, but we’ll have to wait and see whether it can keep the
relentless barrage of ballistics fun for the entire game’s duration.
Behold the Kickmen
DEVELOPER Size Five Games / RELEASE Summer
Behold the Kickmen is a football game made by a developer
who doesn’t like football. That developer is Dan Marshall,
creator of randomly generated steal ‘em up The Swindle.
Behold the Kickmen takes the lighthearted style of
the 1990s classic Sensible Soccer and adds a good
dose of wry humour to the proceedings.
Your objective in Behold the Kickmen is to get
hold of the ball and get past ‘the enemy’ in order to
‘do a goal’. If you do more goals than the enemy,
your team wins.
Marshall initially pitched Behold the Kickmen
as a joke, but the idea proved so popular, he
committed to making it a full game. This decision meant moving beyond
the concept of a wilfully ignorant take on the great British kickabout. In
the final version, players are able to perform screen-shakingly
powerful shots and tackles that leave scorch marks
on the ground. There’s also a full career mode, in
which doing goals earns the player points that can
be used to upgrade their squad.
Behold the Kickmen aims to be a fun distraction and not much else,
but its unique humour and style piqued our interest, and there’s now
much more to the game than was initially planned.
88
FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION
Back in March, AMD provided what many enthusiasts
have been desiring since the introduction of Intel’s Core
architecture a decade ago – a competitive range of CPUs.
Ryzen might not match Intel’s equivalents in all areas, but
it offers superb value, usually outperforming much more expensive
Intel CPUs for less cash, particularly in heavily multi-threaded tasks.
However, launching an entire CPU ecosystem was never going to
be easy, and there were certainly some early teething troubles. Intel’s
latest motherboards are able to handle memory speeds well in
excess of 3000MHz, but getting above this frequency with a Ryzen
system is tricky. Only a few DIMM kits are supported at higher
frequencies, which does limit Ryzen’s performance, as it scales well
with increased memory speeds. There were also stability issues,
problems with the supply of motherboards and a continuing lack of
AM4-compatible coolers and adaptor kits.
This month, though, we’re not only looking at a bunch of AM4-
compatible all-in-one liquid coolers (see p40), but this feature also
focuses on avoiding any problems when building a Ryzen system,
from tackling cooling to memory speed, plus we’ll be highlighting
some tips and tricks to fine-tune your Ryzen system.
ANTONY LEATHER SHOWS YOU HOW TO BUILD
AND OVERCLOCK AN 8-CORE RYZEN RIG
BUILD A £975
AMD RYZEN
8-CORE PC
89
There are some key choices to make
when building a Ryzen system, in
terms of features, cooling and
hardware support. There’s a number of
chipsets from which to choose, some of
which don’t support overclocking. Some
chipsets also have more features, while
others allow motherboards to retail for much
cheaper prices. You’ll also need to factor
cooling into the equation, making sure
your CPU cooler is compatible with your
motherboard, as older coolers may not fit on
the new AM4 socket. Memory support isn’t
quite as wide-ranging as on Intel systems
either, and you’ll need to set up your system
correctly too.
CPUs
There are three factors to consider when
buying a Ryzen CPU. Firstly, there’s the choice
between an X-edition and standard CPU – for
example, between the Ryzen 7 1700X and
Ryzen 7 1700. The X-edition chips are
supposedly speed-binned and could yield
higher overclocks, while also offering faster
stock frequencies and higher XFR boost
speeds. Chips without the ‘X’ suffix are priced
much lower than their X-edition counterparts,
though, and often have lower TDPs too.
The next consideration is clock speed.
Chips without the ‘X’ suffix have lower
frequencies, meaning they’re perhaps not
ideal for running at stock speed, depending
on your requirements. That said, in our own
testing, the Ryzen 7 1700 is often able to
overclock just as far as the Ryzen 7 1700X and
1800X and costs considerably less money, so
it’s by far our favourite Ryzen 7 CPU if you’re
up for a bit of overclocking.
Finally, you need to consider cores and
threads. With cache levels remaining the
same from the Ryzen 7 1800X all the way
down to the Ryzen 5 1500X quad-core chips,
the main difference between the Ryzen 5 and
7 chips is the number of cores. If you’ll be
doing a reasonable amount of heavily multi-
threaded work, such as video encoding with
Handbrake, or 3D rendering, then you’ll want
to opt for a Ryzen 7 CPU. These chips can
trounce Intel’s 6-core equivalent CPUs for
lower prices, and give the far more expensive
Core i7-6900K a run for its money too.
CHIPSETS
Assuming you’ll be up for some overclocking,
there are just two chipsets from which to
choose when it comes to micro-ATX and ATX
motherboards. The X370 chipset offers the
ability to use both 16x PCI-E slots in an 8x/8x
multi-GPU setup, and it has more native
USB 3 ports and SATA 6Gbps ports than the
B350 chipset too.
However, motherboard manufacturers
have latched on to X370 as being the
premium chipset, so motherboards can cost
anywhere between £150 and over £300.
Boards with the B350 chipset, on the other
hand, can retail for under £100, yet they still
have enough ports to cater for most
enthusiasts, including people who want to
use a super-fast NVMe M.2 SSD. Small form
factor fans will be pleased to know that all
three overclocking-capable chipsets will
be finding their way onto mini-ITX
motherboards soon too, including the X300
chipset, which has been designed with small
motherboards in mind.
MEMORY
Every motherboard we’ve tested so far has
managed to get 3000MHz and faster kits
up to 2933MHz, but only modules with
Samsung B-die modules, such as GeIL’s
expensive Evo X kits and a selection of GeIL
memory, have managed higher frequencies.
That’s unfortunate, as Ryzen’s Infinity Fabric
high-bandwidth interconnect is synchronised
to the memory frequency, so lower memory
speed can limit performance.
Thankfully, AMD is taking steps to improve
the situation. In the latest Ryzen community
update on AMD’s website, the company has
been talking about updating the AMD Generic
Encapsulated Software Architecture
(AGESA). The changes will particularly relate
to BIOS updates, specifically microcode
included in the BIOS file. Many of the latest
releases include an updated microcode that
can decrease DRAM latency by 6ns and
remove the need to use the High-Precision
Event Timer (HPET) when using AMD’s Ryzen
Master overclocking utility.
This particular update is already rolling
out, but more importantly, at the end of the
community update, AMD states that it’s
working on a release that specifically
addresses overclocked DDR4 memory.
This update could signal better memory
compatibility and faster speeds on the
horizon, so it’s worth checking motherboard
manufacturers’ websites during May to see
if there are new BIOS files with a second
AGESA update that improves memory
compatibility.
COOLING
There are a few considerations when it
comes to cooling an AMD Ryzen system.
Firstly, you’ll want to ensure that a stock-
speed CPU has enough headroom for
AMD’s XFR boost technology to fully extend,
and if you’re overclocking your CPU, you’ll
want your cooling to be powerful enough to
keep it in check.
If your CPU will spend a lot of time under
heavy multi-threaded loads, you’ll also want
to consider bolstering your case’s cooling to
provide more airflow over the motherboard.
We’ve opted for this month’s 120mm all-in-
one liquid cooler Labs winner – ARCTIC’s
Liquid Freezer 120 (see p41), which managed
a delta T of 35°C in our AM4 test system, with
a 67°C temperature reported in AMD’s Ryzen
Master software. As we established in our
Ryzen coverage last month, the Ryzen 7 1700
we’re using also lacks the 20°C temperature
offset of the X-edition CPUs, which would be
reporting temperatures bordering on 90°C.
Dropping down to ARCTIC’s Freezer 33 air
cooler saw the delta T rise from 35°C to 42°C
and the air cooler was much noisier than the
liquid cooler too, but it does show that a £30
CPU cooler is still more than capable of
keeping an overclocked Ryzen CPU cool.
What’s more, if you’re running your CPU at
stock speed, the lower temperatures
theoretically shouldn’t interfere with AMD’s
Precision Boost or XFR technologies.
We put this to the test in Cinebench using
a Ryzen 7 1700 at stock speed to allow
Precision Boost and XFR to kick in where
possible, and whether we used the multi-
threaded or single-core tests, despite higher
temperatures on the Freezer 33, the scores
were either identical or extremely close to
the scores when using the Liquid Freezer 120.
TEMPERATURE
012 24 36 48
35°C
42°C
ARCTIC
Freezer 33
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
Delta T (overclocked)
Lower is better
Higher is better
CINEBENCH R15
0400 800 1,200 1,600
1,424
1,419
ARCTIC
Freezer 33
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
Multi-threaded test
Single-core test
040 80 120 160
140
140
ARCTIC
Freezer 33
ARCTIC Liquid
Freezer 120
IMPORTANT RYZEN DECISIONS
90
FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 /
£295 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
Our own findings have shown that the Ryzen
7 1700 is usually able to overclock to at least
3.8GHz across all cores, while only requiring
a small increase in voltage, which is 800MHz
above its base frequency. This overclock
effectively makes the chip faster than Intel’s
more expensive Core i7-6850K in our
heavily multi-threaded tests, and it can snap
at the heels of the Core i7-6900K too, which
costs over three times as much money. The
Ryzen 1700’s stock frequency is a little low,
though, even if it does allow for a super-low
65W TDP for an 8-core CPU.
As a result, the X-edition CPUs are better
for running at stock speed, but as we’ll be
overclocking our CPU, the Ryzen 7 1700 is by
far the best option, retailing for around £200
less than the Ryzen 7 1800X.
Alternative CPUs
The Ryzen 5 1600X still offers an impressive
count of six cores and 12 threads for £250,
so if you don’t mind losing a couple of cores,
you’ll still get multi-threaded performance
that’s more than a match for Intel’s Core
i7-7700K.
MOTHERBOARD
Gigabyte AB350-
Gaming 3 / £104 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.cclonline.com
In order to achieve a reasonable
overclock, you’ll need to spend at least
£100 on an AM4 motherboard with
adequate power circuitry cooling. For
example, Gigabyte’s cheaper AB350-
Gaming isn’t particularly adept at
overclocking, but the Gigabyte AB350-
Gaming 3 has been able to get to the limit of
our Ryzen 7 1700, and while we wouldn’t
recommend applying a large overclock 24/7,
the board will be perfectly able to deal with a
reasonable overclock without breaking a
sweat. It also has a 4x PCI-E 3 NVMe M.2 port,
plenty of SATA and USB ports, plus it’s one of
the cheapest boards we’ve tested to offer
Realtek ALC1220 on-board audio.
Alternative motherboards
If you want to get the best overclock out of
your Ryzen CPU, the Asus Prime X370-Pro
costs around £50 more, but has better
power circuitry and heatsinks. If you’re
looking to build a smaller system, there are
several micro-ATX AM4 boards from which
to choose already, and mini-ITX offerings
are promised soon too.
MEMORY
16GB Corsair Vengeance
LPX 3000MHz DDR4 /
£115 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
As memory support above 3000MHz is
currently so limited on AM4 motherboards,
you’ll unfortunately need to spend a lot of
money to acquire a compatible kit that’s
faster than this frequency. Ryzen does
benefit from faster memory speeds, but to
keep our build at a reasonable price, we’ve
opted for some tried and tested 3000MHz
memory from Corsair.
Alternative memory
If you want to up the ante and get as much
performance as possible from your memory
by speeding up AMD’s Infinity Fabric, you
can opt for G.Skill’s TridentZ memory. These
modules use Samsung B-Die chips that
work at over 3000MHz on most AM4
motherboards. The downside is that the
cheapest kit costs £35 more than our Corsair
Vengeance LPX kit.
GRAPHICS CARD
OcUK GeForce GTX
1060 Reference Design
3072MB / £180 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 is a fantastic mid-
range GPU that’s a great choice for gaming at
decent settings at 1,920 x 1,080. It can handle
2,560 x 1,440 too, although you’ll likely need
to dial back the settings in very demanding
games. For instance, in Deus Ex, which uses
a lot of graphics card memory, we found the
minimum frame rate dipped below 20fps
at this resolution at Very High settings.
However, the 3GB model is generally a great
budget graphics card choice and will save
you around £40 compared with the 6GB
model. It’s also very power-efficient, so it
doesn’t need a fancy cooler, meaning
you can save some more money by
opting for a design with a standard
blower cooler, such as our sample from
Overclockers UK.
AMD RYZEN PC SHOPPING LIST
91
Alternative graphics cards
The 6GB model of the GTX 1060 is slightly
more potent for gaming at 2,560 x 1,440, but
AMD’s Radeon RX 580 (see p23 ) is the best
contender in this price league. If you want to
play games at higher resolutions, Asus’ Strix
GTX 1070 OC is a cracking card for gaming at
2,560 x 1,440 at high settings, while Nvidia’s
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will cope with the
fierce demands of 4K gaming.
CASE AND FAN
In Win 303 / £80 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.novatech.co.uk
Noiseblocker BS
XL1 120mm fan / £7 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.overclockers.co.uk
In Win’s recent cases have rarely missed the
mark, and as well as some sublime premium
offerings, it also makes some great, unique-
looking affordable cases. The In Win 303 is a
great blank canvas to create your ideal rig. It
sports a tempered glass side panel and
plenty of room for expansion, including
water-cooling support. There’s only one
downside, which is that it comes with just one
fan, but we’ve added a Noiseblocker BS XL1
120mm fan to the equation for £7 inc VAT,
which can work in tandem with the two fans
on our all-in-one liquid cooler.
Alternative cases
NZXT’s S340 is a decent case if you want to
save yourself a few quid, while Cooler
Master’s Cosmos SE and MasterCase Maker
5t are great choices if you’re looking to
spend more money. There are already some
micro-ATX AM4 motherboards too, which
we’ll hopefully be reviewing soon, so it’s
also possible to build a smaller Ryzen PC
with a micro-ATX case such as the Fractal
Design Mini C.
CPU COOLER
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer
120 / £57 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.aquatuning.co.uk
The winner of this month’s 120mm all-in-
one liquid cooler Labs test is ARCTIC’s very
reasonably priced Liquid Freezer 120. It’s
quiet at low and high speed, offers excellent
cooling, costs less than £60 and it’s easy to
install. Eight-core Ryzen CPUs do dish out
some heat when they’re overclocked, but our
tests showed that they’re easily tamed by
most 120mm liquid coolers.
Alternative CPU coolers
Air coolers are still a viable option for cooling
Ryzen CPUs, and ARCTIC’s Freezer 33 is
compatible with AM4 and offers enough
cooling headroom to keep an overclocked
Ryzen 7 1700 in check.
POWER SUPPLY
Corsair CX450M
450W / £50 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
Even if you’re gunning for a maximum
overclock, there’s little need to opt for any
PSU with a higher capacity than 450W with a
Ryzen 7 1700 and GTX 1060 3GB, particularly TOTAL £975 inc VAT
as the latter isn’t compatible with SLI, so you
couldn’t add a second GPU later anyway.
Even when overclocked and under full load,
our test system drew less than 320W, leaving
plenty of headroom. We’ve opted for
Corsair’s CX450M, which is semi-modular,
enabling you to remove unwanted cables to
build a cleaner-looking PC.
SSD
250GB Samsung
850 Evo / £87 inc VAT
SUPPLIER www.ebuyer.com
We consider an SSD to be an essential
component of any PC these days, and a
250GB model is a good starting point.
Samsung’s 850 Evo offers some of the
best speeds you’ll see from a 2.5in SATA
SSD, it has an excellent warranty and
comes with Samsung’s Magician software,
while the capacity of 250GB gives you
enough room for Windows, a few games
and some programs.
Alternative SSDs
As well as considering a hard disk for
additional storage, there are larger versions
of the 850 Evo to consider, with the 500GB
model retailing for around £150, which
would be our next step if you have more
cash. Of course, the ultimate choice for
solid state storage comes in the form of
Samsung’s 960 Evo, which is a super-fast
M.2 PCI-E SSD that can dish out data at over
3,000MB/sec. However, the 500GB model
will set you back nearly double the price of
the 850 Evo.
ELITE
NEW ENTRY
P64
92
FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION
1
Lift the lever by the CPU socket,
carefully insert the CPU with the
triangle on the CPU matching the triangle on
the socket, then push down the lever to lock it
in place. You’ll then need to fit the ARCTIC
AM4 adaptor, which has essentially the
same design as the original AMD cooling
adaptor, just with a couple of extra holes for
the wider AM4 socket. This adaptor clips
onto the pump section by slotting over
notches in the base before twisting to lock
in place.
2
Arctic recommends positioning the
inlet and outlet tubes on the right
side of the pump as you install it onto the
motherboard. This setup allows for a
greater distance between the pump and
the radiator, which makes installation easier.
3
If your motherboard has a dedicated
pump header then use it for the
ARCTIC cooler’s pump instead of a normal
fan header. This setup can ensure that your
pump works properly, and also give you
control over the pump’s speed and noise,
even if it uses a 3-pin connector.
4
With the motherboard out of the case,
orientate the CPU cooler’s tubes so
that they’re under as little pressure as
possible, with the radiator in the same
position it would be mounted in the case. It’s
important to have the tubes at the base of the
radiator to help bleed air from the loop, and
ensure the pump doesn’t become noisy
because there are air bubbles passing
through it. You can then install the memory in
the second and fourth slots to enable dual-
channel mode.
5
Remove the stock case fan so that you
place the cooler in this mount instead.
It’s worth relocating the stock fan to the base
to add some extra airflow, so keep it to hand
with its screws.
6
Install the motherboard in the case
using the screws included with the
case. You can then go ahead and install the
radiator using the long screws included in
the box, using one of the fans at the rear to
act as an exhaust (with the back of the fan
facing the back of the case), drawing air
through the radiator.
7
Now pass the coolant tubes under the
radiator so they’re out of sight, then
install the second fan as an intake (with the
front of the fan facing the front of the case) on
the front of the radiator. Make sure there are
no kinks in the tubing – it’s worth checking
the tubing again after a lengthy gaming
session to make sure the heat hasn’t allowed
the rubber to kink.
8
Install the stock case fan and your
Noiseblocker fan in the base of the
case, making sure that one of them points at
your graphics card. This setup will provide
extra cooling for both your graphics card and
your motherboard and prevent too much
negative air pressure.
9
Install the Samsung solid state drive
into the drive mount located next to the
motherboard, and then install the graphics
card in the motherboard’s top 16x PCI-E slot.
The latter has a side-mounted 8-pin power
socket, so you’ll need to route the PSU cable
for it carefully around the back, and through a
routing hole by the motherboard, to make the
interior look tidy.
1
4
2
5
3
6
BUILDING THE PC
93
10
The PSU has several modular cables –
we won’t be needing the Molex
connectors, as the In Win 303’s illuminated
front panel is powered by a SATA connector,
so any Molex cables can be removed to
save space.
11
Now go ahead and install the PSU.
We’ve pointed the cooling fan into the
case to help expel air out the rear, although
there are vents in the rear side panel too.
12
The roof of the case is an ideal place to
stow cables, and you can use a few
cable ties to gather them together and
secure them in place.
13
Finally, connect the appropriate cables
from the PSU to the SSD, graphics card
SYSTEM
SETUP
SETTING UP THE EFI
As Ryzen is a new platform, configuring
a system currently takes a little more
fiddling than on your average Intel
system. We recommend installing
Windows first, when the system is
running at stock, default settings, and
then tweaking. For starters, setting the
correct memory speed and timings is
usually best done manually. MSI and
Asus’ implementation of XMP are very hit
and miss, with a miss resulting in failed
boots, while Gigabyte’s implantation of
XMP can result in EFI errors that result
in failed boots. Thankfully, you can
circumvent these issues by avoiding XMP
profiles entirely and manually inputting
your memory settings instead.
On the Gigabyte board used in our build,
you’ll need to head to the M.I.T section
and then go to Advanced Frequency
Settings. This section is also where you’ll
find the CPU multiplier, but we’ll just be
getting the memory up and running first.
Set the correct memory speed next to
System Memory Multiplier – in the case of
3000MHz memory, this setting will be
2933MHz, thanks to the divider. On some
boards, you can bump up this figure to
3000MHz by increasing the base clock a
little, but this option isn’t available on the
board we’re using.
Now go to Advanced Memory Settings
and head into the Memory Sub Timings
sections and enter the correct memory
timings, which will be printed on the box
for your memory, or on the DIMMs
themselves. Next, head to the Advanced
Voltage Settings section and input the
correct memory voltage, which is 1.35V
in our case.
Finally, press F10 to save and exit, then
head into Windows to make sure your
efforts have succeeded, using CPU-Z
(downloadable from www.cpuid.com).
For some reason, CPU-Z currently reports
the CAS latency timing as being 16, when
we’ve definitely set it to 15 in the EFI.
Strangely, when we lower it to 14,
CPU-Z then reports 14, so it’s possibly
just a bug with the program, as all the
other timings are reported correctly.
Either way, the system should work fine
at these settings.
and motherboard. We routed the awkward
graphics card cable underneath it near the
fan then back out of the case in the middle
cable-routing hole.
7
9
11
8
10
12
13
94
FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION
POWER PROFILES
Windows 10’s default Balanced power profile
(go to Power Options in the Windows Control
Panel) can reduce the performance of Ryzen
CPUs by causing longer delays between
frequency changes.
As a fix, AMD recently released updated
chipset drivers that you can download from
http://support.amd.com. These include a
new power profile for Windows 10 called AMD
Ryzen Balanced. This profile cuts power use
compared with the High performance profile,
but with similar performance.
RYZEN MASTER
A new version of AMD’s Ryzen Master
overclocking utility has since been launched,
which improves on the original in a few ways,
such as not requiring the High Precision Event
Timer to be used, which could impact on
performance, plus AMD has ironed out a
few bugs with temperature reporting.
However, there are still one or two snags.
For instance, while Ryzen Master indicated the
correct memory frequency on our system, and
allows you to change it with a restart, it fails to
actually apply that memory speed change
once you’ve rebooted. The key options (vcore
and CPU frequency) do work, though, and
most of the time, you don’t even need to
restart, but you’ll still need set the correct
memory speed and timings in the EFI.
Overclocking the CPU in Ryzen Master is a
simple case of raising the CPU clock ratio or
multiplier, and then applying the correct vcore.
We’re aiming for a 3.8GHz CPU frequency,
which will be applied across all eight cores
compared to the lowly base frequency of just
3000MHz. Ryzen Master can be quite useful
for overclocking, as small adjustments to the
vcore and CPU frequency don’t need a reboot.
Start by clicking on one of the profile buttons
at the bottom of the window, which will allow
you to change the settings. You then just need
to set the CPU frequency to 3.8GHz and the
vcore to 1.3V, and click Apply. With big changes,
you might be asked to reboot, but if you decide
to continue tweaking then it’s a useful tool.
To make sure the overclock is stable, run
version 26.6 of Prime95 from www.
mersenneforum.org and run the smallfft test
for 20 minutes, followed by a run of the video
encoding test in the Custom PC RealBench
suite (www.asus.com/campaign/Realbench),
while keeping an eye on the temperature and
clock speed using Ryzen Master. If it overheats
or crashes, you’ll need to drop the frequency or
increase the voltage a little, but it’s likely you’ll
be able to push the frequency a little higher or
reduce the voltage further – these settings
should work on most systems.
MSI AFTERBURNER
The GTX 1060 3GB is a good overclocker, so
it’s definitely worth pushing up the GPU core
and memory frequencies to boost gaming
performance. Download MSI Afterburner
version 4.3.0 from www.guru3d.com, then
increase the power and temperature limits to
maximum. Sadly, the fan profile didn’t allow us
to switch off the reference blower fan under
low loads, but it was still surprisingly quiet,
even in games.
Now set the GPU core to have an additional
175MHz and the memory clock to have an
extra 500MHz. These figures are fairly
conservative, so you may be able to get some
higher frequencies out of your card. Download
GPU-Z (www.techpowerup.com/gpuz) to
confirm the clock speeds have been applied.
Then, to check for stability, run Unigine Valley
(https://unigine.com/products/valley) for 20
minutes and check the temperature in MSI
Afterburner to ensure the GPU stays below
75°C under load. Any temperature approaching
80°C can result in frequency throttling.
PERFORMANCE
With the overclock applied, we saw decent
gains in all our benchmarks. The CPC
RealBench system score rose from 157,239 to
174,631, which is faster than the overclocked
system score of the £600 Intel Core
i7-6850K. The overclocked Cinebench score
of 1,604 was nearly as fast as the overclocked
score of Intel’s £1,000 Core i7-6900K chip too,
and 600 points higher than an overclocked
Core i7-7700K. The game benchmarks saw
between 10-15 per cent increases in frame
rates too, with the minimum frame rate in The
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt rising from 62fps to 70fps,
while the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided minimum
rose from 41fps to 45fps. Power consumption
did rise as a result, but only by 11W at idle and
103W under full load.
GIMP IMAGE EDITING
HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING
CINEBENCH R15
HEAVY MULTITASKING
013,000 26,000 39,000 52,000
48,802
42,286
CPC Ryzen PC
0130,000 260,000 390,000 520,000
478,620
425,937
CPC Ryzen PC
0450 900 1,350 1,800
1,604
1,420
CPC Ryzen PC
045,000 90,000 135,000 180,000
153,068
144,655
CPC Ryzen PC
SYSTEM SCORE
050,000 100,000 150,000 200,000
174,631
157,239
CPC Ryzen PC
FALLOUT 4
1,920 x 1,080, Ultra Detail, TAA
Stock speed Overclocked
Stock speed Overclocked
CPC REALBENCH 2015
025 50 75 100
fps68
fps56
fps61
fps50
CPC Ryzen PC
THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT
1,920 x 1,080, High detail, Hairworks off
025 50 75 100
fps81
fps70
fps70
fps62
CPC Ryzen PC
DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED
1,920 x 1,080, Very High Detail, DX11
Idle
025 50 75 100
fps54
fps45
fps49
fps41
CPC Ryzen PC
Stock speed min Stock speed avg
Overclocked avgOverclocked min
POWER CONSUMPTION
020 40 60 80
65W
54W
CPC Ryzen PC
Load
080 160 240 320
316W
213W
CPC Ryzen PC
You should be able to run all your CPU cores at 3.8GHz with a 1.3V vcore. You can check for stability by stress
testing with Prime95’s smallfft test
FOR THE WIN / COMPETITION
95
WIN! A Fractal Design
CPU cooler and
power supply
O ur good pals at Fractal Design are offering
two great prizes to a lucky Custom PC
reader, with both an all-in-one liquid
cooler and a 750W power supply up for grabs.
Fractal Design Celsius S24
The Celsius series builds upon proven technology,
using premium sound-dampening materials to
deliver extreme cooling ability with minimum noise
output. Its smart dual-mode speed controls are
simple and robust, with no need for additional
software. Both fan and pump speeds can also be
managed by an intelligent auto mode or switched to
PWM mode for precise user control.
For true enthusiasts, the satisfaction of a clean
and efficient build can never be overstated, and the
Celsius makes this easier than ever to achieve, with
an integrated fan hub and concealed cable routing.
The Celsius S24 features a 240mm radiator, along
with a pair of Fractal’s Dynamic X2 GP-12 PWM fans,
and supports all the major CPU sockets, including
LGA115x, LGA2011x, AM2/+, AM3/+, FM1, FM2/+,
FM3/+ and even AMD’s new AM4 socket.
Email your answer to competition@custompcmag.org.uk, with ‘Fractal Competition 166’ in the Subject line.
Closing date 15 June, 2017. See www.dennis.co.uk/comp/terms for the full competition rules.
Fractal Design Integra M 750W
Fractal Design’s Integra M Series power supply units
feature excellent electrical performance, including 80
Plus Bronze certified efficiency. The modular flat cable
system allows for a clean installation, while the short
140mm length makes for easy installation in small
computer cases, and the extra-long ATX12V cable
accommodates modern cases with bottom PSU mounts.
Integra M PSUs also include a temperature-controlled
120mm fan for reduced noise and optimum cooling.
To be in with a chance of winning these prizes, simply
answer the question below:
QUESTION: What’s another word for Celsius, when
talking about degrees of temperature?
A. Centigrade B. Fahrenheit C. Rankine
96
GARETH HALFACREE’S
Hobby tech
The latest tips, tricks and news in the world of computer hobbyism,
from Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Android to retro computing
S
ay what you will about the
Raspberry Pi Foundation, it’s not an
organisation that likes to keep still.
Not long after the highly successful launch of
the £4 (inc VAT) Raspberry Pi Zero single-
board computer (SBC) at the tail end of 2015,
it followed up with a revised model adding in
a miniature camera serial interface (CSI)
connector for compatibility with the Pi
Camera Module and Pi NoIR Camera Module.
Now it’s at it again, but the shift is rather more
fundamental: it’s added wireless support to
the Raspberry Pi range for the first time.
The Pi Zero W, then, isn’t simply a revision
of the Pi Zero, unlike the model with the
added CSI connector. It’s an entirely new
model in the family, and one that’s being sold
alongside the original Pi Zero at over twice
the price. Initially, that price appears to be
poor value. Fundamentally, the Pi Zero W is
still a Pi Zero.
It still has the 40-pin general-purpose
input-output (GPIO) header that’s common
to all mainstream Pi models, and it’s
unpopulated to keep down costs. It also has
the CSI connector of the latest revision, along
with 512MB of RAM and a single-core ARM
Cortex-A7 processor running at a frequency
of 900MHz. As with the Pi Zero, there’s also a
micro-SD slot for storage, a micro-USB
connection for power and peripherals and a
mini-HDMI port for video. It’s still roughly the
size of a tin of gum too.
The only real change, then, lies in the tiny
and shiny BCM43438 radio chip found on the
upper surface of the Pi Zero W. Identical to the
chip found on the Raspberry Pi 3, it’s a four-
mode radio – there’s support for 2.4GHz
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 (Bluetooth Classic),
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and there’s
also an FM receiver which is sadly
inaccessible. In short, it finally connects the
Pi Zero to the wider world, without sacrificing
its single USB accessory port to house a
separate dongle.
There’s another noteworthy feature in the
Pi Zero W’s design too: where the Raspberry
Pi 3 uses a compact chip antenna, found on
the upper-left corner of the board, there’s no
antenna in sight on the Pi Zero W.
Instead, the circuitboard itself forms
what’s known as a ground plane antenna. It’s
designed using intellectual property from
Proant AB and it’s visible as a triangular cavity
in the board’s ground plane, with a few
resistors in place at the tip.
It’s an undeniably clever design, but it
seems hard to believe that it could be as
effective as a ‘real’ antenna. Testing soon put
my mind at rest: running the Pi Zero W in my
top-floor office, I measured the signal
REVIEW
Pi Zero W
CUSTOMISATION / HOBBY TECH
It may look just like the Pi Zero, but the new
Pi Zero W is much more useful thanks to
integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
more than doubled the price, with the Pi
Zero W retailing at £9.60 inc VAT.
Make no mistake, that’s still a ridiculously
cheap price for a fully functional
microcomputer, but for anyone on a tight
budget who doesn’t need the USB port, a Pi
Zero and a cheap USB Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
dongle (which cost from £1.50 VAT-free via
www.aliexpress.com and other Chinese
retailers) offers a lower-cost way of achieving
effectively the same feature set.
The Pi Zero W is available from the usual
Raspberry Pi-affiliated retailers, although like
its predecessor, stock is frustratingly limited
to one unit per customer – quashing any
dreams you may have had of using the Pi
Zero W to build a smart home on the cheap,
at least until supply begins to meet demand.
97
strength (in negative decibels from a ‘perfect’
signal) to all the wireless access points it could
find; I then recorded the same information for
the Raspberry Pi 3 with its chip antenna.
In every case except one, the ground plane
antenna of the Pi Zero W won out over the
chip antenna of the Pi 3; even in that last case,
it equalled the reception strength of the
competition. It isn’t going to make a massive
difference in truly marginal cases – we’re
talking about a gain of two or three decibels
at best – but it’s certainly no downgrade, and
for anyone who needs more range, there are
unpopulated solder pads for a U.FL connector,
which would allow the use of a high-gain
external antenna.
A bigger surprise came while testing the
power draw. Naturally, having a radio on board
means an increase in power draw over a
radio-free version, but the actual difference
is extremely small.
When idle but while connected to a
wireless network, the Pi Zero W draws 0.1A,
compared to the original Pi Zero’s 0.08A
using the same power supply. Data
transmission bumps up this figure to 0.13A,
but it’s still a surprisingly small increase.
The only real downside of the Pi Zero W
is its price. The original Pi Zero grabbed
headlines with its £4 inc VAT price tag. It
was priced low enough for The MagPi to be
cover-mounted one on each print issue for
the device’s launch, but adding the radio has
As with the Pi Zero, the Pi Zero W needs micro-USB OTG and mini-HDMI adaptors to get you up and running
Pi Zero W Raspberry Pi 3
WIRELESS RECEPTION STRENGTH
(DB FROM PERFECT SIGNAL)
0 -25 -50 -75 -100
Access point 9
Access point 8
Access point 7
Access point 6
Access point 5
Access point 4
Access point 3
Access point 2
Access point 1 -50
-54
-52
-54
-51
-56
-71
-75
-74
-77
-76
-82
-72
-83
-77
-85
-85
-85
Testing of the Pi W’s clever ground plane antenna
showed it outperforming the chip antenna of the
Raspberry Pi 3
Existing Pi Zero accessories and
cases work fine with the Pi Zero W,
thanks to a shared layout
Believe it or not, that triangular gap in the ground
plane is the Pi Zero W’s surprisingly effective antenna
The Pi Zero W uses the same unencapsulated radio
chip as the larger Raspberry Pi 3
98
CUSTOMISATION / HOBBY TECH
I ’ve been working heavily on a book for the BBC micro:bit
microcontroller – The Micro:bit User Guide, published by
Wiley and due out later this year, hint, hint! – and while I was
experimenting with the device’s serial port, I found a rather handy
use for its 5x5 single-colour LED matrix display: a scrolling bar graph
for system statistics.
Whenever I see an LED matrix, my immediate thoughts are to
make it display bar or line graphs – back in Issue 153, I turned a
Raspberry Pi Zero and Pimoroni Unicorn HAT into a home energy
monitor. This project is a lot simpler, though, and relies upon the very
useful psutil Python library and the MicroPython REPL (Read-Eval-
Print-Loop) interpreter.
It was created with a Raspberry Pi in mind, although it will also
work on any Linux-based machine with Python and psutil available. It
should also work out of the box on Mac OS, with only changes made
to the serial device name, and it might work on Windows too if you
have a Python environment setup. All you’ll need is a micro:bit,
Python and a micro-USB cable between the micro:bit and the system
you’re looking to monitor.
1 Prerequisites
The majority of Linux distributions don’t include the psutil library by
default, so you’ll need to install it manually using the following
command at the terminal:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install
python-psutil
You’ll also need to find your micro:bit’s serial device name.
Connect the micro:bit via the micro-USB cable, then run the
following command:
dmesg -T | tail -20 | grep ttyACM
You’ll see a number after ‘ttyACM’ and this number is the device
name. If it’s any number other than 0, you’ll need to change the
program code in the later steps accordingly.
2 MicroPython REPL
Typically, programs for the micro:bit are written in a development
environment, compiled and the resulting hex file is then flashed into
the micro:bit’s memory. While it’s certainly possible to write a
micro:bit program for displaying a bar graph, an easier option is to
use the MicroPython REPL interpreter.
Go to http://python.microbit.org/editor.html and delete all the
text, so you’re left with a blank program. Click the Download button,
then drag the resulting hex file to your micro:bit’s removable drive
and allow it to flash. While you might think you’ve just flashed an
TUTORIAL
Micro:bit CPU monitor
empty program, you’ve actually given your micro:bit some
MicroPython interpreter powers via its serial port, which is how your
system will talk to the micro:bit and turn it into a bar graph display.
3 The program
Open up your favourite text editor or Python IDE, and enter the
following program, paying attention to the indentation:
import serial, psutil, time
gradients = 20
readingList = [0,1,2,3,4]
ser = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyACM0", 115200, timeout=1)
ser.close()
ser.open()
print "Started monitoring system statistics for
micro:bit display."
ser.write("from microbit import * \r".encode())
time.sleep(0.1)
ser.write("display.clear() \r".encode())
time.sleep(0.1)
barGraph = [[0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]]
while True:
sysLoad = psutil.cpu_percent(interval=0)
readingList.insert(0,int(sysLoad))
del readingList[5:]
for x in range(5):
for y in range(5):
readingComparison = (y+1) * gradients
if (readingList[x] >= readingComparison):
barGraph[y][x] = 9
else:
barGraph[y][x] = 0
ser.write("BARGRAPH = Image(\"%s:%s:%s:%s:%s\")
\r".encode() % (‘’.join(str(e) for e in barGraph[0]),
‘’.join(str(e) for e in barGraph[1]), ‘’.join(str(e)
for e in barGraph[2]), ‘’.join(str(e) for e in
barGraph[3]), ‘’.join(str(e) for e in barGraph[4])))
time.sleep(0.1)
ser.write("display.show(BARGRAPH) \r".encode())
time.sleep(0.9)
Save the file as ‘microbitcpumonitor.py.’ Alternatively, you can save
time on typing by downloading the program using the following
command:
wget https://is.gd/60tni7 -O microbitcpumonitor.py
You’ll need to know the device name of your micro:bit’s serial connection, and this handy one-liner tells you exactly that information
99
4 Bar graph fun
Finally, all you need to do in
order to start graphing your
CPU usage on the LED
matrix display is to run
the program:
python
microbitcpumonitor.py
The program prints a
single message, then runs
silently; the micro:bit’s
display will update once a
second, drawing each 20
per cent of CPU load as a
single LED.
One fact to note is that
psutil reports total system CPU usage across all cores; if you’re
running it on a four-core, four-thread system, you’ll need to be
maxing out all the cores in order to see a full bar. Also note that the
bar graph is upside down, which makes it easier to mount the
Orange Pi gets
GSM radio
The Orange Pi family of
single-board computers, as
reviewed in Issue 143, has
grown larger with the launch
of a model boasting GSM cellular support. Dubbed the Orange Pi
2G-IOT, the new variant includes an ARM Cortex-A5 processor,
256MB of memory, 500MB of on-board flash and micro-SD
storage, and a radio with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 2G GSM/GPRS
support. Designed for remote projects, the device can be
equipped with a SIM card and connected to mobile networks for
data transmission. Impressively, the Orange Pi 2G-IOT costs just
£11.01 (VAT exempt under a £15 total order value) delivered from
www.aliexpress.com
NEWS IN BRIEF
micro:bit somewhere with the USB cable trailing downwards, rather
than sticking upwards.
If you find the bar-graph freezes, try increasing the delay between
commands:
change time.sleep(0.1)
to
time.sleep(0.2)
or to a
higher number to improve reliability.
This symbol means the command
should all be on one line
The result: a scrolling CPU usage graph, shown here mounted on a monitor with
high-tech Blu-Tack
It may look empty, but flashing the
resulting hex will give your micro:bit
the MicroPython REPL tool
All the heavy lifting is done on the
host; the micro:bit simply listens out
for instructions
Gareth Halfacree is the news reporter at www.bit-tech.net, and a keen computer hobbyist who likes to tinker with technology. @ghalfacree
I
have an obsession: coffee table
books, and despite the minor issue
of not actually owning a coffee table,
I’ve nevertheless built up a collection of titles
largely centred around computing history. My
latest purchase, though, is the first to a look at
computing from the perspective of design
rather than function – Delete, by Paul Atkinson.
A hefty paperback tome, wider than it is tall,
Delete has an intriguing tagline: ‘A Design
History of Computer Vapourware.’ This
tagline, when coupled with the picture of Rick
Dickinson’s unused design for the Sinclair QL+
on the cover, a machine that was left in the
prototype stage thanks to the commercial flop
of the original business-orientated Sinclair QL,
was enough to raise my interest.
Atkinson starts with a treatise on the
meaning of ‘vapourware’, and adopts a wider
than usual definition, which includes devices
that existed purely on the drawing board to
devices that were built but never saw a
widespread commercial release. Atkinson
even argues that the term ‘vapourware’ isn’t
inherently negative, although he admits that
its well-entrenched negative connotations led
one interviewee to refuse permission to use
images of their designs in the book as soon as
the tagline was known.
Intriguingly for a computing book, Delete
begins with a look at non-computing
‘imagined machines’ from history, such as da
Vinci’s helicopter, high-speed arrow-like cars
and kitchens of tomorrow, as inaccurately
envisioned yesterday. The meat then begins
Sinclair and IBM products are presented in
high-resolution colour, while the lead image
for Marcus Hoggarth’s Pogo Communicator
is a low-resolution marketing shot with
considerable JPEG degradation – a strange
choice when higher-resolution alternatives
are clearly reproduced on the following pages.
Atkinson ends the book with an essay
dubbed ‘The Agency of Ideas’, which goes
through the specifics of vapourware and its
impact on the industry. If you’re reading cover
to cover, it feels a little stale; taken on its own,
though, it’s a fantastic summary. There’s also
a handy timeline at the rear of the book, which
is useful for reference during those who-did-
it-first arguments that flare up on Internet
forums from time to time.
While billed as a ‘design history,’ Delete
has little to offer anyone interested in design
for its own sake, rather than the functional
considerations of designing computers
specifically. For the computer historian,
though, it’s a fantastic addition to the
collection: it’s well researched, detailed
without becoming bogged down in minutiae
and it’s highly visual. The book can even serve
as a canonical reference for some of the
lesser-documented examples it contains,
although you can find additional details for
some of the machines elsewhere.
Paul Atkinson’s Delete is published by
Bloomsbury with a recommended retail price
of £31.99 (VAT exempt), and is available from
all good online and offline booksellers under
ISBN 978-0857853479.
CUSTOMISATION / HOBBY TECH
100
Pimoroni launches
Pi Zero W starter kits
Sheffield-based Pimoroni has announced a new range
of Pi W starter kits. The simplest one includes a Pi Zero
W, SD card, case, headers, adaptors, and a Blinkt LED
strip. It’s joined by three variants with custom cases, all of which also include the Pi W,
and add a stand-up mood light, a robot-themed desktop message scroller (pictured)
and a speaker-equipped Pirate Radio respectively. The kits are priced at £32 for the Pi W
starter kit, £30 for the Mood Light kit, £35 for the Scroll Bot kit, and £40 for the Pirate
Radio kit (all inc VAT). More details are available at https://pimoroni.com
NEWS IN BRIEF
REVIEW
Delete by Paul Atkinson
with a couple of deeply historical entries: the
Analytical Engine and Charles Babbage’s
Difference Engine.
These entries rather tongue-in-cheekily
open the first of four sections: Mainframes
and Minicomputers; Personal and Portable
Computers; Pen Computers; and Mobile
Computers. There’s some overlap – the Xerox
Dynabook counts as a pen computer, although
it was designed primarily as a portable and the
Sinclair Pandora can be found in the Mobile
rather than Portable section.
Each section comprises seven machines,
with each one receiving multiple pages with
photographs and details of its design, creation
and eventual end. The quality of the imagery
varies from section to section, which is
unavoidable when you’re working with shots
dug out from corporate and personal archives.
With a tagline promising a look at computer
vapourware through history, how could I refuse?
The author has really done his research; even
experienced historians will learn a fact or two
101
COMMUNITY / TESTING
Custom PC
in association with
Give your PC a workout with our new benchmark suite, and
see how your rig compares to other readers’ machines
Gimp
We use Gimp to open and edit large images.
Unlike our previous Gimp test, this one
uses more than one CPU core, although it’s
still more sensitive to clock speed increases
than more CPU cores.
Handbrake H.264 video encoding
Our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake
H.264 video encoding test takes full
advantage of many CPU cores, pushing
them to 100 per cent load.
LuxMark OpenCL
This GPU compute test is the only synthetic
part of our suite, although the renderer is
based on the real LuxRender software. As
3D rendering is a specific workload that not
everyone uses, and because most software
doesn’t support OpenCL, this section has
just a quarter of the weighting of the other
tests in the final score.
Heavy multi-tasking
Our new multi-tasking test plays a full-
screen 1080p video, while running a
Handbrake H.264 video encode.
Scores
RealBench 2015 breaks down the scores for
each test, then gives you a total system
score and a percentage reference score.
On an Intel system, the 100 per cent
reference score comes from a stock-speed
Core i7-4790K, with 16GB of Corsair
2400MHz DDR3 memory, a 240GB OCZ
150 SSD, an Asus Maximus Gene VII
motherboard and an Nvidia GeForce GTX
780 3GB graphics card.
On an AMD system, the 100 per cent
reference score comes from a stock-
speed A10-7850K APU, with 8GB of
Corsair 2,133MHz DDR3 memory, a
256GB Plextor M5 Pro SSD and an Asus
A88X-Pro motherboard, using the APU’s
integrated graphics.
SHOUT OUTS!
This month, we’re giving a massive shout out to rbrace16, who has nabbed the number
two spot on the leaderboard, overclocking a 10-core Intel Core i7-6950X chip to
4.373GHz with a 135MHz bus and 35x multiplier, resulting in a cracking system score
of 260,469. At number four, smudgesmif is also upping the ante, increasing his
system score from 237,708 to 245,346 with an overclocked Core i7-6950X.
Also grabbing our attention this month is new entry sergei.potts, who has taken the
number 15 spot on the leaderboard, thanks to a Core i7-5960X running at 4.7GHz.
DOWNLOAD FROM
WWW.ASUS.COM/
CAMPAIGN/
REALBENCH
BENCHMARK YOUR PC
Download the benchmarks from
www.asus.com/campaign/Realbench
and, before you run them, disable any
power-saving technologies in your
BIOS that change your CPU clock
speed, or the leaderboard won’t record
your overclock frequency properly. To
post a score on the leaderboard, go to
Save Upload File in the RealBench 2015
app’s Results menu, and save your
results in an RBR file. You need to select
Offline Uploads on the leaderboard
site, sign up for an Asus account and
upload your file.
CUSTOM PC REALBENCH 2015 LEADERBOARD
RANK SYSTEM SCORE REFERENCE USERNAME MOTHERBOARD CPU CPU CLOCK MEMORY PRIMARY GPU
1275,683 240.9% 8pack Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X 5.5GHz 16GB Kingston 3000MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
2260,469 227.6% rbrace16 Asus X99-Deluxe II Intel Core i7-6950X 4.37GHz 16GB Kingston 3248MHz Nvidia Titan X (Pascal)
3252,838 220.9% punchtech Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion-CF Intel Core i7-6950X 4.44GHz 16GB Kingston 3030MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
4245,346 214.4% smudgesmif EVGA X99 Micro 2 Intel Core i7-6950X Not reported 16GB Corsair 3022MHz Nvidia Titan X (Pascal)
5233,375 203.9% ian.parry3 Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X 4.6GHz 32GB G.Skill 3200MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
6231,781 202.5% CustomPC Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X Not reported 32GB Kingston 2666MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
7230,721 201.6% adrian_symonds Asus Rampage V Edition 10 Intel Core i7-6950X Not reported 32GB Corsair 3200MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
8229,929 200.9% mikey Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X 4.44GHz 16GB Corsair 2709MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
9 221,477 193.5% Chris_Waddle Asus X99-Deluxe Intel Core i7-5960X 4.62GHz 16GB Corsair 3000MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
10 221,087 193.2% randylorfing Asus Rampage V Edition 10 Intel Core i7-5960X 4.49GHz 64GB G.Skill 3200MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
11 220,980 193.1% rbrace16 Asus X99-Deluxe II Intel Core i7-5960X 4.49GHz 16GB Kingston 2666MHz Nvidia Titan X (Pascal)
12 220,917 193% dax Asus Rampage V Edition 10 Intel Core i7-6950X 3.9GHz 64GB Corsair 2666MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
13 219,938 192.2% roosauce Asus Sabertooth X99 Intel Core i7-5960X 4.69GHz 64GB Corsair 2446GHz Nvidia Titan X (Pascal)
14 219,415 191.7% Luke@DinoPC Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X 4.6GHz 16GB Corsair 3276MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
15 216,433 189.1% sergei.potts Asus X99-E WS Intel Core i7-5960X 4.7GHz 32GB Corsair 3200MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
16 216,006 188.7% terrystone1 Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X 4.61GHz 16GB Corsair 2992MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
17 215,694 188.5% dubai1 Asus X99-Pro/USB 3.1 Intel Core i7-5960X 4.7GHz 32GB Corsair 2800MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
18 212,062 185.3% TEL Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X 4.62GHz 16GB Corsair 2750MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
19 211,331 184.6% Menthol Asus Rampage V Extreme Intel Core i7-5960X Not reported 32GB G.Skill 3200MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
20 210,940 184.3% david.quick Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion-CF Intel Core i7-6900K 4.4GHz 16GB Kingston 3000MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
102
MODDING
Mini-ITX needs more than
scaled-down towers
I’m a strong advocate of mini-ITX. In a
world packed with large towers with
just a single graphics card and a rack
of empty expansion slots, I’m still
surprised more people don’t opt for
smaller systems instead of buying a
PC case that wastes a huge amount of
space. Mini-ITX is perfect if you’ll be
using a single graphics card,
overclocked CPU, SSD and a hard
disk – you lose nothing in terms of
performance, and with AMD’s
AM4-based X300 chipset focusing
exclusively on mini-ITX, the form
factor could see a further boost in
popularity this year too.
However, while mini-ITX cases have
generally improved in
terms of cooling, a lot
of mini-ITX cases,
such as the Fractal
Design Define
Nano S and Phanteks
Evolv ITX, were
mostly scaled-down
versions of ATX
towers with little
innovation. They’re
often water-
cooling-friendly,
which is good, but
there’s so much
more potential for
dinky system cases.
Thankfully, the past month has seen
several companies playing around
with the layouts and designs of their
latest mini cases, although this could
have happened years ago. Mini-ITX is
ripe for custom designs, as it’s so easy
to move around components without
needing a drastically different case
layout or increasing a case’s footprint.
That’s especially true if you use an SFX
PSU, as we’ve seen in two of the three
cases launched in March.
Firstly, there’s Corsair’s One, which
for the moment is being sold as a
ready-built, high-end mini-ITX system,
but I’m reliably told it should also
appear as a chassis-only option, which
is very exciting. This vertical case can
house two 240mm radiators – one in
each side – and the graphics card
is mounted underneath the
motherboard, which allows the
chassis to be very narrow.
Meanwhile, a top 120mm fan
acts as an exhaust, with air drawn
into the radiators through large
side vents.
Both radiators are of the all-in-
one liquid cooler variety, with
separate sealed loops and pumps
cooling the CPU and GPU
respectively. There’s an SFX PSU
included in the ready-to-run
system, as well as an MSI Z270
mini-ITX motherboard. My only
gripe with the system is that
Corsair seems to be using a reference
blower on the graphics card to cool the
other hot spots. I’m hopeful that the
case will allow for custom liquid
cooling too, as it would be a shame if
this case was only available as a fairly
expensive complete PC option. It’s a
great-looking case, though, and a clear
demonstration of just how flexible you
can make a small system.
Another case that caught my eye
is BitFenix’s Portal (see p32). Not
surprisingly, given its name, the case
was inspired by Valve’s Portal series of
games, but its aluminium construction
shows that it is isn’t just a cheap and
cheerful novelty Portal cash-in. It’s a
two-part chassis with an internal
frame housing the hardware.
ANTONY LEATHER’S
Customised PC
Case mods, tools, techniques, water-cooling gear
and everything to do with PC modding
The One’s
graphics card is
mounted under
the motherboard,
allowing Corsair
to design a really
narrow case
There’s an SFX
PSU included in
the ready-to-run
Corsair One, as
well as an MSI
Z270 mini-ITX
motherboard
103
Antony Leather is Custom PC’s modding editor @antonyleather
a start, the case is big – it
measures 42cm tall and
33cm wide, which is a
huge footprint for a mini-
ITX case.
Sadly, despite the fact
that Thermaltake offers a
decent SFX PSU in the form
of its Toughpower SFX
600W Gold, the company
has also put a full-sized
ATX PSU mount in the Core
P1, and the PSU will be laid
flat, rather than on its,
side, which means the
mount only adds to the
width. The graphics card
can be mounted on its side thanks to a
PCI-E riser cable being included, but
for some reason, Thermaltake has
included room for at least five
expansion slots where it sits, which
again unnecessarily add to the width
of the case.
All of which is a shame, as the
Core P1 could have been much less
cumbersome if Thermaltake had
rejigged the design to include a smaller
PSU and limited the GPU mount to just
one or two expansion slots. It’s
probably possible to modify it with a
Dremel, though, and I’d still be very
tempted by it, given the reasonable
price tag of £120, which also includes
tempered glass.
height is capped at just 125mm –
you’ll probably need to use the front
fan mount to house an all-in-one liquid
cooler too. I’m also confident that the
front drive mount could be removed to
make way for a more elaborate water-
cooling system.
Finally, there’s Thermaltake. The
company’s glass-fronted, wall-
mountable cases such as the Core
P5 have been very popular among
modders, as they’re great for showing
off water-cooling systems, and it’s
easy to work with the P5’s open-air
design too, although dust may be an
issue for long-term use, of course.
What’s more, the company has also
made headway into offering a mini-
ITX version – the Core P1.
The first attempt was a 3D-printable
model, which appeared at trade shows
last year, although Thermaltake
seemed reluctant to offer its designs
for free on the Internet. It also had the
added boon of optional parts that could
be 3D-printed, allowing you to mount
reservoirs or extra storage drives,
which all looked rather good.
That idea seems to have fallen by
the wayside, though, as the company
has instead simply scaled down its
ATX wall-mountable chassis into a
mini-ITX-friendly model. The Core P1
looks fantastic, and there’s enough
scope for including a capable water-
cooling system inside it too. However,
there are a couple of issues that I feel
have resulted in missed opportunities
for Thermaltake, as with all cases that
scale down an existing ATX design. For
There isn’t much space for any
internal water-cooling components,
but there is an external 120mm
radiator mount. However, the case’s
main draw is its size – it barely
measures 40cm long, and its width
comes in at under 19cm without the
black stand. I love the design too – it’s
unique among mini-ITX cases, and I
love the fact that the motherboard has
been inverted, so the graphics card’s
cooler points at a large optional
curved window in the roof. The only
downsides I can see are that there isn’t
much in the way of ventilation and,
while the GPU length limit sits at a
generous 300mm, the CPU cooler
Thermaltake’s
Core P1 looks
great, but there’s
a lot of wasted
space – why do
we need space
for five expansion
slots when there’s
only one slot on
the motherboard?
The Portal is a two-part chassis with an internal
frame housing the hardware, and the graphics card
sitting under an optional curved window in the roof
The Portal’s main draw is its size – it barely
measures 40cm long, and its width comes
in at under 19cm
104
MODDING / HOW TO GUIDES
Your power supply is an ugly, cable-spewing part of the PC,
and it’s no surprise that case manufacturers are doing their
best to hide them behind covers. Having a PSU cover can aid
airflow too, by covering cables and providing a smooth path for air to
pass through your case. However, modders usually create PSU covers
for aesthetic reasons. A cover can frame the inside of your PC so that
the side window reveals just the motherboard and graphics card
instead of the PSU and a bunch of ugly cables.
If your case lacks a PSU cover, it’s quite easy to make your own
one using sheet acrylic, a Dremel and an industrial heater. You’ll need
to bend the acrylic to shape by heating it first, as well as cutting it to
size. We’ll also be looking at adding some colour to the cover using
coloured acrylic, as well as adding water-cooling pass-throughs so
that you can hide a pump underneath your cover too.
Want to hide your PSU, but don’t have
a new case with a PSU cover? Antony
Leather shows you how to make one
Make your own
PSU cover
How to
1 / CHECK CASE
The bottom area of your case needs to have a clear area to mount the
PSU cover, and we recommend removing spare drive bays, unused
motherboard tray objects and standoffs too.
2 / MEASURE UP FOR ACRYLIC
You want the acrylic to fit end-to-end in your case, so work out where
it will fit, and then measure the length and width of the area in which it
will be installed.
3 / MAKE CARDBOARD TEMPLATE
Creating a cardboard template is a great way to work out how much
acrylic you’ll need, and whether a smooth curve or sharp right angle
will work best with your setup.
TOTAL PROJECT TIME / 12 HOURS
TOOLS YOU’LL NEED
Heat gun /
www.amazon.co.uk
Drill and drill bits /
Most hardware stores
3mm acrylic sheet /
www.ebay.co.uk
Marker pen and ruler /
Most hardware stores
Sandpaper /
Most hardware stores
Dremel, jigsaw or tablesaw /
www.amazon.co.uk
Edging tape and Frog tape /
www.ebay.co.uk
Plastic primer, colour coat
and clear coat /
Most hardware stores
105
4 / MARK UP ACRYLIC
Use the template to mark up the correct amount of acrylic to cut out.
Your acrylic needs a thickness of 2-3mm – any thicker and it will be
tricky to bend.
5 / CUT TO SIZE
Don your safety goggles, and use either a Dremel and cutting disc, a
jigsaw or a tablesaw to cut the acrylic in straight lines. If you’re using a
Dremel, use a low speed so that the acrylic doesn’t melt.
6 / TEST-FIT IN CASE
Once you’ve cut the acrylic, offer it up to the case to see if your
measurements are correct. It will be easier to trim the acrylic to size
now than after you’ve bent it into shape.
7 / SAND EDGES
If you used a jigsaw or Dremel, the edges will likely be rough, so sand
them smooth. There’s little point in flame-polishing them, though, as
you simply won’t see the edges.
8 / MARK UP FOR BEND
Use the cardboard template to identify the required position of the
bend in your acrylic. Then draw a line to mark the centre of the bend,
whether it’s a smooth bend or a sharp right angle.
9 / HEAT WITH HEAT GUN
Remove the acrylic’s protective film and use a heat gun on full heat
and fan speed, moving it at around 10cm/sec across the acrylic,
swapping sides every 30 seconds. Don’t worry if the acrylic starts to
warp; it will flatten out when you swap sides.
106
MODDING / HOW TO GUIDES
11 / CUT OUT CORNER
If you’re aiming for a very tight fit, it might not be possible to get the
cover into position without dismantling the case or removing some
rivets. However, cutting a small notch out of the front edge of the
acrylic can help to squeeze it into place.
10 / BEND OVER SOLID OBJECT
The edge of a cabinet or desk is ideal for bending acrylic, and you can
press the acrylic onto hard surfaces to create a sharper angle. Be sure
that the acrylic’s whole bend area is soft and floppy. Wear gloves for
this job, as the acrylic will be hot.
13 / GLUE SCREW MOUNT
For a quick fix, you can use a glue gun to secure the cover in place.
However, we recommend making a mount so you can screw it to the
case. We lopped off a small section of acrylic and stuck it to the cover
using Araldite.
12 / INSTALL IN CASE
Place the cover down into the rear of the case first, then lower the front
end down. The acrylic is quite flexible, so you might be able to lever it
into place, and it will then spring back once it’s in position.
15 / DRILL SCREW HOLES
We used standard 6-32 screws to hold our cover in place, which
require a 2mm or 2.5mm drill bit. Drill slowly into the spots you just
marked on the acrylic.
14 / MARK SCREW HOLES
With the cover and mount in place, mark up the screw holes. If the
cover doesn’t quite sit level on its own, press it down into place, then
mark up the screw holes so the screws will hold it correctly.
107
16 / SECURE IN PLACE
Place the cover back into the case and line up the cover and screw
holes. The acrylic is fairly soft and the 6-32 screws should easily self-
tap into it with a screwdriver.
17 / MEASURE FOR WATER COOLING
Water-cooling pass-through or bulkhead fittings allow you to route
your loop through the PSU cover, using normal fittings on each
end. Alternatively, you can cut holes for rigid tubing. Our Alphacool
bulkhead fittings required 20mm holes.
18 / DRILL WATER-COOLING HOLES
Use a 20mm drill bit or step drill to cut the holes in the acrylic. Use
a medium speed and light pressure, as the acrylic can crack easily,
especially if you’re drilling close to an edge.
19 / INSTALL FITTINGS
The fittings use large fixed rings on one side, while screw-on securing
rings fix them in place from below. Use the former on top of the
acrylic, or where the fitting will be visible, as it will sit flusher than the
other side.
20 / CLEAN PSU COVER
If you want to paint your PSU cover, wash it first to clear all the
fingerprints and dust that will have accumulated on it. Put a drop of
Fairy Liquid in a breakfast bowl of warm water, give it a stir and then
use a cloth to clean the entire cover.
21 /APPLY FROG TAPE
Dry the PSU cover, then apply Frog tape and edging tape in your
desired pattern. Edging tape is usually thin and great for creating
curves and outlines, while Frog tape prevents paint from creeping and
is good for covering larger areas.
108
MODDING / HOW TO GUIDES
22 /SPRAY PLASTIC PRIMER
Use plastic primer to create a surface to which the colour coat can
adhere. Spraying directly onto glossy acrylic alone can result in poor
finishes. A single coat is usually enough and it dries in 30 minutes.
23 /SPRAY BLACK COAT
We’re using a black coat, while allowing LEDs below to shine through
the green acrylic. You can use another colour, and also consider matt,
satin or gloss finishes to match your case. Allow 20 minutes of drying
time for each coat.
24 /REMOVE TAPE
Apply as many coats are needed to achieve a solid block of your
chosen colour. After the final colour coat has had ten minutes to dry,
remove the masking material to stop the paint tearing.
25 /SPRAY CLEAR COAT
Once you’ve removed the masking, proceed to spray on a clear coat.
This step isn’t absolutely necessary, but it will help to protect the
painted areas. Allow the clear coat to dry for 24 hours.
26 /INSTALL LEDS
We’ve used 3mm coloured acrylic with the intention of allowing light
from LEDs to shine through our spray pattern. Place a row of white
LEDs in the bottom corner of the case, facing outwards, to create the
best effect.
27 /INSTALL IN CASE
Install the cover in the case and switch on the lights. Hopefully, they’ll
be bright enough to penetrate the acrylic and illuminate the coloured
areas. You can add a couple more LED strips if you need a stronger
light source.
109
WHAT IS
FOLDING?
Folding@home uses the
spare processing cycles
from your PC’s CPU and
graphics cards for medical
research. You can
download the client from
http://folding.stanford.
edu and our team’s ID is
35947. Once you pass a
significant milestone,
you’ll get your name in the
mag. You can also discuss
folding with us and other
readers online at the
www.bit-tech.net forums.
COMMUNITY / FOLDING
Folding@Home
USERNAME POINTS
MILESTONE
maddley 20000
greyskin101 60000
Crazyboy75 70000
Magnus_Baxter 80000
razyboy75 90000
Gorobloso 100000
Peanut.Rec 100000
3feethigh 200000
blotty 200000
martin11293 200000
OrangeBernard77 200000
Andydale78 400000
~Jinx~ 500000
GraemeMcMillan 500000
BP_Evil_Element 600000
BairdyUK 700000
crisderaud 700000
USERNAME POINTS
MILESTONE
teago2 700000
Fersigo 800000
soddit112 900000
angrydadadam 1000000
Dutchchemist 1000000
NickC 1000000
pig_farmer_uk 1000000
SJCracing 1000000
AlSomething 2000000
Count_Stex 2000000
Digital-WebDev 2000000
Quozzbat 2000000
srackstr 2000000
boiled_elephant 3000000
crazeey 3000000
darkcircuituk 3000000
Darthcrawf 3000000
USERNAME POINTS
MILESTONE
Pickles96 3000000
YCDCN22 3000000
eCorsair 4000000
Archaon88 5000000
Capt-Camm-Nett 5000000
Von_Neumann 5000000
Wibb 5000000
Nex79 6000000
markf0wle 7000000
awstcomputers 9000000
FurstyFerret 9000000
rOBvAN 9000000
Rojo1604 9000000
Skidder 9000000
Looney 20000000
MazdafanGaming 20000000
Tango_Echo_Alpha 30000000
USERNAME POINTS
MILESTONE
Anonymous 50000000
kcanti 50000000
Ken_Swain 50000000
dazlanc_101 60000000
ZardozSpeaks 60000000
Jobjohn 70000000
SP1 70000000
Sparkymatt 70000000
wew 70000000
Portchylad 90000000
SirBenjaminNunn 200000000
PcShedTV 300000000
Desertbaker 600000000
Roveel 600000000
Unicorn 700000000
coolamasta 1000000000
MILESTONES THIS MONTH
TOP 20 OVERALL
RANK USERNAME POINTS WORK
UNITS
1DocJonz 4,278,350,772 230,633
2HHComputers 3,534,754,706 84,320
3Nelio 3,307,792,997 371,055
4PC_Rich 1,672,597,855 103,992
5piers_newbold 1,614,488,489 80,909
6Scorpuk 1,424,566,889 42,946
7Lordsoth 1,318,418,909 121,519
8coolamasta 1,000,205,382 190,232
9Slavcho 853,621,619 44,276
10 Unicorn 789,101,772 38,770
11 Laguna2012 773,274,078 35,412
12 apeman556 661,606,885 37,695
13 Desertbaker 614,990,661 31,685
14 Roveel 612,430,237 10,962
15 StreetSam 571,113,589 90,251
16 e_M2B 560,653,715 72,797
17 KevinWright 552,965,973 39,401
18 daxchaos 534,933,528 17,003
19 johnim 534,006,305 83,262
20 Dave_Goodchild 489,714,787 126,598
TOP 20 PRODUCERS
RANK USERNAME DAILY POINTS
AVERAGE
OVERALL
SCORE
1DocJonz 6,616,683 4,278,350,772
2Nelio 4,025,172 3,307,792,997
3PC_Rich 3,945,497 1,672,597,855
4Unicorn 3,570,980 789,101,772
5PcShedTV 3,417,658 359,591,529
6Lordsoth 1,907,064 1,318,418,909
7Roveel 1,749,384 612,430,237
8Slavcho 1,738,414 853,621,619
9piers_newbold 1,716,955 1,614,488,489
10 daxchaos 1,267,019 534,933,528
11 BeezaBob 1,222,181 387,216,974
12 apeman556 1,068,350 661,606,885
13 MazdafanGaming 986,106 23,162,683
14 e_M2B 847,128 560,653,715
15 KevinWright 811,904 552,965,973
16 Laguna2012 713,537 773,274,078
17 SirBenjaminNunn 713,327 204,095,445
18 Desertbaker 710,819 614,990,661
19 Jobjohn 559,560 72,858,162
20 dazlanc_101 551,674 68,684,725
Join our folding team and help medical research
Steven Osborne incorporated
his love of Victorian steampunk
engineering into his first
case mod, merging modern
technology with good old-
fashioned copper piping
CPC: What inspired you to
build a steampunk project?
Steven: I’ve had an interest in
Victorian steampunk engineering
for most of my adult life; I really
enjoy the merging of technology
with brass, copper and steam. As a
mechanical engineer by trade, I find
the whole Victorian industrial
aesthetic inspiring, and it seemed
an obvious choice for me.
As for why I built Evie, I really
wanted to see if I could pull it off.
Although a few steampunk-style
case mods have appeared over the
years, I wanted to put my spin on
the theme and create a machine
with a very industrial look, but also
with a Victorian spin –
the Victorians loved
their polished brass
and copper. Ultimately,
I wanted to challenge
myself and see what I
could create.
What I didn’t know
was that this one mod
would be a turning
point for me to move
into a new hobby.
CPC: Where does the
name come from?
Steven: Jules Verne
is known as the
grandfather of
Victorian Steampunk,
and one of his most famous books is
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The
book centres around a Victorian
steam-powered submarine called
the Nautilus and its Captain, Nemo.
What isn’t readily known from
reading the book is that Nemo had
a daughter called Evangeline. Most
large Victorian steam boilers were
given names, and the Nautilus’
boiler was no different, being
named after his daughter – Evie.
CPC: What specs did you choose?
Steven: Evie was built for one sole
purpose – to play games and play
them well. The system I was using
at that time was struggling to
keep up with the developments in
modern game design, and certainly
couldn’t deliver the graphical
performance I desired. It was time
for a new PC that could play games
at 2,560 x 1,440 with maximum
settings without breaking a sweat.
I’d previously bought systems
off the shelf, but this time I decided
to build my new machine myself
so I wouldn’t have to accept
compromises. However, this system
became expensive really fast!
Central to Evie’s performance are
the two EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
cards in SLI, and right from the start
I decided that everything would be
water-cooled – I’d grown tired of the
jet engine sound coming from air-
cooled GPUs under heavy load.
CPC: What other mods have you
built?
Steven: Evie is my first case mod,
but it won’t be my last. I have my
next three mods on the drawing
board, including a special Art Deco
scratch-build for my wife. Art Deco
is another era with striking themes,
and another interest of mine.
CPC: What difficulties did you
come across?
/MEET THY MAKER
Name Steven Osborne
Age 51
Location Newcastle
Occupation Engineer
Main uses for PC Gaming
Likes PC gaming, case
modding and vintage
engineering
Dislikes Internet trolls
Steven: Without the benefit of any
form of sponsorship, my main issue
at the start was cost. It’s surprising
just how fast the cost of the build
began racking up. Building any
high-end gaming PC is always going
to be expensive, especially when
you add all the water-cooling
components, and the cost was
basically mitigated by time,
requiring only that the build take
slightly longer to complete.
However, you reach a point where
you need all the main components
in order to be able to continue.
What really surprised me is the
cost of the case mod itself. Costs rise
rapidly once you start adding
necessary materials, extra tools
and so on, and this factor shouldn’t
be underestimated by someone
looking to build their first case
mod. My problem was also
perfectionism, where only the best
would do – if I wasn’t happy, then I
started again. It’s a double-edged
sword, as it forces me to stretch
myself and create my best work, but
it also adds delays and frustration
if any part doesn’t work out as
planned. My other main issue was
the lack of a dedicated workshop to
undertake the work.
CPC: What tools did you use?
Steven: I had no access to lathes,
milling machines or machinery of
that nature; Evie’s case was all
hand-crafted using basic DIY tools.
As a mechanical engineer, this work
is second nature to me, so cutting,
filing and creating by hand was a
process with which I felt
comfortable. However, it wasn’t all
plain sailing. Sometimes the lack of
big machinery hampered the build
process and workarounds had to be
devised, some of which were more
successful than others; more than a
fair share of blood, sweat and tears
went into Evie.
Project Evie
Readers’ Drives
110
MODDING / READERS’ DRIVES
SEE THE FULL
PROJECT LOG:
http://tinyurl.com/
ProjectEvie
111
I did treat myself to a new Dremel,
which really is the staple case
modder’s tool these days. I also
had to teach myself to use an
airbrush too, as I needed to create
a considerable amount of custom
painting effects, both on the inside
and outside of the build, to achieve
the industrial look I wanted.
CPC: Did the use of copper
tubing present any issues?
Steven: When I got to the copper
loop, I knew that I wanted to avoid
as many fittings as possible in the
tube runs. The cheap pipe bender I
owned wasn’t up to the task and I
ran into all sorts of issues, such as
creasing tubes and the 12mm
copper pipe flattening out on the
bends. I ended up buying a
professional, dedicated 12mm pipe
bender and all the problems went
away. It was very expensive, but it
will be used across several builds.
CPC: How long did the
build process take?
Steven: From concept to
completion, it took six months, with
a lot of learning along the way
about what is and isn’t possible. The
build was started, undertaken and
completed in our kitchen and
dining room, so all the gear had to
be put away at the end of the night.
A dedicated workspace would have
been a nice, but you have to work
with what space is available.
CPC: What did you learn
from the build process?
Steven: That the case modding
community on bit-tech is one of the
best tools available. If I couldn’t
solve an issue, there was always
someone there who could provide
help and advice, often born out of
their own experiences. Without
them, the process of getting into
case modding would have been a
great deal harder.
CPC: Are you happy with the end
result, and is there anything you’d
do differently if you built it again?
Steven: Both yes and no. Evie, as my
first case mod, was without doubt a
success, and she sits on my desk
mercilessly hammering games into
submission each night. Now she’s
complete, I well and truly have the
case-modding bug, and with
hindsight, there are parts of her
that I wish I had done differently
or better. However, hindsight is a
wonderful thing, so this year, I plan
to put those thoughts into action
with a bigger, more complex mod –
a kind of Evie 2.0. Mod on!
112
To enter your machine for possible inclusion in
Readers’ Drives, your mod needs to be fully working
and, ideally, finished based in the UK. Simply log on to
www.bit-tech.net and head over to the forums. Once
you’re there, post a write-up of your mod, along with
some pics, in the Project Logs forum. Make sure you
read the relevant rules and advice sticky threads before
you post. The best entrant each month will be featured
here, where we’ll print your photos of your project and
also interview you about the build process. Fame isn’t
the only prize; you’ll also get your hands on a fabulous
selection of prizes – see the opposite page for details.
BE A WINNER
MODDING / READERS’ DRIVES
CPU Intel Core i5-6600K
overclocked to 4.8GHz
Graphics card 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX
980 Ti in SLI, overclocked to
1470MHz
Memory 32GB (4 x 8GB) Corsair
Vengeance
Motherboard Asus Z170 Mk1
Sabertooth
Storage 500GB Samsung SSD 850
Evo and 1TB Western Digital Black
hard drive
PSU Corsair RM1000X
Cooling EKWB Evo CPU and Titan X
GPU waterblocks, EKWB Res X3 250
reservoir, EKWB D5 pump and pump
top, 360mm and 240mm Hardware
Labs Black Ice SR2 radiators, Barrow
and EKWB fittings, Corsair and
Thermaltake fans
SYSTEM SPECS
113
Phobya Modding Kit
VALUE £50 inc VAT MANUFACTURER www.phobya.com, www.aqua-tuning.co.uk
The Phobya modding kit is designed with the modder in mind, offering
great value for money and quality products. The kit includes Nano-G 12
Silent Waterproof 1,500rpm multi-option fans,
which use an innovative fan-blade design.
As standard, the fans include braided black
cables to keep your case looking as neat as
possible. The fans are also supplied with a
special cable that lets you run the fan at 5V
rather than 12V, reducing the noise
emitted in order to help you to build
a silent system.
The kit also includes the
60cm Phobya 3-pin Molex to
4x 3-pin Molex Y-cable. This pre-
braided extension cable gives you extra routing options in your case,
and it also enables you to run up to four fans from one compatible
motherboard header. Meanwhile, the Phobya SATA 3
cables included in the kit offer the same
great quality braiding as the rest of the
Phobya range, while also securing your
connection with latched connectors.
As well as this, the kit includes the
Phobya SlimGuide Controller, which
gives you the option to vary
the speed of other fans in
your case, while the Phobya
TwinLEDs let you shine a
light on your mods.
We’ve teamed up with some of the world’s leading PC manufacturers and retailers to offer
this great range of prizes to each lucky Readers’ Drives winner. If your creation is featured in the
magazine then you’ll walk away with all of the prizes listed on this page, so get in your entries!
Mayhems coolant
and dyes
VALUE £50 inc VAT /
MANUFACTURER www.mayhems.co.uk
Cooling performance is only one part of the
equation when it comes to kitting out your
rig with custom water-cooling gear. The
other major bonus is that all those tubes and
gleaming fittings just make your PC look
damn sexy, and they look even better when
they're pumped full of fancy coloured
coolant. As such, we're particularly pleased
to have the folks at Mayhems now on board
with Readers' Drives – they're currently
offering two 1-litre bottles of Mayhems'
Pastel Ice White coolant, along with a
selection of five dyes, so you can choose
the colour that best complements your PC.
Check out the blue coolant in our own mini
PC mod on the cover of Issue 109 for an
example of what's possible with some
Mayhems coloured coolant.
Win all these prizes!
Corsair K70 LUX RGB keyboard
with your choice of switches
TOTAL VALUE £160 inc VAT / MANUFACTURER www.corsair.com
The K70 LUX RGB is a part of Corsair’s LUX flagship line of gaming keyboards, featuring Cherry
MX key switches backed by a lightweight, durable aluminium frame and dynamic, multi-colour
lighting. The USB pass-through port is positioned for uninterrupted gameplay and ready for
your mouse or wireless headset adaptor. You can also harness the power of CUE for
sophisticated macro programming and dramatic lighting effects and animations.
Meanwhile, 100 per cent anti-ghosting with full key rollover on USB
helps to ensure accuracy, so every keystroke translates
directly into accurate gameplay. The contoured, textured
FPS and MOBA keycap sets keep you in control, while the
Cherry MX key switches give you a linear response and fast
actuation. Corsair will provide a keyboard with your own choice of
Cherry MX switches – both Brown and Red RGB models are available.
114
OPINION
INTEL OPTANE IS
ALREADY IRRELEVANT
But we shouldn’t dismiss 3D XPoint quite yet, argues James Gorbold
JAMES GORBOLD / HARDWARE ACCELERATED
3 D XPoint, the new memory technology developed by
Intel and Micron, created a big stir when it was
revealed in July 2015. It promises to solve many of the
limitations of both DRAM and NAND by delivering much higher
density and performance than NAND without the cost and
volatility of DRAM. However, actually bringing a 3D XPoint
product to market has taken considerably longer than either
company originally estimated.
Anyway, at long last the first 3D XPoint products are now here,
although they’ve arrived with more of a whimper than a bang.
Branded as Optane Memory, these Intel-made M.2 drives look
like PCI-E SSDs and, indeed, you can format
them in Windows and use them as drives if
you desired, with a read speed of around
900MB/sec and write speed of around
150MB/sec. However, with only either 16GB
or 32GB capacities available, you’d be hard-
pressed to squeeze more than one or two
games onto the drive.
Instead, Optane Memory is intended to be
used as a cache drive, intelligently learning which software you
run the most and speeding up loading times. To be fair to Intel,
the algorithms controlling Optane Memory are very good, only
taking two to three cycles to cache your most frequently used
data and delivering a substantial speed increase. What’s more,
it’s all controlled by the Intel RST driver and Optane control
panel, so no user interaction or configuration is required.
However, the degree of performance increase depends
massively on the data’s source location. You can expect the boot
time of Windows 10 from a 7,200rpm hard drive to be roughly
halved with Optane Memory, while the loading time of bulky
applications such as Photoshop can be slashed by as much as
80 per cent. Unfortunately, the situation with game-loading
times isn’t quite as clear-cut, as games spend a lot of time not
just loading data, but performing other setup tasks too. Even
so, in the tests I’ve run, you could expect to cut load times by
around 20 per cent.
That said, I don’t imagine many Custom PC readers are still
using a hard drive for primary storage, and the gains when
Optane Memory is caching a SATA SSD, let alone a PCI-E SSD, are
minimal. Unfortunately, even if you’re still using a hard drive,
unless you bought your PC in the past few months, Optane
Memory won’t even be an option, as it requires a motherboard
based on either the B250, Q250, H270, Q270 or
Z270 chipset.
Even worse, Optane Memory also requires
a Kaby Lake Core i3, i5 or i7 processor, meaning
that the low-end CPUs (Pentium and Celeron)
that usually get bundled with a hard drive
can’t use Optane Memory either. I’m not sure
whether this situation is a result of non-
joined-up thinking or trying to protect the
sales of Core processors, but it’s a tragic mistake that makes
Optane Memory nearly useless.
If it had been launched ten (or even five) years ago when SSDs
were still very expensive, then Optane Memory could have been
a real game changer, delivering SSD-like performance without
the price tag. However, the launch pricing of 32GB of Optane
Memory is exactly the same as a 256GB SATA SSD, and the latter
would not only provide consistently faster performance, but
extra capacity too. However, despite these harsh words, I’m still
optimistic when it comes to 3D XPoint, as I’ve already seen some
early samples of SSDs using the technology that look extremely
promising. Watch this space.
James Gorbold has been building, tweaking and overclocking PCs ever since the 1980s. He now helps Scan Computers to develop new systems.
The gains when Optane
Memory is caching a SATA
SSD, let alone a PCI-E SSD,
are minimal
Game
changer
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