Build a PC or buy a console? The debate rages on…
With the release of the PlayStation 4 Pro over the holidays, the debate over the performance needed for 4K gaming on PC has been fierce. With games like Last of Us Remastered running in the PlayStation 4 Pro’s 4K 60 FPS mode, it is a testament to the level of optimization that can be achieved when working to a single specification. Yet what sort of performance can a PC builder get for the same $400?
Kaby Lake continues its takeover our CPU recommendations.
Kaby Lake has now replaced all of the Skylake CPUs except for some low-end Skylake Celerons in our Minimum tier. (Since H210 motherboards are not out yet, we cannot find suitable motherboards for Kaby Lake Celerons.)
The Pentium is back, baby.
The Kaby Lake Pentium G4560 is the new king of budget gaming CPUs. The G4560, and big brothers G4600 and G4620, offer gaming performance similar to CPUs costing hundreds more. I put together a maximum performance for value $500 build, pairing the G4560 with the powerful RX 480. This build will handle even demanding modern games at 1440p.
At CES 2017, everybody has been waiting for AMD to drop all the pricing and performance information on their next generation GPU architecture codenamed Vega, but AMD couldn’t do that simply due to the fact that Vega is still in active development. Engineering samples have been shown running both Star Wars: Battlefront and DOOM in 4K at max settings, but that is all.
By far the most overlooked component in new builds is the power supply unit, or PSU. Ironically, it’s one of the most important. Your power supply will be pumping the lifeblood of precious volts to each and every electronic part in your fancy new computer.
A catastrophic failure of a power supply can fry every other part in your PC, or in rare cases even start a life-threatening fire at 2:00 in the morning. Why risk a disaster like this to save the equivalent of four grande mochaccinos from that fancy coffee shop?
2017 is set to bring us some interesting new developments in PC hardware technology. Let’s talk about possibly the most interesting technologies on the horizon from AMD: The Ryzen CPUs and AM4 Motherboards.
Now this is how we do it…
Support for Ultrawide resolutions has grown immensely in the past few years, and is now to a point where it is generally a viable choice for a majority of users — both for work and play. For workstations, 21:9 is much like having dual monitors, but without the bezel. In this guide we’ll be targeting three different price points and recommending a different monitor for each — all Ultrawide. All prices include the price of the monitor. Commence the 21:9 build guide!
For those looking for a mid-range graphics card, this generation’s two leading choices are NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 and AMD’s RX 480. Both cards come with two models of varying video RAM capacities and price points:
Clearly, these cards are direct competitors in performance and price. Let’s take a look at each head-to-head matchup to figure out which is the better purchase.
Kaby Lake is the first CPU series under Intel’s new Tick-Tock-Tack strategy (a.k.a Process, Architecture, Optimization). Previously, Intel would shrink it’s last generation’s CPU (a Tick), and then introduce a new microarchitecture at that size in the next generation (a Tock). Now Intel shrinks a CPU (Tick), makes a new microarchitecture (Tock), then “optimizes” it. What does “optimize” mean? That is left up to the reader to decide, as “optimize” is not defined by Intel.
The MSI Gaming RX 470 ARMOR OC
You’re in the market for a new GPU and want to spend less than $200. In that case, the main choices would be the GTX 1050 Ti (~$140) from NVIDIA and the RX 470 (~$170) from AMD. Given the differences in price and performance, which of these mid-range graphics cards is the better deal?