Posts in Category: pc hardware

Christmas 2017 PC Hardware Buying Guide: What to Know

fore1gn

The Founder’s Edition GTX 1080 Ti

Christmas is just around the corner, and incredible sales are undoubtedly coming. If you haven’t been following the PC building scene for the past year or two, then some things may seem daunting at first. For instance: What’s up with crazy high RAM prices? And why are some CPUs and graphics cards out of stock?

If you’re planning to build a new PC this Christmas, then there are some important things to know about. Consider this your Christmas 2017 PC hardware shopping guide.

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Newegg Cyber Monday Week 2017: The Best PC Hardware Deals

James

 

At Newegg, a Monday can last all week long. That’s the case this week, with Cyber Monday deals on PC hardware stretching out through the week of Nov. 27.

Some of these deals are really good, including $100 off the Intel i7-7820X. Some power supplies are going for a discount greater than 50%.

Below, you’ll find all the best highlights that we could find.

Please note: The best deals are dependent on rebates. Such rebates are reliable, but only if you follow the instructions exactly and submit everything on time, so better be careful!

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GTX 1070 Ti Added to Logical Increments

The Falcon

A few weeks ago, NVIDIA released the GTX 1070 Ti for $450. As you might expect, its performance and price fall between the GTX 1070 ($400) and GTX 1080 ($500), though it’s thankfully much closer to the 1080.

Long story short: At $450, this graphics card is a logical purchase and we are happy to recommend it. We have added it to our GPU recommendations in the Excellent and Outstanding tiers, as upgrades to the standard recommendations.

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Intel Core i3-8350K vs. i5-8400 vs. Ryzen 5 1500X

fore1gn

Intel’s Coffee Lake CPU stack

Intel’s new Coffee Lake processors have been very competitive with AMD’s Ryzen, as we previously pointed out in our i7-8700K and i5-8600K comparisons against the competition.

Finally, we turn our attention to the 4-core 4-thread i3 line. In this article, I’ll be comparing what we know about the i3-8350K against AMD’s price equivalent, the Ryzen 5 1500X. Intel’s segmentation has gone quite out of hand though, and the 6-core 6-thread i5-8400 falls into the same price category, costing only around $10 more than the 8350K and 1500X.

So, how do these sub-$200 processors compare in gaming and some light productivity work?

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Building a PC with the AMD Athlon X4 940, X4 950 and X4 970

Chris Cunningham

The final piece in AMD’s 7th generation CPU refresh for the AM4 platform comes in the form of three new Athlon processors: the X4 940, X4 950, and X4 970. Unlike the two sets of A-series CPUs (see our 35W and 65W builds), these new Athlons do not come with onboard GPUs.

The advantage, however, is that these are unlocked cores and can be overclocked much harder. So read on to find out exactly what you can build with the new AMD Athlon chips!

 

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Intel Core i5-8600K vs Ryzen 5 1600 vs Ryzen 7 1700 vs. i5-7600K

fore1gn

 

The Intel Coffee Lake Core i5-8600K

With this month’s Coffee Lake release, Intel finally decided to increase the amount of CPU cores they offer to mainstream consumers. The company’s newest Core i5 CPU, the i5-8600K has been upgraded to 6 cores from last generation’s 4-core i5-7600K. In theory, that should mean significantly better multithreaded performance in addition to Intel’s typical single-threaded dominance. But how does the 8600K compare to the previous generation, as well as the price-equivalent chips from AMD?

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What is Hyper-Threading and Simultaneous MultiThreading?

Chris Cunningham

With the newly released 8th Generation CPUs from Intel, one feature has gone missing from the Core i3 models: Hyper-Threading (HT). For example, the new Intel i3-8100 features 4 physical cores and 4 threads, whereas the previous generation’s i3-7100 featured 2 physical cores and 4 threads.

What is Hyper-Threading, and is it any different from AMDs Simultaneous Multi-Threading?

What is the difference between having a 2-core Hyper-Threaded CPU or a 4-core CPU without Hyper-Threading?

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Building a PC with the Intel Core i3-8100 and i3-8350K

Chris Cunningham

Competition is great. If you can, think back to a year ago. AMD’s CPU selection consisted of several outdated options, and Intel were happy issuing small incremental improvements over the previous generation. What a difference a year makes! Like them or hate them, AMD has massively shifted the market with the release of the Ryzen architecture. That’s what brings us to today and the launch of the brand new 8000 series Coffee Lake processors from Intel — the biggest upgrade to the Intel lineup in years.

This article looks at the new Core i3 CPUs, which are lower-midrange chips still very capable of great performance for the price. What sort of PC should you build with the i3-8100 or i3-8350K? Read on to find out.

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Intel Core i7-8700K vs AMD Ryzen 7 vs Intel Core i7-7700K

fore1gn

Intel’s Coffee Lake CPUs are part of the 8th generation of processors.

Last week, Intel released their Coffee Lake-based 8th generation CPUs. Intel has been usually refreshing their processors at the beginning of each year, but this one happened a few months early. (Earlier in July, Intel’s X299-based Skylake-X CPUs also experienced a rushed launch.)

It seems that AMD’s Ryzen CPUs really did light a fire under Intel, with the underdog AMD slowly earning the hearts of both reviewers and customers around the globe. But how does Intel’s newest Coffee Lake mainstream flagship CPU, the i7-8700K, compare to AMD’s Ryzen 7 processors, as well as the previous generation’s i7-7700K?

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