PC Hardware Archives - Logical Increments Blog

The Sun Sets Over the Old HDD Warrior

[Photo by Eric Gaba]

Hard Disk Drives! You know them, you have had them (probably), and now you are going to say goodbye to them.

Ah, poor old HDDs! They served us, and served us well for decades, but today…

Mid-tier Graphics Card Woes (Big Oof, Large Yikes)

That is a lot of new cards launched recently! The RTX 5050, the RTX 5060, two versions of the RTX 5060 Ti, and two versions of the RX 9060 XT!

Instead of checking each one out separately, let us take a look at them all in one fell swoop, with an eye toward deciding where/if they belong in our main build chart. I am somewhat unsure of what a swoop is, and why it needs to be of the fell variety, but here are the cards:

New HSFs Replace the Legendary Noctua NH-D15

For the last 14 years, a high-end Noctua CPU cooler has always crowned the list of air coolers in our list. The NH-D14 and NH-D15 were both excellent, and each was the best air cooler when it was launched.

Yes, the unfathomable colour combination of chocolate and “beige” (closer to light pink-brown off-white) made them an interesting* and unique choice from an aesthetic perspective, but there was no denying that the performance was the best.

Noctua offered a serious package deal: Best-in-class performance, fantastic build quality, excellent noise levels, and great customer service. It was no wonder that Noctua products found a home in the PC case and in the heart of many, many gamers…

AMD’s Niche CPUs: Excellent Gaming and Productivity Performance, But at a Price

Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D

A few weeks ago, AMD launched two new processors, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D. How do they fare, and will we recommend them in our PC build chart? Let us find out.

The R9 9950X3D is a $700 16-core CPU, with the “3D” denoting extra cache. The R9 9900X3D is a $600 12-core, with the same “3D” extra cache.

AMD’s goal with these 3D CPUs is the same as it was for previous 3D CPUs: Provide best-in-class gaming performance, without compromising productivity. Did they succeed?

AMD’s Phantom: The RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT are Great, but Have Disappeared

Ah, AMD! At long last, you have decided to do something about your subpar GPU market share. Better late than never!

AMD has recently launched the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT, for $550 and $600. So how do these two new cards compare when pitted against nVidia’s offerings?

nVidia’s Mirage: The RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti are Excellent, But Do Not Exist in Reality

nVidia has very recently launched 2 new cards, the RTX 5070 ($550) and the RTX 5070 Ti ($750). This is a standard nVidia launch, so if you want the tl;dr: Good cards, overpriced.

For more details (and how we’ll be changing our chart), read on…

Intel Boldly Enters the Mid-tier Graphics Card Segment

Intel has recently released two new graphics cards, the Arc B570 and Arc B580, both targeting the mid-range tiers.

How do they fare? Do they belong in our chart?

Courting Kings and Emperors with nVidia’s RTX 5000 GPUs

Tell me, how rich are you? If you are rich, then we can be friends. If you are very very rich, I would like to upgrade you to my best friend, and tell you about nVidia’s two newly released hyper-overpriced graphics cards, the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090.

…let us take a closer look:

AMD Conquers the High-end CPU Tiers

It has been a while, but here we are with AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series launched and ready for purchase!

AMD’s new CPU series starts with a serious set of excellent high-end CPUs. We are not going to analyze all of them individually in this post, but as a quick summary:

- Ryzen 5 9600X: 6 cores and 12 threads for $250.
- Ryzen 7 9700X: 8 cores and 16 threads for $320.
- Ryzen 7 9800X3D: Also 8 cores and 16 threads, but with extra cache for $480.
- Ryzen 9 9900X: 12 cores and 24 threads for $380.
- Ryzen 9 9950X: 16 cores (!) and 32 threads (!!) for $550.

So, how do these new CPUs measure up? Do they belong in our chart?

Where are the Ryzen 9000 CPUs?

A month ago, AMD launched its new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs. The R9 9900X and R9 9950X led the charge, with the R7 9700X and R5 9600X appearing as more budget-friendly options.

So, why aren’t they in our chart?

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