Posts in Category: pc hardware

Intel’s Alder Lake: The Phoenix Emerges

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Ever since Intel won every race in the universe with the launch of Sandy Bridge back in 2011, they have been slacking. AMD’s tortoise needed six long years, but it overtook the sleeping Intel hare in 2017, leaving behind a lot of room for jokes at Intel’s expense.

But Intel, like all other large tech corporations, does have a solid engineering team tucked away. And the only thing that engineers need is time. Intel has been trailing AMD for four years, but that changed with the Alder Lake CPU launch a few nights ago.

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Best Beginner’s Guide to CPU Specifications

When buying and picking your CPU, you want to get the best you can get for your money, as well as the CPU that best fits your needs. When sifting through the available CPUs to satisfy those goals, you are bombarded with numerous technical terms and specifications.

In this article, I aim to clear up what those terms mean, and (roughly speaking) how their specs translate into performance.

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The Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G Release

With the release of the Ryzen 7 5700G and the Ryzen 5 5600G, AMD have once again spiced up the CPU market. They feature similar specifications compared to their 5600x and 5700x counterparts, but have iGPUs in them too, and at a lower MSRP! The rise in price for the 5600x and 5700x shocked some people, so it is nice to see that it is going back down again.

These chips might change the market and create new possibilities for PC builders. Thus, in this article, I will discuss potential uses for these new chips, and talk about their specifications.

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Beginner’s Guide to CPU Coolers

Summer might be close to ending, but the heat lives on in our gaming PCs. Whether you’re looking to overclock, get an aesthetically pleasing water-cooled setup, or just give your CPU some more space to breathe, there is a myriad of different CPU Coolers that are up to the job. (For anyone used to a different name: CPU Coolers are also known as HSFs, or Heat Sinks & Fans.)

But unless you’re buying one of Intel’s unlocked CPUs, chances are you already got one in the box. Do you really need to upgrade to an aftermarket cooler? And if so, what do you look for when choosing the replacement? Well, have no fear; this article will help you answer those questions!

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Motherboard Form Factor Guide

Computer cases can come in a wide array of shapes and sizes, from a basic box you can order online to a custom-made bust of your uncle Kevin that you can slap a power supply and graphics card into.

No matter what kind of case you gravitate towards, it is important to know what form factor of motherboard will be compatible with it, and the benefits and drawbacks that accompany those sizes. Whether you are building a new PC or simply upgrading ol’ reliable, the form factor of your motherboard is an important piece of the puzzle.

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Top 5 Prebuilt Computers for Gaming in 2021

With the GPU shortages continuing, some people are turning to prebuilt computers. These are pre-assembled PCs, usually sold at a slightly elevated price over buying the parts separately; thus, building your system yourself would normally be cheaper. However, prebuilt prices have generally not increased as much as GPU prices have, and because of that prebuilt PCs are suddenly an interesting option.

And even in situations where the prices of these pre-made computers have kept pace with the rest of the market, they are sometimes nevertheless one of the few reliable ways to obtain certain GPU models that are frequently out-of-stock when sought directly. So, as wild as it may seem coming from this particular website, in this article I will discuss 5 prebuilt computers that are currently worth the money (1 budget choice, 3 midrange choices, and 1 premium choice).

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PC Hardware Supply vs. Demand in 2021 and Beyond

Let’s be fair: it would be more than a little presumptuous if we expected or even demanded improvements to the current hardware shortages. Even after a monumental vaccine rollout procedure in many countries, the pandemic is still having a huge global effect, and we as builders need to have patience.

At this point, we are now deep into the knock-on impact of slowdowns at the lowest and earliest stages of manufacturing affecting every aspect of the assembly and distribution pipeline.

But even after all these caveats and disclaimers, people remain curious: which parts are being affected the most, what are the ongoing problems, and when might things get back to normal? Well, those are the exact topics we intend to cover in this post, part by part!

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Guide to Alternative Mechanical Keyboard Switches

The world of mechanical keyboard switches isn’t only made of Cherry Blues and Browns! While Cherry’s popular MX lineup of switches hold the lion’s share of the market, there’s (Many, many… many!) different switches you can find in avaialable mechanical keyboards.

In this article, we’ll look at a handful of lesser-known Cherry switches, an array of switches from Cherry’s competitor Kailh, and some proprietary switches you’ll commonly find in Razer and Logitech branded mechanical keyboards.

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Everything You Wanted to Know about Cryptocurrency and PC Hardware in 2021 But Were Too Afraid to Ask

Ever wondered what the cryptocurrency fuss is all about? Why are some PC enthusiasts so upset about cryptocurrency? And why are some other PC enthusiasts so happy with cryptocurrency?

Let us take a thorough look at this tantalizing love/hate relationship, then consider what companies are doing to address the situation, and finally present a ‘new and improved’TM prediction about when the graphics card market will improve.

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AMD 5nm vs. Intel 7nm: Whose CPUs Will Win?

 

Time traveling is always a risk. When you go to the past, there’s the usual dangers like making sure you don’t talk to your past self, not stepping on any bugs so you don’t trigger the butterfly effect, etc… and when you go to the future, there is the danger that your expectations could be a million miles off of what actually happens.

Well, that second type of time travel is what we’re risking today: we’re gonna take a speculative leap forward in time, to discuss AMD and Intel’s CPUs of the future!

We’ll do our best to base our speculations on available evidence, in the hopes that they won’t be a million miles off of reality (maybe only a thousand miles). So, let’s take a look at some future manufacturing tech, and see who might come out on top in the next era of the ongoing battle between red and blue.

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