CES 2019 Recap: Zen 2 (AMD’s 3rd Generation Ryzen)

With the madness of CES week more or less out of the way, I take a look at what was announced about the 3rd generation of Ryzen CPUs!

The RTX 2060 – Is It Worth Its Asking Price?

Alex
11th Jan 2019
Uncategorized

On January 7, nVidia announced the latest card in the RTX lineup—the RTX 2060. We recently took a deep dive into what the RTX technology had to offer, as well as (earlier this week) what instances the new high-end cards might be a good buy. But after the disappointing announcements of the first run of RTX cards, we were definitely still curious how the 2060 would pan out.

When Would an Upgrade to an RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, or 2070 Make Sense? A Breakdown

Alex
7th Jan 2019
PC Hardware

The much-anticipated release of nVidia’s newest generation of GPUs left many hopeful PC builders a tad disappointed. By many metrics, the cards were overpriced, with huge price hikes over the previous generation’s cards. To make matters worse, reports came out that the 2080 Ti had overheating problems, and the disappointing release of the cards’ key feature, real-time ray tracing, caused many to write off the cards altogether.

By and large, those two key hardware problems have been resolved, but the higher prices still remain. So in what scenarios would an upgrade make sense? Here we’ll look at each new high-end card and point out some cases where upgrading might be in the cards.

The Newbie’s Guide to PC Cooling Fans

So, you’re building a PC; with modern components running faster (and hotter) than ever, you’ll need at least one fan. Searches reveal thousands of models bragging about their CFM or noise levels or bearing type. How do you cut through the marketing jargon? This guide for beginners should demystify computer cooling!

Choosing the Right Monitor: Size, Resolution, Price – and Sitting Distance!

If you peruse sites like this, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the monitor discussion. “I’m buying a monitor, what size/resolution/refresh rate should I get?” Choosing the right monitor can be as important as (or, in some situations, even more important than) anything else in your build.

After all, your monitor is how you experience your build. The best graphics card and CPU don’t mean much if the monitor you’re using can’t show you the benefits of those parts.

Building a PC with Christmas Holiday 2018 Deals

Alex
16th Dec 2018
PC Builds

pc-builds-2018-holiday-deals

Black Friday and Cyber Monday might be over, but the good deals on components keep coming—if you know where to look. We’ve scoured sales from several retailers to find two builds that provide great price-to-performance ratios.

4 Troubleshooting Tips for Overclocking Your PC

Alex
7th Dec 2018
How-To

Often, PC enthusiasts will speak of overclocking the way car enthusiasts discuss high-performance engines, with megahertz and voltage taking the place of horsepower and torque. Overclocking is often a relatively simple way to squeeze out extra performance from computer components; however, problems sometimes do arise. Luckily, most problems faced with overclocking are easily fixed with some basic troubleshooting techniques.

For our purposes, we’ll look at issues affecting the components that are overclocked the most: the CPU and GPU.

What on earth is RTX?!

So, although the graphics cards have been out for a while now (although still a little hard to get hold of), the games with RTX support haven’t really been there. So now that some games are coming out with shiny RTX options, we’re going to take a look at performance and ask what on earth RTX is actually used for!

How to Upgrade an Older PC

Nigel Delmore
30th Nov 2018
How-To

PC photo by Nikitarama

Your computer has faithfully been by your side for all these years. You can’t replace it (for whatever reason), but with Christmas coming up, you decide it’s time to give your little friend a much-deserved gift.

Or maybe it’s frustrating you with sluggishness. Either way, you’ve got a great excuse to give it a little performance boost. What I’m here to do is to help you figure out what you can do to upgrade your older system on a budget.

So, let’s discover how to upgrade an older PC.

This list is more suited to people who fit the following:

You focus on gaming or productivity tasks
You might use these components in another computer build

It is okay if the above doesn’t quite apply to you. This info can still be really helpful. Just keep in mind that you might have different upgrade options than listed.

Choosing Your RAM in 2026: What is CAS Latency and When Does it Matter?

RAM Performance Explained: CAS Latency vs Clock Speed (Updated for 2026)

Choosing RAM can be daunting, because this decision has a tangible impact on your performance. How many browser tabs can you keep open? How smooth is your video editing timeline? How fast will your game load? All of this is directly affected by your choice of RAM.

Late 2025 Update: RAM prices have more than doubled this year, due to astronomical demand from AI datacenters. Unfortunately, this pricing pressure isn’t expected to be alleviated until later in 2026 at the earliest. And since memory factories take billions of dollars and years to build, there won’t be much relief coming from the supply side.

If you’re upgrading and can wait, I would recommend waiting.

If you’re building a new PC and need RAM, shop around and hope to find a deal. Perhaps make the old fashioned choice of buying half the RAM you want now, and buying the second half once prices come back down to earth.