After months of delays and years of waiting, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have finally… almost launched. The top three Ryzen CPUs are now available for pre-order and will be releasing on March 2nd, 2017.
I am not an opponent of LEDs… in moderation. My own PC case has a strip of white NZXT LEDs running all the way around the edges of the inside, just to provide a nice, cool, even illumination. But it is simply beyond doubt that LEDs are one of the most common and most divisive […]
While there are a great number of options these days for good-looking PC cases that entirely lack 5.25” drive bays, the majority of cases still offer at least one of these spaces. And efficient builders won’t want that space being used for nothing. Don’t get me wrong: Many builders still do want to use those […]
All graphics cards need both a GPU and VRAM to function properly. While the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) does the actual processing of data to output images on your monitor, the data it is processing and providing is stored and accessed from the chips of VRAM (Video Random Access Memory) surrounding it. Outputting high-resolution graphics […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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?
