Logical Increments Blog

Four Practical Alternative Uses for Empty 5.25” Drive Bays

Icy Dock Expresscage - 4 practical alternative uses for 5.25" drive bays

Icy Dock’s Expresscage Tool-less Hot-swappable 2.5″ Drive Enclosure

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 spaces to house intended utilities, including disc drives, card readers, extra USB ports, and even floppy drives. But that doesn’t mean there won’t still be an unoccupied bay sitting around at the end of the day. (I personally have a Pioneer Blu-Ray/DVD/CD player in my tower, and for the time being, it sits above an unused 5.25” bay.)

So, here are a few ideas for what to do with those bays instead of leaving them as cavities in your build:

Types of VRAM Explained: HBM vs. GDDR5 vs. GDDR5X

SEC VRAM - Different Kinds of VRAM Explained—HBM vs. GDDR5 vs. GDDR5X

Some Samsung VRAM

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 at a quick rate requires both a beefy GPU and a large quantity of high-bandwidth VRAM working in tandem. For most of the past decade, VRAM design was fairly stagnant, and focused on using more power to achieve greater VRAM clock speeds.

Building a PC to Beat the PS4 Pro

Build a PC or buy a console? The debate rages on…

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 when working to a single specification. Yet what sort of performance can a PC builder get for the same $400?

The Kaby Lake CPU Takeover

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.)

$500 1440p Gaming Build with the Pentium G4560

Orion
31st Jan 2017
PC Builds

Intel Pentium G4560

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 will handle even demanding modern games at 1440p.

How to Choose the Right Power Supply

Mike Howell
27th Jan 2017
How-To

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 other part in your PC, or in rare cases even start a life-threatening fire at 2:00 in the morning. Why risk a disaster like this to save the equivalent of four grande mochaccinos from that fancy coffee shop?

Intel’s Kaby Lake CPUs Launch, Adding to Logical Increments

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 “optimize” mean? That is left up to the reader to decide, as “optimize” is not defined by Intel.

RX 470 vs. GTX 1050 Ti: Which Graphics Card is a Better Deal?

fore1gn
2nd Jan 2017
PC Hardware

The MSI Gaming RX 470 ARMOR OC

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?

Newegg’s 2016 Christmas Week Sales

The craziness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are long behind us, but Newegg has Christmas Week sales! Though less extensive, these sales are great for some last minute pre-New Year shopping. There were no monitors on a good enough sale to include, so we were forced to abandon the “What is your new year resolution?” joke opportunity.

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!

Build Success Story: Jerry’s Photo and Video Editing PC

James
18th Dec 2016
PC Builds

Over the past few months, the Logical Increments team has been emailing with a reader named Jerry about his desire to build a PC for the first time. Today, we received the great news that his new PC is completed — and it looks pretty awesome.