Building an Insane Gaming PC with the i9-12900KS

The i9-12900KS is now among us, and it computes its way across the land like a fearsome giant. Until the next generation of chips releases in the (not-too-distant) future, this is the best CPU for gaming that is available.

It is also a CPU with a massive power draw and large thermal requirements . . . but fear not! If you are considering the route offered by this beefy component, you don’t have to walk the path alone. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how to build an absurdly powerful top-tier gaming system with the 12900KS—all while maintaining system balance and even room for upgrades (many years down the line, when an “upgrade” might once again become possible for this system in a really noteworthy way).

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The Happy Days GPU Update

At last! All modern GPUs are available for purchase, new, for MSRP. No more crying as you pay 2x or 3x the recommended price for a card. No more heartbreak as you buy a used card that has been sitting in a crypto farm for 2 years. No more sad checking on crypto prices, hoping and praying for a crash. No, friends, that time is over!

Oh, how sweet it is, to have everything in-stock and for a normal price. With that, a large number of changes have hit the charts, so let us take a look.

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Air vs. Liquid CPU Cooling: Which is Right for Me?

Air cooling versus liquid cooling is a debate as old as time. Indeed, even the dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago often argued deep in the forests of Pangaea whether air or liquid is the superior form of CPU cooling. With their methods of record-keeping lost to time, sadly we may never know the conclusions they reached…

But we can give you a pretty good idea of which cooling method suits your needs the best here in 2022.

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Building a PC for Adobe Photoshop

Between the addition of cameras to smartphones and the rise of image-centric social media sites like Instagram, photography has only become more and more popular over the past couple decades. This has also meant a lot more interest in image editing and adjusting. When it comes to software for image editing, it’s Adobe Photoshop that dominates both professional and enthusiast work.

However, serious users may find that Photoshop can sometimes be a demanding program. In this article, I’ll briefly discuss the importance of each PC component when it comes to having a good experience with Photoshop.

This post will not be an example build, but rather advice on what to prioritize and what to be aware of. (If you’re looking for something more specific, with recommendations of exact parts to get for different budgets—you should check out the first section our primary guide on building a PC for image editing and graphic design.)

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Should You Buy a Gaming Laptop or Build a Gaming Desktop?

 

The prices for building a gaming desktop PC have improved over the past few months, but they might still be too high for you. In fact, they even be so high that you consider purchasing a gaming laptop instead. As the name suggests, a gaming laptop is a laptop made with gaming in mind; big companies like Razer, Dell, and MSI make lots of these nowadays. These laptops can be attractive options for more on-the-move, lower-budget, and/or younger players as they tend to be a little cheaper and a lot more portable than desktop alternatives.

In this article, I will explore if this is a viable alternative to building your own desktop. I’ll be covering a selection of important topics, starting with those that favor the laptops and transitioning toward those that favor the desktops.

This comparison will be mainly aimed at people wanting to play games on their system. You could also use this comparison for picking a system for similar workloads like video editing or 3D rendering, but the article is written with gaming in mind. Now, let’s get to it!

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The 7 Best Controllers or Gamepads for PC Gaming in 2022

When you think of gaming on a PC, you probably think of a mouse and keyboard. Controllers have long taken the back seat in PC gaming history but, believe it or not, there’s a handful of games out there that play better with a controller than mouse and keyboard. Yeah, I said it, and I’m not taking it back.

There’s a lot of controllers out in the wild, but which ones are the best? Out of the thousands of controllers, how can you possibly choose? Where do you even begin!?

Well, right here is a pretty good place to start, because this article is all about the 7 best options for PC gamepads you can get in 2022. Let’s begin!

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