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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The State of VR Hardware in 2022

VR hardware

Consumer VR has only been around for a few years, but that hasn’t stopped it from improving (and sometimes failing) at breakneck speeds. We’ve come a long way from the early days of 2016 VR being limited to expensive, tethered-only HMD’s and room-placed trackers as the only option.

Now more than ever, we’re witnessing a generational leap—everything from the amazing market penetration of standalone HMD’s such Meta’s Quest 2 (It’s still an Oculus Quest in my heart) to proposed new tech in PlayStation’s VR 2 and Valve’s patent sprees. Not to mention the idea of a “Metaverse” becoming an actual possibility that is actively being worked on by big names in the industry.

There’s a whole lot to cover—which is exactly what I’m hoping to do in this piece: give the reader some summarized insight into what is happening in the world of VR, and then some recommendations on the best headsets currently available!

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Everything We Know About AMD’s Next-generation Zen 4 CPUs

AMD's Zen 4 and RDNA 3 on track for a 2022 launch | PC Gamer

AMD has stayed surprisingly silent over the months since Intel kicked off their 12th generation, letting loose a full series of beefy Intel consumer-grade CPUs. Little is known about the secretive Ryzen 7000 series of processors, AMD’s next CPU lineup, but a few morsels of information have been released so far that give us a general idea of what to expect from Zen 4, and boy are they juicy.

Let’s get right into them!

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Building a PC for Office Work or School

Availability and pricing issues have stirred up the PC market in general, and the GPU market in particular. But that doesn’t mean that every type of builder is affected equally!

Today, for example, we will demonstrate that it is still possible to build a computer with a good ‘bang for the buck’ and robust performance that is entirely suitable for office and school tasks.

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Top 5 CES 2022 Gadgets and Peripherals to Look Forward To

CES 2022

CES 2022 has come and gone. And with it being the first in-person CES after an online-only hiatus (with a new Covid-19 strain, at that), it is not surprising to say that CES had a rocky year, presentation-wise. Lots of issues cropped up, including everything from big tech companies canceling their attendance to the entire event being forced to run a day shorter due to health concerns.

But regardless of the doom and gloom, CES has not failed to deliver another exciting year filled with the latest, greatest, and wackiest that tech has to offer. Here’s our top 5 choices of discrete devices, cutting-edge peripherals, and other new tech to look out for in 2022 and beyond.

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