The Xbox One S is releasing on August 2, 2016, bringing the power of the original Xbox One into a tiny form factor. Releasing at $399 for the 2TB version, this brings the cost of console gaming back up to budget gaming PC range.
Today, we’d like to find out how powerful of a PC we can build for the same price of the Xbox One S. As it turns out, you can build something surprisingly powerful.
Updated January 2017, with new Intel CPUs, new SSDs, and better choices for RAM and HDDs.
At factory clock speeds, the GTX 1060 claims to be equal to last generation’s GTX 980 in performance, while only sipping 120W of power. All of this at a price of $249!
Harley with his computer parts, prior to assembling his new PC.
A few years ago, Logical Increments reader Harley was surfing the internet on a Toshiba Windows XP laptop when he decided he needed a new computer. The laptop was the first computer Harley had ever owned, but by early 2013, he knew he wanted something a little more powerful.
A power supply and graphics card await installation into Jim’s Enthoo Primo case.
Until a few months ago, 53-year-old Logical Increments reader Jim had never attempted to build his own PC. He had always purchased pre-built desktops for his design work, but felt like their components were already antiquated by the time he unboxed the PC.
RAM (short for Random Access Memory) is an essential part of every computer, because it holds all of the data your computer is currently using. Think of it as your computer’s short-term memory, whereas the hard drive is more like long-term memory. If you use your computer whilst at work though then it might be a good idea to check out something like this least privilege manager
software, to make sure that your computer is safe.
Why is RAM important? How much RAM do you need, and how fast does it need to be? We’re going to answer those questions, and hopefully clear up some common myths about RAM along the way. If this question and other tech related issues cause confusion or if your business’s computer systems aren’t acting in the way you want, it’s best you get in touch with an IT Support Company.
Time for a very small GTX 960?
Right on the heels of our post that lists the Best Deals from Newegg’s Pre-Black Friday ‘Deal Leak’ Sale (ending Nov. 16th), Newegg has snuck in another sale, this one only lasting a little over 24 hours.
Introducing the 11/11 sale, going on until 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Nov. 12th. In other words, you have roughly 24 hours from this posting to snag any deals in this sale.
We see two deals in this sale worth noting:
Graphics Card
Screen
Keep following our blog or sign up for our email list on the sidebar for updates on the best PC hardware deals throughout the holidays.
Is today the day you get a GTX 980? How about a rice cooker?
Good news for those living in the U.S.: Newegg is having a pre-Black Friday sale with some nice deals, including an incredibly powerful rice cooker!
OK, maybe it’s just a normal rice cooker.
But if you’re looking for a graphics cards, cases, or a good power supply, there are quite a few good deals in the mix. This might be a chance to skip out early on the Black Friday madness, particularly since graphics cards do not usually go on sale during Black Friday.
If you’re anything like us, then the graphics card is your favorite part of a computer. Graphics cards let your computer do awesome things like super complex computations, physics processing, and most importantly, producing shiny graphics in games.
So, what is a graphics card, and how do you figure out which one you should buy?
We recently posted a new video all about heatsink fans and how to pick out the right one for your PC. Check it out right here:
And here’s all the info from the video, in case you prefer reading over watching:
Something that every CPU shares in common is the fact that they get really hot when they’re working. That’s why we have these things, which are called heatsinks, to keep CPUs running cool rather than immediately cooking themselves.
But how do you figure out what kind of heatsink you want? That’s what we’re going to discuss.
Heatsinks, also known as heatsink fans (HSF) or coolers, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. All of the heatsinks featured in this video are air coolers, while some others are water-based.
The purpose of every heatsink is to draw heat away from the CPU and disperse that heat. A CPU needs to be cooled because if it got too hot, it would fry itself, although modern CPUs are smart enough to slow themselves down or even shut off entirely before they get too hot.
In air coolers like these, heatsinks make contact with the CPU with a thermally conductive metal and heat pipes that draw heat up and away from the CPU and disperse the heat over a wide area while blowing it away with a fan.
If you’ve ever wondered if heat pipes actually do anything (or are just marketing gimmicks), we can assure you that they do serve a purpose. They are hollow inside, and contain waiter in a partial vacuum, so that the water boils around the temperature of a warm CPU. The water boils into steam down here, and travels up here where it condenses back into water and drips back down. What this does is move thermal energy very efficiently from down by the CPU up and away into the rest of the heatsink.
But we don’t put a heatsink down on a CPU without a little thermal paste.
Thermal paste is a substance with a high heat conductivity and allows for better heat transfer between the heatsink and CPU. It fills in all the little microscopic gaps between the two and doesn’t allow for any air gaps that could hurt the heatsink’s performance.
There are a lot of different thermal pastes out there, but today the thermal pastes that come with aftermarket heatsinks are quite good.
In this video, we have four different heatsinks. The two little ones in the middle are what we call stock heatsinks, because they were packaged free with our CPUs.
Stock heatsinks are smaller and they can be a little noisier. They usually work just fine if you don’t plan to overclock your CPU, though they generally make more noise than a bigger heatsink when your CPU is working hard.
Let’s discuss our Intel stock heatsink. You can see it’s mostly aluminum, with a copper core that already has some thermal paste pre-applied to it.
This heatsink gets away with being so small because the CPU that it comes with is very thermally efficient, so it doesn’t need to disperse a lot of heat.
By contrast, our stock AMD heatsink is a little beefier. It has some heat pipes and a larger copper base to compensate for the fact that our AMD CPU generates more heat.
Lots of people assume that stock heatsinks are bad, and that’s not necessarily the case. They’re just not usually good enough if you want to overclock your CPU, and you might not like how noisy they get under pressure.
To solve those two problems, we have aftermarket heatsinks like the Hyper 212 Evo and the NH-U12S.
These are aftermarket heatsinks, and they’re the kind of heatsinks that you might buy to replace the stock heatsink that comes with you CPU.
These heatsinks can do a lot more cooling than the stock heatsinks, and they’ll generally be quieter while they do it.
At this point, you might be able to repeat back the two main reasons to replace a stock heatsink with a bigger one: 1) It will generally be quieter, and 2) If you want to experiment with overclocking your CPU, the aftermarket heatsinks will do a much better job of keeping your CPU cool for maximum performance and reliability.
Whether you need a cheaper heatsink or a more expensive one will mainly depend on how much you want to overclock and how hot your CPU runs. The best heatsinks are more expensive, but are only needed if you’re overclocking a lot or your PC is in a very hot place.
So, let’s say you’ve done your research and you decide to buy an aftermarket heatsink. There are two main things to keep in mind:
First, it needs to be compatible with your motherboard, so check the compatibility to make sure it will fit with your particular motherboard’s CPU socket.
Our Hyper 212, for example, says it’s compatible with CPU sockets 2011, 2011-3, 1366, and a lot more. It’s basically compatible with any modern CPU socket, but it’s always good to double check.
Second, your heatsink needs to fit in your case and not interfere with your RAM. Check the dimension measurements and make sure that everything is going to fit without causing any headaches. It’s usually easiest to just do a google search for your case name and the heatsink you want to use, and quickly find whether they are compatible.
That’s about it. If you want some more information about recommended heatsinks, check the links below:
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us over at logicalincrements.com, where we provide professional recommendations on the best PC hardware for the money.
Helpful Links:
Aftermarket heatsinks in this video:
Other links:
Image source: noctua.at
Some of the silliest myths in gaming are related to framerate, or frames per second (FPS). Some people will tell you that the human eye can only detect a certain number of frames per second, or that an FPS of 24-30 will produce a more “cinematic” gaming experience, as the standard framerate for movies has been set at 24 FPS for nearly 100 years, and television often displays at 30 FPS.
On the other end of the spectrum, some gamers will claim that you need a certain FPS to truly enjoy your gaming experience. They’ll say that running below a certain FPS is like a “slideshow” because of how few images are being rendered each second.
In reality, the only framerate that really matters is the one that is acceptable to you. Generally speaking, however, a higher framerate is better for gaming. And as PC gamers, we have the power to adjust our game settings or build our computers to achieve a desired framerate.