SSDs have been widely available to the public for many years now, and having an SSD within your computer has become a must-have for all but the most extreme data-hoarding budget builders. But when you go online, looking to buy an SSD, you are bombarded with intricate specifications: M.2? DRAM? NAND? What is all of that?
In this article, we are looking to answer those questions, and give some buying advice at the end.
If you are looking to store your digital goodies with the most bang for the buck, then hard disk drives are undoubtedly the way to go. Whether it’s for a NAS, a secondary drive for some less-played games, or any other use where capacity is a priority over speed—there’s no beating the ‘price per gigabyte’ of HDDs. But how do you pick the perfect drive for your use case?
Although almost any modern drive should fit and work fine if there is a free compatible motherboard slot and power connection present (usually SATA, although older systems might have other connectors), there are a few different things to consider when looking to get the perfect drive. In this guide, I will be going over the what and the how of picking out your new drive (or drives!). But first, let’s take a closer look at what HDDs can offer us that an SSD or some other technology can’t, and what drawbacks there might be.
(Image originally by vperemen.)
A virus! A virus! My PC parts for a virus! Or maybe I’ve got the sentiment backwards there…
Anyway, the global pandemic is affecting all of our lives, with some of us under lockdown, and some affected directly by the virus. Let us take a moment to say that Logical Increments is not going to offer any medical advice: We are not doctors, and we are not qualified to give any medical advice. Instead, get your medical advice from the Ministry of Health, or CDC, or another qualified medical official.
But the virus is affecting the hardware marketplace in general, and Logical Increments in particular.
A new decade means lots of exciting new technology to spend your hard-earned money on! If you’ve got the itch to upgrade your PC, it might be worth checking these things out. Then you can either wait to see what improvements are in store, or be confident that a purchase made right now won’t be obsolete in six month’s time.
Keep in mind that a lot of the following information is based on rumours, conjecture, and leaked information. Until it comes direct from the manufacturer in question, take this information with a grain of salt.
Whether you’re building a new computer or just upgrading your current one, the CPU (central processing unit)—being the ‘brain’ of the computer—is an important component to get right.
But, with all the improvements and advancements in recent years on both the hardware and software sides, how many CPU cores do you need?
Is this another GPU just filling a little available space in the market, or have the chaps at NVIDIA weirdly given us a good product in the GTX 1660 Super? To answer this, and more importantly create a build around it, read on!
This week on, “things we didn’t ask for…” comes the i9-9900KS. Now, is Intel providing a genuine improvement here? Or are you just paying to have an S at the end of your CPU model, like certain recent NVIDIA GPU releases? Let’s have a look.
Up until a few years ago, the value king for gaming was the Intel i5 processor. More recently, AMD’s Ryzen APUs have stolen the show at the low tiers, and we all know that no integrated graphics from Intel can currently compete with AMD’s Vega 8 and Vega 11 iGPUs. So it’s a no-brainer for gaming builders at very low budgets (who are entirely skipping graphics cards) to go with Ryzen APUs.
But outside of such head-to-head CPU comparisons, a broader value question remains for upper-low-tier (and lower-mid-tier) builders: how would a self-built system balanced around AMD’s newest R3 (including a discrete graphics card) compare to a highly discounted prebuilt system with a few key upgrades?
With the release of the highly-anticipated i9-9900k, gamers running Intel systems may still be wondering whether it’s worth upgrading to this pricey CPU, even over less-expensive options like the i7-9700k and the year-old i7-8700k. It can be tempting to default to the latest flagship model, but that may not be the best option for every builder.
On January 7, nVidia announced the latest card in the RTX lineup—the RTX 2060. We recently took a deep dive into what the RTX technology had to offer, as well as (earlier this week) what instances the new high-end cards might be a good buy. But after the disappointing announcements of the first run of RTX cards, we were definitely still curious how the 2060 would pan out.