Indice dei contenuti per June 2023 in Maximum PC

IN THIS ISSUE OF MAXIMUM PC, we make a return to building a PC that’s more in keeping with our title, going all-out with a top-of-the-line AMD gaming CPU and Nvidia’s fastest GPU. Yes, while it’s a fun challenge to build a sub-$1,000 gaming PC like we did last issue, as our title suggests, we’re most at home when we’re pushing the extremes of what PC tech can do, which is why we were keen to incorporate AMD’s latest top-end 3D V-Cache chip, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Can AMD’s extra vertically stacked cache help unlock best-ever gaming performance when paired with an RTX 4090? Or does Intel’s Core i9-13900K, $150 cheaper but now six months old, still hold the crown? Sam’s cover build on page 16 holds all the answers.…

IT MAY SPORT the latest GPU technology, but Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 isn’t selling well. The Founders Edition sold out in eight hours, but after the initial rush, stock remained available, and you can now buy pretty much any other edition. According to various sources, the company is to pause production for a month to let things settle. Nvidia is also said to be considering offering card builders a $50 rebate. This lackluster demand has pushed prices down to below the recommended retail price of $599 in many places. The card is as fast as the 3080, but $100 cheaper. However, it is more expensive than the 3070 was, and customers were expecting a comparable price. It’s not a bad card, but the bang-per-buck isn’t balanced, especially if you’re upgrading.…

MICROSOFT had spent 15 months in planning and negotiations to buy gaming giant Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal (the biggest in gaming history), but regulators have sunk the idea. The British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has cited concerns over Microsoft’s dominance in cloud gaming. It has a point; Microsoft currently has 60 to 70 percent of that market, and adding Activision Blizzard’s titles would put it in a dominant position. Microsoft had promised to keep big titles available on other platforms beyond current contracts, but the CMA didn’t think this was enough. Microsoft is not happy. Its president, Brad Smith, called it the “darkest day in our four decades in Britain”, and that “people are shocked, people are disappointed, and people’s confidence in technology in the UK has…

To get more specific, two leading research outfits have released numbers for PC sales covering the first quarter of 2023, and it’s not pretty. Canalys reckons PC shipments tanked by 32.6 percent compared to the same period in 2022, while IDC puts it at 29 percent. Cue tales of woe across online media and the broader commentariat. IDC notes that PC sales now are worse than before the pandemic, implying that the fall is more than a mere readjustment following an uptick in sales during that stay-at-home period. But that isn’t actually right. Instead, even taking the recent drop into account, PC sales are still up overall. For several years prior to the pandemic, PC sales ran at about 60 million units in the first quarter of every year, and…

LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM BUILT AND TESTED STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE Less is more 01 A Just like clockwork, we start our build off by taking our case apart. Seems counterproductive, right? Well, what this does is help us figure out what we’re working with and give us as much room as possible inside the case for later on. Trust us, when it comes down to cable management, you’ll be thanking yourself for doing this step at the start of every build. This NV7 from Phatneks has a lot, and we mean a lot of removable parts and panels. To get going, open up the door at the back of the case—this is on a hinge, and there is a gap at the bottom to open it. Then,…

While audio transcoding isn’t as CPU-intensive as video transcoding, it’s still a good idea to maximize compatibility where you can. When it comes to configuring your audio streams, we recommend using the AAC (avcodec) for any stereo tracks, and AC3 for any surround-sound tracks. Between them, AAC and AC3 should offer at least one track that direct-plays on any playback device. If there’s only a single stereo track, simply create a single AAC (avcodec) track; if there’s only a single surround-sound track, however, create two audio streams from it—one downmixed to stereo (AAC), and the other preserving the 5.1 surround sound mix (AC3). The other consideration is bitrate, which ultimately determines the quality of the audio stream: again, your personal preference will determine this, but as always, the higher the bitrate, the…

A GPU and plenty of time to spend downloading WHILE MOST OF THE TEXT-AND IMAGE-GENERATING AI MODELS we’ve discussed here run in massive throbbing data centers on racks of GPUs—indeed, Elon Musk purchased 10,000 Nvidia cards in March for an unannounced AI project within Twitter—there is one that can be run on your home PC. Stable Diffusion is a deep learning text-to-image service that was released in 2022. It uses a diffusion model rather than a large language model, but the concept is broadly similar in that it’s probability based and is trained from images harvested from the wider internet, plus words associated with them, as well as versions of the same images that have been blurred. With this knowledge, Stable Diffusion is able to begin with a frame full of…

One of the most popular uses for Bluetooth is driving wireless headphones. Actually, “popular” might not be the right word: many reluctantly switched to Bluetooth headphones because their phone no longer has a traditional wired headphone adapter. However, Bluetooth was designed for phone calls, and the creators were more worried about efficiency than sound. Accordingly, they chose an audio standard that required only lightweight encoding to provide comprehensible speech at low bit rates. This is the Sub-Band Codec—SBC for short—and it remains the baseline format for Bluetooth devices. SBC isn’t useless, but it can sound mushy compared to an uncompressed source. It also suffers from latency as high as a quarter of a second, so it’s not suitable for real-time gaming, and won’t sync up properly with video content unless…

1. SELECT YOUR RESCUE DISK All ISO files copied to your Ventoy flash drive will be here. Make your selection, then hit Enter to boot from that ISO file. 2. BROWSE Press F2 to browse the contents of all locally attached hard drives from Ventoy—you can also boot directly from any ISO files you find on these drives too. 3. TREEVIEW As your ISO file collection builds, consider organizing them into folders, then switch to TreeView to make them easier to find by browsing to a folder. 4. LOCALBOOT Pressing F4 will exit Ventoy and boot from the first available hard disk on your system—typically your Windows drive—to return you to your desktop. 5. TOOLS Access a range of useful features, such as Power (reboot or halt), or Temporary Control…

NEW CPU compatible with your current motherboard, plus thermal paste, and suitable cooler (new or repurposed). Isopropyl alcohol (90 percent proof) and cleaning cloth required for cleaning components. IS YOUR PC STARTING TO SHOW SIGNS of age? Envious of the latest MaxPC kit but unable to afford the cost of a full system rebuild? The answer lies in upgrading your current system, and you can deliver a major uplift in performance by focusing on your CPU, a component often overlooked when upgrading your PC. It wasn’t that long ago that a new CPU inevitably meant a new motherboard, but these days, both Intel and (especially) AMD support the same socket architecture for at least two generations, making it possible—for example—to add a Zen3 CPU from 2022 to your 2018-vintage socket-AM4…

One of the reasons we decided to upgrade our CPU was because it meant two upgrades for the price of one: our main PC got boosted to the Ryzen 7 5700X, while another PC was able to jump from the Ryzen 3 2200G to the Ryzen 7 2700. We had to repurpose an old discrete graphics card (GeForce GT 1030) to replace the Ryzen 3’s 2200G’s onboard graphics so we could free up the system’s meagre 8GB RAM exclusively for Windows. The upgrade came with two further benefits: a 30 percent speed bump, and the Ryzen 7 2700 supports Windows 11, allowing the PC to be bought bang up to date. If you decide to follow our example, then simply follow the same CPU upgrade procedure for your older PC…

IN MANY WAYS, the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30 is on-paper perfection. What’s not to like about 32 inches of 4K, 144Hz, and 0.2ms refresh goodness? The fact that for similar money, you have various options, one being a 48-inch 4K OLED monitor from Gigabyte: the Aorus FO48U. I say “monitor”—it is really a repurposed LG TV. What it can’t do is match the pinsharp, crispy image quality of a 32-inch 4K panel. That’s the attraction of the Lenovo Legion: the high pixel density combined with 144Hz refresh. It’s a recipe for not only epic in-game visual detail, but also lovely fonts. It’s everything you’d want in a premium PC monitor. Indeed, it’s the high-DPI thing that no current OLED PC monitor can match. At best, you’re looking at about 110DPI with an…

IT’S VERY EASY these days to obsess over high graphics card prices and forget the fact that most PC components have trended back to historical norms—you know, norms that say tech gets not just better, but cheaper over time. For proof, look no further than the Pixio PXC277 Advanced. It’s a 27-inch, 165Hz, 1440p gaming panel, and it’s yours for just $240. That’s a lot cheaper than you could have got a similarly specified monitor just a few years ago, and that’s just how things should be. We haven’t seen a Pixio monitor first hand before. It’s a lesser brand and with that comes unclear expectations. Can it really be any good for this price? Actually, yes it can. The Pixio PXC277 Advanced is the real deal. There is nothing…

CARVING OUT A NICHE in the busy monitor market isn’t easy, but AOC has managed it better than most. A decade ago, it was a maker of utterly anonymous low-cost flat screens for office workers. Now, it’s one of the most prolific gaming monitor brands in the business with screens to suit all budgets. In that context, the new AOC Gaming 24G2SP combines AOC’s hard-won gaming rep with its origins as a value-orientated outfit. This is a 24-inch 1080p panel, which is pretty modest by today’s standards. But it offers a fair few gaming niceties, including 165Hz refresh, 1ms claimed response, and variable refresh rate. As is the norm for gaming monitors, even at this end of the market, AOC has gone for IPS panel tech. That helps with achieving…

RAZER IS A heavyweight of the keyboard world, and its BlackWidow range has just been updated with some fancy new features and a price tag to match. Is it worth your cash? Compared to the BlackWidow V3 Pro, the latest update tweaks the media controls, repositions the control dial, and adds a fistful of macro buttons. You also get RGB illumination underneath both the keyboard and the included wrist rest, because apparently BlackWidow keyboards weren’t shiny enough already. Speaking of RGB, this wouldn’t be a Razer product if it didn’t offer a smorgasbord of lighting effects for your keys too, and there are 11 light show presets to choose from in the Synapse app. What’s that? Presets are for noobs? Well, you’re in luck, because you can create your own…

WE WERE PROMISED AMD’s 7040-series Phoenix chips for April back when AMD revealed its new Zen 4 APUs. Then there were delays, and it’s only now that we are actually getting to see what they can do. The wait has been worth it, as these mobile chips can rival desktop processors in performance. They are the first mobile Ryzens with Zen 4 architecture, coupled to Radeon RDNA 3 graphics. They also sport a dedicated AI block, the first in any Ryzen chip. There are U versions for low-power applications on a 4nm process, and 5nm HS versions for more chunky laptops. The most powerful is the Ryzen 9 7940HS, with eight cores, a base clock of 4.0GHz, maximum boost of 5.2GHz, and an integrated 780M GPU with 12 computer cores running…

NOW JUST THREE MANUFACTURERS of hard drives are left, so competition is spirited. Seagate is shipping qualification samples of its new 30TB drives to its data center customers. These are the highest-capacity drives yet, beating 26TB drives from Western Digital and Toshiba. These use second generation Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording, which uses a laser in the drive head that heats a grain (data bit) on the platter surface, enabling the recording head to flip the polarity without affecting its neighbors. HAMR requires new actuator heads and new recording media. This isn’t cheap, so these drives are aimed at large-scale commercial operations using Seagate’s CORVAULT systems. Of more practical interest is the new 22TB IronWolf Pro, a conventional 3.5in ten-platter SATA III drive. Officially it sells for $599, but has been seen discounted…

In fact, outside of certain Nvidia data center H100 solutions, PCIe 5.0 GPUs are still not here, but after waiting for over a year, the SSDs are starting to trickle out. The first crop of PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs all use Phison’s E26 controller. That’s an interesting point to begin with, as Phison at one point was regarded as one of the slower SSD controller options. That has changed a lot over the past several years, and the E26 now reigns as the fastest solution we’ve tested. It uses a dual ARM Cortex-R5 design with triple-core CoXProcessors—the coprocessors handle some common tasks, so the R5 isn’t a limiting factor, even though Cortex-R8 controllers are now shipping. Coupled with the controller is a single LPDDR4 DRAM chip. All the 2TB Phison…

When you stream media from one device to another, the receiving device must be capable of playing the media file in question. That means it needs to recognize four things about the file: its format or ‘container’ (such as MKV or MP4 for video); bitrate (the number of bits being transferred per second); resolution (such as full 1080p HD or 4K), and the codecs used to encode—and subsequently decode—the file’s video and audio streams (such as H.264 for video, and AAC for audio). When the receiving device recognizes all four of these, it’s able to “direct play” the file in question. This means all your server must do is send the file to the device, which costs its practically nothing in CPU and RAM resources. If it recognizes the bitrate, resolution,…

ARE HEADPHONES literally doing your head in? Are they cramping your style by causing a permanent indentation in your hair? Maybe you just need to keep an ear out for someone in your household and your noise-canceling headphones are getting in the way of that? Speakers might be the solution. More likely, you want to have both a good set of headphones and a pair of speakers for your setup, and boy do the SteelSeries Arena 9 speakers fit the role of the latter. If kicking back and playing a casual or story-driven game is your thing then you’ll be more than happy with the Arena 9 setup. Being the most premium model SteelSeries offers, sitting above the 3&7 variants, it delivers a true 5.1 surround sound experience. The package includes a…

BLUETOOTH has become so commonplace that you probably used it today without even thinking, but it’s a technology that is worthy of deeper consideration. For a start, it’s unique. Similar to Wi-Fi in some ways, but with a different topology and a shorter range, intended for “personalarea networking” (PAN), rather than a whole-home LAN. In case you’d wondered, “Bluetooth” was originally the colorful nickname of Harald Gormsson, king of Denmark in the 10th century. The connection between short-range networking and the Danish monarchy isn’t obvious, but the ostensible explanation is that Gormsson united the tribes of Denmark into a single kingdom, and Bluetooth similarly brings a whole range of networking protocols into one standard. If that sounds like a stretch, it may also have helped that Gormsson’s initials were written…

TIP OF THE MONTH To ensure your AMD PC is running at its best, check out the AMD Auto-Detect tool. This app will keep your drivers updated for your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, graphics, and chipset. It’s peace of mind to know your system is up-to-date. Head to the AMD site to find out more. MAKE – USE – CREATE 62 How to build a bulletproof rescue disk 66 Upgade your CPU to make your PC run faster 70 Manage email using Outlook’s Quick Steps 9 YEARS TOO LATE? Despite writing for a predominantly Windows-based PC publication, you’d be surprised to find out that a favorite device of mine is my 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: why? Well, it’s never let me down, been with me through…

Rebooting your PC every time you want to test your Ventoy boot drive can be frustrating. While looking for a means to capture grabs of Ventoy, we stumbled on a quick way to test bootable USB drives—including Ventoy—in a virtual environment. Head to https://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/to download the latest Windows 64-bit installer of QEMU—at the time of writing it was dated 2022-12-30. During installation, leave all options checked. Once it’s in place, head to https://github.com/mbusb/multibootusb and click on Releases to obtain the last release (9.2.0) of MultiBootUSB (multibootusb-9.2.0-setup.exe). Once installed, launch MultiBootUSB and verify that your Ventoy drive letter has been selected. Now, switch to the Boot ISO/USB tab and simply click ‘Boot USB’—after a short pause a virtual window will open inside which Ventoy will launch. There may be a bit…

If your CPU and cooler came out as one, you need to separate them if you plan to reuse either (or both). Start by placing the cooler/CPU combo upside down so the CPU is facing upwards, showing its pins. Now, use a hairdryer to heat up the heatsink, loosen the thermal paste, and make things easier to remove. If you’re unable to twist the CPU off the base of the cooler, take the blade from a craft knife (with care—we cut our thumbs in a moment of madness!) and insert it underneath one corner of the processor, blades facing forward. Try wriggling the blade into the gap to loosen more of the thermal paste. You may need to attack more than one side before you’re able to prise off the…

MICROSOFT 365 SUBSCRIPTION, OR OUTLOOK 2013 OR LATER Copy style of what’s needed. MANAGING YOUR EMAIL CAN BE A FULL-TIME JOB. It can take hours to sort, especially if you get a lot of messages that need forwarding, dealing with another time, or deleting. This is something that email developers are trying to fix. They realise that streamlining the process is likely to win a host of new users. Outlook’s approach is a tool called Quick Steps, which lets you join a series of tasks that can be executed in sequence with a keyboard shortcut. The process works like macros, which you may have heard talked about in relation to documents, spreadsheets, and attachments. That’s because, like a sequence in Quick Steps, macros are series of commands that execute automatically…

THERE IS A VERY STRONG argument to be made for the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D being the best gaming CPU around right now. It’s certainly the best gaming chip that AMD has ever made, but it’s also capably outperforming Intel’s top CPU when it comes to gaming frame rates, and is doing so for a lot less cash. It’s a lot less thirsty, too. That’s possibly one of the most intriguing things about the 3D V-Cache processors of the Zen 4 generation—just how much more efficient they are than the first top-end chips of the Ryzen 7000-series. In fact, with every subsequent release of this new generation, AMD has improved its latest processor range, making the previous ones almost redundant. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D, reviewed in our May 2023 issue,…

THE NVIDIA RTX 4070 is a $100 cheaper RTX 3080. That’s the easiest, but probably also the most facile, way to describe the green team’s new graphics card. This is the fourth entry in the notoriously expensive Ada generation of GPUs, and in standard metrics performs as well as the fourth-tier card from the Ampere lineup. On the face of it, it’s just a cheaper chip. But it’s not just that. This smart new Nvidia card is also an RTX 3080 with benefits. This is the first of the Ada graphics cards to utilize the same GPU as the previous release, just with a little of the good stuff cut back to create a more affordable offering. That also means Nvidia is able to do something useful with any chip…

SPEED IS THE NAME of the game when it comes to the HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless. In fact, it’s actually in the name itself, so that’s convenient. Any competitive gamer will tell you that if you want to achieve high K/D/As, you’ll need a speedy (and accurate) gaming mouse to keep up your reflexes. The lightweight Haste 2 wireless has a lot going for it; best of all, it’s only $90. It’s not perfect, but its speed and price are enough to put up with some rough edges. The wireless (and wired) Haste 2 comes standard with that fancy new HyperX 26K sensor with a tracking speed of 650 IPS—good for twitch shooters or games that have a lot of frantic movements that still require you to be accurate as…

ACTION-ADVENTURE GAME AT A GLANCE, Jedi: Survivor falls on the pulpy, safer side of Star Wars—the gifted Jedi with untapped potential, a faithful droid companion, and a swashbuckling crew certainly paint that picture, but there’s more to lead character Cal Kestis. Jedi: Survivor doesn’t shy away from the darkest chapter of Star Wars history, findaas humor in an unfair world, and sometimes succumbs to helplessness. It’s not a story about fighting the Empire as much as coping with its dominance, grappling with the futility of rebellion, and questioning what’s left to fight for. The modern Star Wars media that this feels closest to is Andor, though it’s not as ambitious in its storytelling or as cynical. Unfortunately, those themes take a backseat through the middle of the story while Cal Kestis…

> 7600X Motherboards > Blueprint Ideas > Water Cooling Difficulties Motherboard Meeting I’m planning on buying an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X because of its excellent price-to-performance ratio. It’s faster out of the box than most AMD 7000 chips. Which motherboard do you recommend in the B650 class? I’m not a gamer, but I do like photography. I will likely use the on-board video port. I want a PCIe 5.0 slot in case I need it down the road. The GIGABYTE B650 AORUS Elite AX is the mobo I have in mind, which has 2.5G ethernet, PCIe 5.0, and HDMI. I’m sad there will be no more tactile version of Maximum PC, but will always be a subscriber. Thanks for your help on this issue. –S. Sherk EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GUY COCKER, RESPONDS: I’ve…

TSMC HAS REVEALED A FURTHER YEAR of its production roadmap at the North American Technology Symposium. N2 is on schedule for production in 2025, with two further iterations after. It brings a 10-15 percent speed improvement at the same power level, and a 25-30 percent power reduction at the same speed. Despite what the numbers suggest, chip density is 1.15 times. That metric doesn’t equate directly to the size of the transistor gates, although each manufacturer measures things differently. The second-generation N2P is due in 2026, reaching customers in 2027. This uses backside power delivery (don’t laugh), splitting signal and power between the front and back interconnects. This enables sizable bumps in transistor density, plus power savings. Intel is working on this too, and plans to get it running by…

NEW TECHNOLOGIES bring dissenting voices. The explosion of AI-powered systems has brought more than its fair share of people sounding alarms. However, many of these voices belong to engineers and scientists who were involved in AI development at the highest levels, and know what they are talking about. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai (pictured above), has delivered a sobering warning about the effects of AI-powered systems in a recent interview. It will, he says, affect “every product across every company”. His biggest concern is that it can all too easily be used to spread convincing misinformation. Google has had a series of internal guidelines for AI since 2018. “We have to be very thoughtful” he warns. A recent Netflix drama included an AI-powered ‘enhanced interrogation’ robot developed by the CIA. It…

WITH INTEL’S POWERHOUSE Core i9-13900K taking the limelight in some of our most recent stand-out builds, it was inevitable that we’d follow up with AMD’s top challenger. After getting our hands on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, we simply had to pair this with the most powerful GPU on the block, Nvidia’s RTX 4090. These two components alone should ensure our machine is packed to the brim with power, so you know we had to face it against our 8K gaming monster machine Guy built in our Holiday 2022 issue. Will AMD’s CPU take the throne, or sit in second place? With tricks up its sleeve like 3D V-Cache, 16 cores, 32 threads, and up to 5.7GHz max boost frequency, it will surely put up a good fight. Processors aside, the…

HECK YES, this machine is a monster when it comes down to performance, and after are few niggles, we’re more than happy with how it turned out. Aesthetically too, especially with all of the RGB fans working, it’s a very slick rig. Sure, a few custom cables would help to tidy it up some more, but overall we love how this ended up looking. With everything cleared up, the only remaining restriction was that we were running our RTX 4090 on only three 8-pin PCIe cables, and not the full four 8-pin PCIe cables that it could use. If you have the choice, we obviously recommend using all four, as it means that you are getting all of the necessary power to your GPU, and it won’t be restricted in…

You can make all kinds of changes to your library—simply roll your mouse over a title’s artwork in library view and click the pencil icon to edit anything you like about it—the title name and synopsis, tags, poster, and background image can all easily be changed here. And what happens on those rare occasions when Plex misidentifies a movie or TV show? Roll your mouse over the artwork again, but this time click the vertical ellipsis button, where you’ll find loads more controls, including a ‘Fix Match…’ option. This allows you to search for the correct item using its title and year. Once selected, Plex will update its metadata accordingly. As your library grows, you may want to explore other ways of organizing things—for example, you can create collections that allow you…

Why, exactly, are graphics cards so expensive? With every new GPU launch comes the same refrain: nice card, shame about the price. Everyone seems to agree that PC graphics cost too much, so are $600 GPUs the new mainstream reality? Is there no going back on fourfigure prices for higher-performing boards? Or is there hope for something approaching a return to what you might call historical pricing models? The good news is that graphics card prices today are lower than they were 18 months ago. Back then, mid-range cards cost over $1,000, and anything remotely high-end was megabucks. But all that was a consequence of some once-in-ageneration factors, not least of which were the pandemic, a cryptocurrency craze, and a war in Europe. But the impact of those events, on…

The question of artificial intelligence has been a hard one to get away from, with ChatGPT hitting the headlines as both an amazing scientific advance and the harbinger of the end of civilization. Which is it? Well, as with many tech stories in the papers, it’s a bit more complicated than a simple binary choice. What has been released to the public are still a long way from the AIs we’re used to seeing in science fiction. They’re generally capable of doing one thing, whether that’s holding a conversation or creating images of the Pope in a fashionable white coat (or the image that opens this feature) that are photoreal enough to fool the casual observer. We’ve yet to see one that can do both, though ChatGPT is as capable at writing…

16GB OR LARGER USB FLASH DRIVE Ventoy (www.ventoy.net) and a selection of rescue media in ISO file format. ONE RESCUE DISK TO RULE THEM ALL. That’s the stated aim of this tutorial, and thanks to a free tool called Ventoy, that goal is not just reachable, it’s simple to achieve, too. All you need is a suitably large USB flash drive—16GB or larger—and after installing Ventoy on it, you can simply copy across all kinds of bootable media as ISO files directly to the drive, then choose which one to boot from when you restart your PC. Whether you need to restore your last drive image to bring Windows back to life, perform surgery on a non-booting Windows install, clear malware, or recover data from a corrupt drive before wiping…

If your boot menu starts to become crowded, there are several ways to make things easier to navigate. The simplest is to rename the boot files so they’re more identifiable (for example, Norton Bootable Recovery Tool.iso rather than nbrt.iso). Another tip is to group related ISOs together into folders, such as Security or OSes. By default, the Ventoy boot menu will continue to display these in alphabetical order, but if you press F3, you’ll switch to TreeView, which as you’d expect, displays folders as well as files. If you’d like to customize things further, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with what Ventoy calls plugins, but which are in reality a series of text-based. json files. Thankfully, editing these doesn’t involve your text editor—simply launch VentoyPlugsOn.exe from the same directory as…

1. CORES/THREADS The more cores a processor has, the better it is at multitasking and processor-intensive tasks. These days, even entrylevel Ryzen and Core chips come with four cores. 2. CLOCK SPEED A CPU’s speed—or core frequency—is measured in GHz. Two figures are provided: base and turbo. Base is its everyday level, and turbo is what it’s capable of, subject to thermal and power limits. 3. OVERCLOCKING A CPU’s ability to increase its clock speed to a higher frequency than recommended by the manufacturer. This results in more heat, and thus requires better cooling. 4. TDP (THERMAL DYNAMIC POWER) The maximum amount of heat a processor generates. Lower TDP requires less cooling, but typically results in a lower base frequency. 5. SOCKET This refers to the physical socket a processor…

THERE HAVE BEEN SOME TRULY AWFUL PC game ports—Batman: Arkham Knight, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, and the original Resident Evil 4 all spring to mind. But 2023 will go down as the worst year yet for lousy PC versions of great games—and we’re not even halfway through the year yet. The Last of Us Part I turned one of the greatest games ever made into a laughing stock on PC, with a shader compilation process that took longer than Steam’s allotted refund time, and bugs that turned the famously serious game into an outright comedy. One month on, and it’s still not fixed. Wild Hearts is similarly unplayable, with the top review on Steam stating: “The price is higher than the FPS you will be able to pull…

ONE DAY, X86 PROCESSORS in PCs will be entirely replaced by Arm chips. That’s the widespread assumption—just don’t expect us to tell you if it will actually happen or when. What we can say for sure, however, is that if future PCs do end up being Arm-powered, then the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s will retrospectively be seen as a harbinger of things to come. This slick little 13-inch laptop rocks a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip, a pure Arm-powered processor. If you’re not familiar with it—and why should you be?—it runs four performance-spec Arm Cortex-X1 cores and another four Cortex-A78 efficiency cores. You also get an Adreno 690 GPU, and in this particular configuration, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. It’s all housed in a super high-quality 13-inch chassis,…

THE INTEL NUC has been around for about a decade, making it as old as the PS4 and Xbox One. Yet, this tiny form factor PC still continues to impress us, with new variants released annually. With Intel’s 13th generation CPU now available, a NUC housing these chips was bound to happen, and we’ve gotten our hands on a pre-production unit of the Intel NUC 13 Pro (codenamed Arena Canyon). We’ve featured a similar NUC-based product, the Geekom Mini IT8, before, but that had an 8th gen processor, so this NUC 13 Pro should be a big step up. Is it the right mini PC for you? Design-wise, not much has changed since the last two iterations of the Pro models. Our NUC is the slim “K” chassis, which is…

COMMUNICATION IS KEY. Yes, that’s an old saying, but it’s something that is especially true in the modern digital age, where we stay in touch with friends, work colleagues, even family. In order to build strong communications, you need an equally strong application to make things as simple and clear as possible. That’s where these two apps come in. Whether you’re after a corporate or more gamer-focused app, Slack and Discord are two of the most prominent connectivity platforms to choose from. Both essentially offer the same service, but with unique features that set them apart, it’s often difficult to decide which one to primarily use. Let’s pit them against each other and figure out which one will be victorious. In the grand scheme of things, both apps are fairly…

IN THE LAST ISSUE, we made quite a few changes on our Intel budget build by including parts we used in that issue’s main feature machine. The biggest of them all was the GPU—no shock there! We swayed across from team Nvidia and hopped onto the new Intel GPU train with the A750. For 1080p gaming, we were more than satisfied with our results. Additionally, you can pick these up for $250. That’s not a bad little package, is it? So we kept this GPU in place, along with our newly added Intel Core i3-13100F for this issue. This is $10 cheaper than last time thanks to a nice little discount. As for the rest of the Intel budget machine components, nothing changed other than our motherboard, the ASRock B660M-HDV Micro…