Custom PC UK May 2022

Do you know when we last did a build feature for a sub-£1,000 PC with a discrete GPU? It was in Issue 204, 20 months ago. Zen 3 was still months away, as were Ampere and RDNA2. Our last budget gaming PC build had a quad-core Ryzen 3 CPU and a Radeon RX 5600 XT – we haven’t done a sub-£1,000 gaming build for nearly two years. But that changes this month, as the graphics card market has slowly started correcting. It’s not party time yet. GPU prices are still a long way from normal, and the £400+ eBay prices for the GeForce RTX 3050 (see p16) show that there’s still plenty of silliness around. However, there has been a definite drop. Since last issue, the cheapest price for the GeForce RTX…

Like a slowly deflating balloon, Nvidia’s Arm deal finally ran out of air after multiple governments took aim at it, and Nvidia was forced to let it go. It was a predictable outcome, given that the deal had opposition from practically everyone that makes chips using Arm’s technology. It’s not the first time Nvidia has tried to get its own CPU IP. In the mid-2000s, it approached VIA with the intent to buy its x86 licence, but this was when VIA was facing legal hurdles with Intel. Based on agreements made with Cyrix in the 1990s, VIA argued it had the right to keep making x86 CPUs and use Intel’s front side bus protocols in its designs, but Intel argued otherwise. This was around the time that AMD and ATi were tying…

I was a PC kid rather than a console kid, but I remember the early handheld wars well. I was 16, doing a BTEC in computer programming, poor as can be and intrigued by the Sega Game Gear. That was until a fellow student with rich parents brought one in, and I realised it was comically large for the tiny screen and kind of unwieldy. I went back home to my ancient creaking Amstrad 464 gratefully, while he burned through countless batteries and only two games. But these days I spend a lot of time on handheld games, because schlepping a PC or gaming laptop around on the bus requires more strength, security and chutzpah than I possess. While Nintendo has allowed more variety on the Switch store, including some truly…

Fractal Design has miniaturised the design of its Torrent chassis with two new models. First up is the Torrent Compact; like Fractal’s Define and Meshify Compact models, it reduces the space next to the motherboard tray to make an ATX case with a small footprint. It also comes with a pair of 180mm Fractal Prisma ARGB PWM fans to push air over the internals. Meanwhile, the Torrent Nano shrinks down to a mini-ITX form factor, with just one of Fractal’s big spinners in the front, but maintaining the distinctive grille pattern. Despite its smaller dimensions, the Nano can still house a three-slot graphics card up to 335mm long, with room for a CPU cooler up to 165mm tall. When’s the next issue out? Issue 225 on sale Thursday, 31 March Letters Tell us what you…

Corsair’s acclaimed K70 series of keyboards now has a new Pro-branded flagship, featuring a soft-touch wrist rest, double-shot PBT keycaps, reduced latency and a new dedicated ‘tournament’ switch. The latter immediately changes the backlight to a ‘distraction-free’ static colour, so your eyes don’t get drawn to any breathing, pulsing or rainbow chasing effects, and disables accidentally activated macros. The keyboard also comes with a detachable USB Type-C cable and a choice of five Cherry MX mechanical switches, including the Red, Brown, Blue and Speed varieties. Meanwhile, Corsair says the double-shot PBT keycaps are ‘precision-moulded to resist wear and fading so your keys still look and feel fresh even for years to come, while allowing stunning perkey RGB lighting to shine brilliantly through’. The new soft-touch wrist rest also marks a departure from…

Some of ASRock’s 1st-gen Ryzen boards have been given new beta BIOS updates to support AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs, meaning you could use a five-year-old motherboard to accommodate a brandnew Ryzen 5000-series chip. Given the limited space on the motherboards’ EEPROM flash memory, updating to these latest BIOS versions will result in losing support for some older CPUs. The BIOS notes state that there’s no support for Bristol Ridge chips (AMD’s cheaper A-series and Athlon X4 CPUs) with the new updates. The X370 boards getting the Zen 3 treatment include the X370 Killer SLI, Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4 and Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming. If you have an ASRock X370 motherboard, you can find the BIOS updates available for your board at asrock.com, and scroll down to the bottom to find the beta…