a thing or two about a thing or twomaximumpc.com SEP 2020 MAXIMUM PC 9
editorial
EDITORIAL
Editor: Zak Storey
Staff Writer: Christian Guyton
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Ian Evenden, Jeremy Laird, Chris Lloyd, Nick Peers,
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Zak
Storey
ALTHOUGH Moore’s Law may be
fluttering around the edges today,
its effect on the industry is well-
documented, and very apparent. In fact,
thinking of computing performance,
just how much we’ve managed to gain in
ever-smaller form factors is seriously
impressive. Take Apollo 11’s guidance
computer, for example: According to
some figures, modern iPhones house
over 100,000 times more processing
power than the legendary computer
that landed man on the Moon. And that’s
just in the world of mobile....
Even in the last five years in our
own heady domain, computational
performance has quadrupled in the
mainstream marketplace, and in the
land of HEDT it’s more than six times
higher than when we first started, and
that’s just on core count alone. Moore’s
Law may not be to thank for that—
intuitive complex chip design is—but
nonetheless the amount of power we
can achieve in our mid towers today is
incredible. And that got us thinking.
Just what can you do in the smallest
of form factors. In particular, we’re
talking about ITX. It’s long been a love
of mine, for gaming or otherwise: The
perfect balance between size and
performance. In fact my very first rig
that got me into Maximum PC to begin
with was a conversion of an ATX tower
into the BitFenix Prodigy ITX chassis
with a Core i5-2500K at its heart. It was
only when I managed to overclock that
processor all the way up to 5.4GHz on
a single 120mm radiator that I began to
understand just what you could do with
the form factor. It was small, compact,
easy to transport, and yet insanely
powerful, and a match for some of my
friends’ biggest machines.
Fast forward to 2020, and that i5-
2500K’s heyday is long over, so I set
Christian to the task of building asuper-small form factor PC, designed
specifically with video-editing in mind.
ITX comes with limitations: Two slots
for memory, very few storage options,
and a single add-in card, so just how
well would it do, and what’s the most we
could put into it? You might be surprised
how much we managed to get out of that
beautifully crafted NZXT H1 chassis.
This issue we’ve also recruited Gavin
Bonshor of Anandtech fame to break
down exactly what makes motherboards
tick on PG 34. On top of that, we’ve
decided to overhaul our benchmarking
suite and testing methodologies, and
introduce a digital benchmark database
that you can check out on PG 28.
But it’s not all just videography
and charts. In our build-it this issue,
on PG 56, we’ve decided to take on
AMD’s Ryzen 3 3300X to see how
well it performs at 1080p and 1440p
gaming. This quad-core, eight-thread
processor is in high demand, and with
good reason: Coming in at just $127, it’s
the equivalent of a modern Core i7 from
2017 and makes mince meat out of any
A A A title you throw its way.
On top of all of that, we’ve got a
selection of fantastic how-to tutorials,
including how to test your SSD, a
continuation of our WordPress tutorial
series, detailing how to create posts
and pages, and a bevy of reviews,
columns, and more.
Stay safe out there, and I look
forward to seeing you next time.VIDEOGRAPHY MASTERY
Zak Storey is Maximum PC’s editor and long-
time staff member. He’s been building PCs
since he was 10, and is more than capable of
butting heads with the biggest names in tech.