PC Gamer Presents - PC Hardware Handbook - May 2018

As an upgrade, a budget chip is a tricky concept. We’ve been recommending the Intel Pentium G4600 for our budget build for the b ...

AS THE BATTLE LINES WIDEN, OUR IDEA OF WHAT A MID- RANGE CARD INCLUDES HAS INEVITABLY INCREASED GRAPHICS CARDS Once upon a time, ...

So, where is AMD in all of this? The sad reality is that AMD isn’t providing any competitive solutions at any of the right price ...

MOTHERBOARDS Now we turn to our budget-specced motherboard of choice: the Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3. Ryzen is an absolutely revolu ...

At the time of going to press, we haven’t had chance to play with a lot of Z370 motherboards yet. That said, it’s hard to argue ...

SOLID-STATE DRIVES Once you’ve used an M.2, you can’t go back. To be fair, that’s not strictly true, but it’s a good sound bite, ...

CASES TOTAL £175 ADVANCED £60 is a fair amount of cash when building a budget rig. We usually recommend you try to save as much ...

MEMORY MATTERS Memory Matters FEATURE ...

A fresh look at the state of DDR4 in 2018 W e often describe the PC as having its own ecosystem, almost as though it’s some form ...

Memory Matters FEATURE THE OBSESSION WITH SPEED Memory speed is one of the most convoluted specifications around, and is often m ...

CAPACITY FOR CAPACITY To understand how memory capacity is calculated, we have to look at how the chips themselves are designed. ...

Memory Matters FEATURE PRICE HIKES If you haven’t built or upgraded a machine recently, you might not realise that memory pricin ...

STANDARDISATION What exactly are JEDEC’s standards? And why are they necessary? Well, the biggest reason they exist is to ensure ...

Our test bed consists of an Asus Z370 Maximus X Hero for the Core i7, and an Asus X299 Prime Deluxe motherboard for the Core i9. ...

OFFICE & HOME THEATRE As we mentioned earlier, if all you’re wanting to do is run office software and browse the web, a sing ...

Our test bed consists of an Asus X370 Crosshair VI Hero for Ryzen, and an Asus X399 ROG Zenith Extreme motherboard for Threadrip ...

OFFICE & HOME THEATRE Let’s assume you have an old GPU from an out-of-date system that you’re going to be plugging into this ...

Protect your tech FEATURE Having your laptop, tablet or phone stolen is depressingly common. As we explain here, there’s a lot y ...

Feature PROTECT YOUR TECH AT A GLANCE W e have good news and bad news. The good news is that the crime rate has been falling in ...

Protect your tech FEATURE which allows a security cable to be attached, and that folds away when not in use. It costs from £38. ...