ROUND-UP
MOBOFurnishing your rig with a better
motherboard makes a lot of sense.
The Rampage V Edition 10 is
aesthetically stunning, and
exceptionally well equipped. It’s one
of the only boards capable of
pushing our Core i7-6950X to
4.4GHz and beyond, and its
vast arsenal of connectivityASUS
RAMPAGE V EDITION 10
http://www.asus.com £545
Skylake-X doesn’t offer anything particularly new or interesting, with
performance likely to be no more than 10% over last generation.options makes this the perfect X99
motherboard. If you can stomach the
eyewatering price, there’s no doubt
this thing is the perfect showpiece for
your desktop.
CHIPSET/SOCKET: X99 / LGA 2011-3 / FORM FACTOR: E-ATX
/ MEMORY SUPPORT: 128GB DDR4 @ 3333 MT/S /
M.2 / U.2 SUPPORT: 1X M.2, 1X U.2 /
SATA SUPPORT: 10X SATA 6GB/SOPTANE MEMORY 16GB
http://www.intel.com £50It’ll cost you a mere £50 to speed
up an old hard drive to SSD speeds,
but only if you’re running a Z270 and
the latest Kaby Lake platform. It’s a
new form of caching technology,
similar to RST, but lacks substance.
Save the cash you’d spend on this and
go out there and buy
yourself a 120GB SSD for
your OS instead.GLAIVE BLACK
http://www.corsair.com £70We had our reservations when we
first saw the Glaive, being big fans of
the M65. The design is lacklustre, and
the professional flair Corsair once
touted seems to have dried up in
favour of a gaming-centric style.
That said, it’s a comfortable,
precise, solid palm grip
mouse that is well worth
your consideration.MASTERPULSE
http://www.coolermaster.com £60The MasterPulse headphones are
an intriguing new design from CM,
featuring both an open and closed
back design, depending on how bassy
a sound you want. The overall rigid
design, and strong comfortable
headband ensures they’ll last
the test of time, and the
sound quality is solid, too.
Highly commended.
84 %77 %
58 %
88 %Reviews
HARDWARE
CPUFor all the constant criticism of Ryzen
for gaming and early BIOS teething
issues, the plucky underdog really
does seem to have the market pinned
right now. Think of the 1500X as the
top-end Core i7 equivalent, just at
half the price and coming with a
stock cooler as well. In-game,
it’s a solid performer, akin toWhen this was written, Intel was yet to reveal a decent competitor to AMD’s
Ryzen processors – a response that’s best described as confusing.any Devil’s Canyon part – it still has a
few niggles, but we’re talking about
less than a 5% difference in
framerate between that and its
closest Intel competition.
BASE/TURBO CLOCK: 3.6GHZ / 3.7GHZ /
CORES/THREADS: 4/8 / LITHOGRAPHY: 14NM /
CACHE: 16MB / MEMORY SUPPORT: 64GB DDR4 @
2666MHZ / MAX PCIE LANES: 2089 %
AMD
RYZEN 5 1500X
http://www.amd.com £170