PC Gamer Presents - PC Hardware Handbook - May 2018

INTEL HAS FINALLY THROWN OFF

THE SHACKLES OF THOSE FOUR-

CORE LIMITATIONS

PROCESSORS

At last, we’ve seen it come to fruition.

Intel has finally thrown off the shackles

of those four-core limitations, and added

an additional two cores to the vast

majority of chips in its arsenal of

mainstream processors. It is, in essence,

an effective way of combatting AMD’s

Ryzen eight-core parts, without having

to redevelop an entire processor

architecture to do so.

The Core i5-8400 is the absolute

sweet spot in the lineup, and for those

looking for a mid-range, no fuss chip,

that gets the job done, it’s the new king

of the hill. Although it still lacks the

Hyper-Threading of its Core i7 superior,

the inclusion of those two Coffee Lake

cores on top of the usual four provides a

INTEL CORE I5-

http://www.intel.com

TOTAL

£

ADVANCED

TOTAL

£

MID_RANGE

raft of additional processing

prowess, capable of demolishing

the older Core i7-7700K. It is, by

far, the best value processor you

can buy to date, coming in at a

faintly ridiculous £183.

That’s not to say there aren’t

any limitations with Coffee

Lake, the big one being power

FOR HIGH-END PERFORMANCE

A THREADRIPPER IS DEFINITELY

THE WAY TO GO

FEATURE

Today’s best upgrades

AMD RYZEN

THREADRIPPER

1950X

http://www.amd.com

There is an argument for going with

Intel’s Core i9-7980XE: It’s a beast, with

18 cores and 36 threads. It costs £1,668,

though. For the vast majority of us, such

a move makes no sense. If you want

high-end performance that will leave

your bank balance less sore, then a

Threadripper is the way to go. And at

£999, the 16-core 1950X is the best that

AMD has on offer.

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper

1950X is incredible, effectively

squeezing a pair of Ryzen 1800Xs into

one package. There are big wins in

addition to the phenomenal core count,

including 64 PCIe lanes, support for

quad-channel DDR4, and 40MB of L

cache. It happily turbos up to 4GHz,

and stays cool while doing so; 60 C puts

Intel’s latest to shame.

The

resultant chip is

huge, so AMD has

introduced a new

package and mounting

mechanism – an

interesting system that

helps ensure you don’t damage your

new motherboard or expensive CPU.

Speaking of which, you will, of course,

need a new motherboard to go along

with your top-end chip, and we cover

our recommendation for X399 later.