a thing or two about a thing or twomaximumpc.com SEP 2019 MAXIMUMPC 9
editorial
EDITORIAL
Executive Editor: Alan Dexter
Senior Editor: Jarred Walton
Hardware Lead: Bo Moore
Hardware Staff Writer: Joanna Nelius
Staff Writer: Christian Guyton
Contributing Editor: Chris Angelini
Contributing Writers: Jonni Bidwell, Alex Campbell, Alex Cox,
Nate Drake, Ian Evenden, Phil Iwaniuk, Jeremy Laird,
Chris Lloyd, Nick Peers, Mark Wyciślik-Wilson
Copy Editor: Katharine Davies
Editor Emeritus: Andrew Sanchez
ART
Art Editor: Fraser McDermott
Photography: Phil Barker, Olly Curtis, Neil Godwin
Cover Photo Credits: Future PLC, Raspberry Pi Foundation,
Nvidia, Windows
BUSINESS
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East Coast Account Director: Victoria Sanders,
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East Coast Account Director: Melissa Planty,
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East Coast Account Director: Elizabeth Fleischman,
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West Coast Account Director: Austin Park,
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West Coast Account Director: Jack McAuliffe,
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Director, Client Services: Tracy Lam, [email protected]
PRODUCTION
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Production Manager: Vivienne Calvert
Project Manager: Clare Scott
Production Assistant: Emily Wood
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Alan
Dexter
SUMMER IS OFTEN a quiet time for PC
hardware, but this year things are
different. We’ve had a slew of important
releases hit our test benches all at
once, and it could just be that the PC
scene will never be the same again
after this summer. Serious words,
but reasonable when you’re talking
about a new PCIe bus that will usher
in the promise of incredible storage
performance and improved graphics.
In case you’ve been hiding under
a rock, AMD has released a new
processor family as well as its much
anticipated Navi GPUs this month, and
(spoiler alert!) they’re both impressive.
Admittedly, it’s the CPUs that really
loosened our collective jaws, but thanks
to Nvidia also releasing new GPUs,
AMD was forced to drop the prices of
its first Navi cards, so they represent
much better value than expected.
Of course, Nvidia’s new “super” 2060
and 2070 are interesting in their own
right, but they highlight once again that
competition is good for us, the end user.
Manufacturers dropping prices to make
their products more tempting always
goes down well. The same is true in the
CPU space—Intel is guilty of resting on
its laurels, but now it genuinely needs
to respond, or it’ll find itself lagging
further and further behind. Price drops
from Intel in lieu of new thread-happy
chips aren’t out of the question.
One area where AMD has come on
in leaps and bounds over the original
Ryzen is on the memory front. It’s no
secret that while the original Ryzen
was an impressive shift in gear from
Team Red, memory support at launch
was patchy. It improved over time, to be
sure, but that was one area where Intel
definitely had a lead in terms of easeof use. These new Ryzen chips have no
such problems; in fact, AMD is pushing
memory harder than Intel right now.
Which brings us nicely to the whole
subject of RAM, and our main cover
feature. What is the optimal amount of
memory for any given system? What’s
more important: capacity, frequency,
latency, or price? We show you how
to improve this often overlooked
subsystem, while ensuring you don’t
waste money where it isn’t needed.
Our other main feature looks at what
5G will mean to you, and where our PCs
fit in—it isn’t just about cell phones
anymore. With promises of connections
in the remotest of places, super-low
latencies, and the kind of bandwidth
that is normally the preserve of fiber,
5G promises a lot. But can it deliver?
Turn to page 44 to find out.
Another interesting new release is
the Raspberry Pi 4. The tiny computer
has seen many improvements over the
years, but the most recent iteration
really shifts up a gear, with a speedier
CPU, improved memory, better buses,
and support for dual displays up to 4K.
It is genuinely becoming a viable budget
desktop machine. We also show you
how to build a NAS, get up and running
with Docker, protect your network with
an SSH honeypot, and much more.
I hope you enjoy the issue!SECOND-GENERATION
ZEN IS A GAME CHANGER
Alan Dexter is Maximum PC’s executive
editor and a punisher of hardware. He’s been
a tech journalist for over 20 years, and has no
problem upsetting the PC industry as a whole.