Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Maximum PC

AS YOU MAY HAVE GUESSED by the fact that you’re not holding a physical copy of Maximum PC this month, we’re becoming a digital-only publication from this issue forward. Sadly, the rising costs of printing and distributing the physical edition of Maximum PC were no longer viable, and while I know that will be a disappointment to many of you, we made the decision to pivot to digital now so that we’re able to continue to bring you the title you love. And that’s exactly what we’re doing: the same magazine, the same number of pages, and the same features as before, just in a new digital format that you can access anywhere you have a device. We’re also taking this opportunity to add more content to the magazine in…

GIVE A HIGH-END PC user a fast chip and all they’re going to want to do is try to make it go faster. AMD’s V-Cache chips are a tempting target. However, there’s a bug in some motherboard software (including from MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and ASRock) that enables free control over voltages, and multipliers if you click through to ‘Customize’. All safeguards are bypassed, and it is easy to fry the chip. High voltages produce too much heat, hence AMD’s reduction of the maximum from 1.5v to 1.35v. You can also set the multiplier to 80. Theoretically: 8GHz. Reality: a fried chip. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D has been subject to some tweaking too, including a successful effort to 5.9GHz, thanks to AMD’s PBO Curve Optimizer. Another effort was less successful,…

TIKTOK’S CEO, Shou Zi Chew, received a rough handling from a Congress committee recently. The nub of the matter was whether or not TikTok was a security threat, and if so, should it be banned. The trouble is that TikTok collects data, as does pretty much every company with an internet presence. However, TikTok is aggressive about it, and that data is available to the Chinese government. It doesn’t really have a choice about this; it is part of Chinese law. The company has confirmed that personal data collected is available to staff in China, and that it has the data to spy on journalists as it tries to identify the source of leaks about the company’s operations. Can a ban work? Well, there are problems. There’s the First Amendment,…

That’s exactly what’s happened with the rumors revolving around Intel’s upcoming desktop Meteor Lake CPUs. But actually, it’s simple. Meteor was probably never meant to be a desktop processor. That Intel’s Meteor Lake processors exist is far from a secret. It is mentioned by senior Intel suits every time the company updates the markets on its progress. Meteor Lake, we are assured, remains on track for production later this year. Meteor Lake will be its first consumer processor to use chiplets or, in Intel parlance, tiles. It will be four tiles: one for the CPU cores, one for the integrated GPU, an SoC tile, and an IO tile. It will also be the first CPU on Intel 4, the upcoming process node formerly known as 7nm. This is all public…

BE CAREFUL WHAT you ask for—you might just get it. So it goes with screen technology of late. We’ve been clamoring for something better than an LCD panel with a big, dumb backlight for years. Now we’ve got it, and it turns out—in some ways, at least—that conventional LCD monitors aren’t so bad after all. The new entrants on the display scene are, of course, mini-LED and OLED. Mini-LED screens are actually a subset of LCD displays, not a new category of panel tech. But they do represent a significant step change. OLED, meanwhile, has taken its time transitioning from the TV market to PC monitors. But it is a radical new technology and has finally arrived in desktop monitors. On paper, both offer dramatic advantages over conventional LCD displays. At…

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If you’re considering buying a new computer, there are currently two main processor architectures to choose between. Windows PCs are normally built on the x86 platform, which is used by both Intel and AMD, while Apple’s computers use the company’s M1 and M2 processors, based on the ARM architecture. The x86 and ARM processor platforms do the same basic job, but they do it in slightly different ways. Their internal logic is wired up in different arrangements, with different configurations of internal data registers and different sets of hard-coded instructions. At a fundamental level, they run programs in different ways and use different code. Over the next few pages, we will explore the main differences between the approaches of these two different architectures, and what that means in practice. Instruction…

YOU’LL NEED THIS DUPLICATI (www.duplicati.com) Suitable online storage. Duplicati supports most popular services as well as WebDAV, FTP, and SSH, and can store backups locally too. THE FIRST RULE OF BACKUPS is that you can’t have too many backups. Better to have redundant copies of your data than a single copy that fails when you need it. Hopefully, you’ve already accumulated two separate backup devices, say a USB drive and network-attached storage, with backups alternating between them. You now need a third backup, stored offsite in case of fire, damage, or theft. The obvious choice is the online storage offered by Microsoft, Dropbox, or Google. But does your backup tool support cloud-based backups, and can you even trust your cloud provider—who controls the encryption keys that could unlock your data…

YOU’LL NEED THIS PFSENSE FIREWALL (free) YOU MIGHT NOT THINK you need another firewall. The one built into Windows is working all the time in the background to protect individual computers, and many routers have their own firewalls to protect the whole network. But running your own custom firewall has several benefits: it gives you more flexibility, plus better oversight of what’s going on in the background. It’s also easier to set up than you might think. You don’t need specialist hardware, and you don’t need to pay for firewall software. The open-source pfSense firewall is free for personal use, with a graphical interface for administration and all the same features as the enterprise version (the difference is that you don’t get commercial support). You can run it in a virtual…

IT’S CRAZY HOW a GPU as powerful as the RTX 4090 can be condensed to fit within a laptop, let alone alongside the rest of the components. So when we got the chance to take a look at an all-new ASUS laptop featuring an RTX 4090, we were more than excited. The ROG Zephyrus M16 from last year was an impressive device, so this revised 2023 model with an Intel i9-13900H and an RTX 4090 inside should be a recipe for success, right? The design hasn’t changed much over last year’s model. The chassis is matte black aluminum and magnesium, making it feel tough and rugged. The hinge feels sturdy, too, and there’s no screen wobble. The design changes drastically when we take a look at the lid, though. ASUS…

WHEN WE’VE COVERED Samsung Odyssey monitors of late, they’ve tended to be on the pricier side, such as the Neo G8 in March ($1,300), or the Ark in January ($3,500). This Odyssey G70B isn’t going to feature on any budget buy lists, but at $699, it’s more affordable than those screens. At first glance it has a veritable wishlist of features for gaming fans, including 4K, 144Hz, 1ms response time, IPS panel, and G-SYNC support. Add smart features for streaming, and you have a very appealing proposition. AI frame generation and upscaling tech has come a long way, but 4K displays are still the domain of high-end GPU owners. If you are in a position of owning a beefy Nvidia or AMD graphics card, though, 32 inches is the sweet…

EVEN IN THE PRIVACY of your home, you exist in a world where it’s not safe browsing the internet unprotected. Someone somewhere wants to breach your personal information and use your data for monetary gains in some way or another, and it sucks, right? Whether that be through phishing, viruses, spyware, malware, etc, it’s important to have trustworthy antivirus software, and you may not even need to pay for it. It’s just worth having the peace of mind that you’ve got that extra level of security behind you. We’ve chosen our two favorite web-protection applications to help you stay a little safer the next time you’re browsing the web. With both offerings being bigtime players in this field and providing a range of services to keep you protected, our two…

AFTER QUIETLY working in the background of many applications and services for years, AI has hit the headlines. ChatGPT has become the fastest-growing consumer application ever, surpassing 100 million users, doing in four months what took Twitter five years. ChatGPT is just the vanguard of a major shift in how computers are going to be used: an explosion of AI, and not everybody is waving flags of support. An open letter has been published, signed by some of the world’s most influential technology experts, asking for a pause and some reflection. It warns that AI could prove hugely disruptive, alter the future of life on Earth, and that the rapid development means even AI creators can’t control, predict, or even fully understand what their systems are doing. It calls for a…

Much like Stable Diffusion last year, research in large language models (LLMs) means that you can now run your very own chatbot on your local PC. (https://tinyurl.com/local-chatbot) Caveats apply. This isn’t ChatGPT. You’ll also want a GPU with as much VRAM as possible, and plenty of system memory—32GB is a realistic minimum. Nvidia GPUs are vastly preferable as well, which seems to be what 99 percent of AI researchers are using. Finally, given how much has changed in just a few weeks, don’t be surprised if the gap between a locally running instance and ChatGPT narrows. Over the past month, we’ve gone from needing an RTX 4090 for OPT-6.7b—Open Pretrained Transformer language model trained with 6.7 billion parameters—to being able to run a model with twice as many parameters on…

> How much VRAM? > Taskbar icons AWOL > Keep in sync Video RAM question Back in the early days of the RTX 3060, I remember a question about the amount of video RAM available and I believe you stated that 2GB would be plenty. Now, these cards are available with 12GB of video RAM! Why is this necessary and what has changed? —Serpent Lord THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: It’s a good question, particularly given the huge amounts of system RAM available in today’s PCs. But the answer is straightforward and based on the simple fact that VRAM is optimized for the demands of graphics. The type of RAM—GDDR SDRAM—is optimized for high-bandwidth usage, and along with its placement on the GPU, means it processes graphics far quicker than using system…

TO RECAP QUICKLY, this build had two mission objectives: to avoid breaking the $1000 mark and feature a current-gen Intel CPU & GPU combo. Considering that we almost always opt for an Nvidia RTX or an AMD Radeon RX card, it should be interesting to see how it performed and whether you should opt for a newer Intel card over an older card from Nvidia or AMD at the same price. In short, both objectives were met. We even had $58 spare, so if we were to do this again, we could have added this to the motherboard budget to get an ATX board and a heatsink for the SSD. Regardless, the build went successfully, with only a few minor issues. For example, the lack of fan headers had us…

It’s the perfect display technology. There’s just one problem: you can’t buy it, at least not in a form relevant to the PC. That’s the problem with microLED—it may as well not exist unless you need a massive display for a public installation. So why can’t you get it in a PC monitor? First, let’s review why you’d even want it. Like OLED, microLED is a self-emissive technology. Each pixel being its own fully switchable light source, so you can have a fully “off” pixel right next to one running at full brightness, giving perfect lighting control and effectively infinite contrast. However, unlike OLED, microLED sidesteps the organic compounds that translate into so much pain when it comes to image retention and burn in. What’s more, microLED might be even…

Once upon a time, it was considered good practice to reinstall Windows at least once every two years. As Windows has got better at managing itself, however, the need to reinstall on a regular basis has faded, and it’s easy to go 3-5 years between reinstalls. But sooner or later, the inevitable happens. Your hard drive fills up, your desktop starts to become unmanageable and, despite Windows’ best efforts, glitchy behavior and performance start to become disruptive. While the reinstall process is quick and simple enough (20 minutes on fast hard drives), there’s a lot of work involved in getting things up and running again. In this feature, then, we’ll reveal how to prep your system for the big day, ensuring not only that your data is left untouched by…

YOU’LL NEED THIS WINDOWS 10 OR 11; MICROSOFT POWERTOYS a free and open-source download from either the Microsoft Store or Github (https://aka.ms/installpowertoys). MANY OF THE BEST TOOLS are small and perfectly formed, but having to source them all from separate places, never mind manage them, can be a real pain, even for the most enthusiastic Windows tweaker. That’s part of the rationale behind resurrecting Microsoft PowerToys, a disparate collection of tools that was originally released back in the days of Windows 95, and then later updated for Windows XP before being retired. But now they have been resurrected again in the style of the original Windows 95 release, as a single, unified package rather than a series of individual downloads. In this tutorial, we’re going to showcase some of the 18…

Intel: Budget Savior? Is Intel the answer to our sub-$1,000 Budget Build problem? IN THE COMMENTS SECTION of Maximum PC (see pages 94-95), the most hotly contested issue of the last few months has been our Budget Builds in the Blueprints section (page 96). These builds started out costing less than $1,000, but then over the last year, they crept upwards as graphics card prices commanded ever-greater premiums. We got some feedback on this that then sparked a debate about what a budget build should be in 2023—some readers suggested we drop the GPUs and make them work-machines only, while others said it was important that they were capable of playing games at 1080p. We decided to go with the latter option, and Sam, who curates the build each month,…

WE’RE NOW at a place where it’s truly a competition in the laptop space. Instead of Intel and Nvidia ruling the gaming scene, AMD is making some serious noise and OEMs are starting to dance to its beat. Enter the Alienware m17 R5. Boasting an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor and a Radeon RX 6850 XT GPU, the laptop is not to be trifled with. Thanks to AMD Advantage Suite, this system is optimized to ensure that you’re getting the best performance out of it. You also get Cherry MX keys, a stunning 4K display, great speakers, and a slick design to boot. Our test configuration featured the 3.3GHz AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor with 32GB of RAM, 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, AMD Radeon RX 6850 XT GPU with…

IF YOU’RE PAYING just shy of $2,000 for a projector, then it’s probably desirable that it meets certain criteria. The chances are you’re buying one to increase the size of your screen so, of course, it has to have a large projection size. The quality also has to impress, otherwise, the novelty soon wears thin, and it has to be easy to use. If these three criteria are met, then you should be halfway there to an immersive cinema experience that improves upon a conventional TV. Ideally, your new projector should also have all the functionality of a smart TV with alternative connectivity options for a game console or a PC, for example. XGIMI is no stranger to the world of projectors and this Horizon Pro 4K model is one…

THERE ARE LOTS OF PEOPLE who remain strictly keyboard and mouse, people who use both keyboard, mouse, and also controllers merrily, and others who transitioned to the world of PC gaming from console beginnings and rely on gamepads for gaming. Whatever your preference, it’s what you feel comfortable using and have been accustomed to that makes you enjoy gaming. However, poor peripherals can degrade your gaming experience, so picking a top-quality product is important, but that doesn't always mean breaking the bank. For all of you controller lovers out there, SteelSeries’s Stratus Duo is a wireless PC model that won’t necessarily leave your wallet crying and offers some top-end tech. Yet, with other equally priced and impressive controllers on the market, will the Stratus Duo be the one you should…

A KEY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMD AND INTEL is that the latter’s processors have gone hybrid, with big and little cores sharing the work. AMD, on the other hand, has stuck with multiples of one core design. Both approaches have their strengths, but hybrid designs have some telling ones. AMD has a new APU chip code-named Phoenix 2 in development, which is expected to introduce us to AMD’s version of the hybrid design with performance Zen 4 cores, and energy-efficient Zen 4c cores, each with hyper-threading. The chip reportedly has two big cores with 2MB of L2 apiece, and four little cores alongside an RDNA 3 integrated GPU. Rather than two architectures, the chip uses the same Zen 4 design for both jobs, adjusting clocks to suit the application: running at…

This summer might be the ideal time to fill out your memory slots. In the first quarter of the year, the average selling price of DRAM modules dropped by 20 percent, and indications are that by summer it’ll fall at least another ten. This is the result of lower demand. Micron and SK Hynix (the second and third biggest manufacturers) have had to reduce production as unsold stock languishes in the supply chain. Reports have it that there are enough PC DRAMs currently in stock to last between two to three months. Even demand from the traditionally memory-hungry server market is slow. Much of this excess stock is in the form of 8GB DDR4 modules, which isn’t helpful either. Lowering production should stabilize prices, but it’ll take until the fall…

WE KNOW, WE KNOW—when it comes to CPU cooling, we tend to point you towards an All-In-One (AIO) liquid cooler. But the truth is there are highly capable chip chillers out there that solely rely on fans and heatsinks, even for overclocked processors. There’s a lot to be said about the efficiency, affordability, and minimal fuss of a great CPU air cooler, so we’ve put together a list of the best air coolers to help keep your processor running smoothly. 5 NOCTUA NH-P1 The NH-P1 is a niche product, but it will satisfy that niche to perfection. It’s expensive, bulky, and generally limited to CPUs in the 65W range. But it’s also a passive cooler that’s completely silent. That’s what makes it a big deal. The NH-P1 is a great…

IT’S THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES and customization options that draw us into PC building. You don’t have to buy the latest components, and spending your budget wisely is ultimately what most of us are trying to do. Not only will this stop you burning a ginormous hole in your wallet, you won’t spend your hard-earned bucks on just a few components. That said, while it’s a great idea to decide what the most important components are, you don’t need to dedicate the majority of your limit to those components. In this sub-$1000 build, we wanted to use some of Intel’s latest offerings, namely a 13th gen chip alongside an Arc graphics card. We’ve gone with Intel’s Core i5-13400F and the Arc A750 Limited Edition 8GB. Both of these should offer decent…

WHEN YOU’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME and hard-earned money piecing together a PC that you’ve carefully planned out, it’s important to know the ins and outs of your new machine. Much like anything else you’ve researched, saved up for and purchased, a PC isn’t something to rush into, as you’ll more than likely miss out on some important values and may not be getting the most out of your new pride and joy. One of the most vital elements of your PC to understand is the BIOS, short for basic input/output system. It’s a piece of software that’s installed onto your motherboard via a small memory chip, and allows you to set up the fundamentals of your PC. You can tweak fan, CPU and RAM speeds, boot priority order,…

THE ERA OF PHYSICAL MEDIA is largely dead and buried. Though many people still have old VCR tapes, stacks of DVDs, and the more modern Blu-ray discs at home, mention optical discs and the rising generation won’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve long since stopped including recommendations for optical drives in our PC builds, though it’s still possible to buy a Blu-ray drive for a PC—just like it’s possible to ignore the smart features and connectivity options most TVs now include, and instead opt for a 30-second delay while the Blu-ray player loads up a menu screen. Our quest for instant gratification via Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, or any number of other streaming services means that people are more comfortable using Roku than a DVD. The consumption of streaming videos dwarfs…

TIP OF THE MONTH MAKE SENSE OF STORAGE SENSE To ensure your PC is keeping your system as clean as possible, you can turn on the Storage Sense function. This will delete temporary files and cache, which automatically frees up space. Head into your OS settings, then Storage, and then toggle the Storage Sense switch. For additional settings, click on Storage Sense to open up all the options for scheduling, your recycling bin, and the downloads folder. A MINIMALIST APPROACH In the previous issue, I spoke about my money-no-object rig—the Intel NUC 13, paired with the best GPU that works within this compact system, the RTX 4070Ti. I’ve come up with an alternative setup for the home. One of my most dependable laptops over the past year has been a…

YOU’LL NEED THIS GLASSWIRE 3.2 (free), 20 minutes EVER WONDERED HOW many programs on your computer are using your internet connection? Network-monitoring tool GlassWire shines a light on exactly what each online program is up to, helping you identify any dodgy tools that shouldn’t be accessing the internet. Even better, the latest free version (3.2) includes a selection of powerful tools that were previously available only in the paid-for version. We’ll explain how to use them here. 1 GET GLASSWIRE To install the latest version of GlassWire, go to www.glasswire.com/download, click the green Download button, then run the EXE file that downloads. Follow the installation process, then run GlassWire. The ‘Graph’ tab [Image A] will be displayed by default and shows all internet activity on your computer (orange sections represent data…

AMD’S ATTEMPT TO create the ultimate gaming and productivity chip has almost worked with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. It has once again proven the power of the 3D V-cache technology when it comes to squeezing higher gaming performance out of its processors, and has married that to an asymmetrical chiplet layout that can deliver the goods in productivity. The price and small gains in 4K games are the only things spoiling the party. Once again, AMD has bonded an extra 64MB of L3 cache to an eight-core chiplet (this time a Zen 4 one) to double its last-level cache, for a total of 128MB. It has to limit the clock speed of that chiplet, too, as it’s important that it’s the same height as a standard Ryzen 7000-series CPU. That’s…

THANKS TO a new breed of OLED panels, it’s easy to unload well over $1,000 on a 34-inch ultrawide gaming monitor. Alienware, Samsung, MSI, and Philips will be happy to let you scratch that itch. But those ultrawide OLEDs are all 3,440 by 1,440 pixel monitors. For over $1,000? Really? Enter the ASRock Phantom PG34WQ15R2B. It too is a curved 34-inch ultrawide gaming panel with 3,440 by 1,440 pixels. With a maximum refresh of 165Hz, it’s likewise within 10Hz of the best of those megabucks OLED monitors. And yet it’s yours for a piffling $369. Of course, there’s no OLED tech. You don’t even get an IPS panel. Instead, it’s the cheaper VA variety. That’s not always good news for gaming. There’s a reason why IPS is more popular with…

MUCH LIKE LEON S. KENNEDY, Capcom wasn’t in for an easy ride with this one. There are great games and then there are the classics, games so forward-thinking and complete that they shape entire corners of the games industry. In the case of Resident Evil 4, every third-person game since has worn its love for Capcom’s masterpiece on its over-the-shoulder sleeves—everything from Gears of War to Dead Space to The Last of Us runs because Capcom showed them all how to walk. Remaking a game that remade its own genre is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle one more time. Capcom almost managed it and, for the longest time, you’ll think it did. The opening of the Resident Evil 4 Remake is outstanding, slightly streamlining the original route…