Editorial

Guy Cocker BE WATER, MY FRIEND BRUCE LEE

Intel’s hot new model

Overclockers break records with the Core i9-12900KS

WINDOWS 11 UPDATES APP SECURITY

THE CATCH IS YOU HAVE TO REINSTALL WINDOWS TO USE IT

RESTOCKED AND RELOADED

Graphics cards are back on the menu

ETHEREUM GOES GREEN

Move to proof-of stake this year

AMD’s 6000 series goes Pro

AMD SEEMS DETERMINED not to let a month

INTEL’S ARC ALCHEMIST

Third player joins the GPU market

Win11 still relatively rare

A survey of 10 million Windows systems by

PC sales boom over

It was ghastly for many reasons, but the

AMD 3D V-Cache Boosts Gaming Performance

WE’VE KNOWN FOR AGES that large caches can help improve performance, though larger caches can also increase latency and counteract those gains. It’s a balancing act, and L1 caches have been sitting in the 32KB to 96KB range for quite some time now.

THE LIST

THE TOP FIVE PC SPEAKER SYSTEMS

The problem with the PC is power…

AS THE FANS INSIDE my Intel eight-core laptop spooled up to their customar y mini-hurricane mode, it reminded me that the PC has a major problem with power efficiency. I had a couple of Chrome windows open running 10 tabs each. That’s pretty much all it takes for my laptop to freak out now.

DOCTOR

THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES...

LETTERS

WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...

12TH GEN WATERCOOLING

Mixing PC components with water coolant, pipes, and fastenings? Sam Lewis goes in at the deep end

INTO THE LIQUID LOOP

FIRST TIME LIQUID COOLING? WE WON’T LEAVE YOU HIGH AND DRY

STATE OF THE GPU-NION ADDRESS

Eight years of graphics cards put to the test

LEFT BEHIND

Why do some games get abandoned by their developers? Christian Guyton investigates

SCREEN TECH IN 2022

OLED monitors are here at last. But as Jeremy Laird reveals, you can expect plenty more panel tech in 2022

HOW TO

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDES TO IMPROVING YOUR PC

Machine of the Month: NEC PC-9800 (1982)

THIS MONTH’S COMPUTER may be unfamiliar, but NEC’s PC-9800 series, usually shortened to PC-98, was arguably Japan’s most important computer and played an integral part in developing both Japanese language computing and video games. Despite the potential gaming fun offered by this system, there are technical hurdles to be overcome. So after a brief history of the PC-98, let us show you how to emulate the machine as easily as possible

GIMP 3D perspective

FOR THIS TUTORIAL, we ‘ll be turning our attention to 3D image placement and how to bring two images together while maintaining the same 3D perspective. We’ll be using GIMP for this tutorial and a royalty-free image by Jurre Houtkamp on Unsplash ( unsplash.com ) to show how to build your photo manipulation skills. Practicing using sites like Unsplash allows you to play around with high-quality images with plenty of manipulation potential. We’ll also be using a flat graphic site called the Noun Project ( thenounproject.com ) for a flat sign we’ll be adjusting. This should build your knowledge of perspective and help you blend images together while maintaining a natural finish. We’ll also be touching on textures, as we bring the texture from our original image into the graphics from The Noun Project. You can choose any image for this tutorial but to start, choose an image that’s looking straight towards the horizon

BUILD IT

MSI Special Single Manufacturer Build

LAB NOTES

A long time coming

Nubia RedMagic 7 Pro

Gaming smartphones: what are they good for?

Asus RTX 3090 Ti TUF Gaming

Fully armed and operational

Velocity Micro Raptor Z55

Scary performance from this overclocked beast

Alienware 34 AW3423DW

The best things come to those who wait…

Acer Nitro 5

Portable performance on a budget

Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (2022)

Great performance at a great price

Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro

It ain’t cheap, but it is intriguing…

NZXT Capsule

A leap of faith or a comfortable transition for NZXT?

Razer Huntsman Mini Analog

Small but mighty keyboard

MSI MPG Sekira 100R

A compact, subtle and well-specced case for the money

Ghostwire Tokyo

The city that doesn’t want you to sleep

OBS Studio vs. XSplit Broadcaster

Which live stream app is better?

THE BUILDS

THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...