> Podcast Petitioni

> Creative Deman

> Nvidia Driver Confusi

> Honest PC Magazine

No More BS

I read the letter in the July issue suggesting the resurrection of the No BS Podcast. I would love to see the podcast return. During its run, it made many of my long drives much more enjoyable!

Also, I’d love to see a head-to-head of several WiFi 6E routers and your declaration of the best WiFi 6E router. Love the mag.

–J. Hirsch

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GUY COCKER, RESPONDS: Thanks for your encouragement on bringing back the podcast. Over the last few issues, I’ve really enjoyed jumping on a mic with Sam every four weeks and hearing about that month’s build. There are always interesting stories to each cover feature, like power supplies that don’t work, systems that don’t boot, and things we’d do differently next time, which we often don’t have time to go into in the feature itself.

I’ve also gone back and looked over old No BS Podcast episodes from the archive (which are available on YouTube), and I’d personally love to bring it back—I have experience in podcasting and radio, and love all that stuff. I think we’d need to bring in one of our other contributors, though, like Jarred Walton, Jeremy Laird, or Nick Peers, to make an engaging discussion, otherwise it’s just me and Sam again! But yes, it’s something that I’ll continue to think about as long as we have the resources to do it well, as I think it will help offer more to readers in our new digital form.

In terms of WiFi 6E routers, your question arrives with perfect timing, as I’ve been using Netgear’s Orbi RBKE963 mesh system in order to test the company’s Nighthawk A8000 dongle this month (see page 87). I personally don’t need the dongle, as both my laptop and desktop come with WiFi 6E baked in, although I will say that the Netgear dongle still improved my signal and data transfer rates in testing. However, I tend to spend most of my working day at my desktop, plugged into my home network over an ethernet connection, which will always be my preferred method of connectivity where possible.

That said, the Orbi RBKE963 is a fantastic WiFi 6E system, but then again, it should be for a $1,500 3-node system. Where I live, I currently have a 150Mbps cable broadband connection, which I pay less than $20/ month for. Yes, there’s a 3Gbps package available for $65 a month—not crazy, but not essential in these times of high cost of living. Yes, I sometimes wish my Steam downloads were a little faster, but I can make do, and I also live in a small apartment that only needs a couple of WiFi access points to work effectively. That’s why I've stuck with my Linksys Velop WiFi 5-based system for so long. I love adopting the latest technology, but in the case of WiFi 6, 6E, and even 7, which is now starting to trickle through, there's currently quite a premium on those systems.

Again, though, your case may be different, which is why I’ll look at doing a roundup of WiFi 6E routers and mesh kits in an upcoming issue.

Melting Point

I think you have an error on page 70 of the July issue. If you have a soldering iron at 2,200°C (which is actually 3,992°F), it would melt everything—including the gold contacts, steel, and everything except tungsten! I think possibly you added an extra zero and did the Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion wrong!

Finally, how about building a rig for creative types like me who use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for storing, editing, and publishing photos (and occasional videos)? My setup needs to support two 4K screens (I don’t need very high frame rates, but I do need to be able to draw things quickly). I also need plenty of CPU horsepower to apply

changes, lots of memory, very fast internal storage (think multiple, large M.2 SSDs), plus very large, fairly fast external storage (at least RAID1). I currently use an Intel Core i9- 11900KF, 64GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080, 2TB WD Black, and 36TB LaCie external drive set up in 18TB RAID1.

–J. Taylor

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GUY COCKER, RESPONDS: Many thanks to yourself and fellow reader M. Ososki for pointing out our error on the temperatures! Apologies, it slipped through our checks, and let me say that here on Maximum PC, we don’t recommend doing anything at 2,000+°C! Apologies again for the error.

We’re getting regular requests to do a creativefocused build in an upcoming issue, which I’m sure will be music to the ears of our resident PC builder, Sam Lewis, who himself comes from a graphic design background. Mr Taylor’s specs sound pretty high, particularly in terms of storage, but I know video editors and photographers who would have similar demands, as more power, memory, and storage allows them to work faster, ultimately saving them time and money. It also doesn’t hurt to have a RAID 1 system as Mr Taylor suggests so that you always have a backup if things go wrong. As a consumer, I tend to use RAID 5 (or Synology’s equivalent, Synology Hybrid RAID), as you’d be unlucky to have two disks fail on you simultaneously, although obviously with an offsite overnight backup happening to truly protect yourself. I have an iDrive 10TB annual subscription because they offer one of the best value packages I could find, but other options are available.

I do a little bit of video editing myself, but on the consumer side, I recently made the decision to give up my own personal Synology NAS, and just move everything to the cloud. This was partly due to increased energy costs making running my server 24/7 more expensive, but also it was to try and cut down on the amount of data I was hoarding on my own local storage. I feel much better about having it centralized on a couple of online services, but this wouldn’t work in Mr Taylor’s case, as he needs fast localized storage. So thanks for the letter—plenty of ideas there for future builds, as well as features on storage options for creatives.

Studio Ready

In the latest issue (July 2023, page 31), you discuss using Nvidia’s Studio drivers if you’re using one of the company’s GPUs primarily for creative work, rather than gaming. When looking at the Nvidia website, that seems to be a laptop product. Is that your take?

–R. Matlow

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GUY COCKER, RESPONDS: No, not at all—Nvidia’s Studio drivers are meant for both desktop and laptop processors. Using the Studio option rather than the Game Ready one just means that the drivers, which are what your operating system uses to interface with the graphics card, are more attuned to creative tasks than playing games. Honestly, we need to do a side-by-side comparison in a future issue to see what the difference actually is between the two if you’re using Adobe Premiere, for example, and how much using Studio drivers will impact on your game of Diablo IV. But the idea is you’ll get the best performance from each one by using the right drivers, as well as needing to do fewer updates on the Studio side, which is important for creatives who just want to be getting on with their workflow.

I went to see Nvidia at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, and they had three booths—for laptops, game streaming, and creatives. In the latter, they showed off NVIDIA Broadcast with Eye Contact, Video Super Resolution, and lots of other ways they were supporting creatives in the visual effects and video game creation industries. In tandem with AI, it’s clear that this market is going to become more vital to them, in addition to the gaming stuff we tend to focus on.

Honesty

My wife has gifted me a Maximum PC subscription for years now, and it’s the best magazine, full stop. I must ask you to praise Jeremy Laird for his fantastic article, 'The Great Graphics Card Bubble' (June 2023, page 42). Jeremy doesn’t pull any punches, and it’s easy to tell that no one at Maximum PC kowtows to the big companies. Certain “respected” online websites or YouTubers do not remain as neutral, so kudos to you and Jeremy.

You guys strike a good balance of rooting for Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, while still telling it like it is when these greedy parasites overcharge their customers. There was a time when consumers would not put up with that kind of price gouging, but in the last few decades, corporations have become so powerful that consumers no longer have any significant power.

–S. Philips

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GUY COCKER, RESPONDS:

Thank you for complimenting our writers, as well as appreciating the standards we try to uphold on Maximum PC. I think it’s an important point that we don’t always discuss in these pages—yes, we hold close relationships with a lot of the manufacturers we cover, as it’s how we source the products we feature and review, as well as get access to announcements before they’re made public. However, we maintain our editorial independence and always print what we think, no matter what impact that might have on those relationships. I’ve been in journalism for nearly 20 years, and I’ve found that the key is to contact the PR people at these companies when you’re being critical, and give them the chance to reply. Most of the time, they’re just as aware of the flaws of their company or products as we are—after all, they’ve probably known about them for longer. There are some excellent online outlets and YouTubers, but few I truly trust. Part of that is the ambiguous nature of what's editorial and what's paid-for content, but it's also the level of rigor they're applying. Just this month, a couple of vloggers apologized for their RTX 4060Ti reviews (see ours on page 74) because they were condemned by their viewers for going too soft on it. We always stand by what we publish and trust our audience to make their own minds up.

As for consumer power, I don’t think we’ve completely lost that battle; it’s just taken a long time and a lot of patience from anyone waiting the last couple of years for a good-value graphics card. Believe me, companies notice if their products aren’t selling, so vote with your wallet if you’re feeling taken advantage of.

↘ submit your questions to: editor@maximumpc.com