DEEP DIVE WE DELVE INTO NVIDIA'S TURING ARCHITECTURE THE BEST-SELLING MAG FOR PC HARDWARE, OVERCLOCKING, GAMING & MODDING / ISSUE 196 TUR) Le MASTERCLASS UMMA pes= oro 10 =| 0 1D) = MAKE A SMART PC ; sl in CEG = A ee =) ’ T sae ml NN of @ | ~~ emma eh Cet) ae COOLING RIGHT ie at y oy aa ies i | rot att oh Caer 7 WINGaOltenihictache\s saisMel Cette Custom PC Issue 196 es Take your time Cee emote cats Cee Ree sear ee eenec er eters excitementisstill problem formewhen comes toFC pater eter nteeene tern \wrapper—Iwant my new gear upanidrunning nowIdon't eee tome nares Sennen eee eee Pony eee een eee so ease Re pee eee ert ace en ed ate eer eee eee Tn eee ee eed tidyingcables when tactually putmy mindtoit,andtheartly Pere sett oe tree ent eee er ee eee Sea eee seca Pease ae erent raren) Parte eee eee feet ete ee eee Senet eeene ane Se ee eee ead Rea reset seen cee ence ag Prepare ee eee ree ee tes goingtogo.Once you've donethat, youalsoneed tothinkabout eee meaner teres ea Pos ene eee eon eee retard intheroof itwillblockaccesstothetop cable routinghles,<0 Pees eee eee ete nee eet coed Se ony youthread cables through holes withone hand, andholdyour radiator outof the way with the other in mostcasesitinwalves een ee ener ret ett tes See ee eee eee ee cece oT Sree nes Se Seed ' Se aor) [Te por ot Eker = ed DESIGNERS: anes ir Panny Cite ears Cra ae a rd Care ee oa ee <= eas = Sees a Sad ol cere CR ee = et = ont eed ener renee al Reena peace ete A Re en ee Ser a our eter oes Hie nin teeta eee erent Sere Pare fein ce nee rea Pe err Pore er eS Cote (@tronHighlights 08 AMDshould postpone Threadripper AMD needs to aderess theholes Ins Zen2ne-up before tgoes allouton Threadripper arcues Richard Swainbume, 10 Political protests TracyKinganatysesBizzarts sancboningofaHearstone player forprotestngacainstheChinese {governmentatatoumament 19 Intel Corei9-9900KS Intel's neve flagship LGATISICPU canboosttoSGHz onall cores but Isthisenough totakeon thelatest Ryzenchips? 30 BudgetNVMeSSD Wetakealook atKingstor'snew £82000. which givesyou TTBofPC-E BNVMe storageforjust 108 nc VAT. 46 Premium ATX cases E-ATX support temperedcass panels andexcelentwater-coolngsuppot. \Wetestseveratoftnelatestpremium PCchasss 53 WHFi6gear WeloakatsomeotthelatestW-F6 {equipmentincucing four branc-new rautersandaPClE adaptor 68 Epicflaw ASEpi¢'sSteamcompettor approaches fstanniversary, ick Lane\oaksbackathowitstaed, 70 Borderlands3 MiniPCs nolongerhave toinveive ‘compromising on performance, but, vustoneed to make ure you getthe Fight gear Antony Leather shows you what youneedtobullda powerful ‘D-coregamingrig, andhow to putit altogether. Fancyhavnigagoatbuicna your dumPC om sate outdo tknow \iheretostrt OurPCouidngpimer takes youtoughalthe stages tom Storto fish so youcanconstucta smattPC ust the pros. 86 Nvidia Turing deep dive Real-timeraytracing,Tensorcores andloads of stream processors We dive deep into Nvidia'slatest GPU architecture torevealwnatmakes tbc 94 Hobby tech Gareth Hatfacree shows you howto ‘makeanetwork-attachedsecondary cdsplay witha Pimeronilnky WHAT, aniries out the Fuzed Nintendo ‘Sitch 104 How to guides Antony Leathershows youhow ta ‘make your own Velcro cable tes, and ‘ita water-cooling monoblockto your motherboard, 109 RetroPCart Wetalk toMatia(akaBhaal ‘Spawn aboutherretre PC gaming relatedart including Lego models of fe SoundBlaster Proand 3d Voodoo cards 112. Retrotech: The PC speaker atts chirupingbleens, the PC's fistsoundsysternwasighy Primitive, We take atook athowit ‘works, andhow early game dvelopersmanagediomakett soundralf-decent.Cover guide PC BUILDING Regulars 3. Fromtheeditor 8 Richard Swinbume 10 Tracyking 2 Incoming 14 Letters 34 Forthewin 42 Customkit 60 Howwetest 62 Eliteproducts 68. Inverselook 74 Reality check 94 Hobbytech 99 Readers’ drives 102 Customised PC 104 Howto guides 109 Retrotech 14 James Gorbold TTA REVIEWED Reviews. 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Extraordinary Performance Outside,RICHARD SWINBURNE / VIEW FROM TAIWAN POSTPONE THREADRIPPER Hot benchmark numbers are all well and good, but AMD really needs to address the holes in its Zen 2 line-up first, argues Richard Swinburne or Ryzen 9 3900X, more CPUs at the other It's evident that a quad- core/8-thread Zen 2 option for £100-125 would be very attractive end of thesealeare sold to DIV folks building capable rigson abudget AMD has 332006 and Ryzen 53400 here, bs based on the Zen+ care, rather than the considerably more appealing Zen 2 According to data from mindfactory.de (one of the few places that provide insight into individual CPU sales), sales of these APUs sepresent only a fraction of ‘those ofthe 6-core/t2-thread Ryzen $3600, which s the next (CPU up the stack. Tome, tt's evident that aquad-core/8-thread Zen 2 option at the £100-125 mark would be very attractive, especially when the Intel alternatives lack Hyper-Thrending, AMD did recently launch the 6-core/6.thread Ryzen 3500X bout it's an exclusive chip for its system partners only ~ it needs to be available to the rest of ust Its possible, of course, that AMD is waiting to clear the channel ofold Ryzen 2000-series parts, whichare now being. heavily discounted. Ifso, hopeit will launch more affordable yzen 3000-series chips in sync with the upcoming 8550 chipset release. Even if entry level chips don't have hu profit margins they'll help to grow AMD's market share even furtiner and re-establish the rnindset that AMD isn't justthe cheap option, buta real blow-for-blovr competitor with Inte, which will ultimately benefit customers The place for better profils is the gaming laptop market, ‘which is one of the few PC spaces that’s stll rowing. Thanks to inte’s prior supply issues, AMD has finally got its foct in the door of the laptop market this year. However, again its sadly only serving it with older Zen+ products instead ofits latest and greatest Zen 2 microarchitecture On the plus side, AMD has just launched its Radeon RX 550M GPU, which is based on the latest Navi architecture and is proving to be competitive in mid-range performance. However, i's often being palred with Ryzen 7 3750H and 3850H processors, which are slower tian Intel's alternatives. AMD needs to push Zen 2 into its laptop platform as soon. as possible to hit the hottest-selling season (Nov-Dec), or it will lose momentum. These chips don't need to be APUs ~ they Just need to be versions of the desktop parts with TDP optimisations via clock speeds and boost algorithms to limit them to 35-45. met saying Threadripper isn’t great, but most people are never going to need one, whereas lots of people buy high-performance laptops for gaming, creative work and a close-to-desktop experience. Instead of satisfying our salacious need for the hottest benchmark numbers, AMD needs to push into budget rigs and gaming laptops. ae Richard has worced in tech for over a decade, as a UK journalist, on Asus! ROG team and now as an industry analyst based in Takwan [7] @viswi