Custom PC - January 2014 UK

8/13/2019 Custom PC - January 2014 UK

1/132 W TO:PAINT YOUR HARDWARE

REVIEWED:AMDS FIRST TOP-END GPU SINCE 201

PLUSISSUE124

JAN

2014

4.50

HEBE E I MA H RDW R , R ,GAM

Mini cases, motherboards,SSDs and RAM reviewed

Make your own miniaturePC case from scratch

TINY PC

NUCREVOLUTIO

N

BACK TO THE 80sTURN YOUR RASPBERRY Pi INTO THIS

HOW TO


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3January 2014

Welcome to Issue 124Editorial

EDITORBen Hardwidge

[email protected]

LABSMatthew Lambert,

Mike Jennings

GAMES EDITORRick Lane

ART EDITORBill Bagnall

PRODUCTION EDITOR

Julie Birrell

CONTRIBUTORSAntony Leather, Gareth Halfacree,

James Gorbold, Jim Killock,Paul Goodhead, Richard Cobbett,

Simon Treadaway, Tracy King

PHOTOGRAPHYAntony Leather,

Danny Bird

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Custom PC is published monthly by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street,London W1T 4JD, a company registered in England number 1138891.

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Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited. Custom PC is a trademark of Felix Dennis.

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4 January 2014

Welcome to Issue 124

11 WAR GAMES

Tracy King examines press reports

about the Ministry of Defence hiring Call of

Duty fans to join a Hacker Army.

12HOBBY TECH

Gareth looks at the process of

having your own PCBs made, and builds a

BBC-style Raspberry Pi keyboard-computer

with the new Fuze kit.

20AMD RADEON R9 290X

Following last months

disappointing Radeon HD 7970 rebrand, AMD

has now launched its first new top-end GPUs

since 2011. We put the R9 290X and R9 290

through their paces.

28BUDGET CPU SHOWDOWN

Antony Leather pits AMDs FX-6300

against Intels Core i3-4130 to see which sub-

100 CPU wins out.

78MAKE YOUR OWN NUC CASE

Want to build a PC based on Intelsnew Haswell NUC board, but disappointed by

the lack of third-party cases that support it?

We show you how to build your own NUC case.

98TITANFALL

Ever fancied dropping into a

futuristic battlefield in a huge robot suit? Rick

Lane tries out this new epic-looking game.

106INSIDE TOTAL WAR

We have a chat with the folks at The

Creative Assembly about the development of

the engines behind the epic spectacle of theTotal War games.

1220

cover storY

NUC

REVOLUTION

52If you thought mini-ITXPCs were small, thenyoure going to be

astounded by whats possible withIntels latest Next Unit of Computing(NUC) motherboards.

Believe it or not, you can squeeze a Core i5 HaswellCPU with an 256GB SSD and 32GB of RAM onto a boardmeasuring just 10 x 10cm so small you can hold the entire system in

the palm of your hand. Heck, you can even play Skyrim on it if you want.In this issue, we take a look at four Intel NUC motherboards to see howthey perform.

You dont have to be stuck with Intels own case design either; thereare now loads of third-party NUC cases available, and in this issue wevereviewed eight of them, while also showing you how to build your ownNUC case.


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118

99112

5January 2014

1ssue 124

110INDIE CORNER

There seems to be a surreal party

going on in the burgeoning PC indie game

scene at the moment, with all sorts of weird

ideas turning into fantastic games. We chart

the latest ones to watch.

118HOW TO PAINT YOUR

HARDWARE

Colour customisation doesnt have to stop at

your case. We show you how to not only apply a

coat of paint to your peripherals, but also paintyour drives and heatsinks.

11812

52

78

20

110

Reviewed this monthHardware

GRAPHICS CARDS20 AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB

20 AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB

LAPTOP

24 Scan 3XS Graphite LG135

CPUs

28 AMD FX-6300

28 Intel Core i3-4130

CPU COOLER

32 Antec Khler H20 1250

CASE

36 Corsair Graphite 230T

MOTHERBOARDS

40 Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X

42 Asus Rampage IV Extreme Black

Edition

KEYBOARD

44 Gigabyte Force K7

Custom kit48 Firebox Back to the Future iPad case

48 Yurbuds Inspire Pro

48 Rhino Shield

49 Griffin Powerdock 5

49 Noontec Zoro

49 GG Button

NUC Labs test54 Intel NUC Board D54250WYB

55 Intel NUC Board DC53427RKE

56 Intel NUC Board D33217GKE

56 Intel NUC Board D33217CK

60 Chillblast Fusion Brix

62 Zotac Zbox Nano ID65 Plus

66 Akasa Newton V

66 Akasa Newton

68 CarTFT Blackpete-NUC

68 Impactics D1NU1-B

70 Logic Supply LGX NC210

70 SilverStone Petit PT14

71 Streacom NC1 GK

71 Tranquil PC NUC-YE

72 Logic Supply LGX ML300

Games98 Titanfall

100 F1 2013

101 Shadow Warrior

102The Stanley Parable

104 The Wolf Among Us

36PRODUCTSREVIEWED

Regulars8 From the editor

10 Tracy King

12 Hobby tech

16 Incoming

46 How we test

84 CPCElite products

96 Cynical hit

106The engine room

112 Digital rights129Retro tech

130James Gorbold

Community114 Readers drives

118 How to paint your hardware andperipherals

124Letters

126Folder of the month

127Your folding milestones


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PCs built into radio-controlled cars, George Foreman grills

and Star Wars toys are just some of the curiosities we saw

soon after modders realised the potential for VIAs mini-ITX

motherboard standard a standard thats now really taken off in

the enthusiast circuit, with loads of high-end motherboards now

available. Mini-ITX gave you the chance to rethink the PC it didnt

have to be in a tower-shaped box any more. Provided you thought

about the connectors and cooling requirements, you could put a mini-

ITX board in almost anything. Im hoping that Intels Next Unit of

Computing (NUC) idea will inspire a similar level of new thinking.

Im a little bit in love with NUC, but its taken a while for my affections

to be appropriately kindled. When we first

looked at a NUC system, back in Issue 115,

we were decidedly underwhelmed. It might

have been small, but it was also seriously

underpowered. As our Labs in this issue

proves, though, a 10 x 10cm board can now

hold a Haswell CPU, an mSATA SSD, loads of

memory and an integrated GPU that can even

handle Skyrim at 720p.

Just imagine what you could do with that. In fact, you probably will

have to use your imagination, as there currently arent many third-

party cases available for that particular motherboard, but I think of

that as a bonus. You have a tiny motherboard with a whole PC on it

you dont need any more drives, SATA cables or expansion cards the

basics are all there. As long as you can cool the CPU, the scope for

experimentation is enormous.

Our sister sitewww.bit-tech.netrecently ran a competition to build

a NUC case, and I recommend having a look at some of the entries

there are some really interesting ideas, some of which weve featured

at the bottom of p82. Ive already started thinking about how I mightuse a NUC system. It doesnt just have to be a Mac Mini-style box next

A full PC on a 10 x 10cm motherboard?

Yes please, says Ben Hardwidge

to your monitor. It could be a media PC clipped to the back of your TV,

or it could be a pocket-sized PC you could take anywhere, any time.

My first thought was that I could build a multi-touch tablet-like

device that could sit in my lounge and play back music from my NAS

via my USB DAC, complete with touch-screen control, as well as

streaming video to my TV. Its HDMI port and support for Windows

drivers make it more appropriate for this work than the Raspberry Pi,

although its obviously much more expensive.

What I really love about the NUC Haswell board, though, is that

its got me thinking outside of the ATX-sized box, if youll excuse the

clich. Now Im starting to have ideas for new PCs, how they could

be used and what Ill use for a case. While we

were putting together this issue, for example,

I trawled through the ForgeWorld website, just

to see if there were any models that might

accept a 10 x 10cm motherboard.

NUC isnt going to replace the desktop PC

soon, simply because of its limitations when it

comes to GPU power, but this is also partly why

I hope NUC takes off in the same way as mini-ITX. The latter used to

just be the domain of VIAs EPIA boards, but now motherboard

makers are producing mini-ITX boards with Intel sockets as standard.

Imagine a NUC board with an AMD APU, and you could even use such

a tiny machine for gaming. NUC has the potential to revitalise the

modding scene and start people thinking about using PCs in all sorts

of ways, and Im really looking forward to seeing what the future holds

for this new motherboard standard.

Ben Hardwidge is the editor of Custom PC. He likes PCs, heavy

metal, real ale and Warhammer 40,000.

EDITOR@CUSTOMPCMAG ORG UK @CUSTOMPCMAG

As long as you cancool the CPU, the scope

for experimentationis enormous

PASSTHE NUC

8 January 2014

from the editor


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iwasnt old enough to see the 1983 cold war tech fantasy film

WarGames at the time, but Ive seen it since and, naturally, its

implausible. Not, however, implausible enough, as 30 years later

the British Ministry of Defence is recruiting Broderick wannabes to

build a sort of Hacker Army, and the press isnt being discreet at all.

This month The Metro asked: Are you a Call of Duty fan with a

passion for defeating online enemies? and The Daily Mail claimed

that the Armys tough fitness tests are to be lowered to allow weedy or

overweight computer geniuses to join the new front line of keyboard

commandoes.

Future wars, declares Defence Secretary

Phillip Hammond, will be fought by IT geeks in

rooms like this, rather than soldiers marching

down the streets, or tanks or fighter aircraft.

Accordingly, hes diverting 500 million from

the traditional budget defence to his new Joint

Cyber Force (Reserve).

The government claims there are around

70 sophisticated cyber espionage attacks a

month against Britain, but looking at the figures, only 30 per cent of

those are against the state; the rest target private sector companies,

albeit those with products or services of national interest. But still, one

expects the private sector to fund its own Hacker Army, which no doubt

it already does. I havent seen any recruitment calls to Lockheed such

as the one from the MOD this month, but I dont tend to peruse the

computer genius section of www.monster.com

Having looked thoroughly at the skills required by the Ministry

of Defence for the Joint Cyber Force (Reserve), I cant find any

explanation for the Metros bizarre inclusion of Call of Duty, or indeed

any connection to gaming at all. Its possibly true that the British

military uses modified Xbox controllers for real-life drone attacks, andthe US military is considering employing Wiimotes for remote bomb

disarming, but both of those examples have been seen in the context

of recruitment videos or PR.

These are glamorous tools for attracting new recruits, but almost

certainly irrelevant to the typical soldiers day, and even less within

the remit of this new initiative, which is entirely concerned with, for

example, disabling enemy comms or weapons by hacking. This is

another case of the media getting the wrong end of the joystick.

And talking of cyber-this and cyber-that, heres a follow-up to last

months column. I heard from cyberpsychologist Berni Good just a

few hours after the mag went to print, with answers to my questions.

So for the record, Id like to clarify her position.

When referring to depression as an everyday

stress, she meant commonplace.

She also made her position clear on the

self-help market, saying: The British

Psychological Society recently took part in

supporting the development of a scheme

called Reading Well; basically a books-on-

prescription scheme. The books are based

on CBT to treat common mental health issues including depression

and anxiety. There is evidence to suggest that self-help books are

really good at dealing with some mental health issues, including

depression, and I think this scheme is brilliant. Consider how taking

self-help books and delivering them in a game format could help

people this is the work Im focused on right now.

Specially written books using CBT as a framework is a different

proposition to the bulk of the self-help market, and Im happy to clarify

that here.

Gamer and science enthusiast Tracy King dissects the evidence

and statistics behind some of the popular media stories

surrounding tech and gaming TKINGDOLL

Only 30 per cent of those

attacks are against the

state; the rest target

private sector companies

WAR GAMES

Tracy King examines reports about

the government creating a new

Hacker Army

Sceptical analYsis

10 January 2014


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12 January 2014

The latest tips, tricks and news in the world of computer hobbyism,

from Raspberry Pi and Android to retro computing

hoBBY tech

GARETH HALFACREES

THE FUZE POWERED BY RASPBERRY PiBE

Readers who were around in the 1980s will

remember the heyday of microcomputing:

the Sinclair Spectrum, the Acorn Atom, the

Dragon 32, the Grundy NewBrain plus a

selection of others from overseas. All

were designed to get people started

with learning how to program a

relatively simple computer system.

The 1980s might be over, but there has

been a recent resurgence in these ideals with

the launch of the Raspberry Pi. Sadly, for all

its low-cost capabilities, however, the Pi is far

closer to a modern desktop or laptop than the

microcomputers of yore. Thats where the

Fuze comes in.

The brainchild of Jon Silvera, the Fuze

attempts to bridge the gap between the

easily accessible microcomputers of the

1980s, and the power and flexibility of the

Raspberry Pi. Available as a standalone kit,

designed primarily for education, or as a kit

where you just add a Pi, the Fuze turns the Pi

into a proper BBC Micro-style computer.

The sturdy metal case is finished in an eye-

catching red and black colour scheme. Inside,

mounted to a removable tray, sits a Raspberry

in diodes, while a bundled miniature

breadboard fills much of the remainder,

leaving a little room to build up a small

collection of components to the right.

This feature reveals the difference

between the Pi and a traditional PC: the

kit includes a small selection of electronic

components LEDs, a buzzer, switches

and downloadable project cards, which teach

schoolchildren how to wire them up and

program them. The programming step is

where the Fuze really feels like a throwback

to the 1980s. Rather than using Python, the

Raspberry Pi Foundations default language,

the Fuze includes a customised Raspian

installation on an SD card with Fuze Basic.

Developed by Gordon Henderson, Fuze

Basic will feel immediately familiar to any

child of the 1980s. Double clicking the icon

provides a white-on-black interface clearly

born from Acorns design ethos, but brought

bang up to date. As well as an interactive

command interpreter, Fuze Basic includes

a built-in text editor for free-text editing of

programs, rather than having to replace faulty

lines in their entirety, as with traditional Basic-

based microcomputers.

A small bundled manual provides quick

references for the Fuze Basic command set,

including the instructions based heavily on

the syntax of the popular Arduino IDE for

controlling the Pis GPIO pins. The Fuze isnt

without its faults though the full kit is

undeniably expensive, costing 180 inc VAT

with the Pi and components, or 90 inc VAT for

the case, breadboard and expansion module

alone. While schools can deduct VAT from that

price, home buyers may be put off. The Fuze is

available now fromwww.fuze.co.uk

Pi Model B, with the majority of its ports

except composite video, for some reason

brought to the rear of the case via small pigtail

adaptors. Vents to the left and right offer the

little cooling the Pi requires, while the top of

the case includes a built-in USB keyboard that

connects to one of the Pis two USB ports.

The design of the case includes an

interesting trench above the keyboard, the use

for which becomes apparent when you look at

what else is included: the left-hand side of the

trench provides a GPIO breakout board, which

protects the Pi from easy damage using built-

The integrated mounting tray has pigtails that break out

all the important connections, except composite video

A bundled IO board provides easy access to the Pis GPIO

pins, and uses diodes to protect against miswiring


13/13213January 2014

14

CUSTOMISATION

Created some time in the early 1980s, the LJ

Electronics Tina II was primarily aimed ateducation. Based roughly on the same designas Acorns BBC Micro, and sharing the

same MOS Technology 6502 processor, the

Tina is an extremely interesting beast; themotherboard sits outside the metal case, witheverything laid out in a pseudo-block diagramapproach and labelled according to its purpose.Like todays Raspberry Pi, the device also includes someinteresting extras. A row of general-purpose input-output pins are

located to the left, designed for large plugboard-style jacks, while a

bench-top power supply splits off from the main linear PSU with

its massive heatsinks at the top. Theres even an EPROM burner

located at the bottom right of the board.

Sadly, finding information on the Tina isnt easy. It came to me,

via my friend Andrew Back, from an electronic flea market where

it had been sold untested as an ex-RAF device. Searching online,

theres little evidence it ever existed just a brief mention in the

manual for its lower-end variant, the Emma, and one sentence

on a page dedicated to LJ Electronics robotic arm kits. Even the

National Museum of Computing and the Museum for Computer

History had never heard of it.

As a result, I decided to do a little digital archaeology with the aid

of my EPROM burner. Taking the helpfully labelled and socketed

EPROM chips off the board, I dumped each one onto my desktop PC

for analysis. Saving them in a binary format, I could run the handy

UNIX strings utility across the files in order toquickly find and dump the ASCII text contents.

The result was a goldmine of information,

courtesy of an built-in help system. The Tina,it seems, has a number of advanced features:a built-in machine code monitor, debug routines,the aforementioned EPROM burner, a surprisinglyadvanced filemanagement system for optional diskdrives and even a variant of BASIC.Sadly, the process also revealed a roadblock to getting thesystem working again. The last ROM, which holds the machine

code monitor, is corrupt; theres evidence that the label covering

the quartz window has been peeled back at some point, possibly

letting in enough light to scramble the data.

Replacing the ROM is key to getting Tina back on its feet, but it

isnt going to be easy; while the company that created it, now known

as LJ Create, still exists, it hasnt been eager to respond to my

emails, and I know of only one other Tina out there supplied by

Andrew to another of his friends. If that Tina has a working ROM,

Im golden but if not, this process could get extremely difficult.

Im not going to let that put me off, though, as Im concentrating

on physical restoration. The large linear PSU will need attention,

and a battery needs desoldering and replacing before the leaking

alkaline crystals burn through the circuitboard. Im also going to

contact the RAF to find Tinas purpose there the uneven wear on

a small number of keys suggests active use, so it almost certainly

has a story to tell.

ELECTRONIC ARCHAEOLOGY: THE TINA II

Removing

that battery

is a priority:

the alkaline

crystals will

erode the PCB

The contents

of one of Tinas

EPROMs,

showing the

integrated

help system

When faced with

an unknown

device, dumping

the EPROMs can

reveal interesting

secrets

The keyboard

shows signs of

uneven wear,

suggesting

Tina has seen

active use


14/132

14 January 2014

hoBBY tech

14

Just a few short decades ago, building

printed circuitboards (PCBs) involved

careful hand-drawing, awkward ultra-

violet light boxes, nasty chemicals and

tedious drilling. These days, the hobbyist

community has it easy: fire up some free

software, design your circuit, send it off

and youll receive a professionally printed

board within days and at surprisingly

affordable prices. But just how easy is it

to design your own PCB? Easy enough

that I was able to do it, so you lot should

have no excuse.

01BUILD A PROTOTYPE

The first step is to build a

prototype. Solder-free breadboards

are your friend, here: you can stick

components and wires where you please,

and if something doesnt work its easy

to change. In my case, I was building an

Arduino-compatible night-light and

white-noise generator for my newly born

daughter, but you may have different

requirements: a fan controller,

temperature monitor, network-connected

mains control system, burglar alarm,

jet-pack control system whatever.

Your prototype will probably go through

several iterations. Dont be afraid to

experiment its far better to take risks at

this stage than after youve paid to have

your project etched onto a PCB.

02TRANSCRI BE THE

DESIGN

Possibly the most welcoming software for

the electronic engineering neophyte is

Fritzing. A product of the Interaction

Design Lab in Potsdam, Frizing is an

open-source project that provides an easy

way to design and document simple, one-

or two-layer PCBs. Grab a copy from

http://fritzing.org, and begin the

transcription process.

The first screen that opens in Fritzing

is the Breadboard View: simply drag

components from the list on the right

to create an on-screen replica of your

BUILD YOUR OWN PCB

physical prototype. You dont need to

understand anything about electronics,

just drag and drop the parts until the image

on-screen matches what you have on

the desk in front of you.

03DOCUMENT THE DESIGN

This step is optional and, I have to

admit, one I usually skip, to my shame but

its handy. The second view in Fritzing is the

Schematic View. This takes the components

and wiring from the Breadboard View and

creates a formal electronic schematic that

details the circuit.

The parts, however, will be randomly

placed, so its up to you to shuffle them around

in a logical order, and then to follow the rats

nest wires to join them together.

For simpler circuits, an Autoroute function

in the Routing menu can do the wiring for you.

For more complex projects, however, expect

to do a lot of manual tweaking. A well-laid-out

schematic is vital for any project you intend to

make public: it allows people to understand

the circuit and even offer advice about making

it smaller, cheaper or more efficient.

04DESIGN THE PCB

The third view is the PCB view, where

youll lay out the physical components of

your PCB. As with the Schematic view,

anything entered from the Breadboard view is

already present but will need positioning and

wiring with Autoroute again an option for

simpler circuits.

You can also adjust the size and shape of

your circuitboard, which is key to reducing the

cost: PCB fabrication houses charge by circuit

area, so shaving centimetres off your design

can knock pounds off the cost.

When positioning components, ensure

theres room for them most Fritzing

components include a footprint, which

shows how much space they will occupy. Also,

make use of both layers; a via, inserted from

the right-hand component list, provides a way

to force a PCB trace to jump from one layer to

another if required.

When youre finished, run a Design Rules

Check from the Routing menu, to ensure you

havent made any obvious mistakes, and then

insert a Ground Fill or Copper Fill from the

same menu.

Sadly, no decent photos existof this stage of my build.

Schoolboy error!


15/132

15January 2014

CUSTOMISATION

15

GARETHHALFACREEis the news reporter at

www.bit-tech.net, and a

keen computer hobbyist

who likes to tinker with technology.

ghalfacree

INTEL LAUNCHES

QUARK-BASED GALILEO

Fresh on the heels of thelaunch of its Atom-

based MinnowBoard,

Intel has announced

another open hardwareproject: the Arduino-

compatible Galileo.

Designed for the

enthusiast market and

priced competitively

the boards are expected to sell for under 50,

although a final UK price had not been

provided at the time of publication the

Galileo packs a Quark chip; Intels first ultra-

low-power system-on-chip (SoC) design.

Built to compete with microcontrollers

from the likes of Atmega and Texas

Instruments, the Quark is a full x86

processor based on a similar instruction

set to the old Pentium family. This means

the board is capable of running Linux, while

also providing Arduino-compatible

microcontroller functions.

TESSEL OPENS UPThe Galileo isnt the only piece of open

hardware announced this month, as the

Tessel development boards hardware and

software will also be opening up ahead of a

spring 2014 launch. Designed as a hardware

development platform for software

developers, each Tessel board includes

integrated Wi-Fi and is programmed with

JavaScript. Using NPS packages provided by

the Node.js community, the Tessel is capable

of connecting hardware modules sensors,

SD cards, servos, RFID/NFC readers, relays

and more to the Internet via a built-in web

server, or working as a client for information

sharing services, including Twitter.

Building a circuit in Fritzing

is as simple as duplicating

your breadboard layout

Take your time in Fritzings

PCB view for good results

A good schematic is themark of a decent project,

but nobody would blame

you for skipping the step

05PRINT THE PCB

When your PCB is

wired up, print out a copy

on paper and use that

as a template to insert

your components:

this placement test will

allow you to make any last-

minute changes needed for

component clearance.

When youre satisfied, you can

export the design files known

as Gerbers from the File menu.

These files can be sent to any PCB

manufacturer for printing, etching and drilling

or, if you wish, you can support Fritzings

development by using its in-house

Fritzing Fab service,

available from the

Routing menu.

This service is

typically slightly

more expensive than

those offered by UK

companies such ashttp://

ragworm.eu, but the

profits go directly to funding

further development of the

Fritzing software. When your PCB arrives

a few days later, youre ready to build your

device and marvel at the easiness of the

whole process.

The finished PCB can cost as

little as a fiver, and looks far

better than stripboard


16/132

NEW HARDWARE

NVIDIA REPLACES V-SYNCNvidia has just unveiled a new system to effectively

eliminate stuttering and tearing artefacts in games,

which are caused by differences between the frame rate

and the monitor refresh rate. The companys new G-Sync

technology requires a module to be installed inside monitors,

which will then tell the display to synchronise its frame rate with

the GPU output, rather than with an arbitrary fixed refresh rate of 60Hz a hangover from

the CRT days. Nvidia claims that PC gaming luminaries John Carmack, Tim Sweeney,

Johan Andersson and Mark Rein have all been bowled over by its impact on gaming, and

our own columnist James Gorbold enthuses about the new technology on p130.

We take a look at the latest newlyannounced products

GEFORCE GTX 780 Ti ANNOUNCEDAlong with its G-Sync tech, Nvidia has announced a

forthcoming new GPU, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. There

are no concrete details about specs and price yet, but it

has a similar cooler design to the current stock GTX

780, and looks set to trade blows with the new AMD

Radeon R9 290X (see p20). Naturally, well be putting

it through its paces as soon as we get hold of one.

AMD LAUNCHES A10-6790KAMD has just launched a brand-new APU in its A10 lineup.

The new chip has a base clock of 4.1GHz, which will boost

up to 4.3GHz using the companys Turbo Core technology.

Meanwhile, its integrated Radeon 8670D GPU features 384

stream processors, and its memory controller officially supports

1,866MHz DDR3 memory. The chip features two Piledriver

modules, each with two integer units (for a total of four), and is

intended to replace the A10-5800K in the companys APU lineup.

HASWELL NUC BOARDS UNVEILEDIntels Haswell NUC board, the D54250WYB, offers surprisingly quick

performance for its size (see p54), but there currently isnt much in the

way of third-party cases for it, leaving you with either the standard Intel

NUC case, or building your own. However, Impactics, whose D1NU1-B

(see p68) chassis wowed us this month, has unveiled a new passively cooled

chassis for the Haswell NUC board. Theres currently no word on UK pricing or availability,

but the photos of it onwww.fanlesstech.comcertainly look the business. At the time of going to

press,www.tranquilpc.comalso announced a Haswell-supporting NUC case, which will cost

99 inc VAT. We hope to have a look at both cases when they hit the shops.

rs,

e with


17/132


18/132

36CORSAIRGRAPHITE 230T

Well-built, affordable and,most importantly, orange.

28

INTEL CORE

i34130Our first look at a sub-100Haswell processor.

40GIGABYTE G1.SNIPER A88X

An FM2+ board with high-end audio features.

32

ANTEC KHLER

H20 1250Antecs latest all-in-onecooler has dual pumps.

42ASUS RAMPAGE IVEXTREME BLACK

The pinnacle of Asusmotherboard range.

24SCAN 3XSGRAPHITE LG135

Portable GeForce GTX 765gaming for under a grand.

28AMD FX6300How does AMDs

Piledriver architecturehold up without a GPU?

44GIGABYTEFORCE K7

A membrane gamingkeyboard for 33.

18 January 2014

Our in-depth analysis ofthe latest PC hardware

20


19/132

19January 2014

HOW WE TEST, P46

AMD Radeon R9

290X and 290With 2,816 stream processors,

AMDs 290X GPU is a monster, buthow does it perform? 20


20/13220 January 2014

HOW MUCH?

R9 290X

Price428 inc VATSupplierwww.scan.co.ukManufacturerwww.amd.com

IN DETAIL

R9 290X

Graphics processorAMDRadeon R9 290X, 1GHz

Pipeline2,816 streamprocessors, 64 ROPs

Memory4GB GDDR5,5GHz effective

Bandwidth320GB/sec

CompatibilityDirectX 11.2,OpenGL 4.3, AMD Mantle

Outputs/inputs2 x DVI-D(Dual-Link), 1 x DisplayPort,1 x HDMI

Power connections1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin,top-mounted

Size278mm long, dual-slot

iven that AMDs R-series debut last month

was effectively a 7000-series rebrand, many

were left a little disappointed. However, now

AMD has finally unveiled two graphics cards

based on its new Hawaii GPU: the Radeon R9 290X

4GB and the Radeon R9 290 4GB.

When it first launched, the R9 290X cost 50 less

than Nvidias GTX 780, but the latters price has since

dropped from 500 to 400, indicating how the R9 290X

performs. This makes room for Nvidias GTX 780 Ti,

which is intended to supersede the GTX 780 in the

green teams product stack in the near future. The

R9 290X now costs 428, but AMD was unable to

provide a UK retail price for the R9 290 at the time of

writing, so we wont be able to give it a final score yet.

The new GPU features AMDs Graphics Core Next

architecture, so both cards are fully compatible with

AMDs upcoming Mantle API. Similarly, like the R7

260X, the Hawaii GPU has a separate non-graphics

piece of silicon called TrueAudio. This is a

programmable audio pipeline, designed

to offload audio processing from the CPU for an

enhanced and consistent audio experience,

regardless of the system used. However, like

Mantle, its yet to be supported by a current

game, and requires developer implementation

to function.

Hawaii is built on a 28nm process and contains 6.2

billion transistors. It measures 438mm and its die is

thus 24 per cent larger than the R9 280Xs Tahiti GPU.

Workloads are now divided between four Shader

Engines (SEs). Each SE has a geometry processor,

doubling the number found in Tahiti. The geometry

processors contain a geometry assembler, vertex

assembler and tessellator, and are fed by the graphics

command processor, as well as eight asynchronous

compute engines (ACEs), all of which can operate

simultaneously. This is a fourfold increase in the

ACE-count of the R9 280X, so there are potential

benefits for compute performance too.

Hawaiis main processing power comes from

AMDs Compute Units (CUs), which are unchanged.The R9 290X has 11 CUs per SE for a total of 44 a 37.5

per cent increase over the R9 280X. The R9 290,

meanwhile, has a slightly reduced count of 40.

Each CU is made up of four SIMD engines of 16

stream processors each, bringing the total counts for

the 290X and 290 to 2,816 and 2,560 respectively. A CU

also houses four texture units, so the new cards have

176 and 160 of these respectively. The only other area

where the cards differ is in core clock speeds, which

are 1GHz for the top model, and 947MHz for the 290.

A rasteriser in every SE means Hawaii doubles

Tahitis rendering specification here too, and this is

complemented by a doubling of the GPUs render

back-end units. Each of these houses four ROPs, so

both cards feature 64 ROPs in total. These allow the

R9 290X to theoretically pump out up to 64Gpixels/sec.

AMD is pushing 4K and multi-monitor setups hard

with Hawaiis launch, and while the pixel fill rate is only

one piece of the pie at such high resolutions, it should

still prove beneficial.

Hawaiis memory interface has also been bolstered

to 512-bit, as it now has eight 64-bit memory

controllers compared to the previous six. Theres also

an extra 1GB of GDDR5 (4GB total) memory, which

will again be beneficial at high resolutions and detail

settings. Effective memory clock speeds are down to

5GHz from Tahitis 6GHz, however, which is due to a

shrinking of the die area that the memory interface

occupies. Nevertheless, total memory bandwidth is

still up by 11 per cent at 320GB/sec.

Another hardware change relates to CrossFire,

which no longer requires an external bridge. Instead,

cards communicate solely via PCI-E, thanks to a new

CrossFire XDMA engine in the compositing block.

AMD claims that no performance has been lost in the

transition. ZeroCore, which all but turns off the GPU to

save power when the system enters its long-idle state,returns for the 290-series as well.

AMD

HAWAII

Powerful GPU;

competitive

pricing; great

4K performance

SUNBURN

Runs very hot;

high power

consumption;

loud stock cooler

HAWAII IS BUILT ON A 28NM

PROCESS AND CONTAINS 6.2

BILLION TRANSISTORS

AMDs new Hawaii GPU makes anappropriately volcanic debut

Radeon R9 290X and

Radeon R9 290


21/13221January 2014

GRAPHICS CARDS

IN DETAIL

R9 290

Graphics processorAMDRadeon R9 290X, 947MHz

Pipeline2,560 streamprocessors, 64 ROPsMemory4GB GDDR5,5GHz effectiveBandwidth320GB/secCompatibilityDirectX 11.2,OpenGL 4.3, AMD MantleOutputs/inputs2 x DVI-D(Dual-Link), 1 x DisplayPort,1 x HDMIPower connections1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin, top-mountedSize278mm long, dual-slot

Also, AMDs PowerTune technologyhas seen some upgrades, with thecompanys own second-generationSerial VID (SVI2) VR controller nowat the heart of the cards powermanagement systems. It can access255 different voltage steps that it canselect approximately every ten micro-seconds, based on load demands andother data. Under load, it will alwaysaim to go up a step on the voltage/clockscale to boost performance, provided itstays within the cards thermal, powerand fan speed limits.

As before, increasing the cardspower limit tells the controller itcan draw more power if necessary.However, through the CatalystControlCenter (CCC), you can now set yourcards target temperature. Rather thanhaving a basic fan curve, the card willactively aim for the set temperature by running its fansas slowly as possible to maintain it. By default, thetarget temperature is 95C for both cards, the highestpermitted, which is very hot. AMD promises that theGPU is safe to run at this temperature for its entire life,but that doesnt alleviate our concerns about itspotential effect on nearby components.

You also set a maximum fan speed here, and if thecard reaches this speed, but is still set to go over itstarget temperature, it will then reduce clock speeds.PowerTune is thus a dynamic trade-off betweenpower, noise and thermals. The new CCC makes thisfairly clear, but its user interface is annoying to use,particularly as clock speeds are now adjusted in

percentages, rather than absolutemegahertz values.

Both cards also boast a dual BIOSswitch although only on the R9 290X is itloaded with different profiles; ber Modeand Quiet Mode. The only setting affected,however is the maximum fan speed 55per cent and 40 per cent respectively (for

the R9 290 its 47 per cent regardless).Either way, its largely a pointlessfeature, as you cant override thedefault profile settings, and changingthe maximum fan speed is muchquicker through software.

The card itself is a standard AMDaffair with a thin red and black plasticcover and radial fan, which blows air

through the aluminium heatsink finsdirectly out of the rear I/O. Thisheatsink sits directly on top of themassive copper base plate, which

draws heat away from the GPU as well as the memoryand power circuitry via a black metal contact plate. Itspowered by a 6-pin and 8-pin PCI-E socket combo,and the juice is routed through a typical 5+1 phasepower design.

PERFORMANCE

In all three games tested, and at every resolution, theR9 290X has a marginal but repeatable performanceadvantage over Nvidias GTX 780. In the non-4K tests,the two cards are very closely matched, however,as the R9 290X only twice exceeds the GTX 780sminimum frame rate by more than 2fps. The GTX 780does have a 7 per cent lead in Unigine Valley, but given

22

DIRECTX 11.2AMDs new GPUs support DirectX 11.2, exclusive to Windows 8.1 and the Xbox One. Its most relevant

feature for enthusiasts comes from the updated Direct3D API. Its called Tiled Resources, and its

designed to reduce the GPU memory footprint of high-resolution textures in games. It doesnt require

any new hardware capabilities, so existing DirectX 11 cards, including AMDs HD 7000-series and Nvidias

Kepler and Fermi GPUs, will all support the key gaming features of DirectX 11.2 too.

High-resolution textures look great, but they also take up lots of video memory. This memory can also

be wasted if you dont look at the whole texture at once, as only a portion of it actually needs to be rendered

in such detail. Tiled Resources attempts to address this problem by allowing textures to be split into tiles

on mipmaps of various detail levels. Through the use of a programmable hardware page table on the

GPU memory, it only loads the tiles appropriate to the level of detail the player can see at any one time,

dynamically swapping tiles in and out of the memory. It can also be applied to effects such as shadows.

The end result is high-resolution resources using less memory without sacrificing detail, and with

less memory overhead than software-based tiling approaches. For example, Microsoft demoed it using

just a 16MB tile pool but working with 3GB of textures in total. While this is impressive, its unlikely to be a

compelling reason for existing Windows 7 users to make the jump (Windows 8.1 is free for Windows 8users), though, as it will require developer time and effort for it to become a real performance advantage.

ologyeionw

esscanicro-s andays/clockided itower

s

ry.ntrolurr than

percentagemega ertz

Both cardswitch, althloaded withand Quiet Mhowever, is tper cent and

the R9 29Either wfeature,default pt e maxquicker t

he caaffair witcover an

t roug tdirehea


22/132

22 January 2014

A WORD ON 4K

Currently, 4K displays are in their infancy, with few able to achieve a 60Hz refresh rate suitable for PC use.

Those that can output this refresh rate require two video inputs, as the screen is divided into two 2K tiles.

As such, you must either physically connect two separate HDMI cables, or preferably use a DisplayPort

connection. This must be used in Multi-Streaming Transport mode until hardware on the monitors side

improves and is able to receive a single 4K 60Hz signal. Such signals can be output by all current AMD

GCN-based products, and the HDMI 2 specification will also have enough bandwidth to support it.

For the time being, AMD is coding its drivers to automatically detect tiled monitors and configure

Eyefinity correctly to emulate the plug-and-play experience. Its also supporting the VESA Display ID v1.3

specification, whereby monitors will tell graphics cards all the relevant information needed to setup a 4Kdisplay without needing additional coding and driver updates.

the performance in real games, its obvious why Nvidiaquickly dropped the GTX 780s price.

Hawaiis improvement over Tahiti is also clear. Insome tests, its as much as 40 per cent, although youdexpect a healthy performance margin given the pricedisparity. Meanwhile, the R9 290 demonstrates a verysubstantial real-world performance increase overthe GTX 770, although it was only just ahead in thesynthetic Unigine benchmark. In the gaming tests,though, its lead over the GTX 770 is over 10 per cent(except in Crysis 3 at 1080p), and it often extends itslead to over 20 per cent. Its performance is also closerto that of the GTX 780 than the GTX 770.

We also tested at 3,840 x 2,160 (4K), at which theR9 290X is surprisingly competent, being able to keepboth Battlefield 3 and BioShock Infinite playable attheir highest settings. It also exhibits a much moreconvincing lead over the GTX 780 here, ranging from13 to 20 per cent. The extra memory and bandwidth, aswell as its massive ROP count, undoubtedly play a parthere. The R9 290 also triumphed over the GTX 780 inevery game at 4K, keeping BioShock Infinite playable(albeit barely), while the 780 struggled.

The power consumption figures for the two cardsare less impressive, however. Even though the R9 290Xtypically only exhibits marginal performance gainsover the GTX 780, it caused our system to draw 82Wmore. In fact, both AMD cards had higher load powerdraws than Nvidias GTX 690 a card with two GPUs.

Temperatures and noise are other concerns. Ourresults for the R9 290X are in its ber Mode, where it

can become very loud, and the R9 290 isnt far behindit. They also both run around 10C hotter than the GTX780 thanks to the 95C target temperature.

OVERCLOCKING

We started overclocking both cards by setting theirpower limit, target temperature and maximum fanspeeds to the limit (150 per cent, 95C and 100 per centrespectively). For the R9 290X, we achieved a 12 percent overclock for both the core and memory, whichwent up to 1,120MHz and 1.4GHz (5.6GHz effective).This is a decent result that saw healthy performancegains, especially in Battlefield 3; at 2,560 x 1,600, it justmanaged to beat the GTX Titan at stock speeds.

Pleasingly, we hit higher percentages with the R9290, which we overclocked to 1,110MHz on the coreand 1.425GHz (5.7GHz effective) for the memory. TheR9 290 saw very tasty performance gains as well,especially in Crysis 3, where its result even beats theoverclocked R9 290X and matches the GTX Titan.

CONCLUSION

Even in the wake of Nvidias price drops, the R9 290Xstill offers a small performance boost over the GTX 780for just 30 more. Its a decent overclocker too, but itshigh power draw, high temperatures and loud noiseneed to be considered, as your systems ambienttemperature could suffer. Thus, even with the speedadvantage, the R9 290X isnt recommended over theGTX 780 with its current cooler unless youre intent onplaying at 4K on a tight budget. Sadly, well have to waituntil later for custom-cooled cards too.

The current unavailability of pricing for the R9 290leaves us unable to form a proper conclusion, buttheres a large gap for it to fill between the GTX 770,now just 240, and the 400 GTX 780. The problemswith power, noise and temperature still affect it, butwith so large a segment of the market left uncovered,the 300-350 price bracket could still make the cardattractive, especially with its overclocking potential.MATTHEW LAMBERT

21


23/132

23January 2014

GRAPHICS CARDS

custom P

OVERALL

SPEED38 / 40

FEATURES20 / 30

VALUE23 / 30

scores: r9 290X

BATTLEFIELD 31,92 0 x 1,0 80 Ultr a D etai l, 4 x A A

2,5 60 x 1 ,600 Ultr a D etai l, 4x A A

0 30 60 90 120

fps117

fps108

fps83

fps111

fps91

fps94

fps86

fps68

fps94

fps76GeForce GTX 770

GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

0 20 40 60 80

fps70

fps76

fps65

fps73

fps50

fps65

fps52

fps56

fps62

fps52

fps60

fps41

fps55


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

5,760 x 1,080 Ultra Detail, 4x AA

0 12.5 25 37.5 50

fps49

fps46

fps35

fps42

fps35

fps38

fps34

fps27

fps37


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

TOT AL SYSTE M POW ER DRA W

0 100 200 300 400 500

W426

W418

W350

W344

W333

W114

W114

W111

W108

W106GeForce GTX 770

GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

Lower is betterIdle Load

3,8 40 x 2 ,160 Ultr a D etai l, 4x A A

0 10 20 30 40

fps37

fps35

fps31

fps30

fps28


Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

CRYSIS 31,92 0 x 1,0 80 Very Hig h de tail , 0 x A A

2,5 60 x 1 ,600 Very High deta il, 0x AA

0 18 36 54 72

fps66

fps62

fps9fps64

fps56

fps58

fps52

fps40

fps57


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290XUNIGINE VALLEY2,5 60 x 1 ,60 0

0 650 1,300 1,950 2,600

2 4362,295

2,157

1,989

1,590

2,298

1,934GeForce GTX 770

GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

0 12 24 36 48

fps41

fps45

fps38

fps44

fps30

fps37

fps32

fps33

fps36

fps31

fps37

fps25

fps32


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

5,760 x 1,080 Very High detail, 0x AA

0 7 14 21 28

fps28

fps26

fps21

fps25

fps21

fps24

fps23

fps17

fps22


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

3,8 40 x 2 ,160 Very High deta il, 0x AA

0 6 12 18 24

fps22

fps21

fps19

fps18

fps17


Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

BIOSHOCK INFINITE1,9 20 x 1, 080 Ultr a D etai l wi th D epth of Fiel d

2,5 60 x 1 ,60 0 Ul tra Deta il with Dept h of Fiel d

0 25 50 75 100

fps92

fps75

fps95

fps81

fps82

fps66

fps82


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

0 15 30 45 60

fps56

fps53

fps43

fps56

fps47

fps51

fps48

fps38

fps49


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

5,760 x 1,080 Ultra Detail with Depth of Field

0 10 20 30 40

fps36

fps34

fps27

fps34

fps28

fps29

fps27

fps21

fps29


GeForce GTX 780

Radeon R9 280X

Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

3,8 40 x 2 ,16 0 Ul tra Deta il with Dept h of Fiel d

0 8 16 24 32

fpsfps28

fps28

fps26

fps25


Radeon R9 290

Radeon R9 290X

fps97fps87

Stock speed min Stock speed avg Overclocked avgOverclocked min

Stock speed min Stock speed avg



24/13224 January 2014

HOW MUCH?

Price999 inc VAT

Supplierwww.scan.co.uk

Manufacturerwww.scan.co.uk

IN DETAIL

CPU2.4GHz Intel Corei7-4700MQ

Memory8GB CorsairVengeance 1,600MHz

GraphicsNvidia GeForce

GTX 765 2GB mobile GPUSoundCreative SoundBlaster Cinema

Screensize13.3in

Hard disk256GB mSATAPlextor PX-256M5M SSD

Weight2.1kg

Ports2 x USB 3, 1 x USB 2,LAN, mic, headphone,HDMI, D-SUB, nine-in-onememory card reader

Dimensions330 x 227 x31.9mm (W x D x H)

ExtrasWindows 7 HomePremium

WarrantyTwo years collect

and return

f youve ever tried to lug a laptop with a 15in

screen, youll know they can be cumbersome

beasts. Ultrabooks are popular for this very

reason theyre thinner, lighter and often just

as powerful as full-sized laptops, but they come in

smaller sizes too. We consider anything with a screen

smaller than 12in to be a little cramped for gaming or

typing, but 13.3in represents the first practical screen

size above 12in. Scans 3XS Graphite LG135 comes in

right on the money here and, despite packing some

serious pixel-pushing grunt, it only weighs 2.1kg

much less than laptops with 15in screens.

Its no Ultrabook, though, with a depth of over

30mm, but its length of 330mm and depth of 227mm

mean its just as rucksack-friendly. If youre keen on

having a high-resolution screen, youll also be pleased

to know that the 3XS Graphite LG135 sports a 1,920 x

1,080 native resolution, and uses a variant of IPS panel

technology called Azimuthal Anchoring

Switching. Combined with ample

brightness and contrast and high PPI,

thanks to cramming a full HD display into

a 13.3in panel, the screen looks superb.

Its based on a Clevo W230ST chassis,

which feels very sturdy indeed. In fact, the screen

casing is one of the best weve seen, with some serious

force needed to flex it or create distortions in the panel

when powered on. The left side is dominated by a huge

exhaust vent, next to which sit a single USB 2 port and

the audio mini-jacks. Meanwhile, the opposite side

sports three USB 3 ports, plus VGA and HDMI ports,

as well as an Ethernet port and the power connector.

The keyboard is also backlit with white LEDs; this

feature didnt prove to be of much use in medium to

well-lit rooms, but it lights up your keys without any

distracting glare in dim situations. The keyboard itself

doesnt offer a great deal of key travel, but this is

fairly typical of laptops of this size. Even so, it was

comfortable enough to use for long periods of time.

The specification is pretty eye-popping too,

especially for the price, and it actually has a similar

CPU and identical graphics card to the much more

expensive MSI GS70 (see Issue 123, p34). A Haswell-

based 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700MQ sits at the heart of

the system, offering four physical cores with Hyper-

Threading. Turbo Boost is also on tap to boost the

clock speed to 3.4GHz.

Theres 8GB of RAM too, and a dual storage setup

consisting of a 256GB Plextor PX-256M5M mSATA

SSD for the OS and a 1TB Hitachi 7K1000 hard disk.

For graphics, the 3XS Graphite LG135 has an Nvidia

GeForce GTX 765 2GB, and it can switch between this

chip and the CPUs Intel HD 4600 graphics, depending

on load, thanks to Nvidias Optimus technology.

Popping off the rear cover reveals a huge dual

heatpipe system and massive cooler, while the RAM

and storage devices are all easily accessible too.

Rounding off the specs is an embedded Creative

Sound Blaster Cinema sound card and a pre-installed

version of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, which

makes sense given the absence of a touch-screen.

As with all Scans PCs and laptops, the 3XS Graphite

LG135 is fully customisable via its website too.

PERFORMANCE

We topped up the battery to 100 per cent and fired up

Unigine Heaven, looping it at native resolution to give

the 3XS Graphite LG135 a gaming workout. The battery

SCAN

WINNING

Fast; backlit

keyboard; great

screen; good build

quality; excellent

value for money

LOSING

Keys have little

travel; heavier

than Ultrabooks,

13.3in screen too

small for some

A HASWELL-BASED CORE i7-4700MQ

SITS AT THE HEART OF THE SYSTEM,

OFFERING FOUR PHYSICAL CORES

Portable, powerful and equipped with abacklit keyboard and a great screen

3XS Graphite LG135


25/132

25January 2014

GAMING LAPTOP

GIMP IMAGE EDITING

Stock speed

0 450 900 1,350 1,800

1,681

1,715MSI GS70

3XS Graphite LG135

HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING

0 800 1,600 2,400 3,200

3,029

3,100MSI GS70

3XS Graphite LG135

MULTI-TASKING

0 350 700 1,050 1,400

1,371

1,202MSI GS70

3XS Graphite LG135

OVERALL

0 600 1,200 1,800 2,400

2,027

2,006MSI GS70

3XS Graphite LG135

Stock speed min Stock speed avg

TOT AL WAR: SHO GUN 2 D X9 CPU TES T

0 7.5 15 22.5 30

28fps

28fps

22fps

23fpsMSI GS70

3XS Graphite LG135

Default settings, no AA or AF

THE ELD ER SCR OLL S V : SKYRI M

0 30 60 90 120

108fps

108fps

74fps

73fpsMSI GS70

3XS Graphite LG135

1,9 20 x 1, 080 , 16 x A F, 0x A A

lasted just over an hour at 61 minutes, which is better

than half the laptops in our previous gaming laptop

Labs test (see Issue 114, p50), and just enough for an

average commute-based gaming session on the train.

Of course, less demanding tasks will see several

hours of use at least. Noise wasnt an issue while

browsing the Web and watching videos, and the fan

only really sped up while playing games. However,

while certainly audible, it wasnt as whiny as wed

expected, and just produced a consistent noise.

The really special results were produced in our

benchmarks, though, with the LG135 bettering every

laptop in our previous Labs test. Its image editing

score of 1,681 was slightly behind the MSI GS70,

though, as was the video editing score of 3,029.

However, the 3XS Graphite LG135 posted a faster

multi-tasking score of 1,370 compared to 1,202,

which saw it beat the more expensive MSI laptop by

over 20 points overall.

With a near-identical specification to the GS70, it

wasnt surprising to see similar results in our game

tests, with the LG135 proving slightly slower in the

Total War: Shogun 2 CPU test, and slightly faster in

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The latter result showed

that, in less demanding games, the 3XS Graphite

LG135 is more than able to provide playable frame

rates at its native resolution.

As an additional test, we also ran our standard

Battlefield 3 benchmark with all the bells and whistles

enabled. In this test, it managed a minimum frame

rate of 23fps, just below our cut-off standard of 25fps

clearly, youll need to turn down the eye candy a little

in more demanding games, as the 3XS Graphite LG135

is still a fair bit slower than your average modern

gaming PC.

01The Nvidia GeForce GTX

765 2GB GPU and Intel

Core i7-4700MQ are cooled

using a large heatpipe-equipped

cooler

02The 3XS Graphite LG135

uses two 4GB modules of

Corsair Vengeance RAM

03On hand is a fast 256GB

mSATA SSD for the OS,

and a hefty 1TB hard disk for

storage

CONCLUSION

The Scan 3XS Graphite LG135 proved to be fast, well-

made and exactly what youd want from a laptop of this

size. Its weight and size mean its a perfect for carrying

around, yet its equally at home plugged into a monitor

as a desktop replacement.

Gaming performance isnt quite up to desktop PC

levels, but considering it costs nearly 700 less than

the MSI GS70 Stealth, yet sports similar specifications

inside, the 3XS Graphite LG135 is also remarkably

good value for money.

It might not have the MSIs gorgeous and slim

aluminium chassis, 17in screen or its solid SteelSeries

keyboard, but it offers the same amount of processing

grunt for considerably less money.

AN TO NY LE ATH ER

custom P

OVERALL

SPEED 21 / 25

DESIGN22 / 25

HARDWARE23 / 25

VALUE24 / 25

01

02

03


26/132


27/132


28/132

28 January 2014

hile Intel rules the enthusiast roost with

its K-series CPUs in the high-end portion

of the market, its a different story once

you get below 100. We already know

that if youre looking to play games on a low budget

then AMDs APUs, such as the A10-6800K, make

compelling cheap CPU and GPU combinations.

However, if youre looking for a little more

performance, and want to use a discrete GPU,

the situation becomes unclear.

Intel has finally released its Pentium and Core i3

Haswell CPUs several months after the likes of the

Core i5-4670K. There are also cheap LGA1150

motherboards around too. In fact, these boards are

available for less than 50 in some cases just as

cheap as their AMD Socket AM3+ counterparts.

Therefore, the argument that an AMD setup costs less

is a moot point, at least at this price you can use the

same memory, cooler, case and PSU after all. The only

components that differ are the CPU and motherboard,

and both cost the same.

Both CPU sockets also offer an upgrade

path AM3+ looks set to support at least

one generation past its current FX-series

Vishera CPUs, while Intels Haswell chips

have only been on shelves this year, so

LGA1150 has an equally good measure of

future-proofing.

THE SPECIF IC ATIONS

To see which path you should take, weve selected two

budget CPUs Intels Haswell-based Core i3-4130,

which retails for 90, and AMDs Vishera-based

FX-6300, which costs a tad less at 85. In terms of raw

clock-for-clock performance, Intel is likely to still win,

given Haswells superior architecture, but the AMD

CPU has a couple of tricks up its sleeve, despite its

meagre price tag.

It has three Piledriver modules, each with two

integer units, for a total of six, compared to the Intels

two Hyper-Threaded physical cores. This could well

prove a strong advantage in multi-threaded tests. Italso sports a Turbo Core speed of up to 4.1GHz, while

the Core i3 lacks Turbo Boost and is fixed at 3.4GHz or

below. The FX-6300 also has significantly more cache

than the Core i3-4130, with more than double the L2

and L3 cache. Finally, the FX-6300 is overclockable, so

even if its stock numbers dont put it in the lead, theres

every chance a healthy overclock could turn the tide.

Conversely, the Core i3-4130 lacks a K-series

designation, meaning its multiplier is upwards-

locked, leaving you with just a few megahertz of base

clock with which to play. In fact, on paper, the only area

where the Intel CPU has a clear advantage is power

consumption; its TDP of 54W is nearly half that of the

FX-6300, which clocks in at 95W. This is partly due to

the fact that the FX-6300 uses a 32nm manufacturing

process, while the Core i3-4130 is based on a 22nm

one, but the extra cores and additional cache also

account for higher power consumption.

OVERCLOCKING

To start, we headed into the EFI of our Asus Crosshair

V Formula motherboard to see how far we could push

the FX-6300. We disabled the various C-states and

Turbo Core so all six cores (integer units) would run at

the same frequency. With the default vcore set at 1.38V,

we raised this setting to 1.48V. As AMD CPUs can see

additional performance boosts from increasing the

reference clock, we also raised this frequency from

100MHz to 200MHz and dropped the multiplier to 23x,

resulting in a new CPU clock speed of 4.6GHz. This

proved to be stable, but the voltage needed to be

increased to get any further, with 1.525V required to

reach our maximum clock speed of 4.75GHz, at which

the CPU core temperatures were hovering around the

85C mark when running Prime95.

For the Intel CPU, overclocking is extremely limited

though. While Intel has introduced straps with itsK-series CPUs, enabling you to increase the base

A VOLTAGE OF 1.525V WAS NEEDED

TO GET TO OUR MAXIMUM CLOCK

SPEED OF 4.75GHZ

We take a look at Intel and AMDs

latest sub-100 CPUs

AMDFX-6300 andINTELCore i3-4130

HOW MUCH?

INTEL CORE i3-4130

Price90 inc VAT


Manufacturerwww.intel.co.uk

SKU numberBX80646I34130

AMD FX-6300

Price85 inc VAT

Supplierwww.cclonline.com

Manufacturerwww.amd.com/uk

SKU numberFD6300WMHKBOX

IN DETAIL

FrequencyCore i3-4130:3.4GHz; FX-6300: 3.5GHz

CoreCore i3-4130: Haswell;FX-6300: Vishera

ManufacturingprocessCore i3-4130: 22nm;FX-6300: 32nm

Number of coresCorei3-4130: 2 x physical, 2 xlogical; FX-6300: 6 x physical

CacheL1: Core i3-4130:64KB+64KB; FX-6300:192KB+96KB. L2: Corei3-4130: 512KB; FX-6300:6MB. L3: Core i3-4130: 3MB;FX-6300: 8MB

Memory ControllerCorei3-4130: dual-channel up to1,600MHz; FX-6300: dual-channel up to 1,866MHz

Packaging: Core i3-4130:LGA1150; FX-6300:Socket AM3+

FeaturesSSE, SSE2, SSE3,SSSE3, SSE4, SSE4.2. Corei3-4130: Quick Sync Video;

FX-6300: AMD Turbo Core


29/132

29January 2014

BUDGET CPUs

clock without interfering with other system bus

speeds, most other CPUs, including our Core i3-4130

dont support it. As such, raising the base clock too far

can quickly result in stability issues and even corrupt

your operating system. However, our CPU was happy

at 102MHz; given the 34x multiplier, this boosted

the frequency from 3.4GHz to 3.468GHz pathetic

compared to our efforts on the AMD system, but its

better than nothing.

PERFORMANCE

We included a range of tests to see just how the CPUs

perform in areas such as single-threaded and multi-

threaded applications, as well as a range of games,

including the often GPU-limited Crysis 3 to The Elder

Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is so easy to run that even a

modest graphics card will likely be CPU-limited. Our

test setup included Asus Maximus VI Formula and

Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboards, with

common components being 16GB of Corsair

Vengeance 1,866MHz RAM and an Nvidia GeForce

GTX 680 2GB graphics card.

In our Media Benchmarks, the stark differences

between the CPUs were immediately clear. The

single-threaded performance of the Core i3-4130 saw

it power its way to a massive lead in the image editing

test, even eclipsing the overclocked FX-6300 by a huge

margin. Clearly, in any application that isnt likely to

make real use of more than two physical cores, Intel is

the way to go. In our multi-threaded video encoding

test, though, the situation was largely reversed,

although at stock speed, there wasnt a massive

difference between the CPUs. However, with the extra

boost of its overclock, the FX-6300 held a significant

800-point lead over the Core i3-4130.

Overall, the overclocked FX-6300 was the fastest

option, bolstered by a score roughly equal to that of the

Intel CPU in the multi-tasking test, and its prowess in

the video encoding test compensating for its poor

performance in the image editing test. The meagre

overclock we applied to the Intel CPU only resulted in

small gains and wasnt enough to beat the FX-6300

overall, only surpassing it in the multi-tasking test

by a few points.

Cinebench was up next and, once again, the AMD

CPUs extra cores helped it to a substantial lead. It

managed a score of 4.43 at stock speed compared to

the Intel CPUs paltry 3.65, and it climbed to 6.06 once

overclocked nearly twice as fast as the Intel CPU.

In Battlefield 3, all of the CPUs proved to be more

than capable of providing our GeForce GTX 680 2GB

with enough work to do and, as such, they returned

near-identical results. In Crysis 3, the brute force of theFX-6300 and its ample number of cores saw it draw

30

out a small but noticeable lead over the Intel CPU,

being around 10 per cent faster.

Skyrim, on the other hand, suffered from CPU

limitation. Here the differences were understandably

more varied, but the game appears to favour the

single-threaded efficiency of the Intel CPU, with its

minimum frame rate of 57fps at stock speed eclipsing

the 50fps of the overclocked FX-6300. Our Shogun 2

test resulted in similar scores across the board,

although the stock speed FX6300 was around 10 per

cent slower than the Intel CPU.

While we were obviously using different

motherboards, we also carried out a power draw

test. The efficiency of the Intel CPU put the FX-6300 to

shame, with the Core i3-4130 drawing over 40 per cent

less power at idle and load and, incredibly, less than a

third of the overclocked AMD CPUs power

consumption.

CONCLUSION

Clearly, if youre planning on using a small CPU cooler,

or are building a compact system, the Intel Core i3s

incredibly low power draw makes it the logical choice

youll need a fairly substantial CPU cooler to handle an

overclocked AMD FX-6300.

Aside from power, though, the situation isnt

as clear-cut. Theres no overall winner in our

benchmarks, with both the 2D and 3D tests offering

mixed results, depending on your priorities.

However, it can be boiled down to the fact that the

AMD CPU is by far the best option when it comes to

multi-threaded applications such as video encoding

and rendering. In these workloads, it has a clear

advantage over the Intel CPU, both at stock speed and

especially when overclocked. On the other hand, the

Core i3-4130 was massively faster in the single-

threaded image editing test, and will likely hold this

lead in any situation that doesnt make proper use ofmultiple CPU cores.


30/132

30 January 2014

BUDGET CPUs

OVERALL

SPEED32 / 50

FEATURES 11 / 15

VALUE32 / 35

8OVERALL

SPEED33 / 50

FEATURES 13 / 15

VALUE32 / 35

There was no clear winner in the game tests either.

Battlefield 3 proved to have a bottleneck elsewhere,

with all our CPUs returning identical results. However,

Crysis 3 and Skyrim each favoured a different corner

Crysis 3 preferred the additional cores of the AMD

CPU, while Skyrims older technology was happy

dealing with fewer, more efficient cores, making it

faster on the Intel system.

This means theres a bigger picture to consider, and

youll have to weigh up the pros and cons depending

on your particular needs. Were hearing rumblings

that many future games, including the imminent

Battlefield 4, perform much better with six or more

cores, so if Battlefield 4 features heavily on your future

games list, the FX-6300 might be the better option

(well be investigating Battlefield 4 next month). The

higher power draw of the AMD system, though, will

mean a higher outlay, as youll need a more expensive

cooler and a better case, especially if you overclock it.

Youll also be limited by the overclocking prowess of

your motherboard, which may or may not perform as

well as ours.

While the FX-6300 is slightly faster overall, the

upgrade path to a K-series Haswell CPU, cant

be overlooked; combined with the low power

consumption and quicker single-threaded

performance, this makes the Core i3-4130 a great

budget CPU if youre not bothered about multi-

threaded speed. However, if youre looking for decent

multi-threading performance on a tight budget, the

FX-6300 is the fastest CPU this side of 100.

AN TO NY LE ATH ER

GIMP IMAGE EDITING

Stock speed Overclocked

0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000

1,2211,041

Intel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

HANDBRAKE H.264 VIDEO ENCODING

0 800 1,600 2,400 3,200

3,129

2,300

2,423

2,272Intel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

MULTI-TASKING

0 350 700 1,050 1,400

3441,175Intel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

OVERALL

0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000

1,8981,546

Intel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

BATTLEFIELD 31,92 0 x 1,0 80, 16x AF, 4x AA

0 25 50 75 100

fps84

fps84

fps69

fps68

fps83

fps84

fps68

fps68Intel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300


TOT AL WAR: SHO GUN 2 D X9 CPU T ESTDefault settings, no AA or AF

idle

0 6 12 18 24

fps24

fps22

fps17

fps17

fps19

fps21

fps15


AMD FX-6300

THE ELD ER SCR OLL S V : SKY RIM1,92 0 x 1,0 80, 16x AF, 0x AA

0 30 60 90 120

fps108

fps111

fps50

fps58

fps87

fps110

fps35


AMD FX-6300

CRYSIS 31,92 0 x 1,0 80, 16x AF, 0x AA

0 12.5 25 37.5 50

fps49

fps49

fps41

fps38

fps49

fps49

fps39


AMD FX-6300

1,3591,320

1,8201,774

CINEBENCH R11.5

0 2 4 6 8

6.06

3.71

4.43

3.65Intel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

TOT AL SYS TEM POW ER CON SUM PTION

0 30 60 90 120

109W

64W

98W

63WIntel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

Load

0 90 180 270 360

343W

100W

163W

98WIntel Core i3-4130

AMD FX-6300

1,8231,789

scores: FX 6300 scores: Core i3-4130

29


31/132


32/13232 January 2014

CPU COOLER

HOW MUCH?

Price110 inc VAT


Manufacturerwww.antec.com

IN DETAIL

CompatibilityIntel: LGA775,LGA1156, LGA1155,LGA2011, LGA1366;

AMD: Socket FM1, AM3+,AM3, AM2+, AM2

Weight1.3kg

Radiator size (mm)280 x 120 x 27

Fan2 x 120mm

Stated noiseNot stated

ith CoolIT and Asetek making

many all-in-one liquid coolers

for Corsair, Zalman and Antec, there

hasnt been much innovation. Thats all

changed with Antecs new dual 120mm fan Khler

H20 1250 though.

The pump has been moved from the waterblock,

and now resides above the fan bearing. As the 1250

has two fans, this equates to two pumps a first for

an all-in-one liquid cooler. The coolants route criss-

crosses the radiator and passes through each pump

before being sent to the waterblock. Meanwhile, the

contact plate has been machined smooth, with its

flexible nozzles enabling you to mount it without too

much force. The fans arent your standard 120mm

affairs either. They have huge blades, non-standard

housing and airflow-focusing plates behind them,

much like SilverStones Air Penetrator fans.

Meanwhile, the radiator is a half-height unit, but its

fans cant be completely removed, as theyre attached

to the pumps. This limits the ability to install it in some

cases where the radiator and fans sandwich a dual

120mm-fan mount from either side.

The mount has a single-piece plate slotting into

the waterblock, which is secured using thumbscrews,

with a motherboard backplate for all sockets except

LGA2011. Antec has also updated its software, which

allows you to choose Silent, Extreme or custom fan

profiles. We had no issues installing the software

either, and while its simple, it allows you to control

the waterblock LED and log temperatures easily.

In Silent mode, the 47C delta T in our LGA2011

system matched the Corsair H100i on its Balanced

profile. Meanwhile, the Extreme mode saw the delta T

drop to 43C the second best result weve seen. In

our LGA1155 system, the Silent modes delta T was

44C equal to the H100is Quiet profile, while the

Extreme mode returned a delta T of 39C. This was a

couple of degrees warmer than the H100is highest

profile but equal to SilverStones Tundra TD02.

Noise-wise, Extreme mode also resulted in an

unpleasant hairdryer noise. Unfortunately, though,while Silent mode resulted in the fans being barely

audible, there was a noticeable whine from the

pumps, limiting the Antecs appeal for quiet systems.

CONCLUSION

The Khler H20 1250 features excellent cooling,

particularly for LGA2011 systems, and superb

software control. However, its more expensive

than Corsairs H100i and the noisy pumps make it

redundant for quiet systems.

ANTONY LE ATH ER

ANTEC

1080

Excellent

LGA2011 cooling;

dual pumps;

great software

360

Pumps are

noisy; fans cant

be detached;

10 more than

Corsair H100i

Dual pumps and newcontrol software

Khler H20 1250

scores: lGa2011

scores: lGa1155

results

85custom PC

OVERALL

COOLING39 / 40

DESIGN22 / 30

VALUE24 / 30

FITTING EASY

79custom PC

OVERALL

COOLING35 / 40

DESIGN 21 / 30

VALUE23 / 30

FITTING EASY

INTEL LGA1155

0 12 24 36 48

39C

44C

37C

44CCorsair H100i (low)

Corsair H100i (high)

Khler H20 1250 (low)

Khler H20 1250 (high)

INTEL LGA2011

0 12.5 25 37.5 50

43C

47C

44C

50CCorsair H100i (low)

Corsair H100i (high)

Khler H20 1250 (low)

Khler H20 1250 (high)

Lower is better

Lower is better


33/132


34/132


35/132


36/13236 January 2014

HOW MUCH?

Price65 inc VAT


Manufacturerwww.corsair.com

ModelnumberCC-9011038-WW

IN DETAIL

Dimensions (mm)210 x 550x 440 (W x D x H)

MaterialSteel, plastic

Available coloursOrange,black, grey

Weight6.1kg

Front panelPower, reset,2 x USB 3, stereo, mic

Drivebays3 x external5.25in, 4 x internal 3.5in,

4 x 2.5inForm factor(s)ATX,micro-ATX

Cooling2 x 120mmfront fanmounts (2 x 120mm fansincluded), 1 x 120mm rearfan mount (120mm fanincluded), 2 x 120/140mmtop fan mounts (fan notincluded), 1 x bottom120mm fan mounts (fansnot included)

CPU cooler clearance160mm

Maximum graphics cardlength430mm

ExtrasDust filters, LED fans

eve featured plenty of guides on how

to paint your case inCustom PCover

the years, but just occasionally case

manufacturers take the bold step of

releasing pre-painted cases. BitFenix has done this

with the popular Prodigy, NZXT with the Phantom

series and Corsair has now added to the list with its

new Graphite 230T. It isnt the first case its launched

that differed from the usual black box theme, but white

and camo green dont really qualify in our books.

The Graphite 230T is available in orange as

reviewed here, battleship grey and black. The orange

and black models sport orange LED fans, while the

battleship grey models fans are blue. On our sample,

the orange is vibrant and the paint job is

hardy its certainly a match for anything

you could achieve at home. As the front,

base, inside and rear panel are still black,

theres an even colour balance too, so the

Graphite 230T isnt at all garish. The

addition of a darkened side window and hand

grip indentations give it a racy look as well and,

interestingly, the side panels slide off to the front,

rather than the rear.

Features arent quite in abundance though; theres

no fan control, no rubber grommets on the internal

cable-routing holes, and only three fans are included,

none of which has fan control. However, as far as

cooling goes, the Graphite 230T represents a major

step up from Corsairs previous budget-conscious

efforts. The front section sports a large mesh, allowing

air to pass through the case far easier than the

blanked-off front panel of the Carbide 200R. There

are two front 120mm fans, and while the lower one is

partially blocked by the 3.5in hard disk caddie, the

upper one has large gap behind it, courtesy of a slim

2.5in SSD mount, providing additional airflow over the

graphics card.

Meanwhile, the PSU mount is supported by a

removable fan filter that slides out to the rear. The front

fans are also filtered, but youll need to pop off the

entire front panel to get a hoover to the fan filter, which

is fixed to the inside. Thankfully, this is a painless job,

as you just have to contend with a couple of clips.

Moving to the front panel, youll find two USB 3

ports plus the usual buttons and mini-jacks. The build

quality is excellent too, although theres a fair amount

of plastic on the inside and outside. However, this

CORSAIR

GRAPHITE

LED fans; decent

cooling; snazzy

paint job; good

build quality

LEAD

No fan control;

limited CPU

cooler height

ANYONE BUILDING A QUIET PC

CERTAINLY WONT HAVE ANY

COMPLAINTS WITH THE 230T

A budget case that matches greatlooks with decent cooling

Graphite 230T


37/13237January 2014

ATX CASE

helps to keep the weight down to a paltry 6.1kg.

Meanwhile, the 3.5in caddy can house up to four hard

disks but, unlike many other cases weve seen, theres

no trade-off with 2.5in SSDs, which have their own

four-drive caddy above, and both caddies offer tool-

free installation. Theres plenty of room for optical

drives, fan controllers and bay reservoirs too, with

three 5.25in external bays.

In addition to the two front 120mm fans, theres a

single rear 120mm exhaust fan too. There are also

additional 120/140mm fan mounts in the roof and

base, with a dual-fan slot in the roof and a single one in

the base in front of the PSU. The roof mount supports

dual 120/140mm-fan radiators, although youll be

limited to half-height models due to the close

proximity of the motherboard. While there are two fans

in the front, it isnt possible to install a radiator in this

area, as the hard disk mounts are riveted to the case

and the fans are also staggered.

Apart from the aforementioned lack of rubber

grommets, the case also caters well for cable routing,

with openings in the motherboard tray at the top and

bottom, and a further two on the right-hand side.

Theres also a substantial CPU area cut-out, which

will hopefully mean you wont have to remove your

motherboard to replace your CPU cooler.

Speaking of CPU coolers, theres a height limit of

160mm a little less than some other cases in this

01The substantial CPU area

cut-out will hopefully

mean you wont have to remove

your motherboard to replace

your CPU cooler

02They might lack rubber

grommets, but there are

still plenty of cable holes fortidying up the interior

03Three fans are included,

but none of them features

fan-speed controls

CPU LOAD DELTA T TEMPERATURE

Lower is better

0 12 24 36 48 60

C49

C47

C48

C49

C55Fractal Arc Midi R2 (low)

Fractal Arc Midi R2 (high)

NZXT Source 210 Elite

Antec One

Corsair Graphite 230T

GPU LOAD DELTA T TEMPERATURE

L

Documents

Custom PC - January 2014 UK