Maximum PC

Computer News, Reviews, and How-to Projects

Maximum PC1 min read
Maximum PC
Editor-in-Chief: Guy Cocker Contributing Writers: Reece Bithrey, Nate Drake, Ian Evenden, Darien Graham-Smith, Dave James, John Knight, Jeremy Laird, Nick Peers, Jacob Ridley, Zak Storey, Jarred Walton, Joshua Wolens Production Editor: Steve Wright E
Maximum PC3 min read
Calling All Creators
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON requests I receive from readers (email me at [email protected]!) is for more themed builds. This issue, I’m happy to oblige, and proudly present the Ultimate Creator’s PC, perfect for anyone working in graphic design, video
Maximum PC3 min read
Intel Launches Arc B Graphics Cards
WHEN INTEL’S first Arc cards released, they were competitively priced, but didn’t exactly fly off shelves. The first generation (codenamed ‘Alchemist') A380 release date was pushed back several times. Generally, it worked well with video, but advance
Maximum PC1 min read
Microsoft Doubles Down
WITH THE END OF LIFE for Windows 10 approaching, Microsoft has confirmed that the stated hardware requirements for Windows 11 won’t go away. This relates to the necessity that devices have a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0 chip. While this increase
Maximum PC1 min read
Openai Reveals $200 Monthly Subscription
OPENAI HAS announced the new ‘ChatGPT Pro’ subscription tier. For $200 a month, users can access all language models, including the latest o1. This ‘reasoning model’ is designed to check its own work. An OpenAI spokesperson has confirmed that this is
Maximum PC1 min read
Tech Triumphs and Tragedies
New SEC chairperson Paul Atkins is expected to be more receptive to the cryptocurrency. Traditionally, they’re susceptible to noise and errors. Time crystals boost system stability. ‘Good Old Games’ will ensure that older titles are still playable on
Maximum PC2 min read
Musk To Launch Game Studio
WITHOUT A TRACE of irony, the world’s richest man and owner of a number of multi-million dollar companies announced on Twitter, “Too many game studios are owned by massive corporations.” The owner of X, SpaceX, and Tesla also added that “xAI is going
Maximum PC1 min read
MSI Reveals New Gaming Handhelds
WHEN THE MSI Claw A1M was released in March 2024, it was widely panned by reviewers due to its relatively high price tag. Independent benchmarks also showed that the first-gen’s performance didn’t always match the manufacturer’s claims. MSI’s latest
Maximum PC1 min read
Jeff Bezos Backs Risc-v
AI CHIP STARTUP TENSTORRENT has secured $693 million in investment. This ‘Series D’ funding round was led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners, and attracted major investors like LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group. This move comes after the com
Maximum PC1 min read
Breakthrough In OLED Displays
Applied Materials has published a press release concerning a process it refers to as ‘MAX OLED’. If the claims are true, this could revolutionize the computer monitor market by offering OLED displays with up to three times current brightness levels.
Maximum PC1 min read
Geekom Reveals New QS Series Mini-PCs
According to a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Geekom plans to launch the first mini PC with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor. An image shows an exterior similar to Geekom’s previous A7 series with what seems to be aluminum casing, a po
Maximum PC3 min read
Gelsinger Says Goodbye, Again
Certainly, Intel’s stock price has taken a beating over the past few years, though it was obvious when he took the reins that the company needed to make some major changes. With the unexpected announcement, Intel’s stock took a further hit, and dropp
Maximum PC2 min read
The List
RIDICULOUSLY FAST RESPONSE TIMES, per-pixel lighting, stupendous HDR performance, almost infinite viewing angles—OLED displays have everything. They’re now available in a multitude of form factors, and they’re getting cheaper. Okay, they’re not truly
Maximum PC3 min read
Intel’s New Graphics Card Is What The Market Needs
I review a lot of gaming monitors, and it has become increasingly obvious that the price of monitors and graphics cards has become hopelessly mismatched. You can now bag a decent high-refresh 1440p monitor for as little as $250. I’m talking about som
Maximum PC6 min read
Doctor
> Train AI with AI > Malfunctioning mesh > Encrypt single files I’ve started using Adobe’s Firefly AI image generation system (https://firefly.adobe.com) to produce photo-realistic images to my specifications. However, despite my best efforts, I freq
Maximum PC6 min read
The Ultimate Creative Gamer
THE WORLD of computing is wild and wonderful. It’s a passion that can lead to so many brilliant and varied careers, from game development to creative roles. That’s why every now and then it’s nice for us to investigate the products available to those
Maximum PC10 min read
Big Bertha
LENGTH OF TIME: 1 HOUR LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY LET’S PREFACE THIS with one simple fact: this was the quickest build we’ve ever put together at our photo studio. We built it in record time, to the point where we and the photography team went for an
Maximum PC2 min read
Artistic License
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, FOLKS: one heck of a simple build from start to finish. Now, we’ll be the first to say that it isn’t perfect. It has its foibles. Admittedly, they’re quite minor oversights, but given the frustration it presents, it does make t
Maximum PC6 min read
9800X3D vs 9900X, YAY OR NAY?
At Maximum PC, we take a great amount of pride in rigorously testing each and every build that features in these pages. Each system is pushed to the absolute limit, through an armada of benchmarks, games, and unique workloads and scenarios to not onl
Maximum PC15 min read
The PC Tech Graveyard
Although it’s largely forgotten now, there was a time when Microsoft was betting big on Unix, both in business and the home. As the retail computing world moved from 8 to 16-bit, Microsoft analyzed the choice of operating systems, and expected Unix t
Maximum PC1 min read
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Maximum PC2 min read
The Ultimate Windows 11 Install Guide
Ah, Windows 11, you old devil. Microsoft’s latest iteration of its operating system line might be quite contentious these days, filled with advertising, data scraping, and enough bugs to make even a Tyranid Hive Fleet jealous, but it’s nothing if not
Maximum PC9 min read
The Preperation Stage
Okay, we get it—a big reinstall can be pretty daunting on first glance. You’re effectively going to wipe your operating system drive and start from scratch. That means every file, program, and document is going to be effectively erased from existence
Maximum PC9 min read
What Is An Npu?
We’re all familiar with the CPU and GPU—they sit at the heart of almost every PC made in the past 40 years (albeit the GPU has sometimes been built into the CPU). Lately, they’ve been joined by a friend: the neural processing unit, or NPU. The first
Maximum PC2 min read
MSI Raider 18 HX
DID YOU look at the ridiculous $5,500 RTX 4090 MSI Titan laptop we featured last month and go, “Man, that’s nice, but the price tag is silly dumb?” Good, because if you did, then this one might be right up your alley. On the surface, it’s remarkably
Maximum PC9 min read
AI In Cybercrime
IN 2023, OpenAI unveiled its latest GPT-4 to much fanfare. This was accompanied by a 100-page technical report that included an unusual story. When faced with a CAPTCHA challenge designed to stymy AI, Gen-4 apparently hopped onto gigmarketplace site
Maximum PC1 min read
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Maximum PC2 min read
How To
TIP OF THE MONTH Ever had a problem where your monitor develops black bars at the top and bottom, despite being at its max resolution of 16:9? Right-click the panel, hit ‘Display Settings’, then ‘Advanced display’ and ‘Display adaptor properties’, th
Maximum PC3 min read
Mac Mini (2024)
presents: It shouldn’t be a big story that a desktop computer has upgradeable internal storage, but with Apple’s cute new 2024 Mac mini, that’s exactly where we are. It’s possible to pop the SSD out after removing a screw, and then switch in a bigger
Maximum PC10 min read
Boost Games With Lossless Scaling
LOSSLESS SCALING ($6.99 on Steam) GAMES A LOT OF DIGITAL INK has been spent recently on extolling the virtues of resolution upscaling in games. This new technology allows games to run in a lower resolution internally, before being upscaled to a highe
Maximum PC10 min read
Build Your Own Media Streamer
RASPBERRY PI 5 (will work with a RPi 4), keyboard/mouse for setup, remote control recommended for long-term use. You’ll be installing KonstaKANG’s unofficial LineageOS 21 Android TV build. ARE YOU FED UP WITH having to junk your streaming stick or bo
Maximum PC5 min read
Implementing Your Air Gap
RASPBERRY PI ZERO (optional) USB stick IN2019, $40 million was stolen from one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance. The hackers did this by compromising the API keys and 2FA codes for Binance’s ‘hot’ Bitcoin wallet. The prevailin
Maximum PC3 min read
Tariffs And Tech
A FLAT IMPORT TARIFF on goods manufactured outside the US could seriously harm the PC industry. A tariff is a tax or cost charged to domestic buyers who purchase goods from outside of the tariff-imposing country. US Company A buys product B from Chin
Maximum PC3 min read
Editor’s Pick: AndaSeat X-Air Pro Mesh gaming chair
USUALLY, EDITOR’S PICK is a product we have positive feelings toward. It gives us the opportunity to pick something a little off-piste or have a preliminary look. In this case, AndaSeat’s X-Air Pro Mesh is the opposite of that, mostly because it’s pr
Maximum PC3 min read
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
THIS IS THE ONE we’ve been waiting for: the first true gaming chip of AMD’s new Zen 5 processor range. The signature 3D V-Cache feature, a tacked-on extra layer of L3 cache essentially designed to improve gaming performance, is now in its second gene
Maximum PC3 min read
MSI Titan 18 HX
MONSTROUS LAPTOPS like this aren’t exactly a dime a dozen these days (despite us featuring two of them in as many issues), and with good reason. Honestly, it feels like the world of gaming sort of transcended the form factor for a time. It’s all to d
Maximum PC3 min read
Corsair MP700 Elite 2TB
IT FEELS LIKE yesterday that the first PCIe 5.0 SSDs were launching into the public arena. All of them were based on the same hardware setup. Each featured Micron 232-layer TLC NAND, and each packed that with a Phison E26 controller. On paper they we
Maximum PC3 min read
LG Gram Pro 16
WE’VE GOT a real David and Goliath war of laptops going on, with both the MSI Titan (page 76) and this duking it out on the Maximum PC battlefield. We say that there is no competition here; the LG Gram Pro doesn’t have a sneaky slingshot slotted away
Maximum PC3 min read
iBuyPower RDY Y40 Valorant VCTA R003
THERE’S ALWAYS an element of concern when shipping a pre-built desktop rig. Will the de-boxing process reveal an expensive bag of bits jingling around in a metal box? Thankfully, this iBuyPower arrived in one piece—or two, to be exact. The larger box
Maximum PC3 min read
Xiaomi Mini LED Gaming Monitor G Pro 27i
MINI-LED NEVER really got a start in life. Even though it’s used in some iPad Pro and MacBook Pro models, plus other TVs and monitors, the tech has been left behind by the rise of OLED and the cheapness of IPS. Essentially, it represents a halfway ho
Maximum PC2 min read
Bag A Software Bargain
WE’VE NEGOTIATED a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions; just a one-off bargain price of $29.99, compared to the regular $109 charge. That buys you 15 months of cover from the Norton Security suite across 10 devices Because it’s the Premium vers
Maximum PC3 min read
WD Black SN850X 8TB
WE’VE DONE IT, folks; we’ve hit maximum SSD. 8TB of gloriously fast NAND flash baked into a single M.2 stick. Let’s be clear: from a purely practical perspective, it’s hard to justify a drive like this. On the one hand, yes, you can store a lot of da
Maximum PC3 min read
Lemokey L4
HAVEN'T HEARD of Lemokey? Allow me to explain. They are, in essence, an offshoot of Keychron, a keyboard brand that’s produced popular and acclaimed models such as the K2 V2 and Q3 Max. The idea with Lemokey is to make more affordable versions of Key
Maximum PC3 min read
Lemokey G1
THOUGH SISTER brand Keychron does sell some obviously gamer-orientated mice, that’s really Lemokey’s gig. For the G1, that starts with the 8,000Hz polling rate, a feature usually the preserve of high-end gaming mice from the likes of Logitech or Raze
Maximum PC3 min read
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
I ADMIT IT, I was scared. The gleaming trailers, the Microsoft showcases, the Unreal Engine 5—Stalker 2's marketing didn't look like any Stalker I've known and loved. Had GSC traded in all the series' beloved jank in pursuit of streamlined console su
Maximum PC4 min read
Google Calendar vs Outlook Calendar
CALENDAR APPS are possibly some of the least exciting software on our PCs, but also ones that we depend on every day to keep our lives organized. There are lots of them, too, with offerings from software and hardware companies, as well as cellphone a
Maximum PC6 min read
Letters
> BIOS nervousness > When new GPU? > Gaming beauty contest Hello! I’ve been with you guys since the Boot magazine days. This might seem like a simple question to answer, but is there any way you guys could do a tutorial on how to update the BIOS fo
Maximum PC4 min read
The Builds
Sponsored by THESE BUILDS ARE MADE with you in mind. In almost all scenarios, the majority of the components between the systems are interchangeable, bar the CPU and motherboard combos. That means you could take our AMD budget build as your template

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