A few weeks ago, AMD launched the Radeon RX 500 series, which is mostly a refresh of the previous-generation RX 400 series they launched less than a year ago. Mostly because the Radeon RX 500 series is based on the very same Polaris architecture as its predecessor, albeit on a slightly more mature process. Whatever your stance on rebadges, it’s clear that AMD has decided to double-down on its Polaris architecture in 2017, at least for the midrange and entry-level segments until its RX Vega GPUs appear later on to cover the high-end market. So like it are not, Polaris is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Today, we’re going to take a [...]

Early last month, rumors stirred that Intel was planning on releasing two new CPUs to combat AMD’s recently launched Ryzen CPUs. Following the initial rumors, information about the rumored CPUs have been quiet however, new information regarding the mysterious Intel Core i7-7740K processor and the X299 platform have surfaced thanks to some recently uploaded benchmarks in the SiSoft benchmark database.

The information leaked from the SiSoft database confirms that the Intel Core i7-7740K is indeed a 4C/8T CPU. Operating frequency is currently set at 4.3GHz (base) and 4.5Ghz (boost). The CPU also comes with 1MB of L2 and 8MB of L3 Cache. For comparison, [...]

Gaming hardware has traditionally held a reputation for being bulky and intimidating. Gaming PCs are often visualized as huge towers decked out with flashy lights and sports car inspired paint jobs. While that would’ve been accurate just a few years ago, performance PCs are no longer confined to just “big”. Thanks to ever increasing tiny hardware that pack a serious punch, SFF, or Small Form-Factor, gaming systems are significantly growing in popularity.

Today we’ll be reviewing one tiny, budget-focused graphics card that can fit almost anywhere yet provide decent gaming performance for the casual gamer, the [...]

In the latest round of leaks, stock images of AM4 motherboards and their packaging has been revealed for ASUS, Gigabyte, Biostar and ASRock. These are likely images being sent to retailers to prepare for the upcoming AMD Ryzen CPU launch in a few weeks.

The motherboards include the ASUS PRIME X370 PRO, ASUS Crosshair VI Hero, ASRock AB350 Gaming K4, ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac, Gigabyte AORUS AX-370 Gaming 5, BIOSTAR X370 GT7, BIOSTAR X370 GT5, BIOSTAR B350 GT5 and BIOSTAR B350 GT3.

When AMD released the Radeon RX 470 in August of last year, high demand coupled with low supply meant that it almost didn’t make much sense thanks to its inflated pricing at the time. However, in the months since, pricing has dropped quite a bit and with recent driver updates, the performance of the Radeon RX 470  has significantly improved in performance as well. Is the RX 470 worth considering for someone looking for a sub-$200 1080p gaming graphics card?

Today, we’re going to see about answering that question as we look at the PowerColor Radeon RX 470 Red Devil 4GB, which is one of the more premium and fully-loaded RX 470 [...]

Being an Editor here at Custom PC Review, I’m constantly in need of lots of mass storage. At CES 2017, I took over 1,000 14-bit RAW images using a Nikon D800 camera which generated files somewhere between 40MB-45MB each. After exporting them, another set of images are then created which take less, but still require quite a significant amount of storage space. Tack that onto 50Mbps 1080p video along with the thought of possibly doing 4K video down the road and the need for lots of reliable storage quickly adds up.

Of course, the easy solution is to throw a couple hard drives into your PC because that’s cheap and easy, but I also wanted the [...]

At AMDs press event, AMD displayed a slew of motherboards based on their upcoming X370, B350 and A320 chipsets which will support AMD’s upcoming Ryzen CPUs. The motherboards on display include well known manufacturers including Asrock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI, and more.

AMD’s flagship chipset is the X370 chipset which will support overclocking and dual GPU configurations. AMD’s new chipsets will also support NVMe, M.2 SATA devices, USB 3.1 Gen 1/Gen 2 and PCI-E 3.0. This finally puts AMD motherboards on the a more level playing field in comparison to Intel’s 200 series chipset.

Currently no additional information was provided [...]

When NVIDIA first announced the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards back in May, it was very clear that they had a pair of winners on their hands. Fast forward four months to today, and it seems that the company is still commanding the high-end GPU market with no competition expected from rival AMD until early-2017. With that in mind, anyone in the market for a high-end graphics card really only has two options – the GeForce GTX 1080 or the GeForce GTX 1070.

Today, we’re taking a look at the latter or more specifically, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 AMP! ZOTAC is a company who’ve been producing GeForce graphics cards [...]

Oops! An anonymous user recently uploaded some benchmarks for Intel’s upcoming 7th Generation Core Processors, codename Kaby Lake, to the SiSoft benchmark database.

The benchmarks that were uploaded come from an Intel Core i7-7700K processor running on an ASRock Z270 Extreme 4 motherboard. Interestingly enough, it also reports that the CPU was paired with “2x 4GB Fujitsu TEAMGROUP-D4-3866 DIMM DDR3 PC3-34100” which is plausible as Kaby Lake, just like Skylake will support both DDR3 and DDR4 memory.

The two benchmarks that were uploaded include SiSoft Sandra’s Processor Arithmetic Benchmark and Processor Multi-Media Benchmark. [...]

As a PC owner, one of the most important things to know is the manufacturer, model and BIOS version of the motherboard you have in your system. This is one of the first questions I ask people when they ask me if they can upgrade their system or when they ask me for help because something isn’t working correctly. The motherboard is the one piece of hardware in your system that interconnects everything else so any hardware upgrades will need to be compatible with the motherboard. Depending on the motherboard manufacturer and how active they are on updates, the motherboard’s internal software, or BIOS/UEFI, also needs to be upgrade to support newer [...]