Katharine Castle

Let's face it, we all fear change and spending lots of money, which is probably why many of us still play games on cheap, squidgy membrane keyboards instead of sharp, expensive clicky-clacky mechanical ones. There's nothing wrong with membrane keyboards, of course, but they're not always best-suited to faster-paced games that require nice, quick and responsive finger-tapping. As a result, a good way of dipping…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, Keyboards, MSI.

It's that time of the week again where I swap my hardware hat for my deals herald hat. What does a deals herald hat look like, I hear you ask? Good question. It's sort of like a chaperon, if you must know. I asked for a bicorne, but Graham was having none of it. Said I'd only go and stage a revolution to turn RPS…

Tagged with Best PC Gaming Deals, feature, Hardware.

It's a terrible thing to admit, but ever since I got my first PC, I've never really given much thought to what kind of gaming mouse I've had on my desk. Bog standard mice have always been more than enough for me over the years, but I've since realised that having a few extra buttons and a greater variety of sensitivity speeds can not only…

Tagged with Asus, feature, Hardware, Logitech, mice, mouse, Razer, steelseries.

One of the biggest complaints often levied at wireless gaming mice is that they're simply too slow and heavy compared to their wired rivals. Despite being free of snagging cables that somehow manage to get in the way of everything at all times, that liberty often comes at the cost of latency and reliability, with the extra disadvantage that they've now got to carry a…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, Logitech, mice, mouse.

For a developer who can't seem to get enough of wizards and weird physics puzzles, you might be surprised that Frozenbyte's first game wasn't anything of the sort. Indeed, the Finnish studio best known for puzzler series Trine and more recent fantasy co-op shenanigans Nine Parchments cut their teeth on a sci-fi, top-down shooter called Shadowgrounds. They even made a sequel! Shadowgrounds: Survivor, they called…

Tagged with feature, Frozenbyte, Have You Played, Shadowgrounds.

When AMD launched their Vega-infused Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G processors earlier in the year, I was left mighty impressed. Here were two relatively cheap CPUs that could sort of play games at decent enough settings at 1920x1080 via their integrated graphics chips without forcing you to spend hundreds of pounds / dollars on a dedicated GPU - a feat made all the…

Tagged with AMD, AMD Vega, cpu, feature, Hardware.

As £70 / $69 gaming mice go, the MSI Clutch GM60 is arguably one of the most adaptable mice I've seen in a while. It's ambidextrous for starters, making it a good pick for right and left-handed PC peeps alike, but you also get not one, but two pairs of magnetic side covers, an extra USB cable (one braided, one rubber) and an additional top…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, mice, mouse, MSI.

When I was a child, 4D cinemas were all the rage. You know the ones, with the seat-rumbling and the spurts of air in your face when something explodes onscreen and the spaceship you and 40 other people are meant to be piloting starts crash-landing into the moon. Well, Whirlwind FX have come up with the PC equivalent of 4D cinema that you can stick…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, hot diggity, mega chill, simulator.

Some might say this VR lark is all a bit of a fad. Those someones, however, haven't played #SelfieTennis. It was one of the first games released for the HTC Vive back in the heady days of 2016, and goodness me I was absolutely sold the minute I put on the headset. If you're the owner of a pair of VR cybergoggles but don't have…

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, VRUnicorns, #Selfie Tennis.

What's this? A new weekly deals master? Or should that be mistress? Sounds a bit wrong if you ask me. Let's stick with weekly deals... herald. Yes, I like the sound of being a herald. Does that mean I get my own hilariously long trumpet like the ones you get in medieval processions? I hope so. Then I can stick it out of the RPS…

Tagged with Best PC Gaming Deals, feature, Hardware.

If the thought of building your own PC fills you with dread, then buying one pre-built can save you a lot of time and hassle. You don't even have to spend that much to get a good one, either, as this £600 Kinetic Z1 from UK system builder Overclockers UK is perfectly tuned for 1080p gaming straight out of the box. I've got the basic…

Tagged with desktops, feature, Hardware, Intel, Nvidia, Overclockers UK.

If you've been thinking about building a new gaming PC recently, chances are you've probably put it off due to ongoing price hikes, stock shortages or simply not knowing which bits you should actually buy - which is why this year's Black Friday shopping bonanza might finally be the time to jump in and bag yourself a sack load of deals. To help you make…

Tagged with Black Friday 2018, cpu, feature, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, Headsets, Keyboards, laptop, laptops, mice, Monitors, mouse, RAM, ssd, SSDs, Black Friday, Deals.

Crucial's SSD line-up is in a bit of a funny place right now. As you may well have seen from our Best gaming SSD rankings, their mid-tier MX500 SSD is currently cheaper than their entry-level BX300 SSD in practically all size categories above 120GB, and their latest BX500 SSD on test today only muddies the waters further. You would think, given its name, that the…

Tagged with Crucial, feature, Hardware, ssd, SSDs.

On paper, the Acer Predator X27 should be the bestest best gaming monitor to end all gaming monitors. It's got the same lovely 4K 144Hz IPS Nvidia G-Sync HDR panel with 384 dynamic backlight zones and 1000cd/m2 peak brightness as the Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ, but in the UK it costs £200 less than its Asus rival. That might not be of much consolation to…

Tagged with 144Hz, 4K, Acer, feature, Hardware, HDR, Monitors, Nvidia G-Sync HDR.

When it comes to graphics performance, Assassin's Creed has always been a tough nut to crack on PC. Assassin's Creed Oranges was an absolute beast to get running smoothly when it came out last year, and it continues to be one of the most demanding games in my graphic cards benchmarking suite. This year's Ancient Greece-themed installment, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, is, thankfully, a little less…

Tagged with feature, frames frames frames, graphics card, graphics cards, Hardware, how much graphics does it have, Ubisoft, Ubisoft Kiev, Ubisoft Quebec, Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

As you might have guessed from the name, the Logitech G502 Hero is a slightly fancier version of Logitech's classic £50 / $50 G502 gaming mouse. For an extra £30 / $30, you can bag yourself a 16000 DPI sensor as opposed to a 12000 one, left and right clickers with a 50 million click endurance rating rather than 20 million, and an additional two…

Tagged with feature, Hardware, Logitech, mice, mouse.