The Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero (Wi-Fi) – try saying that three times fast – is quite possibly the ultimate ATX motherboard for cooling and USB junkies – if you’re batting for team Ryzen+, that is. If you thought having eight USB ports on the Asus ROG Strix X470F-Gaming and MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC was generous, the Crosshair VII Hero adds four more to the pile, coming in for a positively monstrous total of 12. If all that wasn’t enough, you also get a whopping nine fan headers for the coolest of cooled systems.
Nine fan headers I can just about get behind, but I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of situation where you’d need to have 12 USB ports. Still, while you can’t accuse Asus of being stingy when it comes to peripheral support, it does mean you’re giving up space for multiple display outputs (unless you count the single USB Type-C port), making it ill-suited to AMD’s other two new Ryzen chips, the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G with integrated Vega graphics. As a companion for AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700 / 2700X or Ryzen 5 2600 / 2600X CPUs, on the other hand, the Crosshair makes a mighty fine match. Let’s see if it’s worth buying over the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC.
AMD’s Ryzen+ CPUs have arrived and if you’ve read our Ryzen 5 2600/2600X or Ryzen 7 2700/2700X reviews, then you’ll know there’s a lot to like. Indeed, one of the great things about AMD’s new family of processors is that you might not even have to buy a new motherboard to start using them, as every Ryzen+ chip will happily slot into every existing AM4 socket motherboard that’s currently available.
That’s good news for anyone wanting to save a bit of money during the upgrade process, but those erring toward the higher end of AMD’s Ryzen+ spectrum, particularly anyone considering the Ryzen 7 2700 or 2700X, may also want to think about getting one of AMD’s new X470 chipset motherboards instead – like MSI’s rather nippy X470 Gaming M7 AC, for example.
Until recently, anyone looking to buy one of Intel’s 8th Gen Coffee Lake CPUs was limited to just a single chipset on their accompanying motherboard: the rather expensive Z370. Then Intel announced two more entry-level chipsets at the start of April in the shape of the H370 and B360, and now it looks like there’s another one in the works as well: the enthusiast-oriented Z390. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re considering buying one of AMD’s new Ryzen+ CPUs like the Ryzen 5 2600 or Ryzen 7 2700X, then you may also want to think about getting a new X470-based AM4 motherboard to go with it. It’s not strictly necessary – all of AMD’s 2nd gen Ryzen processors will work with existing AM4 motherboards, whether you’ve got one with a high-end X370 chipset or the more entry-level A320 or B350 chipsets – but upgrading to X470 brings with it a number of advantages, such as Ryzen+ support straight out of the box as well as AMD’s shiny super-fast StoreMI acceleration tech as standard.
To kick things off in the X470 department, I’ve got the Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming motherboard on test today, with more boards following shortly. Let’s see whether this one from Asus is any good. Read the rest of this entry »
After months of murky rumours, vague interview statements and subsequent but equally unclear clarifications, AMD have confirmed once and for all that their AM4 motherboard platform will continue to receive support until the year 2020. This will come as excellent news for existing Ryzen users and incoming Ryzen+ buyers, as it means that any potential new motherboard purchase isn’t about to go the way of every other tech purchase these days and be made redundant in six months. Good times. Read the rest of this entry »
AMD’s second generation of Ryzen CPUs are finally here. Also known as Ryzen+ or the 2000-series, these four new desktop chips are set to replace last year’s Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 families, offering more competitive performance compared to Intel’s 8th Gen Coffee Lake CPUs.
There’s a fair amount to get your head round, though, especially when you start throwing AMD’s 2000-series (but not Ryzen+) Ryzen Vega APUs into the mix as well, so I’ve put together this hopefully helpful guide that sets out all things Ryzen-related, including the price and specs of all the chips you can buy right now, as well as the proposed release dates for the rest of AMD’s upcoming Ryzen roll-out plan.
Asus have announced a string of new motherboards for the launch of Intel’s latest 8th Gen Coffee Lake CPU chipsets. Arriving in ROG Strix, Prime and Tuf Gaming brand flavours, these new H370 and B360 boards aim to bring more connectivity at a price that should (hopefully) keep those tears of despair at bay if you decide to use as the foundation for your next PC – which is a lot more than can be said for current graphics card prices right now. Read the rest of this entry »
AMD’s new Ryzen processors with Vega graphics have been causing quite a stir lately. Offering Nvidia GeForce GTX 1030 levels of graphical fidelity without the need for a dedicated card, the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G are quickly becoming the CPU of choice for many budget system builders – at least when US retailer Newegg isn’t charging $20 more than AMD’s official prices for them anyway.
Now, however, it appears that not all AM4 socket motherboards actually support them out of the box – which is pretty problematic if you’ve just bought a whole new system and don’t have an older AMD processor handy to get your motherboard updated. Fortunately, AMD is on the case, as you can now request a free ‘boot kit’ from them that will let you do just that.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is over for another year. It was a slightly weird show this year, marred by an embarrassing power outage, one too many pointless robots (Cloi, I’m looking at you) and the creeping feeling that the world’s biggest tech show might just be becoming a bit irrelevant.
Fortunately, PC gamers still have plenty to look forward to in 2018, from giganto gaming screens and teeny tiny powerhouse NUCs to mouse mats that can charge your phone, metal-clad motherboards, and probably yet another hike in GPU prices when EVGA unleashes its crypto mining dream machine power supply that can run something silly like 14 Nvidia GTX 1070s all at the same time (thanks, guys). But all that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Read on for what I’m officially deeming the best of CES 2018, all without a single stroppy robot in sight.
Hello, good evening and give it up for an all-new Intel CPU. By chip industry standards, it’s been a long time coming. But with a nonchalant shrug of its 14nm FinFETs, Intel’s new Skylake chip has crashed the desktop PC party. Dare we hope for genuine progress? Or is the new Core i7-6700K yet another samey CPU from Intel? I also have an early take on the new Z170 platform that pairs with Skylake, in the form of MSI’s Z170 Gaming M5 motherboard. Without giving much away, Skylake is something we desktop gaming dinosaurs can definitely get excited about. But not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.
Catharsis comes in many forms. But there’s none so satisfying as a good old fashioned sweary rant. Hell, I’m not even talking about a pseudo-Charlie-Brooker-but-not-nearly-as-witty polemic. More shouting obscenities into the wind. The time has come for me to unload on my top ten most cursed ruses in PC gaming hardware. In truth, the following is not entirely devoid of practical insight. But you have been warned. It ain’t pretty. Read the rest of this entry »
With CPUs, GPUs and screens (x2) in the bag, it’s time to put the RPS spotlight onto that most mysterious of PC components, the motherboard. By some metrics, mobos are pretty easy to pick these days. For starters, there aren’t many chipset vendors to worry about. Only AMD and Intel are really left in the game. But Intel, in particular, has plenty of marketing tricks up its sleeve. It’s always worth knowing your Z77s from your H67s. So, let’s begin.
Now, I’ve never been a card-carrying motherboard aficionado. It’s a lot easier to get excited about crazy clocks speeds, lots of cores or a shit-load of shaders than it is all-solid super caps and 8+2 power phasing. It’s also true that chipsets and in turn motherboards have become less critical as ever more features have migrated onto the CPU itself. Read the rest of this entry »
