Maximum PC

FOLLOWING the launch of AMD’s Zen 2 desktop chips, the next step is Zen 2 server chips, EPYC. Get this right, and there are fortunes to be made, and AMD looks to have got it right. Its new EPYC 7002 series, code name Rome, is due very soon, and numer

THE PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION of chips is becoming increasingly important. You can only shrink a chip so far before the basic laws of physics interfere. AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series has introduced the chiplet design to the mainstream. Intel has been working o

NINTENDO HAS A NEW VERSION OF ITS SWITCH CONSOLE, and it’s not what pundits were expecting. The Switch Lite is a smaller, all-in-one handheld version, with built-in controllers. Gone is the Switch’s innovative two-in-one design, and it’s back to basi

> Linux on the Go > AMD Upgrades > Cryptic BSODs Dear Doctor, I am trying to install Ubuntu on my HP Stream Notebook. The problem I’m having is that I can’t get the notebook to boot from my USB drive. Please help! –Matthew Parr THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: I

RAM IS A CORE COMPONENT of any computer. With DDR4 now well and truly entrenched in the memory market and DDR5 on the horizon, manufacturers are looking out in different directions: massive 64GB and 128GB sets running across eight channels, and faste

OFF-THE-SHELF is good as far as it goes, but there comes a time when you want to put your personal stamp on something, and with Windows, you’ll be surprised by just how much control you can wield over its look and feel.We’ve dug out no fewer than 60

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A ZILLION INTERNET of Things devices all connected at once. Lagless cloud-based gaming. Cable-free connections for home Internet. Doctors operating remotely on patients. Smart farms. An end to traffic jams. And, yes, 10Gb/s in your pocket. All of tha

5G handsets are grabbing the early YouTube and social media bandwidth, but 5G is actually far from just a mobile technology. Indeed, when Verizon launched its first 5G services last year, it actually implemented its home 5G product first, following w

If you use your PC for word processing, you might be familiar with Grammarly, a program for simplifying and improving your writing. Well, there’s a Chrome extension, too—install it, and it actively works to turn whatever typing you do online into con

iFixit is a global community of tinkerers dedicated to helping people fix things through free online repair manuals and teardowns. iFixit believes that everyone has the right to maintain and repair their own products. To learn more, visit www.ifixit.

YOU’LL NEED THIS SERVER HARDWARE Use whatever spare silicon works for you. LUBUNTU Grab it from http://lubuntu.net. DOCKER COMMUNITY EDITION You can find out more at www.docker.com. EVERY GOOD HOME NEEDS A SERVER. It doesn’t really matter what you in

YOU’LL NEED THIS A RASPBERRY PI Version 2 or better. RASPBIAN BUSTER The latest spin on the Pi OS. COWRIE A great honeypot (see https://github.com/cowrie). WHETHER THEY’RE OPPORTUNISTIC “SCRIPT KIDDIES,” actual paid hackers on some Chinese payroll, o

YOU’LL NEED THIS OPEN LIVE WRITER Download it from the Microsoft Store or directly from http://openlivewriter.org. THE WORLD HAS YET to reach “peak blog.” Until it does, the Internet will continue to be swamped with bloggers sharing their obsessions,

YOU’LL NEED THIS ADOBE PHOTOSHOP Subscribe to a suitable package at www.adobe.com. THE FINAL FRONTIER IS NOT, as we’d previously supposed, a custom loop of hard-piped water cooling, but space itself. Until we can use miniature stable wormholes to emp

YOU’LL NEED THIS WUNDERLIST Download the app from the Microsoft Store, or use the web-based version at www.wunderlist.com. WHEN IT COMES TO MANAGING YOUR LIFE, Wunderlist offers a number of benefits over writing down everything you need to do on the

YOU’LL NEED THIS GOOGLE ACCOUNT If you don’t have one, sign up at https://drive.google.com. TALK OF “THE CLOUD” CAN BE CONFUSING if you’re unfamiliar with the term, but it’s really just a way of referring to storing files online. You may want to stor

Build your own NAS box, with stuff you have lying around, and the magic of open source LENGTH OF TIME: 2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM OFF-THE-SHELF NAS units are easy to come by, but they’re often underpowered, overpriced, or otherwise disappoin

THE BUILD-UP to AMD’s launch party for its Ryzen 3000 CPUs, aka third-gen Ryzen, aka Zen 2, has been huge. The Ryzen 3000 processors are the first mainstream CPUs to utilize a 7nm manufacturing process, and after flirting with the crown for the first

AFTER MONTHS OF WAITING and speculation, AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT is finally here, joining the ranks of the best graphics cards. Sporting a new RDNA architecture that boosts performance while reducing power requirements, and with a price drop to keep

NINE MONTHS AFTER the RTX 2070 went on sale, yields have likely improved and Nvidia now has a reason to improve performance. The result is the RTX 2070 Super, moving up to the TU104 GPU with additional cores and performance. Silly branding aside (ser

THIS ISN’T SOMETHING that we’d normally review. It’s not a component, nor a game, nor is it a full-fledged multi-thousand-dollar gaming rig. But it’s undeniable that the Raspberry Pi has only been improving in recent years, getting ever closer to bec

FOR PROOF THAT the gaming monitor market is in total overdrive, look no further than the new Acer Predator XB3. It looks like a high-end precision panel for content product pros, with its sober suit and three-sided glare-reduction hood. But no, this

ONE OF THE FIRST things we did upon unboxing Acer’s newest gaming laptop was fire up the included software, PredatorSense (which, for some reason, has its own dedicated button on the keyboard). Like many programs of its type, PredatorSense collates a

RAZER HAS NOT NECESSARILY been quick in updating its heavy-hitting Blade Pro line—we last saw it a good two years ago—but the jump to RTX cards is far from a straight component swap. Outwardly, things have been significantly redesigned, with the soft

CAST YOUR MIND BACK one whole issue, and you’ll remember our review of Logitech’s G502 Lightspeed, a tremendous wireless reimagining of a mouse design, which has attracted enough reverence to stay a top-line choice for many years. Corsair’s Nightswor

THE HEADSET MARKET has changed a lot in the past few years, spurred on by streamers and YouTubers, and by the increasing popularity of esports. You know this, of course. But does Roccat? We ask because this new Noz headset feels like a great budget o

THE COMMANDER C35 is a big ’un. While it’s only a standard ATX mid-tower case, it weighs a lot more than some of its counterparts, thanks to the steel and tempered glass. Yet when we peel off the protective film on the glass window and peek inside, w

STRATEGY GAME AFTER THE STRIPPED-BACK nature of Thrones of Britannia comes the full-fat, heavyweight, no-holds-barred game. Three Kingdoms is as expansive as the name suggests, taking inspiration from a 14th-century historical novel chronicling the e

PUZZLE GAME BRING HER. That’s all you’re told. But where? And why? The strange force interfering with the self-aware AI of the space station Observation, whisking it across the solar system and making all but one of its crew disappear, couldn’t possi