How to build gaming rigs, mini PCs and console killers!

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148 pageslearn the skills you need to build your next box

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BUILD YOUR OWN PC

BUILD YOUR OWN PC

TECHBUILD

8 The Console KillersDon’t wait for the next-gen consoles, build a power PC now for the same price

16 The Mini Power PCBuild a no-compromise, small form factor gaming computer

22 Low Power to the PeopleCan you create a low-power computer that uses only 10W of energy?

28 Parts for PenguinsLinux-based PCs don’t have to be second-tier machines any more. Build one with all the power you need

36 Reuse, Recycle, ResellMake the most of your old kit to benefi t you and your environment

46 Serious CPUsWe review the best desktop processors and lift the lid on the best choice for you

54 Graphics for every GamerDiscover the fi nest graphics card for the discerning DIY-er

62 Massive MonitorsWe dish the dirt on the bit you’ll spend all your time looking at – the display

70 Solid State DrivesSuper-fast and quickly coming down in price, SSD is the way to go

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BUILD YOUR OWN PC

BUILDEROur at-a-glance guide to the gear you need to create three amazing rigs

DO MORE...UPGRADE

80 Bargain UpgradesWhat are the best hardware upgrades if you’re operating on a strict budget?

96 In-ear HeadphonesWe showcase the very best slimline headphones for your aural pleasure

98 Gaming MiceIf you’re into gaming, you need to cast your eye over these sublime rodents

100 Mouse MatsA top-of-the-range home for your mouse can make all the difference

104 Stay FrostyHow to cool your hardware

108 Wall-mount your PCOh yes, my friends, it can be done

112 Boot Drive MigrationThe easy way to migrate to an SSD

114 Build an open-source DVRGet the most from free digital television

118 Build a Smart TV NetworkHow to make a tuned DVLA server

122 Create a VPN ServerDo it today using Windows 7

126 Master the Windows 8 desktopIf you’ve moved to Windows 8, you need our power tips tutorial

130 Manage your DriversAvoid hardware confl icts and speed up

134 Expand to Two MonitorsPut your desktop on multiple screens

136 Raspberry Pi: Retro GamingEmulate the golden era of games

140 Calibrate your MonitorSee your photos in a whole new light

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Low-Power to the PeoPLeCan we Create a 10w gaming PC? Probably not, but neil mohr gives it a damn good go

We’re supposed to be power conscious these days. Our editor has unplugged his executive vibrating chair – for our mental sanity we’re assuming it’s the chair that’s been vibrating. Our art editor had to swap his 1,000W 7.1 speaker setup for a pair of earbud

headphones. While our tech monkey, Jeremy Laird, had to swap out his Intel 6-core Extreme Edition for Intel’s latest Atom. And they’re not even socket compatible people, oh the humanity.

We can joke, but power consumption is a real issue. Phones and tablets can idle at sub-watt levels, but even a modest PC gaming rig can happily suck down almost 200 watts of power without trying. If you’re sat there browsing the web or furiously writing complaints about the neighbour’s leylandii to your MP, all that power seems a bit of a waste of energy.

But what are the alternatives? You could jump on your laptop, but that’s often still underpowered and you’re left

with an awful keyboard and trackpad to use, while upgrading it always feels a compromise. But then we did what our therapist told us not to do, we got thinking, perhaps we could build a full-desktop system that was capable of 3D gaming but was also built around the idea of ultra-low power consumption? Perhaps even low enough to rival a laptop?

At the heart of this project is going to be the new breed of Intel Ivy Bridge processors. They’re built with a 22nm process and, in some ways most importantly of all, Intel’s new generation of integrated HD Graphics, which means we can do away with power hungry third-party graphics cards for our system. Sorry AMD and Nvidia.

With so much integrated on to the super-effi cient 22nm process, low-power states can be effi ciently managed. While historically higher-power tasks now require far less juice as well, this is against a background of continued integration and ever more effi cient processes; the number of ICs on a motherboard is down, the main chipset uses less power than ever and main storage and memory can be measured in a single watt. So let’s see if we can get near that magical 10W mark…

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Low-Power to the PeoPLeCan we Create a 10w gaming PC? Probably not, but neil mohr gives it a damn good go

Low-power to the People

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Low-power to the people

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GRAPHICS FOR EVERY GAMERT

hese things can take time, but at last this generation of graphics cards has been pretty much fi nalised. AMD did its part early on, having almost its entire

lineup sorted before the summer, while Nvidia has been dragging its heels like a schoolboy who’s forgotten his homework. The release of the GTX 650 Ti, though, marks the completion of this generation of cards, and despite the fact it’s taken nearly an entire year to get to this stage, things have never looked so good for the consumer.

It’s somewhat inevitable that every generation offers more power for less cash than ever before, but it’s still

surprising that a budget card will be able to deliver more than 30fps on average at full HD resolutions in the latest DX11 titles.

It’s strange, then, that people are calling these the end times for the discrete graphics card, what with all the advances in integrated CPU graphics performance. For the end user though, us PC gamers, our rigs have never looked so sprightly. Being able to pick up mid-range cards with the sort of performance the high-end cards of the past few years could only wish for, is making our gaming experience the envy of the slavering console hordes.

Just look at the gaming shows of the past year, GamesCom and E3 especially.

All the best-looking titles were being demoed on high-end PCs. Why? Because there’s no way to get the games looking as good on the current generation of consoles.

With the next generation of those limited tech bricks not arriving until the tail-end of 2013, the PC has an entire year of even greater gaming dominance. And by then, chances are it’s still going to hold the technological gaming advantage.

But what of right now? Who are the winners and losers in the great graphics arms race? We’ve lined up the full range of gaming-capable graphics cards of this generation and we’ll tell you where the smart upgrade money should go.

THE NEW GENERATION LINEUP IS READY. DAVE JAMES LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE…

eVGA GTX 680 Signature 2

Sapphire HD 7970 Ghz ED Vapor-X

ASUS GTX 670 Direct CU II

ASUS HD 7950 Direct CU II

eVGA GTX 660Ti SuperClocked

Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC Edition

GEAR REVIEWED

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GRAPHICS FOR EVERY GAMER

eVGA GTX 660 SuperClocked

Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 2GB

Zotac GTX 650Ti AMP!

MSI HD 7850 1GB

MSI HD 7770

PNY GTX 650

Sapphire HD 7750

Zotac GT 640 Zone

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Graphics cards

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SOLID-STATE

STORAGE SECRETSFASTER AND MORE AFFORDABLE THAN EVER, JEREMY LAIRD SAYS SOLID-STATE STORAGE JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER

How big, how fast and how reliable? Boil the solid-state storage buying procedure right down, and these are the three

key questions you need to be asking. It sounds simple enough, but as soon as you pop open Pandora’s SSD box, the complexities come bursting out.

How fast, you ask? Do you mean sequential read and write performance? What about random access? And hang on – if you’re wondering about sequential performance, are you talking compressible or incompressible data?

Sure, there are nuances when it comes to processor or graphics performance, like single-threaded versus multi-threaded performance on a CPU, but there aren’t quite so many dramatic contrasts.

There’s loads to keep track of in terms of technology too, from controller tech to memory types and storage interfaces. All of that makes solid-state storage seem daunting, but it’s still the most exciting thing

happening to the PC. It’s the fi nal frontier of performance – the wild west of components – and the latest wave of SSDs look like the best yet.

That exciting edginess is both a bane and a boon. You can’t just fi re up any old SSD and expect it deliver indefi nitely. It’s more complicated than that. Unlike CPUs, for example, solid-state storage still isn’t a fully mature technology. It’s riskier and more unpredictable. Quite frankly, it’s a bit more fun.

If you don’t already have an SSD, it’s likely that an upgrade to solid-state will do more to transform the feel of your PC’s day-to-day performance than anything else. If you have an early SSD, you might be surprised at just how far the game has come in the last couple of years.

This month, we’ve brought 10 of the best new SSDs together. There have been some hot developments in terms of capacity and performance in recent months, along with a new contender in the all-important controller market. There’s plenty to ponder.

GEAR REVIEWED

CORSAIR NEUTRON 240GB £160/$240

CORSAIR NEUTRON GTX240GB £190/$295

INTEL 330 SERIES 180GB £103/$155

KINGSPEC CHALLENGE E3000 240GB£176/$235

KINGSPEC PCIe MULTICORE 1TB £1,075 / $1,525

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SOLID-STATE

STORAGE SECRETS

KINGSTON HYPERX120GB £110/$163

OCZVERTEX 4256GB £154/$229

PLEXTOR M5 PRO128GB £128/$190

SAMSUNG 840 250GB£150/$225

SAMSUNG 840 PRO 256GB £209/$279

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Really put your hardware on show – shove it on the wall

PROJECT GOAL Vertical ascentShow of your PC by hanging it on the wall like a beautiful, pulsing work of art – and in doing so not destroy the wall.

REQUIRESPerspex sheetWe’ve gone for a 600 x 500 x 4mm sheet of Perspex that costs around £15. It’s strong enough and doesn’t break the bank. Though as we’ll show, you need to watch your components.

M3 screws and nutsThe easiest way to mount most kit is to grab a bunch of 12mm M3 screws. These are the standard size for motherboards and the rest of your kit – 25 should do.

Long cablesNot such a challenge for your display cables but you may need to invest in longer power, USB and keyboard cables. All these cables are usually available cheaply from eBay.

Here at PC Building towers we’ve covered all manner of hot mods and crazy cases: from coolers that

look like Giger-esque phallus-fi lled artwork, to lighting that would put the Blackpool illuminations to shame. So when we came across not so much a mod as a new way of life – okay, a way of wall-mounting a PC – we were all on board.

We stumbled across the original project when it was posted to Reddit back in 2011 – it simply showed a running PC hung up on a wall. Take a look yourself at: http://bit.ly/I6nLyH.

Sincere fl atteryWe felt a strong urge to try and emulate this trick and our slow-fi ring neurons took to calculating just how we could levitate such a contraption into the air using pocket money.

While the original system seemed to be mounted on a metallic-style board, we decided to avoid anything metal-based. First for cost, second for weight, and last because we hear computers aren’t too keen on short circuits.

Having played with Perspex/acrylic sheeting quite a lot, we knew it could be cheap enough and rigid enough, but would it take the temperatures that PC components throw out? A quick scout around showed that Perspex starts to lose its

mechanical rigidity between 95ºC and 120ºC – and starts to melt at 160ºC.

As only top-end processors have thermal output of 135W, with the vast majority being 95W or far less, for most systems this should be absolutely fi ne. We wouldn’t suggest you run overclocked systems on such a mounted system, again simply as a 95W TDP

processor, such as the Core i5 2500K, can have its

temperatures raised greatly. Graphic

cards are a different beast but again we’d be wary of mounting a graphics card

with a TDP over 200W, as load

temperatures can start reaching the

80ºC level.When it comes to the rest

of the components, temperature won’t be an issue. The fact of the matter is we’re also going to leave clear air between components and the Perspex, so there’s no chance of

Wall-mount your PCComponents2x PCIe x16 riser extension cable £81x 600 x 500 x 4mm Perspex sheet £1525x M3 12mm bolts £125x M3 washers 50p100x M3 nuts £2.504x angle brackets £1.256x fl at screws + rawl plugs £1.506x large washers 70p6x spacers 70p25x 20mm screws £225x 10mm screws £2

TOP TIPSKNOW YOUR WALLSBefore you screw anything to the wall make sure you get permission from the home owner. We also demand that you get the correct type of securing wall plugs for your type of walls.

2HOURS

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1 A bit sketchyBefore we started buying anything,

we fi rst decided to see how much room all of our components would need. Grab a bit of graph paper or fi re up Excel and plot a quick outline of the components over the area of Perspex you’re thinking about. We used a spreadsheet set with square cells marking 1cm blocks. And remember to leave enough space for the cables.

2 Cable guyKeep in mind where you’re going to

route cables around the board, coming out of the PSU to the motherboard. Very likely you’ll need at least one to the graphics card and the usually easier-to-route power and data cables to the drives, too. Don’t forget power, monitor, keyboard and other USB cables will need to come from your desk to the board as well.

3 Drilling holesIt’s important to note that we’re not

anchoring screws to the Perspex itself as such – it’s not strong enough in that way. We’re slowly drilling holes through the Perspex and using the M3 screws to fi x the components, with the stress spread out, using a washer at the back of the board. When drilling Perspex do make sure you go slowly to avoid potentially shattering it.

PART1: I love a planCheck your specific hardware will fit

the Perspex meeting this type of temperature. But it’s best to play out the worse case scenario here. We shouldn’t also overlook that this is going to be mounted vertically, which we’ve been told is better for cooling as it encourages better convection.

Ideally, we’d suggest 5mm Perspex sheeting. You can get away with 4mm, but there’s a little more fl ex to it with sheets this size. To fi t the various components to the sheet we’re going to use 15mm M3 screws and a bunch of suitable bolts. We did consider using the standard brass motherboard stand-off posts. But fi xing these to the Perspex would either be too elaborate, using multiple screws, or not secure enough, such as screwing them directly into the Perspex sheeting.

Silver friendsJust as a towel is essential for hitchhiking around the galaxy, the trusty M3 screw is the standard issue case fi xing for most PC components. These little silver friends are going to be ideal for the hard drive, optical drive and the motherboard. Both the drives provide alternative base fi xing holes. You just add a spacing washer or bolt and these are simple things to attach.

The only curve ball is when you come to fi xing the power supply. Through some oddity of design it’s often the only part that requires the alternative US-based standard 6-32 UTS or Universal Thread Standard screws (you’re not the only ones around here who read Wikipedia you know). These are the case screws with the coarser thread. As these are only used on the power supply unit our plan is to use 90 degree brackets to fi x the PSU in place. If long enough, these could be angled underneath the PSU to hide them from view.

The last confusion is the graphics card. You can’t have this hanging out the side of the PCIe slot, it’s just going to snap off. The solution is simple, get a PCIe riser extension ribbon cable. You might be worrying

about latencies, but for a signal travelling near the speed of light a foot of extra cable is just a nanosecond. You’ll fi nd 15cm ones on eBay, but you’ll need two for a long enough strip, otherwise the card would end up being mounted fan-side down.

As for fi xing the thing to the wall, this is the only area that concerns us, as Perspex, while resilient to impact, can be brittle under the wrong circumstances, such as twisting and compression. Opting for a thicker, longer screw will help ensure it stays secured on the wall and using a large washer will help spread any load. Alternatively you could use brackets to mount the board onto the wall and hold it in place, which would eliminate any chance of damaging the Perspex.

TOP TIPSSTAY PROTECTED

The Perspex will come with two

protective plastic layers on

each side. Leave these on until

you’ve completely fi nished

drilling and fi xing to

avoid scratches.

What’s in a screw?It turns out that one size doesn’t fi t all. Starting off this project we had hoped to get away with a single size of M3 screw. A trip to Screwfi x saw us return with a pack of 25 20mm M3 screws as well as a bag of nuts and washers. It seems that bigger may be better, as for most components, with a bit of spacing out with extra nuts, these could be made to work in most situations.

For the brackets and the PSU, however, it was better to use 10mm M3 screws as this enabled us to hide the brackets out of sight with the screws ending up fl ush. Using 12mm M3 screws for the motherboard and drives would fi t a lot better, but having the fl exibility of the larger

screws is helpful. While for the PSU we’d feel better if we had also opted for the larger 39mm two-screw hole brackets.

Much can be made of these

Wall-mount your PC

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SERIOUS ABOUT HARDWARE?

PERFORMANCE ADVICEFOR SERIOUS GAMERSON SALE EVERY MONTH

ISSUE 278/MAY 2013

EXCLUSIVE REPORT

WHY THE PS4 IS GREAT FOR THE PCHow AMD's HSA is shaping the future for budget gaming rigs

How to get your system in shape to record your own video masterpiece

Most accurate rodents boasting fricken lasers

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