1+ week, 3+ day ago (347+ words) MoboMaps could be a game changer. The web-based tool, MoboMaps by Robin Wilde, does what I think most people who have been in the gaming PC building bizz for a while will recognise as a giant service to humanity. It shows you visually and interactively exactly where different motherboards have different PCIe lanes routed. Apart from how many VRMs it has and how many I/O ports it has, probably the most important thing to consider with a motherboard is how many PCIe lanes it has routed to different areas. This is particularly important when you expect to use multiple storage devices or expansion cards. PCIe lanes are what your different components use to communicate with each other'they're physical, embedded routes that run through your motherboard. Each lane has one upstream and one downstream wire, and can either connect directly…...

19+ hour, 52+ min ago (339+ words) I can personally vouch for some of these, and the rest are calling my name. There might be better esports-oriented PC gaming gear than what I've highlighted here, if you're on an unlimited budget. But I've tried to put together a list that will have something to offer most gamers. This is the absolute best lightweight gaming mouse on the market right now. It's incredibly light at just 36 g, and somehow it's achieved this with nary a hole in sight. Apart from this, it's pretty barebones, but a good sensor and light weight is all that's needed for some seriously competitive FPS gameplay, and this mouse delivers on both fronts. Key specs: 33K sensor | wireless | 36 g weight | 70-hr battery Key specs: OmniPoint 3.0 HyperMagnetic Switches | Wired | Rapid trigger Key specs: Asymmetric thumbsticks | Hall effect thumbsticks | 260 g Don't expect much popping HDR or…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago (254+ words) The GameSir G7 Pro tops the list of our favourite controllers for PC, and for good reason. Earlier this year I reviewed the GameSir G7 Pro controller and came away mightily impressed. For AU$159 you get a 2.4 Ghz wireless controller with all the usual "pro" trimmings'paddle buttons, a modular d-pad and face button microswitches'as well as other features that help it trounce the competition, especially at this price point. Anyway, Amazon's Black Friday sale just kicked off and you can currently get the GameSir G7 Pro for AU$135: a neat 15% discount. It's not the steepest cut'and apparently only the white model is available'but if you're going to get one, now's the time to bite. A tidy saving on this brilliant PC gamepad (which also works with Xbox consoles, albeit only wired). It features an astonishing 1000 Hz polling rate for higher precision, TMR analog…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (297+ words) Sweet dreams, Steam Deck. Valve has just checked off a long-requested wishlist item for the Steam Deck: Downloading games even when the screen is turned off. The feature, available now in the Steam Deck's beta client, is enabled by default when the Steam Deck is plugged in. The handheld will automatically complete all downloads in the queue with the display off, then enter sleep mode. Display-off low power downloads can also be enabled when the system is running off the battery. After updating to the latest beta client, you can find the option under Settings > Power and scrolling down. You can also disable the feature altogether there, if you'd rather the Steam Deck's display stay on whenever you're slurping down some game updates. "While in this mode, if you press a button or move Steam Deck, a new status screen…...

4+ week, 1+ day ago (444+ words) Is it time to drop the joystick? I'm not great at fighting games. I have a main in Street Fighter (add Sakura to 6, please, Capcom) and don't often swoop to the lows of button bashing, but it doesn't take much panic to send me there. Well, luckily, Corsair has announced a new professional-looking fighter stick, and I can't wait to lose at my local tournament with it. The Novablade Pro Wireless has Hall effect magnetic switches, which not only ensure a longer shelf life but also allow custom actuation on the board. Keys can be set from anywhere to 0.1mm to 4mm, which means you can make surrounding keys a little harder to press and important ones easier to hit. Being wireless, it can be connected via Bluetooth, or connected to your rig in 2.4 GHz mode, offering lower latency than the Bluetooth…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago (334+ words) Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format'full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck. Building your first gaming PC can be an intimidating task. There are a ton of different components you need to jam into a chassis, in the correct order and orientation, before…...

5+ day, 20+ hour ago (357+ words) Going Pro for less. Our current pick for the best PC controller right now, the GameSir G7 Pro, is only slightly pricier than a standard Xbox controller but feels and looks nearly identical, and comes with TMR sticks, tactile switches, and a charging dock to keep it topped up and looking pretty on a shelf. This is the lowest we've seen this controller at, and it was already reasonably priced at MSRP. Key specs: TMR joysticks | 2.4 GHz wireless, Bluetooth, Wired | Asymmetric | 272 g It's not every day the best of the best can be enjoyed at a cut price'but then again, not every day is Black Friday. For the moment, I'll set aside my grumblings about how it just feels like the week-long sales events go on forever, and instead tell you about a cracking deal on the best PC controller. GameSir…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago (292+ words) It even runs at a, ahem, stunning 40 FPS in 786p. Despite some recent unrest within the community, Battlefield 6 is mostly a home run for the venerable military shooter series'thanks in part to its pristine optimization. It boasts a low barrier to entry due to non-prohibitive system requirements, and those requirements are so low fans have been putting it through the wringer to see just how old a GPU can run it. More recently, YouTuber Fully Buffered (via Tom's Hardware) got the game to run on an AMD FX-9590 CPU, first released in 2013, revealing that the game's stated minimum required specs are a bit misleading. Fully Buffered broke down his process in the above video, where he shows the game running on the 12-year-old chip to a quality standard he calls "not terrible." It peaks at around mid-40 FPS at lower resolutions, though…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago (300+ words) Good things come to those who wait. Probably. I was there folks, I was there. In May of this year, AMD announced a massive new update to its upscaling tech, giving us our first glimpse of FSR 4 "Redstone" which was said to be bringing a whole host of machine learning-based improvements. So, if you've got an RX 9070 XT, RX 9070, or RX 9060 XT, all of your rays will be reconstructed if you jump into a brand-new game of BLOPs. And enable FSR 4 in the settings, of course. It's not known yet whether you'll be able to turn Ray Regeneration on or off as a separate setting, but regardless, according to AMD it will be there to make all of your less-gritty-lighting dreams come true. You'll also get AMD's machine learning-enhanced frame generation to play with at some point, which will hopefully…...

4+ day, 20+ hour ago (412+ words) Ergonomic and responsive, this wired controller offers many of the same features as its wireless sibling but often goes for half the price. Be warned though that the colourful interchangeable faceplates are sold separately and tend to go for between $25-$30. Key specs: Asymmetric thumbsticks | Hall effect thumbsticks | 260 g I really wanted to like the wireless version of the Scuf Valor Pro, but its significant price increase over its wired counterpart kept me at arm's length. Setting aside the fact that, yes, that is the optimal operating distance for most PC controllers, I was left feeling like you'd be better off saving your pennies for something else. The wired version of the Scuf Valor Pro may well be that 'something else'. It's our top pick for the best wired PC controller for many good reasons, not least of all its very…...