TechSpot Features

We were among the first to review the Ryzen 5 3600 and at $200 we found the 6-core, 12-thread processor a crankin' good deal. In short, it murders the 9600K in core-heavy productivity benchmarks and was right there for the gaming tests. But without question the most popular question we received afterwards was: should you buy the Ryzen 5 3600 or the 3600X?

You don't have to use magnetism or electrical charge to store data. It can be done using light, or more rather, the reflection of it. Okay, if you want to be really specific, it's done using the interference of infrared and visible electromagnetic waves, but let's not worry too much about that!

Just as transistors revolutionized computers, by increasing the speed at which circuits could switch and perform math operations, the use of semiconductor devices in storage devices was aimed at producing the same outcome. Lets dissect SSDs.

It's magnetic. It's electric. It's photonic. No, this isn't going to be about a new superhero trio in the Marvel universe. This is all about our precious digital data. So let's prep for theatre, scrub our hands clean, and dig into the anatomy of what we use today to hold onto our trillions of digital bits.

Consoles have come a very long way since the arrival of first-gen machines from Atari and Coleco in the seventies. Even the original PlayStation (1994) and Xbox (2001) look dated compared to today's machines, and that divide will grow even larger once the PS5 and Xbox Series X arrive at the end of 2020. But what about the future?

Power supply units don't break headlines like the latest CPUs do, but they're awesome pieces of technology. Let's put on our gowns, masks, and gloves, and pull open the humble PSU -- breaking down its various parts and seeing what each bit does.

Intel is developing discrete GPUs for gamers, professionals, and servers, and they're all slated for release this year or coming in 2021. Intel's cards will either be the long-awaited saviors of a stagnant market, or they'll underperform and flop miserably (no pressure, Intel PR person reading this). This is our second round of investigation into Xe.

Looking back before we move forward, 2019 was a good year for PC gaming. But in spite of how excellent many of those games are, they'll have some pretty stiff competition this year. With highly-anticipated titles like Mount & Blade: Bannerlord and Cyberpunk 2077 on the release docket, 2020 is set to be one hell of a year for PC gamers.

Today we're taking a look at the performance impact having four DDR4 memory modules can have on performance in a dual-channel system, opposed to just two modules. In this scenario all modules are operating at the same frequency, use the same timings and provide the same total memory capacity.

Today we're going to review the sub-$200 graphics card market and see how it compares to what we were offered just a few years ago. We recently did this for the $400 price range and it was super interesting. The two most recent additions to this segment are the Radeon 5500 XT and Nvidia's GTX 1650 Super. Let's see how they do against previous generations.

When we look at the video games that have truly stood the test of time, MMORPGs are always near the top of that list. The genre has been around for decades, but what's the secret sauce that makes MMOs so popular and long-lasting? And which titles are worth playing today?

Without properly managing heat, our electronic systems would destroy themselves or conversely, we'd be severely limiting our computing capabilities. This article will touch on the basic science of heat, how and why it is generated in electronics, and the various methods we have developed to control it.

How well do you know the components that make up your PC? Take the humble motherboard, it sits there, quietly keeping everything running, and rarely gets the same attention as the CPU or graphics card. Motherboards are remarkably important though, so let's go all Grey's Anatomy, and dissect the motherboard -- breaking down its various parts and seeing what each bit does!

We all think of the CPU as the "brains" of a computer, but what does that actually mean? What is going on inside with the billions of transistors to make your computer work? In this new four-part mini series we'll be focusing on computer hardware design, covering the ins and outs of what makes a computer work.

Expanding upon all the testing we performed in our day-one 3rd-gen Ryzen coverage, today we'll be running a clock-for-clock comparison benchmark. IPC can be a good indicator of a processor's architecture efficiency, so we're pitting the new Ryzen 3900X and 3700X against Intel's Core i9-9900K.

Video game physics are something that we often take for granted. Programming physics into a game can be as simple as one or two routines, or as complex as requiring a separate physics engine to handle the computations. In this article we'll delve into the specifics of rigid body and soft body physics in games.

For the third year in a row, before the year comes to an end, lets look back at some of the worst CPU and PC graphics products released in 2019. Just like we have guides dedicated to the best CPUs and best GPUs you can buy, this is our hall of shame equivalent. Not meaning to create controversy, take this piece as informational light reading for the holidays.

You've followed the rumors, waited for the reviews and finally slapped down your dollars and walked away with one of the latest graphics cards from AMD or Nvidia. Inside these lies a large graphics processor packed with billions of transistors, all running at clock speeds unthinkable a decade ago. Welcome to our architectural comparison of the newest GPUs from AMD and Nvidia.

The PC business as we know it owes itself to an environment of enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and happenstance. The invention of the microprocessor, DRAM, and EPROM integrated circuits would help bring computing to the mainstream. This 5-part series explores the history of personal computing, from the invention of the transistor to modern day chips powering our connected devices.

In 2019, more games flowed between PC and other platforms than ever before and we saw the titanic clash between Valve and Epic. PC gaming retains its unique identity through mods, hardware configurations, and its inextricable ties to Twitch and YouTube. Increasingly, though, the lines between these platforms are dissolving, and everybody's winding up back where so many series and genres started: on PC.

Portable apps are lightweight versions of applications that don't use an installer. Executables are contained within a single folder, meaning you can run them from a USB drive or a cloud folder synced across PCs. We've assembled a collection of the best and most useful portable apps across a variety of categories.

In this third part of our deeper look at 3D game rendering, we'll be focusing what can happen to the 3D world after the vertex processing has done and the scene has been rasterized. The majority of the visual effects seen in games today are down to the clever use of textures -- without them, games would dull and lifeless. So let's get dive in and see how this all works!

Something we've been hearing a lot this year is that there's a lack of development and progress on the PC gaming/hardware front. In an effort to determine if that's true, we'll test 2016's prime $400 GPU, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 against 2019's $400 GPU players, the RTX 2060 Super and RX 5700 XT and compare them in 37 games at 1080p and 1440p.

In the world of computer chips, bigger numbers are often better. More cores, higher GHz, greater FLOPs, all desired by engineers and users alike. But there is one measure that's hot news right now and the smaller it is, the better. Let's take a journey into the world of process nodes, to find out more.

ICQ, short for the phrase "I Seek You," laid the groundwork for standalone instant messaging clients when it arrived in November 1996. Think about how long ago that was... Windows 95 was barely a year old, Nintendo had just introduced the N64, and those with a reason to have a cell phone actually used it to talk on.

While 3D graphics turned a fairly dull PC industry into a light and magic show, they owe their existence to generations of innovative endeavour. This is the first installment on a series of four articles that in chronological order, take an extensive look at the history of the GPU. Going from the early days of 3D consumer graphics, to the 3Dfx Voodoo game-changer, the industry's consolidation at the turn of the century, and today's modern GPGPU.

To say that a lot of people use social media is an understatement. At last count, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat had more than 3 billion active users combined. In a small experiment to find out just how much social networks impact our lives, I decided to disable all my accounts for three weeks to see what, if any, effect it has on my day to day.

By far the most common types of display panels used on PC monitors are TN, IPS and VA. We're sure you've heard these terms before if you've researched monitors to purchase, and to be clear, the type of panel is a key piece of information that reveals a lot about how the monitor will behave and perform.

The tech industry is known for its predictive pronouncements and verbal sparring as for its actual innovation. Many have felt compelled to follow Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame) in bringing their judgements and observations into the public eye... with varying degrees of success. Here's a taste of those now infamous quotes.

Time to revisit the state of ray tracing. It's been months since we last discussed ray tracing in detail, when we tested it on early titles such as Battlefield V, and the latest releases of Metro and Tomb Raider, so there's plenty of fresh stuff to go over, more benchmarks, more experience playing those games and quite a few opinions. This is bound to be a long one, so strap yourselves in.