We're PC evangelists... but, y'know, realistic evangelists | Having built 500+ PCs in my time I can say this with confidence: Building is fun and rewarding but ironing out those inevitable BIOS, CPU, memory kinks is unbearable | AndaSeat Kaiser 3 Pro | 5D armrests | Magnetic headrest | Range of colors | $396 at AndaSeat (save $103.99 with coupon code AndaPCG)
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The PC is the finest gaming platform out there. We can say that without irony, without excessive hyperbole, because it's just plain true. There is no other platform out there with the wealth of experiences available to it—whether you're after modern masterpieces or nostalgic classics of ancient gaming history—and no other with the sheer breadth of different machines you can enjoy it all on. The customisation, the bespoke builds, the opportunity to get unfeasibly obsessed with mechanical keyboard switches... well, it's all part of the rich tapestry of PC gaming.
But yeah, it can also be a royal pain in the arse at times. As our Nick has talked about recently after he decided to embark on a new PC build and I sent him a bunch of new kit to test out, too.
It's not all sunshine and roses in the PC gaming garden, but personally I wouldn't have it any other way.
It's been a busy old month at Chateau Evanson, mostly down to the inordinate amount of time spent testing the performance of Dragon's Dogma 2 and how its quality settings affect things. That all started on my old primary PC, with a Core i7 9700K, but half way through, I did a full system upgrade to an Intel Z790 setup. New CPU, RAM, graphics card, coolers, SSDs, PSU. The lot, bar the case, which will eventually get replaced at some point as the cooler doesn't quite fit properly.
The whole build went very smoothly and the PC booted absolutely fine with the DDR5 set to its 6400 XMP profile, all of the SSDs worked exactly as expected, and cable management was remarkably stress-free. Heck, it didn't even take all that long to get Windows and the gamut of usual applications installed and configured.
On the other hand, I started to get headaches over the amount of BIOS/UEFI fiddling required to get the right balance between performance, power consumption, temperatures, and fan noise. Use the motherboard's default settings and the CPU just sucks up enough power to melt the polar caps; drop the limits down to Intel's values and you get top notch performance for a while before it throttles back. I think I have it all figured out now but it was a handy reminder that no matter how experienced you are in doing something, you can still come across something new to trip you up.
Five dimensional armrests are only one of the reasons why the Kaiser 3 makes a good place to rest your weary bones. More crucially, this chair offers mod cons such as a magnetic headrest and adjustable lumbar support. Just make sure you use the exclusive 10% site-wide PC Gamer discount - and you can use that on any AndaSeat product, too.
It's not the lowest price we've seen for an RX 6700 XT but it's pretty close, and the graphics card itself is probably AMD's best mid-range model. This or an RTX 4060? For outright gaming speed, the RX 6700 XT is definitely better.
Acer's Helios 16 has proved one of our favorite 16-inch gaming laptops of the last generation, and this RTX 4080-powered device is a great price at under $1,800. Sadly, this isn't the mini-LED version we loved so well in our review, but it's still got a great IPS panel that is able to hit pretty high brightness levels and at a great refresh rate, too.
A beautifully crafted gaming laptop that gets the most out of the components stuffed inside it. Though a high price tag even versus similarly premium alternatives leaves me wanting a bit more for the money.
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