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By MaximumPC, published 14-11-2011
Intel's new enthusiast platform is here. I'm going to put it through its paces with a quiet riot of a gaming rig. Intel has just released its new Sandy Bridge-E platform. With six- and eight-core processors, eight DIMM slots, and multiple PCIe 3.0 slots, it’s Nehalem’s true heir and the answer to complaints that Sandy Bridge, while awesome, just isn’t enthusiast enough. (Check out our official benchmarks here). The i7-2600K is a great part, but it’s only a quad-core, and there hasn’t been a six-core enthusiast CPU from Intel since the i7-990X, which is on a dead platform. I’ve gotten my hands on the Sandy Bridge-E flagship CPU: the Core i7-3960X, a $1,000, six-core beast at 3.3GHz. Oh, and a motherboard and cooler to go with it. I’ve rustled up a passel of RAM, a titanic GPU,...

By MaximumPC, published 11-07-2011
Get Gaming on an HTPC I don't want to watch cable TV. I don't want to use a controller. I just want to watch 3D Blu-rays and frag people with a mouse and keyboard, all on a box that fits on my entertainment center. Is that too much to ask? We’ve built our fair share of home theater PCs in the past, with all sorts of different use cases in mind. Our August 2010 HTPC was a stunner built for 3D, with passively cooled GPU, CPU, and PSU, as well as a four-channel CableCard tuner and Blu-ray 3D support. In June 2011, Gordon tried to make a small-form-factor HTPC that could cut out the previous build’s bulk (and CableCard) while still supporting Blu-ray 3D. Both of those rigs handled their respective tasks well, but what if I don’t care about cable but do care about gaming? This month’s ...

By MaximumPC, published 20-06-2011
Build A Gaming Machine That Will Satisfy Your Cravings Without Breaking the Bank The thought of a gaming PC might conjure up images of decadent excess—a full-course meal of awesome that moves from an SSD consumé to a filet of Core i7 990X to quad-SLI under glass. While that’s certainly a feast worth aspiring to, it’s by no means the only fare that will give your gaming needs sustenance. And, no, we’re not suggesting that you ruin your health with an empty-calorie diet of console. In fact, unlike some corners of the gaming world, where there’s a fixed menu of parts, the PC offers loads of options that scale from opulent to economical. Our budget gaming rig is all about instant gratification: a way for you to fill your gaming hunger with a state of the art, speedy machine, capabl...

By MaximumPC, published 16-05-2011
From the caliber of their parts to the breadth of their abilities to their unconventional shapes and sizes, today's small form factor PCs are a tasty treat for power users It has long been considered common wisdom that the smaller the size of a PC, the greater its compromises. Notebooks, no matter how fat, for example, will never touch the power of a desktop machine. The same held true for small form factor rigs. But is that still the case? To find out how today’s SFF rigs compare with their full-size desktop brethren, we tasked five top PC makers with sending us their best and brightest, and, well, smallest machines. We didn’t put any hard and fast limits on size or price. Instead, we wanted the vendors to go nuts with the definition of “small form factor rig.” As a result, what ...

By MaximumPC, published 04-11-2011
Can we build an AMD machine—any AMD machine—that can compete with an Intel-powered rig? In the forever war between CPU vendors, AMD and Intel have traded places many times—one leads, then the other. Since the advent of Intel’s Core i7, though, AMD hasn’t been able to touch the performance of Intel’s high end, and Sandy Bridge further increases the gap. But, well, you couldn't buy Sandy Bridge motherboards when I wrote this build-it story in February for the May print issue—something about a bad chipset—and I’d been meaning to build an AMD-powered machine for a while now—with CrossFire, even. Why? Partially because I can, but I also want to witness the performance delta firsthand. Just for kicks, I’m also going to put some effort—and money—into making this system p...

By SlashGear, published 28-03-2011
Intel has announced its latest SSD range, the 25nm-based 320 Series, replacing the existing X25-M and slashing prices by up to $100. Available in 40-, 80-, 120-, 160, 300- and 600GB capacities, the third-gen SSDs more than double sequential write speeds as well, up to 220 MB/s sequential writes, together with up to 270 MB/s sequential reads. Unlike the SSD 510 Series, the 320 Series uses a 3Gbps SATA II interface rather than 6Gbps. The 320 Series is priced at 40GB at $89; 80GB at $159; 120GB at $209; 160GB at $289; 300GB at $529 and 600GB at $1,069 (in 1,000-unit quantities). Press Release: Intel Announces Third-Generation SSD: Intel® Solid-State Drive 320 Series Features Enhanced Performance/Reliability, Larger Capacities and 25nm Intel® NAND Flash Memory NEWS HIGHLIGHTS • T...

By MaximumPC, published 17-02-2011
You don’t need to spend a fortune to take advantage of Intel’s newest platform Previous builds in this section have tended toward the expensive side, whether they’ve been the $8,600 photo studio or our $1,800 mini-ITX gaming build. While we stand by those choices (this is Maximum PC), we’ve also heard your cries for more affordable options. Often, a budget build means buying parts that are a little past their prime—and don’t get us wrong, you can find great deals there. But for this month’s build, I knew I wanted to explore Intel’s hot new Sandy Bridge architecture—and, if I could swing it, one of AMD’s new Radeon 6800 series GPUs—while keeping my total budget under $1,000. (Editor's Note: This was written before the Sandy Bridge snafu, but hey, it's still a great bui...