TO THE MAX

A new golden age has begun.

There’s no doubt AMD’s absolutely killing it with the new Ryzen 3rd-gen. Perhaps their arrival has prompted you to consider an upgrade? If my small group of friends is any kind of useful barometer then it would seem that almost everyone is jumping on the new Ryzens. More reliable statistical evidence is easy to come by. A quick look at the top selling CPUs on Amazon shows AMD with six of the top 10 – and that includes five of the top six and the number one spot (the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X).

We have our first Ryzen 3rd-gen reviews in this issue, and do please come back next month as we continue to test all of the CPUs in this astonishing release.

With the new Ryzens comes a new motherboard chipset. The X570 brings truly generational leaps to the PC with stunningly quick PCIe 4 supporting new SSDs that take full advantage. We’ve gathered up a selection of X570 boards this month so you have the full picture if you’re thinking of a new build.

To cap it off we’ve done one of our rare memory group tests, along with a buyer’s guide, so you know what to look for there.

It’s a particularly potent issue of APC this month, with so much jammed in covering this incredible time in the PC universe. I’m not sure when we’ll see another focused moment of upheaval of this magnitude. Relish it!

Elsewhere, in the Blue Corner, I’ve been testing the new Intel Performance Maximizer that I raved about in our Computex coverage in APC 470. As we reported, it’s an internally developed automatic overclocking tool. At the moment it works with 9th-gen K-series CPUs in Z390 motherboards. Testing an i9-9900K in an Asrock Z390 Taichi yielded a 300MHz gain, taking the i9-9900K from 4.7GHz to a nice round 5GHz. That’s decent enough, and comes close to the 5.1GHz manual OC this particular CPU is capable of. Future versions will support a wider range of motherboards and CPUs, but most interestingly will enable per-core overclocking. It’s a free download and worth checking out if you have a compatible system and can’t be fussed doing a manual OC.

Remarkably, Intel is also offering overclocking insurance – so that in itself is a surprising move. The Performance Tuning Plan costs US$19.99 and adds coverage for overclock damage to the remaining term of your existing warranty. Never thought I’d live to see the day… See you in a month.