Six-core benchmarks
Heavyweight PCs Tricky header cables
Useful shortcuts
For Windows XP and Windows 7 users looking for their old troubleshooting commands in Windows 8 and 10, simply use Windows-X. Windows-I can be handy as well. – Mark Seest EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: We like readers bearing gifts. Rightclicking the Start button produces the same result, but keyboard shortcuts are definitely quicker. So well done, Mark.
Dream builds
Another great August issue! I read the comments section in the last issue about doing a microATX build, and I thought that would be great. Then I thought, you know what would be better? A water- cooled build. Then I thought, even better would be a Dream Machine in a CaseLabs Mercury S5. Epic, I say, very epic indeed. Just one more suggestion, I would like to see more benchmarks with a sixcore CPU rather than its higher priced brethren. It just seems to me that the average person is using those chips more. Anyway just my 2 cents, keep up the great work. – Daryl Austin EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: We did build a tiny water- cooled PC back in the July 2016 issue, which is worth checking out if you haven’t done so already. But yes, watercooling smaller machines is always very tempting, if often a tight squeeze. We’re sure we’ll be visiting it again soon. As for the Dream Machine, that always takes a lot of planning, and this year’s Dream Machine is already sorted— you’ll see the fruits of our labors next issue. As for your final point, we actually looked at the six- core Core i7- 6800K last issue (pg. 83).
No man’s time
Is anyone else afraid of the potential of NoMan’s Sky and VR to be the mother of all time sinks? I am hoping to retire there.
– Alain DeWitt EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: By the time you read this NoMan’s Sky will have landed, and you, like many others, will be contrasting the hopes for NoMan’sSky and the (often crashy) reality. You will of course notice that we don’t have a review of the game this issue— unfortunately there just wasn’t time to get the review in, as it was released so close to deadline and we were prewarned that there was going to be a big day one patch. We will look at it in the future, but our initial impressions are that it isn’t quite the trouble-free experience we were hoping for. Graphics driver updates are coming thick and fast as I write, though, so a few more days may make for a much better game. Even so, we’d recommend holding on to those retirement dreams a little while longer.
Heavy lifting
I was talking to a friend of mine (he owns his own custom build and computer store) and he had commented about how he started to dread moving his tower to his shop for its weekly cleaning. That got me to thinking: Why isn’t the weight of cases and, in the instance of the Aventum 3 review, the entire system included in the specs? To be honest “you need a hand truck” is quite amusing, but not very helpful to some of us old codgers who have to lug this stuff around.
– Martin Jarvis STAFF WRITER ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: Good point, we’ll take it into consideration moving forward. Some of these systems really are starting to get very hard to move, but then watercooling does add a lot to the weight of a rig.
RAID fight
I had to write in response to Ben Pearman’s demands that you renounce support for RAID5. Pooh on that.
My Buffalo TeraStation HD-H1.0TGL/ R5 (1TB) has been in continuous active service since 2006, its 4x 250GB Samsung IDE drives configured in RAID5 are still the original drives. The only failure has been the cooling fan, which I replaced with an Arctic F9 92mm. I’ve never lost data and the NAS has served Mac, Windows and Linux computers as well as being a DMZ FTP for my clients.
There’s no one solution for everything, but, maintaining critical data accessibility even with a drive(s) failure is compelling enough reason to keep RAID5 around at least until mechanical drives disappear altogether.
– John Mullen EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: Further proof that you can’t please everyone all the time. Seriously though, while I’m sure there are plenty of readers that have been running RAID5 for years without any issues, there is a growing consensus that there are much better options available. The fullon feature explaining all of this is on the way to a future issue of MaximumPC, I promise. But until then, please can everyone just ensure that they have a proper back up in place.
Slot machine
I have an older ASUS motherboard that clearly does not support, nor has been updated to support, NVMe and PCIe SSDs. However, the Kingston HyperX Predator HH-HL from your article looks like a potentially great drive given my board’s lack of NVMe support. You state that it’s compatible with nearly all mobos, but to do your due diligence before buying. Well, I went so far as to call ASUS directly and I don’t think the person I spoke to understood what I was asking. The board has longer PCIe x16 slots, but not the shorter “x4” slots. Aside from ASUS’s very limited drive compatibility list, what information should I be researching to see if I could pull this drive off in my PC?
– Jeff Musial STAFF WRITER ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: Fortunately what we can tell you from the get go is that from a physical compatibility standpoint you don’t need to worry. In short, any PCIe card will work in a x16 slot, regardless of length of the PCIe connector. The first group of pins heading to the first notch for any PCIe card provides power, whilst the remainder is where data is transferred across. The reason cards like the HyperX Predator and even Intel’s 750 series SSD are so short is because they are PCIe x4 devices, but they’ll work fine in a x16 slot.
That said, without knowing your actual motherboard model, we can’t do much digging for you. Your best bet is to query the motherboard make and model online with bootable PCIe SSDs. However if your board supports the AHCI protocol, a quick BIOS update should enable PCIe boot compatibility.
You’re so vain
I am very much interested in building the mid- range system described in the article, [ Sep 2016, pg. 66] but have one question: The article states “one problem we had with this particular combination of motherboard and case was with the USB 3.0 front panel connectors.” “As you may have noticed, there’s no grommet directly opposite it, and because the USB 3.0 front panel has such a stiff cable, we opted to not plug it in at all.” My question: Was the cable not connected due to cosmetic reasons, or was the cable impossible to connect? – Dave Weaver STAFF WRITER ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: With this particular motherboard and case combination it would’ve been impossible to connect it directly. It wasn’t vanity, we promise. It could’ve reached it easily enough, but because the USB 3.0 header is placed between two grommets and a metal panel it’s just not possible. Couple that with the rightangle header, and you just can’t route the USB 3.0 front panel cable around to plug it in to the board.
If the header was vertical it would’ve certainly made it easier to plug in to, but otherwise we just had no luck with it. And unfortunately, unlike a lot of the Skylake boards, the only other USB 3.0 header was situated on the bottom of the board, facing down towards that solid PSU cover.
That said, there are a number of alternative motherboards out there that look like they’d work just fine, either with multiple USB 3.0 headers located there, or just vertical headers instead.
The Asus Maximus VIII Hero, and the TUF Sabertooth have vertical ports, whilst both the MSI Z170A Gaming M7 and Gaming M9 ACK have two USB 3.0 headers, one vertical and one rightangled in those traditional positions to allow for a little more flexibility in a build like this one. I’ll vouch for all of them in regards to performance too.