Editors’ Picks: Digital Discoveries

Jarred Walton, senior editor, and Alan Dexter, executive editor, are pumped about the latest tech

RYZEN 5 1600

AMD just finished rolling out its Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 CPUs, and do you know which is my favorite? Not the 1800X or even the 1700, though the 1700 does come in second. No, the best of the current crop of seven Ryzen CPUs is the 1600. Stock clocks are pretty tame at only 3.2–3.6GHz, but like all Ryzens, it’s fully multiplier unlocked, so you can overclock to the same 3.9–4.0GHz that you’ll hit with higher priced Ryzen chips.

It’s not just about overclocking, though. I do like the eight-core Ryzen 7 chips, but they’re in the high-end market, with the least expensive starting at $330. At just $220, the 1600 makes six-core/12thread computing truly affordable. And you’re not restricted to more expensive “enthusiast” motherboards. Pair this puppy up with a B350 mobo and some decent DDR4-3200 memory, and you’re looking at similar performance to Intel’s six-core i75820K/6800K at about half the cost.

Just don’t get stuck in the rut of chasing the final 100MHz of overclocking performance. That usually requires substantially more voltage, which means more heat. Even at 3.9GHz, the Ryzen 5 1600 is super-capable, and will smoke any similarly priced Core i5 when it comes to CPU-intensive workloads. $219, www.amd.com

GAME MODE BROADCASTING

We’ve covered game streaming plenty of times, with tutorials for the likes of OBS and XSplit for more serious streaming, while Nvidia’s ShadowPlay takes on AMD Gaming Evolved for specific graphics card options. These have now been supplemented by the Windows 10 Creators Update, which throws integrated game streaming into the mix.

With the latest version of Windows 10, broadcasting is as easy as hitting Win-G and clicking the broadcast button (or just hitting Win-Alt-B). You can turn on your webcam and record from your mic as well, but the basic idea is that you can be streaming in a matter of seconds. There is a caveat, though: Windows 10’s Game Mode streams to Beam, the streaming service Microsoft bought in the fall of last year. It offers low latency streaming (200ms) and includes interactive elements, if you want to set them up.

Beam’s problem is Twitch, which owns streaming. It’s the go-to site, and it’s built a community that Beam can only dream of. To give you an idea of the uphill struggle Microsoft has to overcome, right now, the top stream on Beam has around 200 viewers, while Twitch’s most popular Dota2 stream has 100,000. That’s quite a hill. $Free, www.beam.pro