TINKERING WITH 4K

I’VE GOT THAT ITCH again for a new system. Honestly, it’s the biggest curse of this job. Once you’re in, and you’re tinkering and playing with hardware, and writing about it and building systems all the time, you sit down, and you’re like “This is enough, I’m happy, Core i5-10600K, RTX 2080 Super, it’s all good.” Then things start launching; AMD releases new processors, Nvidia announces new GPUs, performance increases over here, new awesome software and tech out over there, then a few cool-looking cases pop up. All of a sudden your mind is back on the idea of liquid-cooling the proverbial out of some poor chassis that’s likely going to have its front I/O cut out because it looks “aesthetically displeasing” to you. That is my life, and let’s be fair I can’t really complain about it, can I?

And so this issue we (I say “we,” I really mean “I”) decided to take things out for a test drive so to speak, namely, by revisiting an old topic that we’ve explored several times over the years: 4K gaming. In fact, since I’ve been at MaximumPC this idea is something we’ve done time and time again, year after year. Not because we’re fresh out of ideas, but because it’s that halo product, the system that we all want to see make its way down to the mainstream, or at least become more affordable. And year after year, the prices decrease, the frame rates go up, and we get one step closer to leaving the world of 1440p and 1080p far behind.

With AMD’s latest processors and GPUs launching, complete with Smart Access Memory and a bevy of other features, we’ve teamed up with Corsair to bring you one of the most epic-looking “off-the-shelf” luminous systems you can build and buy today.

On top of that we have some phenomenal content this month. In fact, I think this might be my favorite issue of all time. Ian’s taking us on a nostalgic journey back in time to look at the Y2K Millennium Bug, and that includes some fantastic interviews with the UN’s director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center, Bruce McConnell, alongside some other brilliant sources in the form of Peter De Jager and Richard Hassett, for a truly insightful look into what might have been. Then Dave gives us a full deep-dive and deconstruction of the SteelSeries Apex 7 TKL mechanical keyboard, soldering in his own mechanical switches by hand, and Jonni gives us the lowdown on not getting hacked, and how those pesky cyber-crims do it.

We’ve got more than that too, including a ton of tutorials, and reviews of the Ryzen 5 5600X, Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus PCIe SSD, an ultra-ultrawide 49inch Samsung monitor, and the latest Raspberry Pi Pico microboard. Oh and Cyberpunk2077 is in for review too, and then of course we have all the latest and greatest columns from Jarred, myself, and the rest of the team. Seriously, this is my favorite issue ever, and I do hope you enjoy it too.

As always, stay safe out there, and until next time.