TRIPLE THREAT TIME
NOW THAT I’VE BEEN at the helm of this fine publication for five months, I thought it was time for us to try something we’ve never done before: a three-build special. Sure, we’ve done two-build head-to-heads before, like our popular Intel vs AMD challenges, but they’re usually taken on by two writers who split the workload between them. In this issue, it’s three machines covering the 1080p/1440p/4K sweet spots, by just one writer.
Like most editors, I’m cheekily taking credit for someone else’s brilliant idea here—it was Christian who dreamt up this insane challenge a couple of months ago and, like some mad genius, he’s been masterminding it ever since. Christian is a master builder with many years of experience crafting PCs for MaximumPC, but I cannot overstate the challenge he set himself: picking the components, getting them in, building the systems, testing them, and then wrapping that all up into one easy-to-follow feature was a monumental task.
The result of Christian’s ambition, though, is the answer to a simple question for PC builders: how do I get the best bang for my buck? It doesn’t matter if you have $1,200 or $3,600, you still want value for money and our guide covers how to achieve that across three different builds. So, whether you’re gaming on a sub-$200, 1080p display or cranking the ray tracing up to max on a 4K monitor, we’ll tell you the parts to buy and how to build the system of your dreams. It begins on page 16.
One of the things I love about PC gaming is how inclusive it is. You can get a great gaming system for not much more than $1,000, or you can go all out and remortgage your house for an absolute beast—but you’ll end up playing the same game of Cyberpunk
2077 on both. Now that PC component prices are becoming more reasonable and there’s a chance of getting hold of an Xbox Series X, I decided to visit the age-old PC vs. Console gaming debate in my feature on page 44. Having ditched my consoles last year in favor of a gaming laptop, I thought this would be a one-sided contest, but as I revisited the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, I found plenty of reasons to play on all of the different formats. I hope my feature encourages you to grab the controller and get playing, no matter what your machine of choice.
Speaking of letters, we also have two brilliant features in this issue that go deep on the sort of tech stories I get the most requests for. On page 32, Jeremy Laird looks back at how AMD nearly went to the wall, only to come back from the brink and deliver one of the most extraordinary comebacks in tech history, both in terms of its products and stock market performance. And on page 54, Jarred Walton casts his eye over the latest generation of GPU-powered supercomputers to see what they’re capable of, what AI-driven tasks these monster machines could perform in future, and who might win out of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD.
It’ll be a struggle to top the three-build special, but I’m thinking about future cover features on topics such as couch gaming, budget builds, and dream machines, and would love to know what you most want to see. Email me at editor@maximumpc.com. As always, I love all feedback, good and bad!
Enjoy the issue!
Guy is Maximum PC’ s Editor-in-Chief. He built his first gaming PC in 1997 to play Tomb Raider on 3dfx, and has been obsessed with all things PC ever since.