Maximum PC – October 2023
English | 100 pages | pdf | 34.11 MB
Welcome at Maximum PC Magazine October 2023 Issue
LAST MONTH, we built a brand new Nvidia/Intel-based system for under a grand. This magazine issue, we’re doing it again, but with AMD, in our cover build, masterminded by our in-house expert Sam Lewis. Just as the RTX 4060 finally enabled us to get down to the magic three-figure budget with Team Green, so does the Radeon RX 7600 for Team Red, allowing 1080p gaming on high settings in titles such as Dead Island 2, Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil 4.
We paired this $299 card with the $160 Ryzen 5 5600X processor, which is no slouch when it comes to everyday computing. It’ll chew through any CPUheavy task you throw at it, and should be good for years to come. We have our reservations about graphics cards with only 8GB of video memory, such as the Radeon RX 7600, but this system will be upgradable down the line thanks to a roomy chassis that’s easy to build in. On the plus side, AMD’s card comes with an AV1 hardware encoder that allows you to stream your gameplay at super-high quality with little to no impact on your gameplay performance. All in all, it’s a nice little system at a great price, and you can find out how to build it yourself from page 16, including mine and Sam’s video chat in the Story of the Build.
As I’ve been discussing with news writer Chris, it’s been a slow month for news, aside from Gamescom in Germany starting as I write this. It appears as though we might have to wait now for new GPU and CPU releases, and that’s if they appear at all—the RTX 4090 Ti appears to have been canceled.
So, we’ll be building more high-end machines in our upcoming cover builds, hopefully including the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX that has somehow eluded us until now. I also have our best technical writers, Jarred Walton and Jeremy Laird, working on features for upcoming issues, looking at whether 8GB is enough video memory, how to upgrade your Steam Deck, and who’s likely to win in the battle of ARM versus x86 architectures. This month, Jeremy has an update on where Moore’s Law is at—Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has declared it dead, but is that the whole story? Find out on page 38.
We’ve had lots of letters asking about hosting your own storage, what sort of redundancy to use, and what operating system is best. So, I set NAS-loving
Nick Peers the task of building his own cloud storage, then writing an eightpage feature about it (see page 28). I tend to go for the relative safety of an off-the-shelf solution from Synology or QNAP, but as Nick shows, doing it yourself isn’t that difficult, is much more customizable, and can even be quite fun. I’ve started treating my cloud storage like I do my email hosting and pay for a company to manage it for me, but this fun weekend project is actually making me want to give it another go.
By the time you read this, 2023’s biggest game will be released—I am, of course, talking about Starfield. As I write, my colleagues on GamesRadar and PC Gamer are holed up trying to play as much of it as possible before the embargo lifts and we find out if it’s another Bethesda classic like Elder Scrolls, or closer to the disappointment of Redfall. I’ll be throwing my RTX 4090
at it either way. I just also hope it’s worth spending weeks of my life playing as we head toward Christmas.
Enjoy the issue!
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