The $1,000 price point is really the sweet spot when it comes to building a PC; you can't afford the best of the best, but you can still get good quality parts that can play the latest AAA games. Although Intel is generally considered to be the better value vendor this generation for a variety of reasons, going AMD isn't a bad idea and comes with its own advantages. If you're looking to spend about a grand on a new PC and want to do with AMD hardware, here's how we think you should do it.

The long-awaited Ryzen 7000X3D series is here, and everyone agrees that the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the fastest CPU for gaming... but by how much? That's a tough question to answer because the reviews are all over the place. Some publications found that the 7950X3D was barely any faster than Intel's Core i9-13900K, while others found larger margins of over 10%. It's not like reviewers are testing completely different games, and in non-gaming benchmarks like Cinebench R23, the scores are about the same across the board, give or take a percentage point.

Announced back at CES in January, AMD's Ryzen 7040HS APUs using the Phoenix chip have been delayed to April in order to "ensure the best possible user experience". We expected to see laptops using these APUs arrive sometime this month but it seems we won't see them for at least another few weeks. There are several other members in the Ryzen 7000 mobile family, but it seems the delay has been limited to 7040HS chips, though most other laptop chips using the Ryzen 7000 branding are refreshes of older Ryzen 5000, and 6000 APUs rather than completely new processors, since AMD has made its naming scheme very confusing.

Now that Intel and AMD's latest CPUs both support DDR5, a new era in memory has begun. However, that doesn't mean DDR4 is all in the past. Intel's 12th- and 13th-generation CPUs support DDR4, as do AMD's more affordable Ryzen 5000 CPUs, which are a popular choice for anyone on a budget that's looking for good value.

Intel has been facing fierce competition ever since 2019 when AMD launched CPUs using the Zen 2 architecture. The Ryzen 9 3950X made Intel's high-end Core i9-9900K much less impressive, Threadripper 3000 was far superior to Intel's aging workstation lineup, and Epyc Rome server CPUs began to eat away at Xeon's vast market share. For nearly four years, AMD has been the champion of raw compute power, but Intel at last has been able to fire back and retake the Cinebench world record with its 56-core Xeon W9-3495X workstation chip.

The GPU is perhaps the most exciting part of a gaming PC: it provides the power necessary to increase resolutions, visual detail settings, and can easily be upgraded generation after generation. It's also the traditional arena where Nvidia and AMD duke it out for commercial and technological supremacy (though the fight has been shifting to the datacenter in recent years). These two companies have often fought tooth and nail every generation, sometimes producing graphics cards that aren't merely great, but truly decisive in changing the direction of the industry.

Streaming has seen has exponential growth over the last few years. Twitch alone has millions of active streamers with more on the rise in other platforms like YouTube, Facebook Gaming, and more. But streaming games requires a certain set of hardware, and some parts are better than others. We've selected the best parts you need for a single streaming PC using Intel's 13th-generation platform; no dual desktop shenanigans required.

Installing a new graphics card (GPU) is the single most impactful upgrade you can make to improve the overall gaming performance of a PC. The 2020s haven't been particularly kind to PC enthusiasts due to the ongoing global chip shortage. While it's now possible to get your hands on the best graphics cards on the market, they're much more expensive than they ought to be. Still, upgrading your GPU is sometimes necessary, though thankfully, the installation process is pretty simple. We'll walk you through it step by step.

Ever since 2019 when Ryzen 3000 launched, AMD has struggled with Intel for the gaming crown, which has traded hands multiple times in recent years. But today, it's back in AMD's hands once again with the launch of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 9 7900X3D, the first Ryzen 7000 CPUs with 3D V-Cache technology. The 16-core and 12-core CPUs are primarily focused on gaming but can also be used for core-intensive workloads, though the regular 7950X and 7900X are slightly more suitable and are cheaper.

Despite the launch of AMD's new Ryzen 7000 CPUs, Intel is managing to keep up and offer enticing options for the entire PC market. While Intel's high-end Core i9-13900K and Core i7-13700K are certainly fast CPUs and are great for top-end PCs, they're not really required to make a PC that's worthy of being called premium. In this guide, we'll show you what kind of components you're going to want when building an Intel gaming PC using the company's latest 13th-generation hardware.

It's a bit of an open secret that AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs aren't selling very well due to a variety of factors, one of which is the high buy-in price for the AM5 platform. AMD 600 series motherboards and the DDR5 RAM they require are more expensive than hardware from previous generations, resulting in a price increase that's most noticeable on midrange Ryzen 7000 builds. In order to counteract this, AMD is offering up to a $125 discount for buyers who purchase a Ryzen 7000 CPU, motherboard, and DDR5 memory between February 27 and April 1.

Although Cooler Master is primarily known for its CPU air coolers and AIO liquid coolers (it's in the company's name after all), it's also invested in other ventures like gaming chairs. Its Caliber lineup has been available for a few years now and Cooler Master is adding three new members to the lineup: the Caliber X2, the Caliber R3, and the Caliber E1.

Random-access memory (RAM) is more than just a number on a spec sheet. Memory is one of the most important pieces of hardware that goes into a build and the type of memory kit has a huge impact on your system's overall performance in gaming, productivity tasks, and more. A lot of different manufacturers regularly release new memory kits with different speeds, timings, and capacities, making the overall process of going through seemingly endless models of RAM sticks a time-consuming task. But since it can't be overlooked, we're here to help you find the best DDR4 RAM kit for your system.

The new Intel 13th-generation Raptor Lake CPUs are now official and hit the shelves on October 20. Although 13th-generation CPUs suffered from supply problems soon after launch, it seems that those issues have been resolved. Most Raptor Lake chips are selling at or even under MSRP. Here's where you can go to grab yourself a new 13th-generation CPU.

Two of AMD's new Ryzen 7000X3D V-Cache chips are due to launch on the 28th: the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. As is tradition, someone with access to one of these chips pre-launch accidentally uploaded a Geekbench 5 benchmark result, with some interesting results. The 7950X3D showed only similar single-threaded performance as well as lower multi-threaded performance to the regular 7950X. Although this benchmark seems to reveal something we should be concerned about with Ryzen 7000X3D, it actually shows the kind of performance we'd expect.

Most people tend to prioritize choosing the best CPUs and the best graphics card over anything else while building a PC. The decision of picking the best PC case is often overlooked and is usually considered an afterthought. While the core components like the CPU, GPU, motherboard, etc. are important for the build, the PC case is perhaps the one that should be picked first. A chassis is more than just a box to put your PC components and hide the cables. Not only does it give an identity to your build, but it also plays a crucial role in determining what components can fit inside. Not to mention, it also influences factors like thermals, noise levels, and more. In this article, we'll try to break down a few important things and tell you how to pick a PC case.

USB or ‘Universal Serial Bus’ is one of the oldest and most popular interfaces today. While it was initially introduced as a computer port, it is now seen on almost every single piece of tech including smartphones, gaming consoles, cameras, etc. in some form or the other. The main objective of making USB was to provide a standardized connection of peripherals to PCs. Today, USB stands true to its name, thanks to its wide acceptance and a broad variety of supported hardware and software. Let's take a look at the brief history of USB as well as list all the various types of connectors and standards.

Picking the right processor for your PC mostly depends on what you plan on using the computer for. Whether you have a large or small budget, you might be surprised by how fast cheap CPUs are. Under the right conditions, a midrange or even low-end chip can provide a similar gaming experience to one that's much more expensive.

If you're in the market to build a new gaming PC, then you just landed on the right page. We already have a couple of other PC guides including one for the enthusiast gaming PC build and for an Intel-based streaming PC build. Today, we're going to be taking a look at some of the best PC parts you can grab on the market for a mainstream gaming PC build. These are the components we recommend now at the start of 2023 to anyone who's looking to put together a decent gaming rig that balances price and performance.

You just bought a new processor, a shiny new motherboard, and a new graphics card (that probably set you back quite a bit sadly). Great! What's next? Grabbing all the new components and putting them together to build a new computer. The first thing you need to do is toss that CPU on the motherboard to bring your PC to life. Installing a CPU is like putting the brains into your computer. Fortunately, it's a fairly simple task and there's no need to stress. We're here to guide you through the process to make sure everything's in place. In this guide, we'll take you through each step and explain how to install a CPU on the motherboard.