Home//PC Pro/January 2023/In This Issue
PC Pro|January 2023Never mind the brand, it’s the price that matters“You know what?” I said to Marcus, the man behind YouTube technology channel PC Centric. “I feel sorry for AMD.” We were chatting on our way to a launch event for Philips’ new gaming monitors, but it was also the day when the first benchmark results were released for Intel’s mighty 13th gen chips (see p52).Marcus, it’s fair to say, had less sympathy. “Why feel sorry for a huge company that hasn’t got its pricing right?” he retorted, genuinely surprised. And he had a point. I still think of AMD as the underdog, but in the past decade it’s frequently led the market for outright speed, consistently delivering on its chip fabrication promises where Intel has struggled. From a market cap of $1.5 billion a decade ago, AMD is now…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023Crypto’s climate changeSince cryptocurrencies and blockchain first took off, true believers in the technology have faced a number of tough questions: is the currency stable? And how can we avoid scams?But arguably the most stinging attack has been over its energy consumption. The way cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin verify transactions and generate new virtual coins is by having computer systems crunch through complex maths to solve the “hash” for a given transaction. Cryptographically, it’s very clever, and means that there isn’t any one person in control of a Bitcoin central bank. The downside is that it’s energy-intensive, and today there are entire server farms around the world, whirring away, “mining” crypto.In fact, according to one estimate from Cambridge University’s Centre for Alternative Finance, Bitcoin mining alone is currently consuming around…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023The A-ListPREMIUM LAPTOPSApple MacBook Pro 14inStunning creative power from £1,899from apple.com/ukAlongside its 16in sibling, this is simply the world’s best laptop for demanding users. The amount of power on tap via the M1 Pro or M1 Max processor is staggering, and it’s backed up by a terrific screen and stunning battery life. With all the ports you could ask for, the only negatives are its relative bulk (especially compared to the Air) and high price.REVIEW Issue 328, p58ALTERNATIVESDell XPS 15 (2022)Surely the best Windows all-rounder money can buy, with a slim design, gaming potential and plenty of power courtesy of Intel’s 12th gen Core processors. And the AMOLED panel is gorgeous. From £1,950 from dell.co.ukREVIEW Issue 337, p54Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022A truly gorgeous design in eye-catching powder blue. It’s expensive,…24 min
PC Pro|January 2023ISPs must deliver, deliver, deliverBarry Collins pines for the days when computer magazines were thicker than junior ministers. Send condolences to barry@mediabc.co.uk.@bazzacollinsWhen I started working on PC Pro nearly 25 years ago, we had a bit of a stand-off with the Royal Mail. In short, we had to cap the number of pages in the magazine because it had grown so thick that posties were struggling to get it through letterboxes. (I think it’s fair to say Tim would give one of his kidneys for a problem like that now.)Now, it’s the broadband providers moaning about the heft of things they must deliver. Apparently, Netflix, Amazon, Google and the like are weighing down their networks with so much traffic that – in addition to us consumers paying a fee for data delivery – the…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Readers’ pollThis poll clearly touched a nerve, with almost a hundred responses across Facebook and Twitter. And it’s clear that the 5-6-year mark is the sweet spot, even if many people – like Lise Smith – won’t cling on to them for the whole time. “I expect my laptop to still be in good working order when I trade up after three to four years for a harder, better, faster, stronger (lighter weight, shinier) version,” she wrote. “So I expect them to ‘last’ longer, but not on my desk.”Adam Dunlop put his finger on one of the key reasons laptops are lasting longer. “Cheap, larger SSDs have made an enormous difference to longevity,” he wrote on Twitter. And replaceable batteries are a must. “For my past two laptops I went for…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023The homework hacker’s happy endingBack in 2020, my school used a few online learning platforms that allowed professors and teachers to assign homework to students. I, as a lazy developer, wanted to spend more time playing games and writing code, especially when everyone was spending their time at home because of lockdown. I succeeded in hacking our homework system and I was caught – but it didn’t turn out badly for anyone involved.The back storyLet’s set the scene. In 2018, my school introduced a new online homework platform for students. It was called HegartyMaths, and it did a lot. It was fairly simple: teachers chose a topic to set for us as homework, we got a 10 - to 15-minute tutorial/informational video on the subject (and on which we had to write notes while…8 min
PC Pro|January 2023Switching routesIn most simple Ethernet setups, client devices plug directly into the router, or into a socket on a mesh station or extender. This is fine and dandy, until you run out of ports. However, it’s easy to add more physical connectors to your network with a basic Ethernet switch.A switch is a simple box with a row of Ethernet ports at the front: one of these needs to be connected to a port on the router, and then you can plug anything you like into the other ports. Through the combined cleverness of IP and the Ethernet standards, the router can address and manage clients “through” the switch as if they were directly connected. You can even daisy-chain switches together to distribute more ports over a wider area.A typical office…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023The motherboard differenceAMD’s AM4 socket has served for five years across five CPU generations, four architectures, 125+ processors and 500+ motherboard designs. It’s high time for a new socket, unimaginatively dubbed AM5, which also means a refreshed series of motherboards. Higher-end boards will be based around AMD’s X670 and X670E chipsets, with B650E and B650 likely to be the mainstay of budget systems.Socket AM5 motherboards will expose up to 24 lanes of PCIe 5.0 to the user, with an additional four lanes to connect to the chipset (less expensive motherboards can use a PCIe 4.0 connection to the chipset). AMD also supports PCIe lane bifurcation to carve a connection into different allocations (turning an x8 slot into two x4 interfaces, for instance, which is very helpful for SSDs). Additionally, all of AMD’s…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023AMD Ryzen 7 7700XSCOREPRICE £358 (£429 inc VAT) from scan.co.ukIt can feel like AMD’s Ryzen 9 chips get all the love, but ignore the Ryzen 7 7700X at your peril: it just might be the best AMD CPU ever produced for the masses.Its greatest skill is versatility. Take gaming, where it went toe to toe with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which has substantially more L3 cache in an effort to give it a gaming boost. And it even held up well against Intel’s i9-13900K, sold as offering the “world’s best gaming experience”With eight full-performance cores and 16 threads, along with a boost clock of 5.4GHz, it’s impressive to see the 7700X matching the i9-12900K for single-core performance in Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23, even if it falls far behind the i9-13900K. And while…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Intel 13th gen Core desktop processorsIntel’s 12th generation Alder Lake processors brought the biggest change in the Core architecture since the range’s launch in 2008, with an ARM-like division into “big” Performance cores (P-cores) and “little” Efficiency cores (E-cores). Alder Lake was a huge success, largely outperforming AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs, only for AMD to retake the lead with the Ryzen 7000 series (see p44).There’s nothing so revolutionary about this 13th generation of Core chips, codenamed Raptor Lake, yet thanks to a mix of frequency increases, extra cache and improvements to DDR5 throughput, the end result is still dramatic: Intel claims a 15% improvement in single-threaded performance and 41% for multithreaded performance. Claims that our tests largely confirm.While Intel has released only three unlocked “K” chips so far, the family will extend to 22 desktop…7 min
PC Pro|January 2023Intel Core i7-13700KSCOREPRICE £417 (£500 inc VAT)from scan.co.ukWhat does an extra £120 buy you if you choose the i7-13700K rather than the i5-13600K? In short, two extra P-cores, with eight to match the eight E-cores that both chips offer. You also benefit from higher boost clocks, with the 13700K topping out at 5.4GHz versus 5.1GHz for the Core i5, while the E-cores can hit 4.2GHz (300MHz higher).Otherwise, it’s a very similar story here to the Core i5, with the i7-13700K delivering superior performance than its equivalent Ryzen chip – here, the Ryzen 7 7700X – in both single-threaded and multithreaded tasks. Intel is charging more for its processor, with the 7700X costing £429, but remember that you can buy the Core i7-13700KF for £480 if you don’t need integrated graphics. Either way,…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Intel Arc A770 Limited EditionSCOREPRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT)from ebuyer.comIt’s a moment the gaming world has been waiting for. When the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition went on sale on 12 October, a third player not only entered the gaming graphics card market but did so with a genuinely competitive product.Technically, it isn’t the first Intel card to be based on Intel’s Alchemist GPU – the entry-level Arc A380 saw a limited release in China earlier this year – but the A770 is the first true gaming card by Intel, along with the Arc A750, which I review opposite.Alchemist insideThe architecture powering Alchemist cards is called Xe-HPG, or High Performance Graphics. It’s closely related to the Iris Xe (Xe-LP) graphics found in laptops, but there are numerous changes to tune the Xe architecture for…7 min
PC Pro|January 2023Dell XPS 13 (9315)SCOREPRICE As reviewed, £837 (£1,004 inc VAT)from dell.co.ukDell is clearly battling demons when it comes to the XPS 13. It knows that tweaks to the formula are no longer enough in the face of brilliant competition, whether it’s the Huawei MateBook X Pro (see issue 338, p54) we reviewed last month or the Dynabook Portégé X30L-K-108 opposite. It tried the radical approach with the divisive XPS 13 Plus (see issue 337, p52), but this update is more modest.The exterior is little changed from any XPS 13 model of the past decade, with the biggest change being a purple-blue colour option that Dell calls Umber. Open it up, however, and a redesigned interior replaces the carbon fibre keyboard palm rest with sleek aluminium that helps hands glide over its surface with…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Portus E-Pro AIO-202SCOREPRICE £624 (£749 inc VAT)from portusdigital.comThis is the first time we’ve featured British firm Portus in PC Pro, having been lured in with the promise of an all-in-one “powered by the 12th generation Intel Core processor at prices half those of Dell’s equivalent models”. It refers specifically to the OptiPlex 7400 series, which costs over £2,000 inc VAT, but a fairer comparison is the OptiPlex 5400, where a similar spec still costs almost £1,000. And that’s with a 256GB SSD to the 512GB unit Portus provides.So while it isn’t a 50% saving, we’ll take £250. And there are other reasons to choose Portus over Dell and its ilk. Unlike so many retailers, the British company takes its environmental impact seriously: you can send your packaging back to Portus free of…5 min
PC Pro|January 2023Google Pixel 7 ProSCOREPRICE 128GB, £708 (£849 inc VAT)from store.google.comGoogle’s Pixel phones have generally been solid mid-range handsets, but with this year’s offering the company is setting its sights higher. The Pixel 7 Pro aims to deliver the kind of quality and speed you would expect of a flagship phone from Apple and Samsung, but for a significantly lower price.It’s certainly achieved the latter goal. Launching at £849 (with 128GB of storage and 12GB of RAM), the Pixel 7 Pro costs considerably less than an Apple iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The question is, can it compete with them?Bright beginningsThere are three colour options for the Pixel 7 Pro, namely Snow (white), Obsidian (black) and a tasteful grey-green that Google is calling Hazel. I don’t love the design; the glossy…7 min
PC Pro|January 2023Apple Watch UltraSCOREPRICE £708 (£849 inc VAT) from apple.com/ukIf you thought the Apple Watch was an expensive accessory, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But while the £849 Watch Ultra is distinctly pricey, at least there are no big-ticket designer variants to worry about. You pick one of the standard straps, pay the standard price, and that’s it.That’s not to say the straps are dull. You can use any 44/45mm strap you like, but stock options include the ribbed rubber Ocean band, the Velcro Trail Loop, and the hook-fastening Alpine loop, available in a range of tasteful or eye-catching colours, to suit your style.Aside from colour choices, the most noticeable thing about the Apple Watch Ultra is its size. It has a display of almost two inches that sticks out a little from…5 min
PC Pro|January 2023How to choose the perfect M.2 SSD for you1 Do I want an internal or external drive?We’ve reviewed internal drives here, although with an external adapter you can use a USB drive instead. While USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds are considerably faster than previous generations, they’re not as quick as internal drives by a long shot. USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x1 runs at up to 10Gbits/sec, which works out at around 1,250MB/sec, a fraction of the maximum speeds of the latest SSDs. So why bother?External drives are useful if you need to move data from one computer to another, or you want to take a secure backup of files, storing the drive in a different location or even a safe. External drives are also useful for devices that are hard to upgrade, such as laptops.There’s a big disadvantage:…9 min
PC Pro|January 2023CRUCIAL P3 PLUSSCOREPRICE 1TB, £83 (£100 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs3Although it has a similar name to the Crucial P3, the P3 Plus is a slightly different beast. Here, the drive has been upgraded to a PCI-E Gen4 interface, up from the Gen 3 interface on the standard P3.Claimed read and write figures have been improved to 5,000MB/sec and 3,000MB/sec respectively. That means the benchmark results are better, although not necessarily by as much as you might expect.In the AS SSD sequential test, the P3 Plus managed read speeds of 4,267MB/sec and write speeds of 3,344MB/sec, which puts it well above the P3. Things are closer in the Random test, with the P3 Plus scoring 2,003MB/sec read speeds and 2,588MB/sec write speeds: only fractionally ahead of the P3.Turn to the PCMark 10 benchmarks and…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023SSD sizes explainedAll of the M.2 drives that we’ve included are 2280 drives, which are the most common type you’ll find, but there are a host of other physical drive sizes out there. So what are the differences? Quite simply, the figures explain the key dimensions of the drive: the first two numbers are the width of the drive in millimetres, and the second number is the length in millimetres.So, our 2280 drives are 22mm wide and 80mm long. This is the most common size, allowing the most room for memory chips, so capacities tend to be higher at a lower cost. It’s not the only type of SSD, though.The other common formats are 2260 (60mm long) and 2242 (42mm long), with the even smaller 2230 (30mm long) size starting to become…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023SAMSUNG 980 PROSCOREPRICE 1TB, £119 (£143 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs7It was one of the first PCI-E Gen4 drives and the fastest drive that you could buy for a while, but the Samsung 980 Pro no longer has that title. A shame, really, given that it’s still on sale for such a premium price. In fact, it’s the most expensive drive per gigabyte here, apart from the special edition Seagate FireCuda Beskar Ingot.We’ve reviewed the 1TB version, although it’s also available in 250GB (too small to be of much use), 500GB and 2GB versions.When it was first launched, the Samsung 980 Pro was one of the most powerful drives available. With its 1GB SDRAM cache and high quoted throughputs, this drive can’t be called slow. Indeed, it can still put a shift in, as…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023WD BLACK SN750SCOREPRICE 1TB, £64 (£77 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs10It’s incredible that the WD Black SN750 is still around. Launching back in 2019, this drive has been around for a long time in technology terms. The reason that it’s still available is that this was a flagship drive back in the day. Today, based on the PCI-E Gen3 standard, it’s slower than the competition, yet for an older computer or those looking for a budget drive, it’s still a good buy.At its time of launch, the drive’s specifications indicated that it was pushing the limits of what the PCI-E 3.0 interface could achieve. Our results show that this is still true. In our sequential benchmark, the drive managed 3,071MB/sec in the read test and 1,828MB/sec in the write test.Moving to the random test,…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023WD BLUE SN570SCOREPRICE 1TB, £62 (£74 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs13The previous generation of this drive, the WD Blue SN550, was something of a bargain: pretty fast, but great value. It’s a trick the WD Blue SN570 again manages to pull off, mostly outclassing its older, higher-rated competition.We tested the 1TB model, although this drive is also available in 250GB, 500GB and 2TB models. None has – nor requires – a heatsink.As with its predecessor, this drive is a PCI-E Gen3 model, which limits how fast it can be. That’s not necessarily a problem, as its rated read and write speeds are below even what PCI-E Gen3 can offer.Like many cheaper SSDs, the Blue SN570 doesn’t have a DRAM cache, using SLC caching and HMB instead (see p83). In our sequential benchmarks, the drive…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023View from the LabsIt’s almost impossible to find a new computer or laptop running a mechanical hard disk. The technology now seems to be relegated to hard disk TV recorders, such as Sky Q, and NAS drives. Everyone else has gone solid state, and that’s for good reason: the drives are faster, use less power, take up less room and make no noise.With the move has come the issue of more choice. Mechanical hard disks were, at least, simple. Sure, there were some variations in speed and transfer rates, but looking back, the actual differences between drives were minor. For the most part, you could make your decision based on the capacity you needed, and chuck in another hard disk when that filled up.For a long time, SSD owners would look at the…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Avast Premium Business SecuritySCOREPRICE 25 devices, £841 per year exc VATfrom avast.comSMBs that want endpoint protection with an emphasis on simplicity will find Avast’s cloud-managed business security solutions could fit the bill nicely. It’s easy to control costs, too, with Avast offering a range of versions covering home and small offices with up to ten users, plus Essential, Premium and Ultimate versions which can all protect up to 100 devices.We reviewed Premium Business Security (PBS), which takes all the protection services from the Essential version and adds removable device controls plus Avast’s built-in VPN service for securing workstation internet connections. The Ultimate version includes Windows patch management and increases yearly costs for 25 devices to £1,023.Installation choices are plentiful. You can download the Windows and macOS agents and place them in a central…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023WithSecure Elements Endpoint ProtectionSCOREPRICE 1-24 devices, £28 each per yearexc VAT from withsecure.comFinnish company F-Secure offers separate consumer and business security solutions and has relaunched its enterprise endpoint protection portfolio under the new WithSecure brand. The underlying product family remains largely the same, with the Elements Security Center cloud portal providing a central point to manage them all.The Elements Endpoint Protection (EPP) module on review can look after Windows and macOS workstations, Windows, Linux and Citrix servers, plus Exchange and SharePoint hosts. Along with malware protection, EPP applies web content security and removable device controls, and the price includes patch management for Windows OSes as standard.EPP’s DeepGuard feature exposes zero-day attacks and unknown malicious programs by analysing file contents, system change attempts and program behaviour. An EPP Premium subscription increases yearly device costs…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023Attack surface managementAttack surface management? That sounds like something the SAS might get involved in…It does, but in this case we’re talking about the world of networks and cybersecurity. The “attack surface” is the sum of all possible entry points that a threat actor could use to gain unauthorised access to systems, networks or data. For a typical business this might include devices, websites, servers, software platforms and even people. And every time you add a server, deploy a new application, set up a VPN or enrol more users, the surface gets bigger.So it’s an umbrella term for all the different sorts of attack vector?Not quite. Vectors are methods that attackers use to gain access, such as phishing, malware, API exploits or zero-day vulnerabilities. The attack surface is the target against which…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023“With a NAS, it’s best to replace before you have a problem rather than after one has occurred”Network attached storage (NAS) devices are wonderful things. Back in the day, I used to run Windows Server on my network, and it did a good job. Then things got more complicated with Active Directory, which was fine for a large corporate but added a lot of complexity to the SME marketplace. Microsoft, in its ongoing attempt to force every square peg into a round hole, made a Home Server. But complexity was always going to be an issue.NAS devices have been around for a while, of course, and many vendors had a go. Starting with straight storage, they grew into application platform servers with a rich array of additional tools and services. It started with the obvious ones – file server, a spot of DNS and maybe some DHCP…14 min
PC Pro|January 2023“Whether you’re investing in the firm or the tech, always kick its tyres”This year we’ve seen three high-profile corporate scandals with larger-than-life CEOs in the dock facing serious allegations, and it’s tech companies that are at the centre of all the action: Theranos, Wirecard and Autonomy. All three CEOs have been charged with fraud.The former CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, has had her day in court, been found guilty of fraud and is facing up to 20 years in prison. Holmes touted Theranos as a health technology company, raised $700 million, featured in Forbes and defrauded a catalogue of wealthy families, as well as a number of prominent statesmen.The payment processing firm Wirecard’s former CEO Markus Braun languishes in jail after his bail was revoked. Braun is awaiting trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accounting manipulation. But that’s the…8 min
PC Pro|January 2023Hot stuffI wasn’t terribly surprised by the Dell’s operating temperature: it’s an older model with a CPU dating from the days of Centrino, and it had a huge processing task chewing through over 175 Windows 7 updates, having been hidden in a cupboard for the past five years. A healthy hot breath was emitted steadily as the updates rolled in, the flat but stylish Dell PSU from that era doing excellent duty as a foot-warmer through the day.The real surprise came with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X machine. This has two USB-C ports that are ready to accept the PSU in either port. While I associate USB-C with fast charging, I wasn’t expecting that tiny little connector to pass enough amps to make its PSU the hottest I think…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Settling the offside debate… with science!Tottenham’s Son Heung-Min’s cross - with the slightest brush of a teammate’s head – swung into the goal ten minutes into a match against Fulham in September, but VAR revealed Harry Kane was offside and the goalwasdisallowed. Yet more drama unfolded in the 90th minute, when a Spurs goal was again disallowed after a VAR review.Welcome to the wild world of video assistant referees (VAR). While those calls might have been correct, recent controversies prove that’s not always the case – but AI, 3D motion capture and virtual reality could all help.The Premier League took its time before introducing technology to aid referees with line and goal calls, but finally introduced VAR systems in the 2019-20 season for some offsides, goals and penalties. That was welcomed by some, derided by…7 min
PC Pro|January 2023CONTRIBUTORSPaul OckendenWe normally consider hot hardware to be a good thing, but as Paul explains, heat output often directly ties to energy input. He shows how to spot the greediest devices from p111.David LudlowThe easiest way to breathe life into an old laptop is to insert an SSD, ideally an M.2 SSD. David has spent the past month testing all the major models for speed, and delivers his verdict from p78.Jon HoneyballAfter six years of loyal service, Jon decided it was time to replace his ageing Synology NAS server with a shiny new model, and even he’s surprised by all the features it has to offer. Find out why on p108.Dr Rois Ni ThuamaWhat lessons can tech investors learn from the stories of Autonomy, Theranos and Wirecard? Corporate governance expert…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Win for the virtual networksThe move to eSIMs could prove lucrative for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) – companies that run their own networks by leasing capacity from one of the main networks.James Gray uses Tesco Mobile as an example of how an MVNO could benefit from not having to ship little pieces of plastic to consumers to simply join its mobile network. “You could advertise your mobile proposition on your own-brand pizza boxes, and I could scan it and join you,” he said.The eSIM transition could help MVNOs in another lucrative market, too: data roaming. “Previously, MVNOs didn’t really win in roaming,” said Gray. “It was pretty much all cost for them.”This is because MVNO customers would go abroad and roam, costing the MVNO in fees paid to the oversees network to connect…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Meme culture is not only alive and well, it’s funnyDick Pountain regrets that this column has no room to display his four favourite memes, but you can download them at pcpro.link/339meme Email dick@dickpountain.co.ukI just checked and it was nine years ago (see issue 230, p26) that I devoted this column to Richard Dawkins’ theory of “memes” – ideas that act like genes by propagating from mind to mind, perhaps mutating so that some survive while others perish. Examples of such memes, going back to his original definition in The Selfish Gene, include religions and political ideologies. Nine years ago I said meme theory interested me, but I only partly accepted Dawkins’ argument: important ideas such as “liberalism” and “Islam” are too big and baggy to be treated as single coherent things. I did, however, sympathise with him over the…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Star letterI read your article about Google Sheets/Docs (see issue 338, p42) having spent six months being forced to use Google over Microsoft. Where you want people to contribute to the same document and see the changes in real-time, then Google was great.What I used Excel for (over Google Sheets) was to have an old version of a file and then use some lookup functions to see whether the latest version of the spreadsheet had been updated. I never found that I could get a link from spreadsheet 2 to spreadsheet 1. Yes, you can copy the old document over to the new document in Google Sheets, but I never worked out how to do links to other documents.And there were no hints in your feature to help me out, either.…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023PC PRO Christmas Gift GuideHUAWEI WATCH GT3£159 FROM CURRYS.CO.UKIf 2023 will finally be the year you adhere to a fitness regime, the Huawei Watch GT3 is the wearable you need. This responsive watch is packed with an impressive array of health-tracking tools and offers truly remarkable battery life of up to two weeks, particularly if you opt for the larger 46mm version.Aside from supporting more than 100 sports (both indoor and outdoor), the watch’s array of biometric sensors track heart rate, SpO2, skin temperature, stress and sleep. Huawei has given its optical heart-rate monitor an upgrade this time around, and the results are impressive: changes are detected quickly during intense interval training sessions, and accuracy rivals that of dedicated running watches.There’s support for five satellite navigation systems as well, which should make for more…16 min
PC Pro|January 2023Switch to ABILITY OFFICE 11 FOR FREEThe best-known office suite is Microsoft’s – but it’s costly, and if you want to keep up with the latest features you need to sign up for a recurring subscription. But there’s no need to pay for pro-grade productivity apps. This month’s PC Pro includes a full, perpetual licence for Ability Office 11 Standard (see p66). It’s the latest release of the popular suite, which comprises a trio of fully featured office tools. In fact, we used it to write this feature – and if you’ve used Microsoft Office you can jump right in, as Ability Office maintains compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats and interface conventions. Here’s our guide to some of the most compelling reasons to switch to Ability Office 11 Standard.1 COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER OFFICE SUITESIf you’ve…9 min
PC Pro|January 2023PoE: I got the powerAlmost every consumer networking appliance comes with a little power brick. For businesses with a busy network infrastructure, all these power supplies add up to a lot of points of potential failure – and it’s not always convenient to deliver mains power to every location.The solution is the Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard. Actually, this is a collection of standards: the original PoE specification was published nearly 20 years ago as IEEE 802.3af-2003, but today the most popular variants are 802.3at-2009 and 802.3bt-2018, commonly known as PoE+ and PoE++.The two systems work in the same way, allowing devices to be powered through a standard Ethernet socket, while simultaneously sending and receiving data over the same cable. Any cable that conforms to Cat5 or greater can be used: PoE+ delivers up…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023AMD Ryzen 5 7600XSCOREPRICE £274 (£329 inc VAT) from scan.co.ukThe Ryzen 5 7600X is the cheapest option in the Zen 4 processor lineup, at £329 for a 6-core, 12-thread CPU with a boost frequency of 5.3GHz. It’s not the same on-paper dynamite as the 7950X, but it’s a competitive entry that becomes even more impressive once you see the performance figuresWith single-core scores of 1,954 and 2,141 in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5, the 7600X smokes its 12th-gen Intel equivalent and edges ahead of the Core i5-13600K: it scored 2,007 and 1,948 respectively. Intel’s chip has a 5% advantage overall in our gaming tests, with the 7600X’s best results coming in Metro Exodus, F1 2022 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Other games don’t fare quite as well, but it’s still a strong…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023AMD Ryzen 9 7950XSCOREPRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from scan.co.ukWhen the Ryzen 9 7950X landed it was hard to argue that it wasn’t the best consumer processor ever made. Fundamental to its success is the switch to TSMC’s 5nm node, which enables the Ryzen 9 7950X to be a 16-core, 32-thread beast with 80MB of cache memory and a boost clock within sight of 6GHz.What’s more, unlike Intel’s turn to big.LITTLE architecture, all 16 of the 7950X’s cores are full performance, which means it runs roughshod through tasks. Before Intel spoiled AMD’s party with its i9-13900K, the 7950X offered best-in-class performance across the board, from raw single - and multicore performance to content creation and gaming.And it’s worth flagging what a huge generational shift the 7950X represents. Take Cinebench R23’s single-core performance, with…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Intel Core i5-13600KSCOREPRICE £317 (£380 inc VAT)from scan.co.ukThe i5-13600K is much more expensive than last year’s equivalent, with the i5-12600K selling for £290. Or consider the KF variant, which doesn’t include graphics, for £260 versus the 13600KF’s price of £355. Intel needed to ramp up performance to justify such a rise, but that’s exactly what it has done.The 13600K has eight E-cores, four more than the 12600K, along with six P-cores. Intel has also increased the P-core clocks by 200MHz to 5.1GHz, then bumped up the E-cores up by 300MHz to achieve a 3.9GHz boost. Naturally, this means the chip will consume more power; the 13600K has a 31W higher MTP than the prior gen, weighing in at 181W.Judging by my tests, the Core i5-13600K is the most impressive Raptor Lake chip…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders EditionSCOREPRICE £1,416 (£1,699 inc VAT)from store.nvidia.comThere’s nothing subtle about Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. It’s a hulking lump of a pixel pusher, and while there are curves to distract from its size it still looks like a satirical plastic model created to skewer GPU makers for the ever-increasing size of their cards. But it’s no model: this is the vanguard for the RTX 40-series and our first taste of Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture.This is a vast GPU that packs in 170% more transistors than even the impossibly chunky GA102 chip that powered the RTX 3090 Ti. And, for the most part, it makes that card look well off the pace. That’s even before you get into the equal mix of majesty and black magic that lies behind the DLSS…11 min
PC Pro|January 2023Intel Arc A750 Limited EditionSCOREPRICE £275 (£330 inc VAT) from ebuyer.comIf you were expecting lowly performance from Intel’s cheaper Arc card, think again: it typically bats at the same average frame rate as the RX 6600 at 1080p. But there are exceptions: Metro Exodus is well optimised for Intel Arc, while Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Far Cry New Dawn prefer AMD’s silicon.Instead it’s at 1440p where the Arc A750 excels. Even in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the Arc A750 edges ahead of the RX 6600. I suspect it’s a combination of architecture and memory – particularly the high memory bandwidth on this card – that puts it on a better footing for QHD gaming. If you’re a fan of ray tracing then take note, as this is an area where the A750 stretches well ahead…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023How to claim your bonus software1 Visit pcprodownload.co.uk. First, enter the issue number (339 this month). Next, enter your email address and the coupon code printed on the cover’s spine (or directly on the front cover of digital issues of the magazine). We’ll then send an email to confirm that your code has been registered. Follow the instructions in the email to access the download area.2 Once you’re in the download area, you can access this month’s bonus software by navigating to the relevant product page and clicking the red Install button. For trial software, freeware and other downloads, click the Install button below the product description, or follow the onscreen instructions (please make sure to read these carefully).3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register button, or follow the instructions on the…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023AOC Q27V5CWSCOREPRICE £275 (£330 inc VAT) from box.co.ukAOC has built its reputation on putting together high-quality monitors for a great price, and that’s exactly what it has done here. What lifts the Q27V5CW apart from previous mainstream AOC products is that it offers USB-C docking along with HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, which is quite remarkable for the price: one obvious competitor is HP’s E27d G4 (see issue 313, p83), which costs almost £500.In terms of panel quality, the AOC is definitely a match for the HP. Both offer a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution across a 27in diagonal, and with 94% coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut coupled with an average Delta E of 0.33 the Q27V5CW is a vibrant offering. If you prefer the sRGB colour space then head into AOC’s (clumsy)…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Google Pixel 7SCOREPRICE 128GB, £499 (£599 inc VAT)from store.google.comThe Pixel 7 brings much of the same goodness as the Pixel 7 Pro (see p72) in a cheaper package. Costing a very reasonable £599 with 128GB of storage, it has the same Tensor G2 chipset and the same Android 13 software, which together add up to a great experience.The design is similar to the Pro’s, with a Gorilla Glass Victus casing, an in-display fingerprint reader and a metal camera band across the back. The display is slightly smaller, at 6.3in, making it more pocketable. The Snow and Obsidian colour schemes return, but in place of Hazel you get the choice of a cool Lemongrass hue.While the OLED screen isn’t quite as stunning as the Pro’s, it still looks rich and colourful, with a…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Apple Watch Series 8SCOREPRICE From £349 (£419 inc VAT) from apple.com/ukAt first it seems the Series 8 upgrades from the Series 7 are so minor that Apple is pushing punters towards the Watch Ultra.There are changes, though. One is a new temperature sensor that will learn your body’s base temperature, and detect variations to a precision of 0.1°C. It’s not clear what you’re supposed to do with this information, however – unless you’re trying to get pregnant, in which case the Watch can advise you when you’re ovulating.Apple has upgraded the gyroscope and accelerometer, so the Watch 8 can detect if the wearer has been in a crash. This could be a life-saving feature, as it automatically alerts the emergency services. So far, though, we’ve mostly heard reports of alerts being mistakenly triggered…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023ADATA LEGEND 840SCOREPRICE 1TB, £117 (£140 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs1Designed for both PC and PS5 use, the Adata Legend 840 has some stiff competition. We’ve reviewed the 1TB model, although it’s also available as a 512GB drive.All drives ship with a heatsink as standard, which the company says keeps the drive 15% cooler. The competition at this price tends to ship with heatsinks, too, so it’s not particularly an Adata advantage.As is required for a drive that supports the PS5, the Adata Legend 840 has a PCI-E Gen4 interface. Here, the specs are just right for the PS5: a claimed read speed of 5,000MB/sec and a write speed of 4,500MB/sec. Both are good in their own right, but the issue here is price.Not as widely available as its competitors, the cheapest we could…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023CRUCIAL P5 PLUSSCOREPRICE 1TB, £97 (£116 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs4At the top of Crucial’s SSD lineup is the P5 Plus. This is a thoroughly modern drive, with some of the fastest throughputs available. We’ve reviewed the 1TB drive, although 500GB and 2TB models are also available.As you might expect from a modern SSD, this M.2 drive uses the PCI-E Gen4 interface, which means that quoted throughputs are 6,600MB/sec read speed and 5000MB/sec write speeds. Both are fast enough that the drive can be used in the PS5, as well as in a PC.As well as these quoted speeds being faster than those for the P3 Plus (another Gen4 drive), the benchmarks show that the P5 Plus is a considerable way ahead for sequential transfers. Scoring 5,492MB/sec write speeds and 4,516MB/sec read speeds, the…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUSSCOREPRICE 1TB, £113 (£136 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs6Once the darling of PC builders everywhere, offering fantastic speeds at lower prices than the Pro range, the 970 Evo was the budget drive to buy. Unfortunately, it’s now relatively expensive, particularly for a PCI-E Gen3 drive.Here, we’ve tested the 1TB version, although it’s also available in 250GB, 500GB and 2TB versions. As with other SSDs, the 250GB version is a little too small to be of use, so we’d avoid that drive and go with at least the 500GB model, if not larger. All versions have a DRAM cache, with the size dependent on the drive.Not only is the 970 Evo Plus expensive for a Gen3 drive, it’s more expensive than PCI-E Gen4 drives, including the WD Black SN850, WD Black SN770 and…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023SEAGATE FIRECUDA 530SCOREPRICE 1TB, £113 (£136 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs6Seagate’s top-of-the-range offering, the FireCuda 530, is built to be a thoroughly modern drive, delivering the fastest read and write speeds via its PCI-E Gen4 interface. We’ve reviewed the 2TB drive here, although it’s also available in 500GB, 1TB and 4TB sizes.Before we get into the performance details, it’s first worth noting that this drive has a huge endurance figure of 2,550TBW for the 2TB drive, while the 1TB drive is 1,275TBW. That’s more than double the industry average of 600TBW for a 1TB drive.While a figure of 600TBW means that a drive will last for as long as you’re likely to need it, having more endurance is particularly important if you’ve got demanding needs, such as for games or video editing, where the…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023WD BLACK SN770SCOREPRICE 1TB, £78 (£94 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs11A new drive, the Black SN770 is the spiritual successor to the ageing WD Black SN750. While they have similar names, the SN770 has more in common with the SN850 than the older drive.For starters, this drive has a PCI-E Gen4 interface, rather than the Gen3 of the SN750. And it costs only a little more than its predecessor.Changing the interface is one thing, but it’s the increase in performance that’s particularly impressive. When running the PCMark 10 benchmarks, we were a little surprised to see that the SN770 topped the table. In fact, we were so surprised that we reran the tests, checked them again, and then reran the benchmarks on the SN850.Our eyes were not deceiving us: the SN770 was faster in…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023WD GREEN SATASCOREPRICE 240GB, £20 (£24 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs14At just £24 for a 240GB drive and £38 for a 480GB drive, the WD Green is certainly cheap for an SSD. Similarly cheap 1TB and 2TB drives can be picked up. There’s a reason for this: it doesn’t use PCI-E at all but the older SATA interface.(Note: this drive isn’t to be confused with the WD Green SN350. Although both models share the “Green” name, the SN350 is an NVMe drive, rather than a SATA one.)That firmly puts this drive at the bottom of the table for every single test we ran, as the SATA interface is so limited and slow. In our sequential test, scores of 524MB/sec read and 442MB/sec write put the drive way down at the bottom.It’s similar for the…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023External drive enclosuresHunt through the accessory pages of your favourite retailer and it doesn’t take long to find the external M.2 SSD enclosures, which turn an SSD into an external drive. That seems like a good way to build fast external storage, but there are a few things to watch out for.First, you need to have the right type of enclosure for the SSD you’re thinking about using. The cheaper enclosures usually only support SATA drives, while the more expensive ones will support faster NVMe drives.Second, you need to make sure that the enclosure you pick will take the right size drive (see “SSD sizes explained”, p86). Most SSDs are 2280 models, so that’s likely the size of enclosure that you need.Watch out for speeds. Most USB-A and USB-C ports top out…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Vipre Endpoint Security CloudSCOREPRICE 25 devices, from £500 per yearexc VAT from vipre.comVipre’s Endpoint Security Cloud (ESC) offers strong protection at a pleasingly low price. Costing around half that of many competing solutions, ESC presents a good spread of features including file, web and email anti-malware scanners, AI behavioural analysis to counter zero-day threats, a client firewall, intrusion detection and even patch management.There are some compromises: Linux, Android and iOS devices are off the menu as ESC supports only Windows and macOS clients. You’ll also have to wait for an endpoint detection and response service as Vipre advised us this is currently undergoing beta testing.Deployment is straightforward. You can use the ESC web portal to email links to users or download the installer for manual setup. Either way, the agent takes ten minutes…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023IDrive RemotePC EnterpriseSCOREPRICE Enterprise, first year, 100 devices,£412 exc VAT from remotepc.comIDrive has been our cloud backup provider of choice for many years thanks to its superb value and ease of use. Many competing solutions use confusing licence plans that charge per concurrent technician session, but RemotePC keeps it simple: yearly costs are based only on the number of computers you want to support.We reviewed the top-level RemotePC Enterprise, which has a first year cost of £412 for 100 computersg and unlimited users. It takes everything from the Team version and adds computer group organisation, user roles and access permissions and Windows Group Policy support for large-scale deployments.Installation is undemanding. After creating an administrative account in the web portal, you add more users, or technicians, and decide on access permissions. You can…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023Shrink your attack surface in three steps1. Minimise complexityAs a businesses expands, its IT environment tends to accumulate legacy endpoints and applications – prime targets for attackers. Security processes grow in complexity too, creating more potential for exploitable mistakes. Cut out legacy assets wherever you can, and segment your network to limit the potential for intrusions.2. Know your vulnerabilitiesStatic vulnerability scanning is valuable, but real attackers are more cunning and resourceful than any automated test. Schedule regular penetration testing, and include “red team” exercises to obtain a realistic, adversary’s-eye view of your vulnerabilities.3. Raise awarenessMany compromises start at the social attack surface. Promote awareness of threats, from the shop floor to the boardroom – and support it with upstream security controls. Don’t play the blame game, but embrace “zero-trust” principles to make it as hard as…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023“A good rule of thumb is that if something gets hot, it’s a red flag for energy consumption”For more years than I care to remember, I’ve been using these columns to describe the various measures that I use to manage and optimise my energy usage. I suspect some of you may have glazed over at the time because energy was relatively cheap back then, but things are different now – it’s a totally new energy landscape. I know there’s a price cap, which is helping a bit, but it’s temporary, especially for businesses. And bills for both domestic and business use are higher now than they’ve ever been before. Things are unlikely to get better.So it came as no surprise that over the past month or so several readers have been in touch and asked me to recap some of the things I’ve done over the years…12 min
PC Pro|January 2023“MFA fatigue attacks have been employed to significant effect for the entirety of 2022”Back in September, two hacks involving huge organisations hit the headlines: Uber and Rockstar Games. By way of a memory refresher, Uber was the first to fall, and fall spectacularly.The taxi, food delivery and car rental company suffered what can only be described as an extensive systems hack. The attackers got hold of an external Uber contractor’s login credentials, either through a successful phishing attempt, a credential-stuffing attack (where one leaked set of credentials is used against multiple sites and services to see if any of them match) or, as Uber itself has posited, a purchase from a dark web dealer in such things.What happened next is clearer, as the threat actor himself has boasted about it. It boils down to what could soon become a familiar phrase: MFA fatigue…9 min
PC Pro|January 2023The tiny palmtop with big ideas: Psion Series 5SCOREPRICE £50 from ebay.co.uk (deals may differ)Over the years I’ve used many word processors, from Protext on the Amstrad CPC and Pages on the Mac to iA Writer on the iPad and Word on a PC. I’ve inputted many paragraphs into Google Docs and enjoyed writing books using Scrivener. Yet I invariably return to LibreOffice on my Mac, primarily because I like the comfort of a desktop computer and I have a penchant for open-source software.At the same, however, I’ve long looked for a way of writing on the go that doesn’t involve lugging a large laptop around with me and gives me a proper, physical keyboard. Regular readers may recall that this hunt led me to try the Amstrad NC100 Notepad – a portable Z80-based computer that impressed me…12 min
PC Pro|January 2023Automating offsideAs we’ve seen, using VAR to judge offside calls has two complaints: poor viewing angles and frame rates lead to bad calls, and the analysis can take too long. A solution is on the way: semi-automated offside technology (SAOT).Three years in the making, the SAOT system pairs artificial intelligence, real-time sensors and smart cameras to better visualise the position of the ball and players. A sensor known as an inertial measurement unit will be tucked inside match balls, recording data 500 times a second and sending it back to the operations room, with roof-mounted cameras also keeping watch on its position. Those cameras will track more than two dozen points on each player – in particular, swinging limbs that are relevant to offside calls – updating 50 times a second…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Next monthFeaturesBroadband: the fibre upstartsThe switch to fibre doesn’t only mean faster upload and downloads. It’s also a chance to choose a specialist fibre provider that might be perfect for your needs and budget.Revive your dead tech!Lee Grant gets down and dirty with old hardware to explain how to breathe new life into everything from a five-year-old iPad to a laptop that hasn’t booted for years.How to slash your electricity costsCap or no cap, it makes more sense than ever to reduce the amount of electricity all our devices are consuming. Our guide reveals practical ways to do just that.LabsTabletsWhether you’re selecting a gift for someone else or choosing a top-end model for yourself, our comprehensive test will pit all the major models against one another so you can buy with…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Google’s chopping blockThe future of video games was supposed to be in the cloud. Forget the bulky console beneath your television, Google told us way back in (checks notes) 2019, all you need is a controller and an internet connection, and it would stream games right to whatever device you happen to be playing on.The product was Google Stadia, and following the launch Google signed up a number of the world’s biggest publishers to offer their games on the platform, including Ubisoft, the company behind the Assassin’s Creed series, and EA, the company responsible for FIFA.“Our vision for Stadia is simple – one place for all the games we play,” said games industry veteran Phil Spencer, whom Google hired to oversee the launch.Now, just under three years later, Stadia is dead, and…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Apple hangs up on SIM cardsApple’s press events are arguably the biggest dates in the tech calendar each year. Over the course of an hour or two, the industry looks on as CEO Tim Cook reveals what’s new with the company’s latest hardware – and how the company is reshaping the industry for the year ahead. Because where Apple goes, the rest of the tech industry normally follows.The events themselves are not only about new products, either – with a flick of the Keynote slide, Apple will rewrite expectations and kill entire industries or product categories. This includes the iMac controversially dropping the floppy drive in 1998, the MacBook Air killing the optical disc drive in 2008, and most notoriously of all, 2016’s announcement that the iPhone 7 would be launching without a traditional 3.5mm…6 min
PC Pro|January 2023Demos shouldn’t just be an artist’s impressionNicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. She doesn’t want a robot butler. Where would she put it? Imagine opening the cupboard and finding that.@njkobieMeta, the company formerly known as Facebook, blew minds in October with a demo of its virtual reality (VR) system that included avatars with legs. That this was deemed worth demoing is evidence that Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for our digital lives is truly the dullest possible version of the future.In the demo, Zuckerberg’s avatar jumped up and down. On the other side of the screen, the digital self of Aigerim Shorman, “general manager for avatars and identity”, did a snazzy ninja-style kick. As previous demos had rendered avatars as weird floating legless beasts, the legs were deemed exciting enough to prompt headlines in The Guardian, which…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Readers’ commentsRepurposing old kitWhat should Paul Ockenden do with all his old kit (see issue 337, p113)? Here on the Isle of Wight we have been collecting old kit to furnish Ukrainian refugees with the wherewithal to stay in better contact with family back home and support the kids with their education online.Most of the refugees are mothers arriving with a backpack and children. They all arrive with a mobile phone (of sorts), but that isn’t enough for the children’s education or filling in complex forms. We have so far collected and supplied 75 laptops to refugee families.I’m not aware of many similar projects on the mainland and we cannot offer support at a distance. Do any readers run such projects? To find out more, or get in touch, please go…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023PC GAMES FOR THE Christmas WISHLISTCRUSADER KINGS III is a demonically detailed strategy game set in the Middle Ages, where you must bully, connive, charm and (frankly) breed your way to dominance. It looks stunning, but the learning curve is steep – you’ll need the Christmas break to watch enough YouTube tutorial videos to give your poor liege even half a chance of getting through the first year without a dagger in his back.TWO POINT CAMPUS s a much friendlier challenge. Here, you’re charged with building university campuses, ensuring the students have sufficient lab equipment, library books and posters on the wall to keep them stumping up for their fees. It looks cutesy, but you’ll need a first-class brain to balance the books while maintaining exam pass rates. The superb tutorial will help you swot…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Why Ethernet just won’t dieWe live in a wireless age. The latest Wi-Fi 6E connections let us stream hundreds of megabytes a second through the air – and next year we expect to see the first Wi-Fi 7 chipsets, promising speeds of up to 40Gbits/sec.With all this data swirling around, traditional cabled connections may seem old-fashioned to the point of obsolescence. But while Ethernet can’t match the go-anywhere convenience of wireless networking, it still has several advantages over Wi-Fi.Five reasons why Ethernet is better than wireless1 You can’t beat Ethernet for simplicity. Just run a cable from one socket to another and boom, the connection is made. Assuming the devices at either end are correctly configured then the link speed, addressing and routing should all be sorted out automatically.You don’t need to worry about…10 min
PC Pro|January 2023AMD Ryzen 7000 seriesFlip ahead to p48 and you’ll see our reviews of the four new Ryzen 7000 series processors that AMD has just released, but before you dive in it’s worth taking a broader view. AMD’s Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 processors (the 6000 series are laptop chips) accomplished what was once thought impossible: they unseated Intel’s best in every CPU benchmark, including reaching the top of our list of the best gaming CPUs.But then Intel released its 12th gen Alder Lake chips. Their innovative hybrid x86 architecture, featuring a blend of big Performance cores (P-cores) and little Efficiency cores (E-cores), pushed the company into the lead in all facets of raw performance and even helped reduce its glaring deficiencies in terms of power consumption. But, perhaps most importantly, Alder Lake started a…12 min
PC Pro|January 2023AMD Ryzen 9 7900XSCOREPRICE £483 (£580 inc VAT) from scan.co.ukThe 7900X comes with four fewer cores than the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X flagship, but has a 4.7GHz base clock and a 5.6GHz boost. It also includes 64MB of L3 cache, like the flagship model, and an identical 170W/230W TDP/peak power rating. Despite this, the 7900X is more power-efficient than its predecessors as it chews through workloads faster.It’s an impressive gaming chip, with a 15% boost over the 5900X effectively tying with the i9-12900K and 7950X and only falling behind the 5800X3D and the 13th gen chips. Those results were at 1080p, with all gaps narrowing at 1440p, which is why we prefer the cheaper Ryzen 5 and 7 chips for value.It’s a similar story in multithreaded apps, although naturally the 16-core 7950X has…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Bag a software bargainNorton 360 Premium for £19.99 (10 devices for two years)pcpro.link/norton360We’ve negotiated a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £19.99 compared to the regular £179.99 charge. That buys you two years of cover from the powerful Norton Security suite across ten devices.And because it’s the Premium version, you get a host of extra tools. There’s 75GB of cloud storage for secure backups, plus the full version of Norton Secure VPN, both to protect your identity and provide a way of watching British TV while abroad.Norton Parental Control provides tools to see exactly what your kids are up to on their various devices, and you also get GPS location monitoring for Android and iOS.To round things off, Norton Password Manager generates and stores passwords across all…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Intel Core i9-13900KSCOREPRICE £583 (£700 inc VAT) from scan.co.ukAs you’d expect from the most expensive Raptor Lake chip, the i9-13900K lacks nothing. While it uses the same eight P-cores as the i7-13700K, they can boost to 5.8GHz rather than 5.4GHz. More important still are its eight extra E-cores, with 16 in place to bring the total thread count to a huge 32. Naturally, the E-cores have a slightly higher Turbo clock too, at 4.3GHz to the Core i7’s 4.2GHz.All this extra firepower was reflected in our multithreaded tests, where the i9 dominated its 13th gen siblings. It did face tough competition from the Ryzen 9 7950X, which also has 32 threads but has the advantage of 16 performance cores. Simply put, I found that the 13900K was 3% slower overall, with Intel…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023Scan 3XS VengeanceSCOREPRICE £4,000 (£4,800 inc VAT)from scan.co.ukWe used to run group tests for “Ultimate PCs”, where we let PC manufacturers loose to build a sky’s-the-limit system with no restriction on budget. While those systems were often full of RGB fripperies to give them extra visual impact, Scan’s latest iteration of the 3XS Vengeance is all about cutting-edge power: it couples Intel’s new top-of-the-range Core i9-13900K (see p52) with Nvidia’s new top-of-the-range GeForce RTX 4090 (see p56).The end result is so fast that the only reason we haven’t ripped up our graphs and started again is because I cheated and put the Time Spy Extreme score in rather than Time Spy. For those who are interested, it scored 33,219 in that DirectX 12 benchmark, while a GeForce RTX 3090 typically scores just…7 min
PC Pro|January 2023Dynabook Portégé X30L-K-108SCOREPRICE £1,025 (£1,230 inc VAT)from box.co.ukDynabook pushes its Portégé X30L line with this promise: “Superlight laptop. Heavyweight performance.” It more than delivers on the first half, with this magnesium chassis weighing in at a feather or two over 900g. It really is ludicrously light.This is a robustly built system, too, with the only sign of give being when you twist the lid – and having some flexibility here can help resist knocks. It would be more reassuring if the laptop came with a longer warranty than one year, but at least it’s EMEA-wide cover.Dynabook’s official figures state that the X30L is 17.9mm thick, but this ignores the rubber foot at the rear, which pushes it over the 21mm mark. It’s by no means chubby, but there are sleeker laptops –…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023Your bonus softwareTotal value this month£ 160Ability Office 11 One-PC licence worth £30 ability.comREQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 250MB hard drive space; online registrationAbility Office is a powerful productivity suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool and photo manager.Ability Write looks and feels a lot like Microsoft Word, and can read and write the same files; it has all the formatting options you need, with vector drawing and autoshape tools, indexing, and spelling and grammar checking. It can natively export your finished documents as PDFs, too.Ability Spreadsheet handles your calculation needs, with over 250 built-in functions, 25 chart types, pivot tables, autoshapes and more. And Ability Presentation lets you read and edit PowerPoint presentations, or create new slide decks of your own.The Ability Photoalbum tool helps locate, view and organise…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023Philips 16B1P3302SCOREPRICE £200 (£240 inc VAT) from stonegroup.co.ukPhilips has taken its time to launch a portable monitor, so I was keen to see if the 16B1P3302 was worth the wait. While there are some neat touches, the answer is no.One reason is price: Philips is charging £240 for the 16B1P3302, while you can buy no-name units with the same specification for around £130 from Amazon. That specification is a 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel with a 15.6in diagonal, the result being a fuzzy image compared to what you may be used to. At this price, which isn’t far off the £300 that LG is charging for its 1440p 16in Gram+ view (see issue 336, p48), you should expect more.Sadly, it isn’t a great panel either. It covers 55% of the sRGB…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023Apple iPhone 14 PlusSCOREPRICE 128GB, £791 (£949 inc VAT)from apple.com/ukThe “Plus” is a newcomer to the iPhone lineup, supplanting the adorably small iPhone 13 mini. In many regards it’s the same phone as the regular iPhone 14 (see issue 338, p62), but scaled up with an expansive 6.7in display. It’s a tempting option if you’re looking for a big-screen experience, but don’t want to pay for the top-of-the-range camera and CPU of the iPhone 14 Pro Max (see issue 338, p64).Aside from its size, the Plus looks all but identical to the iPhone 14, with an aluminium frame, glass back, notched display, pill-shaped volume and power buttons and Lightning port. It’s even the same thickness as the standard model, at 7.8mm, although the larger display makes it 14mm taller. It’s a little heavier,…5 min
PC Pro|January 2023SOLID BUYS: M.2 SSDsIf there’s one constant in computing, it’s that we’ll always need more storage. If there’s a second, it’s that the faster it is the better. Currently, the best storage option on both fronts is an M.2 SSD drive. If the move from mechanical drives to solid state was a step forward, then the move from 2.5in SSDs to M.2 has been a staggering leap in terms of performance and efficiency, and the technology continues to improve.Mostly ditching the old SATA interface, which was designed for hard disks, M.2 drives primarily run using PCI Express, delivering speeds that seemed impossible a few years ago.What’s more, M.2 drives combine power and data in one connector, so there’s less cable clutter in your PC and, as the drives plug directly into a socket…1 min
PC Pro|January 2023CRUCIAL P3SCOREPRICE 1TB, £74 (£89 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs2One of the cheapest SSDs you can buy, the Crucial P3 costs just 9p per gigabyte for the 1TB version we reviewed. Thanks to its QLC storage, it’s also available in 500GB, 2TB and 4TB formats. As a cheaper M.2 SSD, this drive uses the slightly older PCI-E Gen3 interface.As with other budget drives, there’s no SDRAM cache on this model, with the drive instead using SLC caching and a Host Memory Buffer (HMB), where system memory acts as the buffer. As we’ve seen with other drives to use similar techniques, this no longer dramatically impacts performance.In fact, the Crucial P3 did rather well in all of our benchmarks. In the PCMark 10 System Disk test, the Crucial drive scored 3,210, and it also…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023KINGSTON KC3000SCOREPRICE 2TB, £169 (£203 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs5One of the last companies to offer a PCI-E Gen4 M.2 SSD, Kingston certainly hasn’t messed about with the final product, delivering a fast and enduring piece of storage. We’ve reviewed the 2TB model (technically 2,048GB), although there are also 512GB, 1,024GB and 4,096GB models in the lineup, too.This particular SSD offers headline speeds of up to 7,000MB/sec read and write. Not only does this make it one of the fastest drives on paper, it puts it beyond the minimum specifications required for use in the PS5.Similar to the Seagate FireCuda 530, the Kingston KC3000 doesn’t use DRAM as a cache but instead uses part of the drive in SLC mode. This reduces hardware costs and, as the KC3000 can use up to one-third…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023PCI-E Gen3 vs PCI-E Gen4The best M.2 SSDs use the NVMe interface, which runs over PCI Express. The key difference between the drives we’ve reviewed is in the version of PCI Express that they use, with PCI-E Gen3 and PCI-E Gen4 drives on test. You may see the latter described as PCI-E 4.0, PCIe 4.0 or PCI-Express 4.0 as well.The main difference between Gen3 and Gen4 is the speed of the lanes. With PCI-E Gen3, the speed per lane is 1,000MB/sec, while PCI-E Gen4 doubles this to 2,000MB/sec. The SSDs that we’ve reviewed can run up to four lanes, for a total bandwidth of 4,000MB/sec on PCI-E Gen3 and 8,000MB/sec on PCI-E Gen4. As ever, bandwidth doesn’t always translate into real-world speed.It’s not only the SSD that needs to run at Gen4 speeds, but…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023SEAGATE FIRECUDA BESKAR INGOTSCOREPRICE 1TB, £150 (£180 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs9A special edition drive to tie in with The Mandalorian, the FireCuda Beskar Ingot is designed to look like the currency in which the titular character is paid. Seagate has done a great job of it, taking a FireCuda 530 and encasing it in a new heatsink.As a result, the drive is much thicker than a normal M.2 SSD, at 80mm tall. Then there’s the case of whether or not the drive will be seen.Most M.2 slots on a regular PC are tucked out of the way, or even hidden from view because of the CPU cooler. Given that this drive is more expensive than the regular FireCuda 530, you’ll want to install it in a case with a clear window and an equally…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023WD BLACK SN850SCOREPRICE 1TB, £101 (£121 inc VAT)from pcpro.link/339labs12It’s been around for quite a while now, but the WD Black SN850 runs at the current PCI-E Gen4 speeds, so it can still put in a shift. And it’s better value now than it was at launch thanks to a price drop or two. We’ve reviewed the 1TB model, although there are 500GB and 2TB versions available. All are available with and without heatsinks, with WD recommending heatsinks for use in PCs and the PS5.The last time we reviewed this drive, the heatsink version was hugely more expensive. Fortunately, times have changed, and the heatsink version is now excellent value: £121 for such a fast 1TB drive really is excellent value.As the basis of a new PC, there’s still a lot going for…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023SATA drivesAt the start of this Labs, we said that SATA drives couldn’t cut it any more. While SSD SATA drives are much faster than their mechanical counterparts, they’re still exceptionally slow by modern standards; just look at the WD Green SATA M.2 drive opposite. That said, a SATA drive is better than nothing if you have an older laptop or a desktop computer that needs more storage space and has no spare M.2 ports.We haven’t reviewed any new models in this group test for one simple reason: there aren’t any. The market has hit the limit of what SATA can do. Simply put, there will be no improvements in this technology, and the best drives for the connection have already been released.The issue is that the SATA interface is slow…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023Business Endpoint Protection 2022There are good reasons why hackers like attacking endpoint devices: they’re one of the weakest links in any business data security strategy.Previously, many businesses relied solely on perimeter security such as firewalls and UTM appliances, but the post-pandemic surge in hybrid and home working has expanded their network borders so far beyond the office walls that these traditional methods are no longer sufficient.Whether they’re using workstations, laptops or mobiles, a geographically dispersed workforce presents businesses with serious security challenges that must be overcome. It isn’t a problem that’s likely to go away in the near future either, as lots of businesses have discovered that hybrid working brings many benefits and plan to implement more permanent arrangements.Endpoint protection software is the perfect solution as it can keep workers safe from harm…5 min
PC Pro|January 2023WatchGuard EPDRSCOREPRICE 25 seats, 1yr subscription, £1,693exc VAT from watchguard.comWatchGuard has a fine reputation in the network security space and its acquisition of Panda Software has allowed it to complement its firewall appliances with enterprise-grade endpoint protection. Three versions are available; we reviewed the top EPDR (endpoint protection, detection and response), which delivers a heap of security measures including some you’d be hard-pushed to find elsewhere.You won’t need to worry about extra management overheads. EPDR is fully integrated into the WatchGuard Cloud portal, so you can remotely monitor and manage all your Firebox appliances, security policies, wireless access points and endpoint protection services from one console.Instead of relying on reactive signature updates, EPDR analyses and classifies every app being run and blocks those it doesn’t know about. It won’t stop them…3 min
PC Pro|January 2023Netgear WAX615SCOREPRICE £138 exc VAT frombroadbandbuyer.comSMBs looking for an affordable Wi-Fi 6 network upgrade will find that the WAX615 has a lot to offer. Priced at only £138, Netgear’s first business AX3000 access point (AP) supports the Wi-Fi 6 high-performance 160MHz channels and comes with a 2.5GbE multi-Gigabit network port to unleash this extra speed.The WAX615 may be cheap to buy but it doesn’t compromise on features. It combines plenty of business-class features with standalone mode or cloud management and can be used to swiftly build a meshed wireless network. Its LAN port supports PoE and PoE+ power sources, and you should use the latter if you don’t want to see a drop in performance.It also supports the Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 standard, which enables uplink MU-MIMO to deliver faster upload…4 min
PC Pro|January 2023SUBSCRIBE TO PC PROWHAT HI-FI? AWARDS 2021BEST WIRED ON-EAR HEADPHONES UNDER £100“They extract bags of detail but keep the soul of your music intact”- What Hi-Fi? Award ReviewWhy we're so excited about the Austrian Audio Headphones• Sound great even when connected to low-power outputs like mobile devices• Soft memory foam earpads to keep you comfortable during the longest sessions• Foldable construction for easy storage, uncommon in this price range• Exceptional High quality to price ratioOther great reasons to subscribe…• Every issue of PC Pro delivered direct to your door. Save up to 27% with each monthly issue• The UK's most in-depth and trusted reviews• Exclusive and in-depth analysis from IT expertsChoose your package!PRINT EDITIONGet 13 Issues of PC Pro over 12 months in print, straight to your door and save 14%ANNUAL PRINT +…2 min
PC Pro|January 2023“Repair shops are not only about screwdrivers and upgrades; tea and sympathy also play a part”It won’t have escaped your notice that the battle to grab money from your bank is growing ever more intense, and not just from legitimate sources: there are scammers out there who will syphon every penny you possess, if allowed. It’s a humiliating experience for the scam victim, as the perpetrators show no mercy when executing a slick, professional and largely invisible crime.“My printer’s been hacked.” Mary was a new customer living far outside of our usual catchment area. She was convinced that her HP printer was transmitting bank details to criminal gangs. Mary mentioned that HP had confirmed the leak, and its efficient and friendly support technician hadn’t resolved the problem. So, how many red flags have you spotted? If the answer is greater than zero, you’re faring better…9 min
PC Pro|January 2023“I cannot see any rationale for allowing Bitcoin and other crypto farms to keep running”How to summarise watching not just Bitcoin, but a large bucket of other cryptocurrencies, have a $9 billion crash in the late summer of 2022? I don’t like cryptocurrencies, as I think regular readers will have realised: safe to say that a frisson of schadenfreude was in order as the so-called crash took place, with formerly optimistic traders wondering if this was the Beginning of the End.Answering that question isn’t terribly difficult, particularly if you understand the techno-economics jargon and a readiness to type multiple-word queries into search engines. After a few minutes of prodding and poking at the less hysterical, more day-to-day bits of the net, I had a few answers.Perhaps the most useful explanation is that the entire market in all the cryptocurrencies added together is broadly agreed…10 min
PC Pro|January 2023Jon Honeyball has had enough: it’s time to call time on the endless flow of bad newsHow much is too much? Obviously, I’m not referring to gin. Or a nice wine. Or toad in the hole, as made by my lovely husband. Or even the smile of someone you have helped.No, I’m referring to the flood of news that seems to be overtaking everything in our lives. Maybe the start of Covid, and the work-from-home mantra, accelerated the dreaded FOMO, or “fear of missing out”. Certainly it prompted us all to pay unprecedented levels of attention to the big questions: how was Covid progressing? Which form of lockdown were we in? Could we speak to five people over the garden fence or was it only three?I think there was a small, subtle, but important shift in the way we consume news from that point. No longer…4 min
