Gaming

There’s a couple of ways to do this step: 1.) Attach the CPU, CPU fan cooler and RAM to the motherboard before installing the motherboard inside of the case, or 2.) install the motherboard first and then attach the other components. The first way is typically easier because you don’t have to be bent over your case trying to screw/unscrew things from an awkward angle. For our purposes, we re-used the case from our old testing rig for the new build and already had our power supply & HDD installed, so it was easy to drop the motherboard into the case and start connecting. As you can see from the video above, installing the CPU is very easy. First make sure you properly align the CPU with the socket on the motherboard, for these Ryzen CPU’s there is a small triangle indicator on both the CPU and the socket which indicates the proper orientation for the CPU. Next lift the little latch on your motherboard, slot in the CPU, and press down the latch. Make sure that the CPU is snug – otherwise this will cause you major headaches down the line.

Next we’ll install the CPU cooler shown in the short video above. Most CPUs come with a CPU cooler nowadays, but they are available for purchase separately if yours does not or if you want to spice up the aesthetics of your build with a fancy RGB LED one. For our build, we went with the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X which is the only Ryzen 3000 series CPU that does not come with a CPU fan cooler, we used a CPU fan cooler that we had on hand from a AMD Ryzen 5 3600X that was compatible. To install the fan, you must first remove the brackets on your motherboard (pictured below).

The CPU cooler is placed directly on top of the CPU. However, before screwing the cooler to the motherboard it’s important to make sure you have a healthy glob of thermal paste applied to the top of the CPU. Thermal paste is essential for the heat dissipation from the die of the CPU and your heatsink, not having thermal paste can lead to overheating and crashing. Once you’ve made sure that you have thermal paste applied, secure the cooler to the motherboard by screwing it in to the motherboard around the CPU where the brackets were located. Lastly, you’ll need to connect the cable attached to the CPU fan cooler to the motherboard (see video below – the power connector is typically labeled “CPU_FAN” or “CPU_FAN1”).

With the CPU and fan cooler installed, it’s time we connect the RAM to the motherboard. RAM is probably the easiest component to install and simply pops in to the allocated slots (see video below). Three important notes when installing RAM are that most motherboards have slot configurations for multiple sticks of RAM, meaning that it matters which slots you place the sticks in. For our motherboard, the MSI MPG X570 Gaming PRO Carbon WiFi, the optimal slot configuration is A2/B2. The slots should be clearly identified on the motherboard. Additionally the RAM only installs in one direction, to make sure you slot it in correctly make sure the pins and cut out on the RAM lines up with the RAM slot properly. Finally, don’t be afraid to push with some force, RAM often causes issues if not installed snugly.

Video Citations:

DudeBrd. (2016, August 4). How to Install a Power Supply in Computer [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOsrsHC4CMk

Digital Trends. (2015, May 20). How to Install a SATA Hard Drive [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjfRYfN4jfM

Possible Specs: Expect a 7nm Ampere architecture with a GPU clocking up to 2.2GHz, boasting 21 TeraFlops of raw performance, 18Gbps making it 40% faster than 2080 Ti, possibly 20GB vram, PCIE 4.0 support.

Release date: September 2020

Price: Around the same as current line up

Currently most graphics cards distributors are emptying their stock of RTX 20XX series cards, it seems like they are finally preparing for the RTX 30XX series Ampere launch. There are rumors of August mass production and a September release for the newest best GPU on the market a RTX 3080 Ti and possibly even a RTX 3090.

The speculated specifications expect these new GPU’s to be clocking up to 2.2GHz, boasting 21 TeraFlops of raw performance and 18Gbps making it 40% faster than 2080 Ti. All to go with possibly 20GB VRAM and PCIE 4.0 support. These graphics cards are expected to boost performance, and increase power efficiency significantly. Plus new DLSS, could mean you can get to buttery smooth 4K with a midrange card – 3060 anyone?

A recent tweet from KittyCorgi mentions two models: A GA103 with 3,840 cores, 10/20GB of graphics RAM and a 320-bit memory bus. And a GA104 model with 3072 cores, 8/16GB of graphics RAM and a 256-bit memory bus. This is just speculation but we do have more information on the architecture. Similar to how Volta architecture preceded Turing with the RTX 20XX series, we expect the Ampere processor for data centers and AI NVIDIA makes right now to be a precursor for the same with the RTX 30xx series processor.

We originally expected an official release date to be announced at either Computex(September) or Gamescom (August), but by now Computex has been officially cancelled. So now expect the RTX 30XX series reveal either at Gamescon, which moved entirely online, or NVIDIA may even do there own private launch event in August. Either way with stock of RTX 20XX series running dry, and rumors of Ampere production ramping up in August, we expect new RTX graphics cards to be available in September.

We expect them to be priced roughly the same as the current line up, with 3070’s around $500, 3080’s around $700 and 3080Ti’s/3090’s at around $1200. Previously there was a jump from the GTX 10XX to the 20XX series because of a lack of competition, the Turing GPU’s ran unopposed until Radeon VII arrived the February after its release. But with Big Navi expected soon competition forces NVIDIA to keep prices roughly the same for this new line up. Also it is speculated they will use Samsung 7nm EUV production to reduces cost to manufacture the graphics card. Typically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (who you may know as the also produce chips for both Apple and AMD) manufactured NVIDIA’s cards, but they are apparently not as competitive price-wise right now.

Above are all the player matchups from the tournament, you can see the players seeding, choice of team, and the games final scores.

This NBA 2k tournament is an exciting new eSports tournament put on by the NBA, featuring NBA stars playing 2K competitively against each other. The rules are as follows, it is a single elimination tournament for rounds one and two. The players were seeded by their 2K player rating, with Durant at No. 1 and Derrick Jones Jr at No. 16. Players select eight teams at the beginning of the tournament and cannot use the same team twice. The Semifinals and Finals are decided by playing best-of-three. Finally the overall winner gets to donate $100,000 of the NBA’s cash to the charity of their choice for coronavirus relief.

Game 1: No. 5 Devin Booker (HOU Rockets) vs No. 10 Deandre Ayton (LA Lakers)

Score at the end of 1st Quarter: 14-14 Tied

Score at halftime: 29-33 Rockets Up

End of 3rd Quarter: 47-52 Rockets Up

Final score: 72-62 Booker wins at Rockets

This first one was a very competitive game, but Booker came out on top!

Game 2: No. 5 Devin Booker (DEN Nuggets) vs No. 10 Deandre Ayton (MIL Bucks)

Score at the end of 1st Quarter: 19-14 Nuggets Up

Score at halftime: 41-35 Nuggets Up

End of 3rd Quarter: 55-45 Nuggets Up

Final score: 74-62 Booker wins as Nuggets

Number one takeaway from these games has been that Booker is the by far the better s***talker and player. He has Deandre Ayton’s number by halftime and is just entirely demolishing him by the beginning of the fourth quarter. It is so bad that even though Ayton is clearly concentrating hard he seems out of his league. Ayton says “I can’t even get mad cause I don’t even know this game” and Booker is not having it.  He just asks “What are you saying its over with already? You want me to cut it off? Want me to cut it off?” to which Ayton meekly responds “No”. At this point its 61-47 Nuggets with 4:17 left to play and the game is already over. Booker continues to talk trash throughout as expected after all he went undefeated throughout the entire tournament.

Overall the tournament was a good fun, a great way to provide entertainment for fans of the NBA and donate to a good cause all at once. Booker chose to split his winnings between #FirstRespondersFirst and Arizona Food Bank Network. Who do you think will win next year? Let us know if the comment section below!

With Microsoft announcing its next-gen follow-up the popular Xbox One series consoles, the Xbox Series X, gamers around the world have begun to speculate about what kind of performance the console will be able to achieve and what the hardware is that will achieve it. Recently, Microsoft announced a preliminary list of specifications for the new console with more details planned to be revealed originally at this year’s E3 gaming convention. Now with E3’s cancellation they may decide to broadcast them independently elsewhere, regardless we will let you know when they release more information.

In this article, we will discuss the level of performance you should expect to get out of the Xbox Series X based on the released specifications and determine how it will stack up against the most powerful PC Gaming components currently available.

Microsoft revealed that the new Xbox Series X will include a new Navi GPU based on AMD’s RDNA-2 architecture. Some of you may recognize the RDNA architecture as it was introduced with the first wave of new Navi GPUs that included popular graphics cards like the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary (100-438336) and the SAPPHIRE RX 5700 XT NITRO+ (11293-03-40G). Those cards introduced many firsts to the GPU world such as PCI Express 4.0 compatibility, and they also were the first line of AMD GPUs to utilize Radeon’s new RDNA architecture. The architecture was engineered to greatly enhance features like Radeon Image Sharpening, FidelityFX, and VR technologies. While seen as a huge step forward, RDNA lacked the real-time ray tracing capabilities of NVIDIA’s RTX series graphic cards. RDNA-2, the follow-up to the first RDNA architecture, is what the new Xbox Series X will run on. Described by AMD as a “refresh” of the RDNA-1 architecture, RDNA-2 boasts major improvements over its predecessor. According to AMD, RDNA-2 will provide a “50% performance-per-watt improvement over RDNA 1 ” meaning faster clock speeds and instructions per clock. Additionally, the new architecture will include real-time hardware accelerated ray tracing RDNA-1 lacked, and will also provide variable rate shading. It has been speculated that RDNA-2 will serve as the architecture for AMD’s next line of GPUs of which there is a GPU rumored to surpass the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti by 30%. See more here!

The initial specifications released by Microsoft indicate that the new Xbox Series X will pack a serious performance punch. Listed below are the current set of specifications that have been confirmed by Microsoft:

While there is little in the way of specifics at the moment, we do know that the Xbox Series X will include a custom 8-core AMD CPU based on the Zen-2 and RDNA-2 architecture offer 12 teraflops of GPU performance. For those who are unaware, teraflops are a unit of computing speed used for GPUs. To put this into perspective, the NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER GPU has approximately 11 teraflops while the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti has 13.5 teraflops. The new Xbox falls right in between those two cards and runs just behind the 2080 Ti. The new console also boasts 16GB of GDDR6 of RAM and Microsoft claims that the card will be capable of outputting 8k, 4k, and “support for up to 120 fps”. While vague, it’s certain that the new Xbox will be capable of outputting impressive video quality.

There are still many questions about Microsoft’s new console:

Q: When is the console going to be released?

Microsoft still has not given an exact release date of when the new console will be released but some speculated that an announcement was coming at this year’s E3 prior to its cancellation. Now we will have to wait and see instead!

Q: How hefty will the price tag be?

There is no information currently about what the new system will cost you if you want to get your hands on it. However, even if the console were to retail for $1,000 (approximately double that of the Xbox One) it would still be substantially cheaper than a PC build of the highest specifications – albeit less powerful.

Despite these questions, one thing for certain is that the system is shaping up to be a game changer in the home entertainment console industry.

When selecting a graphics card, gamers consider many things – price, performance, size, fit – and while it’s been meme’d to death, the finishing touch which RGB lighting provides is important to them. The RGB illumination that pulses from your graphics card serves as the bow that ties your PC build’s aesthetic together. In this article we’ll take a look at some of our favorite RGB displays from cards that we offer in our Graphics Card Leasing Program.

Link to RGB Video

In our previous article discussing the different AMD RX 5700 XT models we raved about the performance of the SAPPHIRE RX 5700 XT NITRO+ with it’s staggering 2035 MHz boost clock speed. The NITRO+ also boasts an impressive ARGB (alpha, red, green, blue) display, which you can customize with SAPPHIRE’s NITRO Glow software designed to change lighting displays for a more personalized gaming experience. The NITRO+ also comes equipped with ARGB fans (backlit RGB underneath the fans) that create a swirl effect when all three fans are engaged. The SAPPHIRE RX 5700 XT NITRO+ has excellent performance for its low price-point ($449.99) and the display pushes the card over the top.

Link to RGB Video

The first RTX 2080 Ti card from GIGABYTE that we have carried is the GIGABYTE RTX 2080 Ti AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE. The AORUS card boasts a radiator with two 120MM RGB fans that provide advanced cooling to the powerful GPU. Check out GIGABYTE’s RGB Fusion 2.0 software utilizing an integrated intuitive user interface that provides personalized lighting effect customization in tandem with the RGB lighting on the fans. In addition, RGB Fusion 2.0 features a “gaming mode” which syncs the lighting effects with a certain selection of games to create an even more immersive gaming experience. The end result is this great looking, better performing graphics card!

Link to RGB Video

GIGABYTE smashed it out of the park with the RTX series GPUs when it comes to RGB, and our next entry is also from GIGABYTE: the GIGABYTE RTX 2060 SUPER AORUS. The card also uses RGB Fusion 2.0 and features a three fan design that utilizes GIGABYTE’s alternate spinning technology. The fans feature a truly unique tri-color RGB design that allows for multi-color lighting on each fan simultaneously. This design in conjunction with the alternate spin technology combine to create a cool warp-like effect.

Link to RGB Video

The last card on the list – and my personal favorite – is the MSI RTX 2080 Ti LIGHTNING Z. Using the MSI Dragon Center software, the LIGHTNING Z boasts a plethora of innovative lighting features. MSI created dazzling RGB lighting effects that have endless combinations, and also included popular preset effects like “color fusion”, “lightning strike”, and “magic”. Another awesome feature is the OLED panel that sits on the top of the card. The screen allows for customizable animations that work in tandem with the RGB lighting display. Animations include displays that show GPU temperature, memory usage, fan speed and more. The LIGHTNING Z features a backlit RGB design that rests behind the fans similar to the GIGABYTE AORUS card that we discussed earlier.

Starting in the mid-2010’s, streaming has quickly become one of the largest and fastest growing new forms of entertainment. What exactly is video game streaming? It is when people broadcast themselves playing video games with commentary, in either pre-recorded or live streams online. On streaming platforms like Mixer, Twitch, YouTube Gaming etc. you can see how the top players play and have some insight into their thoughts. As streaming has become more popular the platforms for viewers have grown, Twitch itself has more traffic than Netflix and HBO’s online streaming service pulling in 185 million viewers, compared to HBO’s 130 million and Netflix’s 93 million in 2016. With all these viewers top streamers like Ninja, Tfue and Shroud are able to generate large amounts of influence and money. Now let’s take a look at what they do to generate their viewership and why these particular streamers are so popular.

Richard Tyler Blevins aka Ninja is one of the streamers you may have heard of before, and for good reason. His YouTube account has over 22.2 million subscribers as of December 2019, and he has been streaming since 2011 compiling around two billion total views as of December 2019.

Ninja began his career as a professional Halo 3 player in 2009, he played for several organisations before eventually joining Luminosity Gaming in 2017. That year Ninja started to rise to fame with his win at the PUBG Gamescom Invitational Squads. After that win he began streaming Fornite regularly, and his timing could not have been better as Fortnite took off that year. So much so that by September 2017 he had over half a million followers and six months after that he had more than two million. By March 2018 he set the Twitch record for the largest concurrent audience on an individual stream (outside of tournament events) at 635,000 viewers, a record which did not last as he broke it again a month later with 667,000 viewers during his event Ninja Vegas 2018.  2018 continued to be a great year for Ninja as he was the first Esports player featured on the cover of ESPN Magazine, announced a partnership with Red Bull, and released his own record. Additionally he was in the NFL’s “The 100-Year Game”  ad which aired during Super Bowl LIII this year.

Along with all those accolades Blevins is making quite a career out of streaming. He was paid a reported $1 million to promote EA’s Apex Legends on his Twitch and Twitter accounts and he earns over $500,000 a month streaming Fortnite.

While he made a killing on Twitch, he decided to switch to Microsoft’s streaming platform Mixer as of August 1st, 2019. He did this as he felt Twitch was limiting his ability to grow his brand outside of video games. For instance he released a book in August called Get Good: My Ultimate Guide To Gaming published by Penguin Random House. He also was briefly a member of The Masked Singer  on Fox as his wife is a fan of the show.

After all of his streaming success he has also done some quality fundraising for charity. In February 2018, he raised over $110,000 for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Then during the first annual Fortnite Battle Royale Esports event he gave away $50,000 in prize money, with $2,500 going to the Alzheimer’s Association. The charitable works roll on as in April 2018 he took part in the #Clips4Kids event, helping to raide over $340,000 for the charity. Additionally his team won the Fortnite Pro-Am event, winning the $1 million prize for the charity of their choice.

Michael Grzesiek aka “Shroud” is a Canadian professional streamer. He began his career as a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) player before transitioning to streaming full time.

Prior to streaming he took first in all these events:

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 – North America 2015

iBUYPOWER Cup – 2015

ESL Pro League Season 4 – Finals 2016

Americas Minor Championship – Kraków 2017

All of those wins helped him build a viewer base and transition to streaming full time as people want to see the best of the best play. He is now famous for playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 which he streamed on Twitch. He has streamed over 6,000 hours on Twitch with a reach of over 345 million total views. Recently in October 2019 he followed Ninja’s lead and left Twitch for Mixer, most likely for a large pile of cash as his YouTube channel has over 5.3 million subscribers.

As professional streamers become bigger stars it is interesting to see how video games are influencing culture worldwide. Stars like Ninja, Tfue, and Shroud are ambassadors for Esports now and will likely have a large impact on the future of gaming. They can use their influence to create charities and help the world if they manage to stay out of trouble. But most importantly they are here to entertain us and we hope they continue to do so for as long as they choose too.