Maximum PC içinde November 2023 için içindekiler tablosu

WE’VE BEEN A BIT down on 2023’s graphics cards, thanks to a pretty toxic combination of inflated prices, lackluster performance, and a lack of a generational improvement over previous GPUs. Thankfully, we’ve finally been able to dish out a positive review due to the arrival of AMD’s RX 7800 XT (see page 76). At $500, it isn’t “cheap”, but it is a card that a lot of you reading this will actually be able to afford. It also punches above its weight in performance, taking the fight to Nvidia’s $600 RTX 4070 and beating the $100 more expensive card in many titles. True, AMD’s a generation behind Nvidia in terms of ray tracing and AI-powered features, but this is the sort of competition we’ve been hoping for since this latest generation…

THIRD-PARTY printer drivers haven’t always been the most compliant software, updates often causing problems. It seems Microsoft has had enough of a multitude of drivers; Windows is to take control by 2027. 2025 will see no new printer drivers on Windows Update; 2026 will actively push Windows IPP inbox drivers, and in 2027, third-party drivers will vanish from Windows Update (bar important security-based updates). Existing third-party drivers for old printers will still be available, but all-new printer drivers will be under the auspices of Windows. We can only hope that Microsoft’s drivers won’t pull tricks such as refusing to run the scanner function on your all-in-one when it runs out of ink, refusing to print in black because your color cartridge is low, or present warnings about low ink when…

The most recent example of this involves AMD’s hot new Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT boards, but we’ll come back to those GPUs in a moment. The overarching problem here, aside from the more obvious issue of painfully high pricing, involves comparative value for money. Call it bang for buck or frames per dollar, whatever you prefer, the value curve when it comes to all manner of electronics has always been the same. You get more for your money at the lower end of the market. For a product like a GPU, that means the absolute best-of-the-best graphics card might be five times the cost of an entry-level board, but only offer two or three times the performance. Somehow, however, that value scaling up as you move down…

We’ve seen numerous attempts at a handheld gaming PC over the years, but Valve’s Steam Deck has suddenly taken the whole concept mainstream. It’s not necessarily a Nintendo Switch replacement, but for PC gaming on the go, it offers a ton of potential. It might not be able to run every PC game under the sun, but it’s definitely encouraging a lot of games to come out with “low spec” settings that are suitable for the Steam Deck’s hardware. The only serious issue with the Steam Deck is that it’s lacking in storage. The base model comes with just 64GB of eMMC storage, with a $399 price tag. Bumping up to the top model gets you an anti-glare screen and 512GB of PCIe SSD storage for an additional $250. With…

When it comes to power efficiency, Arm-based CPUs have set the standard for decades. But for pure performance? Accept no substitute. You need a proper x86 chip—at least, that’s how the classic Arm versus x86 CPU contest used to stack up. In the here and now? It’s not quite so simple. CPUs based in Intel’s x86 instruction set still top the performance charts, at least in the consumer space. But when it comes to the performance per clock cycle of a single CPU core, the very latest Arm chips arguably have the edge. In fact, Apple now makes Arm CPU cores so powerful that its iPad Pro offers comparable single-threaded performance to a high-end desktop PC processor. Indeed, Apple’s latest Arm-based CPUs are so good, they can beat native x86…

PLUSES • Amazing value • Slick gaming • Great game selection NEGATIVES • No real upgrade option • No keyboard or mouse • Platform tie-ins On one level, it makes zero sense to splash out on a gaming PC when today’s consoles offer unbeatable performance at lower prices. Take the Xbox Series X. It has an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen CPU running at up to 3.8GHz, plus a custom RDNA 2 GPU with 52 CUs running at 1.825GHz for approximately 12 teraFLOPs of number-crunching power. The nearest AMD desktop GPU—the RX 6750XT—runs faster, but would cost you north of $300 on its own, without the Xbox’s CPU, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, or 1TB SSD. Even if you could grab that stuff within the budget, you wouldn’t have the cooling, the controller,…

GRAMPS A free open-source tool (https://gramps-project.org), plus access to your family tree, photos, and any research notes (including documentary evidence). HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW your family history? What interesting stories are hidden away? There’s never a bad time to start digging, and once you’ve mined family members for their own tales and memories about your forebears, you can embark on a more rigorous search for information using the rich online resources at your disposal from the likes of Ancestry and MyHeritage. The question remains, however, as to how you bring all this research together in a single place for easy recording, retrieval, and sharing with others. You’ll find plenty of paid-for options, such as Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic, but why spend money when Gramps is free, open-source, and…

Now you’ve explored the basics of Gramps and got to grips with its breadcrumb-like navigation system, powerful set of tools, and customizable user interface, keep digging. Make use of its Bookmarks system to add shortcuts to frequently accessed items—just navigate to the view you want and choose Bookmarks > Add Bookmark. Make use of the Go menu to retrace your steps through each view, and explore the Tools menu for options helping you analyze your data, plus perform various checks and—if necessary—repairs. Also, take the time to select Edit > Preferences > General tab, and click ‘Check for updated addons now’ to browse a list of plugins that can extend Gramps’ functionality further. Expand a category, read the descriptions, and check any plugins before clicking ‘Install Selected Addons’. You’ll find…

OPERA ONE www.opera.com/browsers/opera (free download) OPERA HAS BEEN UPDATED. The browser, now known as Opera One, has a fresh new look on Windows, MacOS, and Linux thanks to its innovative new feature: tab islands. This lets you open multiple links from a single page and keep them in a group. This means they will be kept separate from links you open on other sites or that you type directly. Once you get used to it, tab islands will help you speed up online research, holiday planning, comparing the price of train fares, or delving into Wikipedia pages. Here, we’ll show you how to get started and reveal the keyboard shortcuts that will help you manage your tabs more efficiently. 1 INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION Download the new version of Opera from www.opera.com/browsers/opera.…

HOW MUCH VALUE do you put on ray tracing as a PC gamer? That’s got to be at the forefront of your mind if you’re considering dropping $500 on an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT. If you are sold on ray tracing, you probably need to consider whether you’re willing to pay another $100 for extra RT performance and drop the cash on the RTX 4070 instead. If, however, you’re convinced that rasterized performance is the only GPU metric worth a damn in this topsy turvy world of PC gaming, then the RX 7800 XT is probably the best upper mid-range graphics card you can buy today. We effectively now we have four graphics cards capable of very similar frame rates: the RX 7800 XT here, the RTX 4070, and…

THIS VIVOBOOK from Asus is not a gaming laptop. It may look like one, with its GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, 13th-gen Core i9 processor and 3.2K, 120Hz, OLED screen, but there’s a subtle difference. The Vivobook is aimed at creative professionals, the sort of people currently glued to Photoshop rather than Baldur’s Gate 3, and as such comes with Nvidia’s Studio drivers installed, rather than the Game Ready ones. This matters because DirectX 12 needs detailed instructions for the games you want to play. Every time a big title is released, the GPU manufacturers release a new driver to fit it. The same isn’t true of the Studio drivers, which are designed to be stable rather than to squeeze every possible frame out of Armored Core 6, so while games will…

BUILDING OFF THE BACK of the excellent ROG Azoth, the new Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless is simply the best gaming keyboard I’ve used in a very, very long time. I don’t say that lightly—I’ve also been using Corsair’s latest creation, the K70 Max, and the Strix Scope II 96 has it beat. Same for the SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL. While both Corsair and SteelSeries boards offer magnetic switches with adjustable actuation, which the Scope II does not, neither matches the sublime typing and gaming experience delivered by the ROG’s lubed up switches. Yes, lubed switches. I’m so glad that this has made the leap from enthusiast boards into more mainstream ones. The process of pulling out every key switch and dropping in some lube in order to…

WHETHER YOU’RE LOOKING to recreate an older version of Windows to play classic games or try different flavors of Linux without having to set up a dual-boot system, virtualization is the answer to your prayers. The good news is that it costs nothing to emulate OSes on your PC thanks to these two options, both of which are free for personal use. But which one is better? We put both to the test to find out. Superficially, both VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Player do the same thing, but there’s plenty of differences to mark them distinct from each other. If we start with VirtualBox, it’s free to use, and mostly open-source, so there are no restrictions in play unless you need access to fast USB peripherals, in which case a…

BY THE TIME you read this, Intel will have released the first of its new 14th generation Raptor Lake refresh processors. This initial batch will consist of three versions, with two variations of each. We have, in order of power, the Core i9-14900K, i7-14700, and i5-14600, each in “K”, and “KF” configurations (all unlocked, but the Fs lack integrated graphics). As usual, Intel has opted to release the best first. That best has eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, plus a base P clock of 3.2GHz. Memory support runs to DDR5-5600—not the rumored 6400 that some had hoped for. The rest of the range is expected in the new year, and will expand the range to 26 versions in all, including two that don’t even warrant i3 status, as…

It’s a safe bet that GDDR7 will end up in the next-generation AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs. We don’t expect any of those to start shipping until 2024 at earliest—Intel’s Battlemage architecture will almost certainly be the first “next-gen” GPU to arrive—so we still have plenty of time. But the transition is otherwise right on schedule. The first GDDR6 graphics cards launched in 2018 with Nvidia’s RTX 20-series, with GDDR6 at 12–15.5 Gbps (GTX 1650 to RTX 2080 Super). AMD RDNA GPUs also used GDDR6, again ranging from 12–14 Gbps. Two generations later, the latest Nvidia Ada and AMD RDNA 3 GPUs have pushed GDDR6 speeds of 17–20 Gbps, with GDDR6X clocked as high as 22.4 Gbps for the Nvidia RTX 4080. That represents a 43 percent increase in bandwidth…

> High-end server > Update old Macs > Linux desktop Home server advice I’m planning to build a replacement home server. My current server is on its last legs: a 4th gen Intel i7 CPU on an ITX ASUS board running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials. My server is used to back up my and my wife’s laptop, plus run a Plex server. I need one that’s more modern and accessible online. I would like to stick with an ITX board and Windows Server, since I am familiar with it. Some of my mandatory requirements are: four or more SATA slots for 20TB of storage; the latest generation CPU that isn’t a power hog; two NVME slots—one for the OS, and another for a scratch disk cache for Plex; 32GB RAM,…

MOVING UP AND AWAY from recent budget machines, we wanted to create a more premium computer capable of solid QHD gaming, and also some intensive productivity on the side. We started this journey following an all-AMD route instead of the Intel/Nvidia path that we’ve done a lot of this year. When piecing together a custom PC, we need to start by mapping out the build and spreading our budget wisely. We knew we wanted to come in at around the $2,000 mark. and that we did. Okay, we crept over ever so slightly over, but moving forward, we would make one change (component-wise) to rectify this. Our choice of NZXT’s C1000 PSU was overkill, but our reason was for futureproofing this machine. You could get away with a 750W power supply,…

Why all the fuss about upgrading your Steam Deck storage? There are two primary reasons. First, Valve overcharges for storage upgrades. Second, even the highest capacity Steam Deck lacks storage capacity. The base model Steam Deck comes with a 64GB eMMC drive (basically an M.2 SATA drive), and costs $399. The next model up costs $130 more, and comes with a 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD, while the final option costs $250, and comes with a 512GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD and a “premium anti-glare screen.” Perhaps those prices might have seemed justifiable in 2021 when Valve first announced the Steam Deck—the pandemic was in full bloom, and supply chain issues were a huge problem. Two years later, such prices look ludicrous. Hop on Amazon or Newegg, and you can…

PLUSES • Cheap options • Solid choice for cloud gaming • Includes a keyboard NEGATIVES • Limited game options • Limited performance • Limited upgrades You can largely brush aside concerns about how gutsy your hardware is if you opt for cloud gaming. Largely, but not entirely. Even when it had its own Stadia cloud gaming service, Google struggled to position Chromebooks as gaming devices. Perhaps that’s unsurprising: with their low specs and lackluster screens, the average Chromebook was nobody’s idea of a games machine. Yet, Chromebooks have bucked up their gaming credentials. Mid-range and high-end Chromebooks have the screens and audio to make blockbuster games look and sound great. Chromebooks will work with those Stadia controllers, not to mention Xbox controllers and gaming mice. Acer, Asus, and Lenovo have…

There are few things more power hungry than data centers, and their power consumption is set to quadruple by 2030, according to Lenovo. More than 30 percent of a regular server’s energy is devoted to the cooling fans, which is why Lenovo is continuing to develop its Neptune water-cooling technology—a far more energy-efficient way of keeping servers from cooking. There are two types of water-cooled server in Lenovo’s lineup. There are fixed-loop systems, where the same water is cycled around the server and passed through a radiator, cooling the server much like a liquid-cooled PC. Then there are open systems, where the water is pumped around the entire rack, where cold water enters the system and warm water comes out. It’s what happens to that expelled warm water that’s helping…

1. SWITCH VIEWS Use the left-hand pane to switch between Gramps’ main views—most are self-explanatory, while the Dashboard allows you to set up a whole page of customizable widgets called Gramplets. 2. CONTEXT-SENSITIVE The view (and toolbar) changes depending on the view that has been selected—roll your mouse over a button for a pop-up description of what it does. 3. MULTI-PANED VIEW Each view contains a two-paned window. On the left are details from the current view. You can click and drag the dividing line to increase or decrease the size of any individual panes. 4. SET UP GRAMPLETS You can also choose to display specific Gramplets in the right-hand pane. Click the ˅ button followed by ‘Add a Gramplet’ to add your choice—each one is displayed in its own…

MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD (Free, Windows/Mac/Linux) Version 115 of the free email client, which you can download from thunderbird.net THUNDERBIRD HAS JUST BEEN UPDATED—the tabs of its old interface are still there, but you can hide them if you only have one component open. There’s also a column of icons that switch between email, calendar, address book, and more; a handy search box in the title bar; and a discreet menu that saves you from picking your way through the full menu bar. It’s not just redesign for design’s sake, though, as there are other changes that will make an appreciable difference to the way you manage your email. Chief among them is the new tags filter, which lets you more quickly identify particular messages. Say, for example, that you want to…

CAN YOU HAVE TOO much of a good thing? Turns out the answer is yes. I was putting the hot new Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 G95NC through its paces for a sister title to Maximum PC, and had a bit of an accident. The G95NC, you see, is the new 57-inch monster with that ridiculous 32:9 aspect ratio and outrageous 1000R curve. We’ve seen similar displays from Samsung before, but only up to 49 inches. Now, you might think that’s just a case of massive and, er, massiver. 49 inches is huge, right? Yes, it is. But somehow, this new 57-inch model feels even more dramatic than the step from 49 inches to 57 implies. It also happens to create logistical issues. Repackaged TVs aside, this is the most physically…

SAMSUNG’S NEW ULTRA LAPTOP sits at the top of its laptop range, boasting a new design. There are suitably heavyweight components to match its name. Samsung sent us the top-end model, with a Core i9 processor and GeForce RTX 4070 graphics that push it into gaming laptop territory, most notably the 2023 Razer Blade 16. It also packs enough multi-threaded performance to make it a worthy alternative to the 16-inch MacBook Pro. I mention these two rivals because Samsung has emphasized the slick dimensions. It’s impressive and unusual to see such powerful components inside a sub-17mm design, and at 1.8kg it’s light, too; the 16-inch MacBook Pro weighs 2.2kg, and the Blade 2.5kg. Samsung has even slimmed down the power supply by choosing a phone-style USB-C charger. It’s still meaty,…

THE WD BLUE SN580 is the consummate budget NVMe SSD, taking a winning formula and making it better. It performs well enough with a fair range of capacities and solid support, making it a contender for our list of best SSDs. It’s relatively efficient, and the single-sided design makes it great for laptops. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but it’s an easy pick-up for a budget drive if you’re looking for a cheap upgrade that won’t disappoint, assuming the price is right. The success of the Blue SN570 and Black SN770 has prompted WD to revamp the former with the Blue SN580. The SN580 is essentially an updated SN570, much as the SN570 was an updated Blue SN550, which succeeded the Blue SN500. The SN550 was very…

RAZER’S COBRA PRO is pitched as a jack-of-all-trades mouse, ideal for any hand grip and game type. It comes with a 30,000 DPI Focus Pro optical sensor and Razer’s own optical switches under the buttons. There are 10 programmable controls and three ways to connect to your PC (2.4GHz, Bluetooth, USB-C to USB-A cable). At roughly 12cm x 6cm, it’s a pretty compact mouse, and that means it’s not that well suited to larger hands. At a wincingly expensive $129.99, it’s not exactly cheap either. In fact, that price leaves it just $20 short of Razer’s DeathAdder V3 Pro. That puts a lot of pressure on the Cobra Pro to deliver the goods. How does it fare? COMFORT & PERFORMANCE The Cobra Pro is light, snappy, and responsive, and looks pretty,…

THE RED TEAM’S party trick of layering a slab of cache over the processing cores to make a blistering chip, especially for games, has finally found a home in a laptop. The chip is the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D, and has 16 Zen cores with 128MB of L2 cache. The base clock is 2.3GHz, with a top boost of 5.4GHz. It is, as AMD boasts, the best mobile gaming chip in the world. We first got wind of this beauty when the specifications of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 G773 laptop broke cover. That laptop has arrived, and Asus claims it as the pinnacle of Windows gaming. The chip gets partnered with a 16GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 or 4080 Laptop GPU, and a 17-inch 1440p screen with a maximum…

WITH A POSITIVE outcome from our October 2023 build, the new budget AMD, we wanted to step things up with AMD’s latest GPU, the Radeon RX 7800 XT. Pair this with the almighty Ryzen 7800X3D, and we’ve surely got a recipe for success on our hands. Yep, it’s all-out AMD once more—this system should tackle the likes of the Intel 13600K & Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 at a competitive price bracket. Sure, Intel and Nvidia capture the majority of the custom PC market, but no one should turn their nose up at AMD. They’ve not kept quiet, and with cheaper prices (on the whole), they put up a strong fight. Although arguably the CPU/GPU are the two main components of a PC, the rest of the build is always fun…

THE BENCHMARKING results from our system are pretty impressive, being able to run games at QHD resolution on ultra settings, achieving frame rates of around 100fps. However, there are a few very quick tweaks and improvements we can make using AMD tech to boost this further. We have to mention the competitor, Nvidia, as it has this sector of the market covered, with the likes of DLSS vastly improving game performance. That being said, AMD is snapping at its heels with what its own Software: Adrenalin Edition. This application should be a necessity for AMD users, as it allows you to install the latest drivers and updates. You can also can fine-tune your hardware to squeeze some extra performance out of your PC for free. We’ll touch on the one-click auto…

PLUSES • Low cost of entry • Older computers can be fine • Works on Xbox NEGATIVES • Costs mount up • PCs can be too old • Fast broadband required You can largely brush aside concerns about how gutsy your hardware is if you opt for cloud gaming. Largely, but not entirely. The current pinnacle of cloud gaming performance comes from Nvidia GeForce Now’s Ultimate tier. On that plan, you can stream games in 4K at 120fps on either PC or Mac, with the graphics settings maxed out on over 1,000 games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Rocket League, and many more. However, don’t think you can run GeForce Now Ultimate on any computer. Although most of the heavy lifting is done by the RTX 4080 SuperPods in…

PLUSES • Capable in undemanding games • Affordable choices NEGATIVES • Demanding games unplayable • Very limited expansion You may be surprised at how capable modern Windows laptops are when it comes to gaming. Intel’s Iris Xe graphics can run Counter-Strike: GO and GTA V at rates well above the 60Hz refresh of their typical screens, and there’s enough power to run PUBG and Fortnite if you dial down the settings. The same is true for any modern AMD-powered laptop with Radeon graphics. However, just because a laptop includes a Core i3, i5, or i7 processor, it doesn’t mean it will produce playable frame rates in CS: GO. One particular quirk is that Iris Xe requires two sticks of RAM; if you only have one SODIMM, or embedded onto the motherboard, then it’s plain old Intel UHD Graphics. The…

TIP OF THE MONTH COLOR HUNT If you’re a creative person—whether commercially or as a hobbyist—then Color Hunt is a great place to find color swatches for your designs. On the colorhunt.co website, you’ll see a nearly endless selection of swatches, with categories and themes along the left-hand side. Each swatch has the exact hex code, which you can copy and paste straight into your design application. Pretty handy, hey? MAKE – USE – CREATE 62 Record your family history with Gramps 66 Master three great Thunderbird add-ons 70 How to use Generative Fill in Photoshop A HELPING HAND FROM AI To put it bluntly, AI scares me, but it has its perks. I’ve used it for design work with Adobe Photoshop’s generative fill tool, and to boost my gaming…

AN ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD OR PHOTOSHOP SUBSCRIPTION Adobe (www.adobe.com) YOU CAN’T THROW A GRAPHICS card these days without hitting some mention of AI with it. While the large language model chatbots may give every indication of understanding what you say and being able to hold a conversation that could pass for a real human, it’s in the world of image generation that AI’s strengths are most clearly on view. Image generation involves a text-to-image model such as Stable Diffusion or Midjourney taking a text prompt and turning it into an image. You can be as vague or detailed as you like, specifying the style of image you want to see or leaving it up to the AI to provide a creative interpretation. Adobe has just integrated a Generative Fill command…

IT WAS NOT long after joining this publication that I reviewed Samsung’s flagship Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. I found that the $1,100 device had a gorgeous OLED screen, but was a little too large in size and price for the average consumer. Jump forward a year and a half, and that high-end screen tech has filtered down to the standard model of its successor, the Galaxy Tab S9, which is far more palatable at both $800 and 11 inches in screen size. Overall, it may be Samsung’s entry-level tablet, but this upgraded display and the improved rear camera make it feel like a much more premium slate. There are other new features worth noting, including a sturdier design that’s dust and water-resistant, as well as a faster…

THE DREAM OF PLAYING PC games in bed has been the long-held desire of the handheld gaming PC crew. But 18 months, regular wrist cramps, and a couple of black eyes later, the general consensus is that the Steam Deck isn’t a device you want to be gaming on in bed. Its weight and girth make it an uncomfortable bedfellow, and your companions are unlikely to appreciate it, given the racket the fans make. But your bedroom will be a happy home for the OneXPlayer OneXFly handheld. It’s been designed to be smaller than both the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally, and lighter. It really is a lovely piece of hardware. While I don’t love the OneXConsole application, it’s effective enough at giving you easy control over the system.…

XGIMI HAS CARVED OUT a niche over the last four years on the back of terrific projectors. The Horizon series is the brand’s home cinema line, with the standard model offering 1080p resolution and 4K limited to the Horizon Pro. XGIMI is now rolling out a new variant: the Horizon Ultra. Dubbed the next-gen model in the series, the Horizon Ultra features a hybrid LED and laser system, 4K resolution with Dolby Vision integration, and a low-latency gaming mode. The best part is that the Horizon Ultra isn’t selling at a significant premium; the projector is debuting at $1,699—less than what the Horizon Pro launched for two years ago. Looks-wise, this projector is gorgeous; it’s not something that you tuck away in a corner. Instead, it’s designed to be the…

THERE WAS A MOMENT, after watching Pinocchio carve through his 200th rampant puppet with a squeal of grinding gears, when I wondered how we got here. Impossibly, in a year where Elden Ring’s expansion is still waiting in the wings and Lords of the Fallen is reusing the name of 2014’s most middling Soulslike, our best shot at an off-brand Dark Souls is a Korean-Italian puppet and his chatterbox cricket companion. But somehow you can put an oversized bonesaw in Pinocchio’s hands and it just feels right. While Lies of P trips over some mechanical clumsiness and can’t escape its inspirations, it’s a competent action game with a unique toolset for experimentation. Maybe more impressively, through the grim spectacle of puppet violence, it’s a successful gothic folktale reimagining. Pinocchio is…

> Mobo Connector Hate > Back Issue Issues > Digital Reader Help > Firefox Returns Consistency Qualms In his September 2023 Build, Sam mentioned his frustration with connectors. I thought I would share my least favorite, in addition to the case front, which he also lamented over. First is the USB 3.1 connector, which is often nigh-on impossible to plug into the motherboard. Next comes the 3-pin 5-volt RGB connector. The pins are incredibly fragile, the connector rarely stays put on the motherboard, and more often than not I fall at the first hurdle, as I can’t even get the connector onto the pins. It would be so lovely if manufacturers could help solve this problem and develop connections that are sturdy, easy to use, and unmistakable. On the subject…