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It's tech time, with PC PowerPlay
Ben Mansill
22 June 2025
The annual PC PowerPlay Tech Handbook is out now, loaded with tips, guides and reviews
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Get a full load of gaming hardware goodness in the new issue of PC PowerPlay’s Tech Special. This is the magazine you want to be holding in your hands if you’re a gamer and love the inside bits. We’ll help you better understand how the magic happens, what the best gear to have is right now, and entertain you with some tech tales, before diving into the two DIY builds we’ve done for this issue.
Check out our reviews of the CPUS and GPUs that might well end up powering your next rig, or just be a very desirable upgrade to what you’re currently running.
Enjoy tech tales, as we look at how Steam got big, consider the worthiness of mouse and keyboard alternatives, and much more, then dive into our monster 14 page guide to Computex 2023. We were there, and were blown away by the big reveals and we’re sharing all the big news with you.
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Then it’s time to get inside the silicon and understand how things work. It starts with the anatomy of a modern motherboard – essential if you’re shopping around for a new PC to build, before diving into the state of play with CPU architecture, as well as how AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs take gaming tech to the next level.
Then it’s off to the tool shed to get our building going on. Follow along and learn a few DIY tricks, or heck, just copy what we’ve done and you’ll end up with a beautiful new rig. We went all-out for our first build, loading up with a 7950X3D + RTX 4090, as well as premium bits for everything else. It’s a monster, we loved building it and our clear step by step guide and photos show how it’s done, so you can do it, too.
But because nobody normal can afford such a beast we’ve done a budget build for the rest of us. It’s still a powerful rig, just more sanely priced.
Enjoy the issue, you can grab a copy at the newsagent, or see below for getting this issue via digital methods. Hooray!
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Where to find your copy of PC PowerPlay?
At any good newsagent, of course!
Or just subscribe, it's a whole lot cheaper (save up to 10% off the newsstand price!). Do that here! And, if you've missed a special issue and that makes you sad, you can grab any back issue of PC PowerPlay right here. Fan-tastic.
Alternate plan B! Grab the digital edition for just $6.99 per issue, or grab a digital subscription and save 40%.
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And, if you'd like to discuss your options with an actual real human being, call us on (02) 8227 6486, or email future@crmaus.com.au.
Ben Mansill
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PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Painkiller
PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – 10th anniversary
PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Doom: The Dark Ages
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PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
The RX 9070 XT might not be the truly mid-range graphics card I'm still dreaming of but it turned my latest sci-fi PC build into a frame rate menace
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