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Cool thanks, I had assumed that it would only apply to a particular laptop but looks like you're right and the setting will carry across, appreciate the reply.

Hi folks, I'm looking at the Steelseries Rival 3 for use on a future gaming PC, but for now it'll be to use on my work laptop for working from home. I can't install the Steelseries software on the work laptop. I find the default rainbow effect RGB very annoying. I have the Apex 3 tkl keyboard, and on that I can just turn off backlighting to get rid of the rainbow effect that the keyboard defaults to when I plug in my laptop. Just wondering, is it possible to disable the RGB lighting on the rival 3 mouse so I'm not stuck with a rainbow effect as soon as I plug it in? I could put the software on another laptop and disable the RGB but am not sure if that would still apply on my work laptop? Thanks in advance

I've been thinking about building a 1080p gaming pc but the Xbox Series S is so much cheaper it is making me wonder if it might be better to pick that up instead. The only thing is I love single player FPS and immersive Sims (never play multiplayer) and find playing those with a pad very awkward. I've seen the Xim Apex would let me play with a keyboard and mouse but has anyone actually used it? How close is it to the feel of playing on a PC?

Hey thanks, I'll take a look at those keyboard options. I'm not too worried about storage as that's something I can add down the road as needed but if I can free up a bit of cash for a better PSU, that would be a good bit of future proofing for sure.

Hey thanks for the reply - won't lie that's a little disappointing but I guess I'll wait and see what comes up. In general did my component list look ok to you?

Budget (including currency): Max £1100 for everything including peripherals, hoping to reduce by buying discounted products during Black Friday Country: Ireland, but buying components from the UK to save money Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 1080p gaming - mainly AAA single player games e.g. Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate 3, Titanfall 2, Doom, Deathloop, Total Warhammer, Star Wars Squadrons. Maybe a little multiplayer (star wars squadrons or Titanfall 2) but nothing serious and I'll be playing on wifi. Plus general office tasks like Word, Excel, Powerpoint but no video editing or anything like that. Other details: I've spent the last few months looking into a new 1080p build. I need everything - monitor, peripherals, etc, and want to bring the price down by picking up anything that gets a discount during Black Friday. I've prepared a shortlist of options for each component and want to know: - Are any of them bad picks for my budget? - Are there any better options I should consider? - Is there any reason not to buy any/all components that are on offer and pick the rest up later? CPU - with no release date for a 5600 and the likely £50 price hike over the 3600, I'm looking at the 3600 or maybe the 3600x if there's a good saving. The 3300x has been out of stock for 6 months. If there are no CPU discounts I'll wait until I get the GPU (see below) in case there's something new by then. Motherboard - I need wifi, so the MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI is my number 1 pick. I couldn't see any other B550s that have wifi at this price point, or cheaper ones where adding a wifi card would come to the same price GPU - I'm almost certainly going to wait for the 3060 / 6600; I imagine the new cards will be more expensive so hoping to offset this with savings elsewhere. However if there are great savings on any of the below I'd consider getting one: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 KO Gaming Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Zotac GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Gigabyte Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB PULSE Memory - either the Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200 or the Team T-Force Vulcan 16GB 3200 Storage - either the Crucial P1, Kingston A2000 or the WD Blue SN550 - all 500GB NVME drives. I know the WD Blue is DRAMless but it seems to work well despite that? Cases - Either the Fractal Design Focus G Mini tower plus 1x Arctic P12 fan, or the Thermaltake Versa H18 mini tower plus 2x arctic P12 fans to have 3x fans in total either way PSU - I think I'd be fine with 550W even with a new GPU from what I've read? My shortlist is: Cooler Master MWE Bronze V2 550 W 80+ Bronze Corsair CV 550 W 80+ Bronze be quiet! System Power 9 600 W 80+ Bronze Monitor - Only 1x option here - the AOC 24G2U, as it seems to be overwhelmingly the best 1080p monitor Keyboard - I've never used a mechanical keyboard but would like to try one. I'd prefer a TKL as I've a small desk so either the HyperX Alloy FPS pro or the Corsair K63 Mouse - either the Steelseries Rival 3 or Logitech G203 Lightsync Headphones - either the HyperX Cloud Stinger or the Logitech G432 if there's a good discount Here's my current model build for ref on the price: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£180.00 @ Currys PC World) Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.99 @ Box Limited) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£58.00 @ Amazon UK) Storage: Kingston A2000 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£44.98 @ Amazon UK) Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB PULSE Video Card (£276.58 @ Alza) Power Supply: Cooler Master MWE Bronze V2 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£52.94 @ Box Limited) Case Fan: ARCTIC P12 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fan (£5.99 @ Amazon UK) Case Fan: ARCTIC P12 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fan (£5.99 @ Amazon UK) Monitor: AOC 24G2U/BK 24.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor (£178.20 @ Currys PC World Business) Mouse: SteelSeries Rival 3 Wired Optical Mouse (£29.98 @ Currys PC World Business) Headphones: Kingston HyperX Cloud Stinger Headset (£49.99 @ Amazon UK) Custom: Corsair K63 Compact Gaming Mechanical Keyboard (Cherry MX Red) (£72.98 @ Amazon UK) Custom: Thermaltake Versa H18 Window (£41.28 @ Amazon UK) Total: £1096.90 Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for any advice!

Hi all, Like a lot of people I've been waiting for the new CPU/GPU reveals to put together a new gaming build. However the costs so far for the higher-end 3000 series GPU and 5000 series CPUs make me think that I probably won't be buying both a next gen GPU and CPU for my 1080p budget build! I've seen a lot of comments that at higher resolutions the GPU matters a lot more for gaming than the CPU, but at 1080p if you were faced with a choice between e.g. a 3600 + 3060 or a 5600 + a 5600XT (great naming conventions there AMD!), which would you think would deliver better performance? And why is that the case? This is obviously hypothetical until everything's out and benchmarked, I know, but I'm curious about the CPU/GPU relationship at 1080p. Cheers, Mike

Yes I just find it so bizarre that they'd bother to launch a CPU that gets incredible reviews if they weren't going to produce enough to meet demand. Very strange. I think it's the 3600 for me and I'll keep my fingers crossed for a black friday discount...

Hi folks, I'm playing around with a 1080p gaming build - having seen that the 5000 series will have the 5600X (well out of my price range) as the lowest spec'd CPU at launch I'm thinking I may end up going for a 3000 series CPU instead. The 3300x seems to deliver practically identical gaming performance as the 3600 for less money, but as far as I can tell it's essentially been out of stock from the moment they released it. I know the production process involves using higher-end chips that failed so that might have something to do with this - is there any reason to think the 3300x will come back into stock or do you think realistically it's better to plan around the 3600?

Wow. That one acquisition makes the binge they went on for E3 last year look like peanuts. It's the most aggressive move I can imagine from Microsoft going into the Series X. If every Bethesda game ends on game pass + all future titles start appearing on day one, that's a massive competitive advantage against PS5. It also could be good news for some of the devs like Arkane; I love their games but they've never been huge sellers. If they become Microsoft's source of immersive sims for Game Pass that could be a brilliant source of stability for them.

Cool thanks - yes that's really the question. Will have to wait and see some benchmarks for the 3060/6600XT and the 4300X/4600 to see what performance I could get at 1080p!

Hi folks, I've been playing around with a 1080p build for later this year/January. At the moment I've got a 3600 on a B550 MB, paired with the 5600XT. However, I'm hoping that by the time I build I'd be looking at a 3060/6600 equivalent plus a 4000 series CPU. I'm trying to save costs wherever possible. Currently I have the AOC 24G2U 24" down which is 144Hz and normally costs around £180 but I noticed that there's a 75Hz version for £30 less. I only play single player games - ones I'd be excited about are e.g. Titanfall 2, Doom, Dishonored, Deathloop, Cyberpunk, Total War, Assassin's Creed, Xcom etc. I understand that high refresh rates are better for multiplayer gaming but I'm wondering whether I'd really notice the improvement going over 75hz for the kind of games I like to play?

Depending on what kind of monitor you're upgrading to, something like a 3060 or the AMD equivalent could be all you need if you're sticking with a 1080p model. It's likely that these cards (which haven't yet been officially announced) will be available by early-ish next year.

I might be wrong but I thought that a KB and mouse would work on the system but not in game? Ie if I wanted to play Doom with a keyboard and mouse on Xbox you'd need to buy a third party adapter?

Before anyone accuses me of cheating, I don't play multiplayer games. At all. I've been looking at a new PC build but if an Xbox Series X is £450 it's hard to even convince myself that it's worth spending £1100 to get a decent system with all the peripherals. The thing I really miss from PC gaming though is the mouse and keyboard - playing first person games with a controller just feels slow and awkward to me. So has anyone used a third party adapter to use a KB+M on a console? Do they actually work and feel normal in game? Thanks in advance.