#might do a blank template so people can put their ocs too

[miranita]

Totally forgot to post these cute icons that’s I’ve been working on for a relationship template for my ocs and the GTAV gang ⭐️

I need to figure out who I’m going to draw next tho 👀

[geode-crystal]

Gail Carson Levine's Character Profile

I was tagged by @tildeathiwillwrite for this one! decided to do my boi Mianu.

I love character building stuff like this so I maaay have gone a little overboard on a couple questions lol

All credit to @theeccentricraven for the original tag game :)

Rules: Copy and paste the template, fill it out for one or more of your OC's, then post your OC's and the blank template for others to copy and paste.

I'm not going to tag anyone specific in this but hey, whoever wants it, go for it! All answers for Mianu below the cut!

Name: Mianu Farias

Nickname: Do not even attempt to give him a nickname he is too Edgy for that (he’s not even a fan of all the formal royal titles people use for him)

Kind of being: Human

Age: about 20-ish

Sex: Male

Appearance: Long, somewhat wavy pitch-black hair. There’s a strand that tends to fall in his face, sometimes covering up the scar above his right eye. Bright green eyes. He looks a little too skinny for his height. Discreetly muscular.

Occupation: Prince, was once in training to be a knight before he discovered his true royal heritage

Family Members: Adoptive parents (who are not nobility), younger brother, even younger sister

Pets: A very loyal and very cute black hound. It’s always tough to leave him behind when he goes on various adventures.

Best friend: Considers Darius both his best friend and his boyfriend. Becomes good friends with Everard, a knight from a neighboring kingdom.  

Describe their room: His room in the palace of his home kingdom is surprisingly sparse, almost entirely devoid of personality. He doesn’t like spending that much time in there, and it shows.

Way of Speaking: He tends to sound rather cold while he’s talking, especially to people he’s not familiar with. But most of that is just him trying to push past his regular self-doubt and anxiety. Add that to the stiffness that comes with using Polite Royal Speech when he’s still not particularly used to it, and you get a bit of a standoffish mess. But when he’s comfortable and happy around someone, he can be playfully snarky and sarcastic. He loves teasing people. And his laugh is wonderful. Only Darius gets to hear that laugh often.

Physical characteristics (posture, gestures, attitude): Even before he knew he was royalty, he had a habit of standing tall whenever he was angry. He has an impressive death glare. An Upset Mianu will have hunched shoulders, curling in on himself, wrapping his arms around himself protectively. He favors one arm over the other thanks to the consequences of dark magic. He’s worn a sword at his side often enough that putting a hand where it would usually be in times of crisis has become something of a habit.

Items in his/her pockets or backpack or purse: Whatever he might need for the latest adventure. He tries his best to plan ahead. It doesn’t always work. He also “secretly” carries two books with him wherever he goes, one on whatever magical subject he happens to be studying at the time, another just for entertainment. (Darius knows about his “secret books.” He thinks it’s adorable, much to Mianu’s embarrassment.)

Hobbies: Studying magic, still remembers some gardening basics from his old non-noble life  

Favorite sports: He is a master at the cheese-rolling challenge in old hometown festivals. (So basically track and field lol)

Talents, abilities, or powers: Wields incredibly powerful shadow/dark magic (when it doesn’t wield him), skilled with a sword. Once commanded an entire squadron of a magical shadow army (He regrets that desperately, but still retains his skills in command and tactics).

Relationships (they are with other people): Seems cool and unapproachable at first, but most of that is just the self-doubt showing through, manifesting as a need to prove himself and unwillingness to open up to people. But as above, once you get close to him, you have a friend for life. And he’s actually a clever and funny person, with one heck of a nerdy streak. He will defend anyone in his small chosen family with everything that he has.  

Fears: Terrified that the fact that he once chose the wrong path in his life, that he fought on the wrong side of a great battle, means he will never be able to make up for everything he did.

Faults: Has given into temptation/been tricked/been manipulated before. He can be cruelly cunning, but this is mostly the effect of living with and working with The Bad Guys for so long.  Lots of inner confusion and inner torment: he’s still trying to figure out what to do with himself and his newfound position of power.

Good Points: His heart is truly in the right place. He cares deeply about friends and family and loved ones. Genuinely wants the best for his people, no matter what their rank or birthrights might be. He’s also wonderful with animals, and quick both on his feet and with his wits.

What they want more than anything else: To make things right.

Template:

Name:

Nickname:

Kind of being:

Age:

Sex:

Appearance:

Occupation:

Family Members:

Pets:

Best friend:

Describe his/her room:

Way of Speaking:

Physical characteristics (posture, gestures, attitude): 

Items in his/her pockets or backpack or purse:

Hobbies:

Favorite sports:

Talents, abilities, or powers:

Relationships (how he/she is with other people):

Fears:

Faults:

Good points:

What he/she wants more than anything else:

[flower-of-zaun]

Bruh can you stop incorrectly tagging shit. Tags exist for a reason. For people to find and sort content. What the fuck is the point if ur just gonna put whatever you want in whatever tag you want regardless of if it belongs or not. And before you come at me with the “it’s first person sweetie it counts :^)” yes I understand x reader shit can be in first person, but that was not the point the other anon was trying to get across they were trying to explain that it isn’t a reader insert if you fucking a whole character insert. That’s an oc. Not a blank reader template. You might have gotten that if you actually read their ask instead of getting nasty for literally no reason. I’ve had the same criticism with fic writers for years and I usually just ignore it and block like you told them! It’s easier for everyone! And while that anon may not have been rude to you initially, I will be before I block you since you decided to be nasty for no reason first, ignore a fair criticism, and double down on your incorrect tagging! Have lovely day! <3

I explained why I tag first person POV. There is very little character description. I’ve always tagged it and never had an issue. I’ve done this for years. In other fics on different sites I also haven’t updated the fic in MONTHS, so y’all are just low down in the tag and super mad for no reason. It came off as rude and I kinda said no the first time, they kept going. Y’all are either friends or the same person acting like someone else, bc I didn’t even tag these with anything fic tags lmfao. Someone saying “don’t tag this plz, I don’t agree with it” isn’t criticism. It’s requesting someone to do something.

Thanks for blocking me babes. I’d maybe take it into consideration of you were anon and being dumb loud over a tag 💀

Edit since y’all mad:

Description: gaining and losing weight, the length of your hair is showing time passing. Also hair plays into a massive plot point. Tattoos also play into it too.

Personality: who the fuck wants a basic ass self insert. You’re a little bad ass and you’re funny. Silco isn’t falling in love with some basic bitch. Still has relatable humor.

Backstory: it’s tragic and kind of cliché BUT It is a plot point. This isn’t basic Porn with Plot but a whole ass story where you’re building a relationship with people from your past and present. You are living in a fantasy world and you aren’t yourself…but stepping into this persons shoes and living their story. It still counts as reader. Sorry you have your OPINION on what x Reader should be. I never said you were wrong, it’s one of the ways of writing but ISNT THE ONLY WAY.

[thetenthdoctorscompanion]

UMBRELLA ACADEMY CHARACTER POSTERS - TUTORIAL/RESOURCES

So since the giveaway, I’ve gotten a couple messages inquiring how I made my character posters for Umbrella Academy OCs. I figured I’d throw a quick walk through together in case anyone wants to make their own and isn’t sure how to start.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t work for the Netflix graphics department, so obviously this design isn’t mine. If you make one of these posters, I don’t need credit. If you use my blank template, maybe give it a reblog for others to find it, but I don’t need or expect anything. Thanks in advance.

So to start off, there’s a couple things you’re going to need for this edit. I use Photoshop for all of my editing, but there are plenty of good editing websites out there where you should be able to put the pieces together. Before you start, you probably want to collect the following:

poster base/background

picture of your character

super adjective (ex: quiet, cursed, strong, bitter, high, etc.)

OPTIONAL: background symbol/number

OPTIONAL: umbrella picture

PART ONE: YOUR BASE

To start off, you’re gonna need your full stripe-y background. So full disclosure, I didn’t start from scratch. I took one of the licensed promo posters and selected the thin strip of stripes at the top, made it a new layer, and then stretched it to cover up the entire original poster. I also duplicated that layer to add a “sprayed strokes” filter on top, just to give the lines that unfinished texture they have in the regular posters. If you want to skip that step, here’s the plain background I started with.

PART TWO: YOUR CHARACTER

The next thing you’ll want to add is you - your OC, your selfie, whatever you’re making the poster for. Wait that’s a good idea, I want to make a poster of me. File that idea for later.

This is a pretty personal step, so there’s not much I can do to help you. If you’re keeping to the promo poster style, you’ll want to stick to pictures where the person is looking into the camera. I searched for other character promotional footage or photoshoots. I tried to restrict myself to pictures that framed at least from the hips up. This is important so your character doesn’t take up too much of the width of the poster and hide the striped background. And obviously, you’ll want to make sure the image is large so the quality is conserved in the poster.

(Additional Note: If your character is someone who was in the Umbrella Academy, you might want to keep an eye on their hands in the photos. Almost everyone [with the exception of Klaus] has an umbrella in their poster if they were part of the team, but I’ll get to this bit in more detail later.)

So you’ll add whatever character to the poster, and use a standard mask to get rid of the background. I usually use the lasso tool with my feathering on 1 pixel.

PART THREE: TOP TEXT

Pretty easy step. The “super superlative” at the top of the poster should be black, Impact font. Whatever word you pick: keep it short, and keep it one adjective. The longer the word, the smaller you’ll have to make it to fit on the poster, and the less bold it will look in the finished product. You’ll want that layer to be behind your character.

OPTIONAL STEP: BACKGROUND SYMBOL/NUMBER

This is another personal step. If your character was one of the Hargreeves children, they’ve probably got a number assigned to them. In the promotional posters, these numbers are displayed in the background behind the characters. (If there isn’t a number for your character, you can skip this step. Characters like Hazel and Cha Cha simply have striped backgrounds, and that’s just fine.)

The font used in the real posters is not any default font that I could match. For my posters, I used white Arial Black. Resize until it’s as large as you’d like (probably at least 1/3 the height of the poster) and drag to whichever side of your character you’d prefer. This layer should also be behind the person in your image. Then you want to convert your text layer to a workable layer (rasterize) and trim the edges.

OPTIONAL STEP: UMBRELLA

Oof, okay this one can be tough. As I said earlier, most of the Umbrella Academy team members appeared with an umbrella in their poster. With the exception of Klaus, the lil deviant, and Ben who is too dead to hold one. It’s not a necessary part of the poster, but it does take it up a notch if you’ve got the time, patience, and program to do a little more work.

Obviously, this picture of Eliza Dushku does not come with umbrella. I had to do a lot of Googling for “closed umbrella” or “woman holding umbrella” in order to find positions that would work with each photo or hands I could sub out in the picture. Once you’ve found one you want to use, you can mask the layers and adjust the color appropriately. 

This one didn’t work too well cause I had already cropped her legs, but you get the idea.

PART FOUR: BACKGROUND STRIPES

Now for the fun, up for interpretation part! Playing around with that background bit. If you’re working with a plain background, you can select uneven sections of the stripes to delete, so they don’t all reach the bottom. If you’re working with a number, you should already have rasterized the layer. You can go ahead and select some uneven sections so those black lines drip down through the number.

PART FIVE: FOREGROUND STRIPES

There are...probably better ways to do this. But alas, what I have for you is a semi-cheap, time-saving way. We’ve deleted some stripes in the back, now it’s time to stretch some of the stripes down in front. But as the stripe extends over your character, it inverts color. So what I ended up doing was *~* MAKING A NEW LAYER *~* on top, and painting with a white brush where I wanted these lines to go.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT FORGET TO MAKE A NEW LAYER FIRST. YOU WILL REGRET IT IF YOU DON’T.

After that I used the rectangle marquee to trim the brush strokes, i.e. extend the negative space from the stripes above. Then trim the ends of the lines where you want them to stop, and the tops of the lines where your character’s outline begins.

VOILA! YOU’VE DONE IT! THAT RIGHT THERE IS A POSTER!

Anyway, I hope this was helpful for some people. I spent about an hour and a half longer on this tutorial than I intended. Whoopsie doodles. Please reblog if this helped, and/or shoot me a message with questions.

[nihilnovisubsole]

I love all your comments about writing and since you seem to like answering questions about writing: I was wondering if you could elaborate on your writing process? How do you start writing? Where do you start? How do you keep focused? How do you decide what to include and what to exclude when you have several ideas for the same story? Or ignore these questions and fill them in yourself with whatever you'd like to share or not! I would love to hear your thoughts, thanks!!

yeah lmao you got me 💀 i really do like talking about writing a lot

seriously, though, i do hope you find these posts useful. i know writing can be so obscure, it’s hard to feel like you’re “doing it right.” i may not have a million dollars or a book deal or anything, but i’m happy to tell you anything you need if it’ll help.

how do you start writing?

i always start with a character. a protagonist, a team member, a love interest. who they are, what their dialogue sounds like, what they look like, what they wear. i’d say it comes from being active in fandoms and making OCs, except that i did it for years before i knew what fandom was. i’ve never really gone “i want to write a story about [X].” it’s always, “i want to make this character. what would their story be about?”

where do you start?

once i had marcus and livia, the first seed of dangerous crowns came from an image of the two of them up late at night. the room was a deep, dark blue. he sat at the edge of the bed, and he told her that some ambiguous war was taking a toll on him. those were the first random bits of dialogue i wrote down, long before i expected it to go anywhere.

and then i got other flashbulb images. the two of them having a garden breakfast, livia riding through a forest, the two of them swearing to overthrow a king. eventually i got an image of them fighting in a throne room. the end scenes tend to hit me early, before i know what to do with them. basically, these moments pop up like nonlinear storyboards, and then i have to jot them down and figure out where they fit. it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. i don’t start at the top corner and go left-to-right, i notch it together based on whatever piece i find next.

i think having a blank page scares a lot of people off, so my goal is to get rid of it as soon as possible. i paste in my usual outline template and start filling it with junk. just anything. setting ideas, scene details, character notes. then i paste in some chapter headers and start blurting out the random dialogue stuff i mentioned earlier. it may not look like much, but at least it’s not empty anymore.

how do you keep focused?

to be honest, with personal work, i’ve just kind of accepted that doing a long writing project is a slow, gentle ride. i’m not, at least so far, one of those writers who can strap in and bang out a rough draft in three weeks. i’ll be busy with other work or get distracted with research, or i’ll spend too long trying to make one passage perfect. i’m sure that’ll have to change when i try to ramp up my career, but for now, doing itty bitty selfpub, it works.

there’s a [paraphrased] quote that really nails the mindset i have about novel-length work: “you have to get comfortable with the idea that you’re going to live with this project for the next year or two.” i’m lucky in that i’ve now finished two of them, so i can just kind of take it on faith that it’ll get done sometime. i’ve done it before. somehow, i’ll figure out how to do it again. not everyone has the luxury of having proved that to themselves.

on the other hand, when i’m writing for voltage, i have to do a certain amount every day to meet deadlines. i can’t put writing off and binge the night before it’s due. i have a concrete ceiling of how much i can do per day. so every morning, i load gdocs and put the forest browser extension on, which i’ve set up to only whitelist google stuff, wikihow, and wikipedia. in general, voltage scripts don’t need a lot of research, so i can chew through my daily quota without falling into social media hell.

how do you decide what to include and what to exclude when you have several ideas for the same story?

god, i wish i had this problem more often than i do. most of the time, i’m lucky if i have one idea for how something should go. it’s tough when i run it by my mother and she says it doesn’t work, because i might have literally no clue how else a scene could play out. either it was a “flashbulb moment” and it’s hard to picture anything else, or it breaks some rule of adulthood that i’m not familiar with. the second one happens a lot. she’ll be like, “um, that character wouldn’t be allowed to do that,” and i’m like, “well, shit. i didn’t know that military/social/etc. protocol.” then we have to talk about how i can restructure it so that it hits the same plot beats without breaking the rules.

on the rare instance that i do have more than one idea, it tends to boil down to survival of the fittest. i’ll leave blank spots and string them all along for a while, and eventually, i’ll see that one is generating more material. like, if i have two different ideas for a character’s backstory, i may notice that one is more symbolically meaningful. if i’m stuck between giving a character two different jobs, i may notice that one job gives them more relevant skills. it sounds mercenary, but long writing projects are already hard enough. i have to pick the one that’s going to make it easier.

[neomatch]

Neomatch is live!

Neomatch is a “dating site” made for the purpose of pairing the neotag’s lonely neopet OCs together with the intention of finding them friends, and maybe a little something more :)

Like all fun things, NeoMatch has some guidelines we would like you to read before submitting apps to help clear up any confusion or concerns! Please click to read more about this project and learn how you can be part of it.

Guidelines

Neomatch is intended to be a fun, community building activity and resource for people in the neopets fandom who would like to incorporate other’s neopet OCs into their stories/character development and need somewhere to start. We want to keep this site as drama free as possible and ask everyone to abide by the following rules:

Neomatch is purely for fun and not meant to be taken too seriously, so please refrain from starting conflict if your neopet does not find a partner or is turned down by the partner you wanted for them. This site is for making friends, not enemies! 

We ask everyone to respect the boundaries of the other individuals associated with this site. That means that if someone isn’t looking for romance for their pet, don’t ask! If they don’t want to RP or have ship art drawn of their pet then please be sure to respect that. What this also means is, regardless of the pet’s sexuality, if the user has stated they are only looking for a specific gender of partner for their pet, please abide to that as well. (I.E. someone’s OC is bisexual but only interested in girls, don’t pursue them with your male OC! Neopets can have preferences, too)

The minimum OC age to use this service is 16, and RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN UNDERAGE OCS AND ADULT OCS ARE NOT ALLOWED!!!! We have created tags with the purpose to seperate the adults from the teens, but while searching through other tags on our blog PLEASE keep an eye out for which OCs are “neominors” and “neoadults” respectively. The only exception to this is the “2 year age gap” rule which basically means that if your OC is 16, the oldest OC they can date is 18. If your pet is 17, the oldest OC they can date is 19. Please be mindful of this rule regardless of what your opinion is of age gaps irl. Anyone found to be purposely breaking this rule will be removed and blocked from Neomatch and will not be allowed to participate in events related to it.

Contact us ASAP if you receive any form of harassment from someone related to using this service. This includes disrespecting pre-established boundaries (unsolicited RP/ship art), pressuring or giulting someone into having your OCs date/be friends, and anything related to shipping minors/adult OCs together (that breaks the 2 year age gap rule). Anyone who is found to be breaking the rules will either be given a warning or be blocked and banned from using the service (depending on the severity of the situation). 

Now that is over with, let’s get to the fun part!

1. Making your Application

Below are examples of the templates available to you at this time, the first one is the Neomatch Application which is required to fill out in order to use this service.

Here’s a beautifully illustrated and completed version of the template made by Zji:

Here is where you can download the template yourself! The folder includes a Visual Guide, a blank PNG, and a blank PSD.

The second template is the Neomatch Profile which is completely optional!

Here’s Zji’s version of the profile:

Here is where you can download the blank version of the profile, as well as the visual guide +PSD! This template is easiest to fill out in Photoshop, but if you don’t have Photoshop you can add text to the blank profile in another art program like Paint. If you want to add emojis to your profile but don’t have them on your computer, I would type up the bio on tumblr mobile, save as a draft, screenshot it, then paste into the profile :)

Here is a brief rundown of what is OK and not ok to do when filling out the templates:

Feel free to

change the color of the background, text boxes, and font as you wish (as long as you can still read it)

add multiple pictures into picture box

use a different font to fill out the form

Please refrain from

Changing the color of the header/footer (This is fine on the Profile, but we want to keep the grey top and bottom on the Application)

Removing or editing the Neomatch logo

Leaving info boxes blank (except for the “Other” box) 

Filling out the form illegibly (if you really want to write in the info yourself just make sure other people can read it)

Using images you don’t have permission to use as the profile picture

If you have any problems filling out the form or have questions for us related to it, please send us an ask or DM and we will help you ASAP.

Here is where you can see some more of Zji’s apps/profiles if you want to see more examples.

2. Submitting your application

If you go to the Submit page you will see we have a few more rules and stuff to follow just to help keep stuff organized. I will briefly address them here as well as some other things 

We prefer at this time if you don’t post your applications to tumblr on your main blog/other blogs. You are absolutely welcome to reblog submissions from us, but we would like to keep everything in one place and don’t want to clutter people’s feed’s with the same picture over and over again.

You can submit as many apps as you want, but if we receive a lot of submissions at once we may put them into a queue to try to space out the posts.

It’s very important to use that you tag your submission correctly to save us a little bit of time when uploading them, we can’t tag them for you because we aren’t at liberty to assume what your OC is looking for

If your application or something related to your submission is incorrect we will send you a message and explain how you can fix it

If you have any questions or are confused about the submission process please shoot us an ask and we will try our best to help you

It is also required to fill out the following form in the description of your submission to be accepted:

Contact: (your blog[s] here) Is it OK to draw your OC interacting with other OCs platonically?: (yes/no/ask first) Is it OK for Neomatch to send you “Matches’ via DM with similar characters your OC may be compatible with, or would you like to look by yourself?: (yes or no) [BE SURE TO HAVE YOUR DMS OPEN IF YOU SAY YES OR ELSE YOU WONT GET MATCHES FROM US] If you marked “No” above, is it still okay for us to match your OC with other’s OCs? (you won’t get a DM from us but someone might DM you): (yes/no) Other important info: (maybe include a bit of your character’s backstory & if you are looking for characters to add to your story, etc? or anything else at all you would like to include)

3. Receiving Neomatches

We intend on providing a little matchmaker service to those who opt into it, what it consists of is the admins of this blog helping you find friends/romance for your OC by taking mutual interests, location, age, and so on into consideration and pairing your OC with someone else’s based off of that. These “Neomatches” will be DMed to you privately (SO KEEP YOUR DMs OPEN) and it’s completely up to you on whether or not you’d like to pursue it or not. The message will consist of something like “_____ has a new match!” and we’ll DM you the profile of the other OC. If you find this service annoying or are not interested in using it you can let us know and we will stop sending them to you :)

I think that basically covers the jist of it, so keep an eye out for future updates and announcements! Feel free to send us an ask here if you have any questions or concerns related to using this service! We hope you all have as much fun with this as we will!

[gta-5-cheats]

Intel Core i5-8400 and Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming Review

New Post has been published on http://secondcovers.com/intel-core-i5-8400-and-gigabyte-z370-aorus-ultra-gaming-review/

Intel Core i5-8400 and Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming Review

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Intel’s 8th Gen Core CPU family has proven to be more exciting than anything the company has released in years. For the first time, we have multiple different architectures serving different product segments and more than four cores in mainstream desktop processors. We now know that there are Intel CPUs with integrated AMD graphics, and we’re also eagerly awaiting the launch of 10nm models for ultra-thin laptops. Today, we’re looking at one of Intel’s six current desktop offerings, the mid-range Core i5-8400.

We reviewed the Core i7-8700K shortly after its release in October 2017, and found that while performance was certainly better than that of the previous generation, there were a lot of unanswered questions about supply, pricing, and platform support. Now, a few months in, we’re curious to see how things are coming along in Intel’s ecosystem, and what exactly you have to compromise on with a Core i5 model in the same line that costs almost exactly half as much.

The Core i5-8400

Intel has so far released one multiplier-locked model and one overclockable model in each of its Core i3, i5, and i7 product tiers. The Core i5-8400 is the locked mid-tier offering, sibling to the Core i5-8600K. The biggest reason to get excited about it is the graduation to six physical cores, as opposed to four in previous generations. That should give apps and games a nice boost where it counts. Another strong selling point is this CPU’s street price of approximately Rs. 14,500 which puts it directly in competition with the quad-core AMD Ryzen 5 1500X and slightly undercuts the hexa-core Ryzen 5 1600.

The Core i5-8400 is clocked at 2.8GHz but one core at a time can be pushed up to 4GHz if any workload can benefit from that, or 3.8GHz if all cores are boosted. There’s 9MB of cache memory, and the TDP is rated at 65W which is well below the 95W rating for overclockable CPUs. There are 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes for communication with high-speed peripherals such as a graphics card. You can use up to 64GB of DDR4-2666 RAM.

Desktop 8th Gen Core CPUs are built around Intel’s 14nm Coffee Lake architecture, as opposed to the Kaby Lake Refresh used for laptop parts. That means it’s slightly more advanced in terms of optimisations to the manufacturing process and underlying design, but isn’t all that important. The bigger picture is more cores and better performance compared to 7th Gen and older equivalents. However, there has been no improvement at all to the integrated graphics capabilities – other than changing the name from HD Graphics to UHD Graphics – which is surprising and disappointing.

You’ll need a motherboard based on the Z370 platform controller – Intel has not fleshed out its offerings which is a shame, because the Z370 is expensive and only really suited to the high-end unlocked Core i7-8700K and Core i5-8600K. Its overclocking abilities are utterly wasted on the Core i5-8400 and other lower-end models. We were hoping that mid-range H-series and B-series motherboards would be in the market by this point, but Intel has just not released those controllers yet.

  The Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming

The Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming is one of the higher end models in Gigabyte’s Aorus range. It’s a nice-looking matte black board with grey and silver accents, (except for the bright red and gold audio components in one corner). The layout isn’t too cramped, which is always good to see. There’s a bulky black shroud around the rear port cluster and an oversized heatsink with over the platform controller chip. There are metal reinforcements around the RAM and primary PCIe slots (whether for looks or functionality is debatable) but some high-end touches such as M.2 slot heatsinks didn’t make the cut. We also noted the lack of power and reset buttons on the board itself, so you’ll have to short pins manually. The buttons are something we now take for granted on enthusiast-class boards and it’s so simple to implement that we’re quite surprised by the oversight.

While not quite as blinged-out as the X299 Aorus Gaming 7 that we tested last year, the Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming does of course feature plenty of RGB LED lighting. The most noticeable lighting zone is the plexiglass strip at the front of the board, which Gigabyte calls an Accent LED Overlay. You can 3D print your own strip with any pattern or text of your choosing, using templates available on Gigabyte’s website. We aren’t fans of this because it calls attention to itself unnecessarily, but some buyers will undoubtedly love it.

There are also LEDs around the CPU socket power regulators, along the RAM and PCIe slots, on the PCH heatsink, and around the audio circuitry, plus headers for additional RGBW and even UV light strips. With the RGB Fusion utility for Windows, you can control each zone independently and also tie in other compatible hardware (internal and external) from Gigabyte and partner brands.

The rear IO port cluster doesn’t have anything special. You get two USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports, one of which is Type-C and the other Type-A. There are four more USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) and two USB 2.0 ports, as well as one PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, DVI-D and HDMI video outputs, a Gigabit Ethernet port, five analog audio sockets and one optical S/PDIF audio output. Internal headers can give you more USB ports including one more Type-C (Gen 1) port for your cabinet’s front panel. The only real problem is the lack of a DisplayPort output, which we’ll address in a minute.

  There are two M.2 slots, one of which can handle SATA or PCIe SSDs while the other is PCIe only. Intel’s Optane Memory is supported. You also get six SATA 3.0 ports, though one is disabled if you’re using a SATA M.2 SSD.

Due to Intel’s stinginess with PCIe lanes on its mainstream CPUs, the PCIe slots share bandwidth. Of the three PCIe x16 slots, only the first one has a full 16 lanes of PCIe bandwidth, but will run at full speed only if the other two slots are blank, and at x8 speed if they aren’t. The second slot can go up to x8, and the third will run at either x4 or x1 speed depending on whether the others are populated. The three native PCIe x1 slots aren’t affected by this, but two of them will be blocked if you have double-width cards in the two primary x16 slots.

Audio is handled by a Realtek ALC1220 codec plus high-end capacitors and an amplifier capable of detecting and supporting high-impedance headphones. There’s a vanilla Intel Gigiabit Ethernet controller, and no built-in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. While overclocking is not specifically highlighted as a feature, there are six fan headers and six temperature sensors around the board, plus support for liquid coolant pumps and flow sensors.

Gigabyte’s BIOS is for the most part pretty unimaginative. There’s a dashboard-style Easy Mode which shows the most commonly used parameters, and a neat graph-style fan control interface that lets you drag and drop pins to set thresholds for speed and temperature. Other than that, it’s just a bunch of textual menus without even useful explanations. With our non-K-series CPU, overclocking options were ghosted out.

  Intel Core i7-8400 and Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming Performance

We set up our new components without much trouble. The motherboard’s rear port shroud is a bit larger than usual and so we needed to use a little extra care to install our large heatsink and fan. Retail boxed packs of Intel’s non-overclocked CPUs include a standard heatsink with fan, but our review sample arrived without one so we tested with our own. We tested with Windows 10 using the latest drivers for all hardware. All tests except for high-res gaming benchmarks were performed using the CPU’s integrated graphics.

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Speaking of graphics, we have to point out that while the Core i5-8400’s integrated UHD 630 graphics can handle 4K output, it’s limited to 30fps using this particular motherboard’s HDMI 1.4 port. 60fps would be possible through a DisplayPort output, but this board lacks one. Few people really go up to 4K, especially those using integrated graphics, but it’s worth knowing that this motherboard lacks something that other models do support. In all other respects, the Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming proved to be an excellent companion to the Core i5-8400.

  Intel Core i5-8400 Intel Core i7-8700K AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Motherboard Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium RAM 2×8 GB Kingston HyperX DDR4-2666 2×8 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 Graphics Intel UHD Graphics 630; XFX Radeon R9 380X DD BLK OC 4GB XFX Radeon R9 380X DD BLK OC 4GB SSD 400GB Corsair Neutron NX500 240GB Kingston HyperX Savage CPU cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212X Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 PSU AntecHigh Current Gamer 850M Corsair RM650 Monitor Asus PB287Q OS Windows 10

  All tests were run with the CPU at stock speeds. Because this is a non-overclockable CPU, we don’t have to worry about the Multi Core Enhancement feature in the motherboard BIOS being left on by default, which artificially boosts all cores to the single-core peak Turbo speed and inflates test scores. While we haven’t had the chance to test an AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, we can refer to our review of the Ryzen 5 1600X which has six cores (with multi-threading) but costs slightly more than the Core i5-8400. Because Ryzen CPUs don’t have integrated graphics, there are no scores to compare with the Intel CPUs in several tests.

In some of our tests, we noted that a few of the Core i5-8400’s scores exceeded those that we recorded with the Core i7-8700K at the time of its review. To isolate any variables that might have caused such a situation, we retested the more powerful CPU using exactly the same components and software. All scores shown below are the results of the fresh tests, and are more in line with what we expected. There are still examples of the much cheaper model stealing a lead, and the only significant remaining factor that can account for that is the differences in thermal characteristics between the two CPUs.

The main takeaway from all test results was that the Core i5-8400 came extremely close to the Core i7-8700 many times. Productivity and content creation tests that use all cores and threads definitely favoured the Core i7 by large margins, and that was most noticeable in Cinebench. In other cases, such as many of our gaming tests that involved a discrete GPU, there was no difference whatsoever between the two. This CPU represents tremendous value, priced at the same level as previous-gen desktop Core i5 models but with two extra cores. For the majority of people including gamers and those with high-end needs, it would be extremely cost effective to buy this CPU rather than a Core i7 model.

  Intel Core i5-8400 Intel Core i7-8700K AMD Radeon R5 1600X Cinebench R15 CPU single-threaded 173 201 159 Cinebench R15 CPU multi-threaded 962 1413 1219 POVRay* 1 minute, 48 seconds 1 minute, 24 seconds 1 minute, 40 seconds WebXPRT 567 633 393 Basemark Web 3.0 578.38 975.01 743.03 PCMark 8 Home 3875 4340 3740 PCMark 8 Creative 4879 6512 5842 PCMark 8 Work 3577 3446 3122 Geekbench 4 Single Core 5260 5881 4353 Geekbench 4 Multi Core 20,993 25,423 18,478 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (Physics) 11,820 18,715 16,533 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (Overall) 282 334 NA 3DMark Fire Strike (Overall) 1180 1388 NA 3DMark Time Spy (Overall) 430 502 NA SiSoft SANDRA CPU arithmetic 145.51GOPS 215.52GOPS 173.54GOPS SiSoft SANDRA CPU multimedia 427.62MPix/s 661.17MPix/s 343.41Mpix/s SiSoft SANDRA CPU encryption 11.14GB/s 12GB/s 13.25GBps SiSoft SANDRA CPU performance/Watt 2236.95MOPS/W 2268.60MOPS/W NA SiSoft SANDRA cache bandwidth 233GB/s 262.13GB/s 179.25GBps HyperPi* 10.433 seconds 12.58 seconds NA 7Zip file compression* 2 minutes, 40 seconds 2 minutes, 10 seconds 3 minutes, 23 seconds Handbrake video encoding* 59 seconds 50 seconds 1 minute, 12 seconds Rise of the Tomb Raider, 1920×1080, Low 11.63fps 13.85fps NA Star Swarm 8.46fps 12.23fps NA Unigine Valley, 1920×1080, Medium 18.6fps 21.7fps NA Ashes of the Singularity, DX12, 4K, Extreme** 25.4fps 26.1fps 25.3fps Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, DX12, 1920×1080, High** 51.8fps 51fps 31.1fps Metro: Last Light Redux, 1920×1080, Very High** 42.15fps 42.26fps 36.58fps *lower is better **discrete GPU

  Verdict

Anyone looking to buy a completely new desktop PC today should avoid previous-generation Intel CPUs simply because you get more physical cores at all price levels with 8th Gen Core models as well as AMD’s entire Ryzen lineup. The Core i5-8400 is an absolute star, and should really hit the sweet spot for gamers and anyone who wants a super-smooth PC for work or entertainment. It really is almost as good as the Core i7-8700K for just half the price. Unless you could really benefit from faster content creation or you enjoy overclocking, there’s very little you’d miss out on.

In comparison to AMD’s lineup, this appears to be a sweet spot for Intel. The equivalently priced Ryzen 5 1500X is a quad-core, eight-thread CPU and lacks integrated graphics. It would also a bit slower at single-threaded tasks, especially games, as the Ryzen 5 1600X scores illustrate.

The thing that hurts the Core i5-8400 most is Intel’s completely illogical decision to put out only one premium platform controller for the entire desktop 8th Gen lineup. This really hurts the value proposition when you look into the cost of an entire new PC, and it’s downright frustrating. Hopefully this will change soon, knocking a few thousand rupees off the total bill of materials, and truly cementing the Core i5-8400 as a value champ.

The Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming seems to be a rock-solid motherboard and is easy to work with for the most part. The emphasis is definitely on showing off with RGB and UV LEDs, rather than little things that make life easier for builders, such as a helpful BIOS UI and onboard power and reset buttons. The one big problem is the lack of 4K video output support – even if you’re using a discrete graphics card or have no need for 4K, the platform is capable and Gigabyte made the choice not to support it.   

Intel Core i5-8400 Price: Rs. 14,250

Pros

Excellent value for money

Six physical cores

Cons

Users have to buy expensive Z370 motherboards

No improvements to integrated graphics

Ratings (Out of 5)

Performance: 4

Value for Money: 4.5

Overall: 4

  Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming Price: Rs. 16,000

Pros

Stable performance

Lots of RGB LEDs and customisation options

Cons

No DisplayPort for 4K video output

No onboard power and reset buttons

Ratings (Out of 5)

Features: 4

Performance: 4

Value for Money: 4

Overall: 4

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