General Gaming Article

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• Red Harbinger Cross Desk: A PC Desk That Doubles as a Case
• Nvidia Shield Review
• Corsair Launches Entry Level Force LS Series Solid State Drives
• Sony PlayStation 4 Launches November 15 in U.S. and Canada
• Razer Launches Kraken 7.1 Surround Sound USB Gaming Headset
• Mark Zuckerberg Has a Plan to Bring Internet Access to Everyone
• Gaming Laptops Defy Slumping PC Sales
• Newegg Daily Deals: Intel Core i5 4670K Haswell, AMD A10 5800K Trinity, and More!

Red Harbinger Cross Desk: A PC Desk That Doubles as a Case Posted: 21 Aug 2013 07:13 PM PDT Inspired by the award winning  l3p d3sk case mod, Cross is now available for pre-order From smartphones to smart TVs, convergence is everywhere. Often, it can even be found in places where we least expect it. Take Red Harbinger's Cross Desk, for instance. It's a desk and a PC case rolled into one. Inspired by the l3p d3sk case mod that we covered here a couple of years ago, the Cross Desk has been designed and developed by Red Harbinger, a small outfit that has on board, as its Director of Design, l3p d3sk sire Peter Brands. Red Harbinger was, in fact, conceived with the sole aim of commercialising the Dutchman's creation. "Our goal with Cross was to bring to market the most ultimate and all-encompassing PC case ever created," reads a page on the Red Harbinger website. "The desk itself doubles as the case and completely integrates all hardware, liquid and air cooling systems, lighting systems, and pretty much anything else that you may want to throw at it." PC enthusiasts from Australia, North America and Europe can now pre-order the Cross Desk from the company's online store and have it delivered to them on November 15. And if they act fast enough, they can snag the Cross for $1,699 instead of the usual $1,999. That's not all, as Red Harbinger is also offering a number of other goodies with each order: "shelving and headset mount accessories, a limited edition case badge, a certificate of ownership signed by the Red Harbinger team, limited edition artwork of La Croix (the Cross Desk mascot), and tons of perks around the Red Harbinger forums and website at no additional charge." Here are the Cross Desk's complete specs: Material: Steel and Aluminum, Powder Coated PSU Mount: 1 standard Max PSU Mounts: 2* Motherboard Compatibility: mITX, ITX, mATX, ATX, E-ATX†, XL-ATX†, SSI-EEB†, HPTX† Standard Expansion Slots: 8, 10† Maximum Expansion Slots:  8+8*, 10†+8* 5.25" Drive Bays: 4 (2×2) 3.5" Drive Locations: 8 (left side) + 12 (right side) 2.5" Drive Locations: 6 (right side) + 12 (center, hidden) Glass Type: Scratch Resistant, Tempered with Frosted Border, 10mm Front Ports: USB 3.0 x 2, Audio, Mic, 22mm Power and Switch x 2 Max Front Ports: USB 3.0 x 4, Audio x 2, Mic x 2, 22mm Power and Switch x 4* Cooling Fan Locations: 120mm x 3 (left), 120mm x 3 (right), 120mm x 8 (back) Radiator capacity: 2 x 480 mm rad (back), 1 x 360 (right), 1 x 360 (left) Physical Dimensions (L x W x H): 59.1" x 28.6" x 30.1" (1502mm x 726mm x 765mm) Package Dimensions (LxWxH): 65″x 33.5″ x 25″ (1650 mm x 850 mm x 635 mm) *Available with the Dual PC upgrade kit       †Available with the XL-Motherboard Kit Follow Pulkit on Google+

Nvidia Shield Review Posted: 21 Aug 2013 03:54 PM PDT The Nvidia Shield falls short of being a game changer With the Shield, Nvidia aims to deliver a powerful gaming handheld centered around the Android ecosystem and the ability to stream PC games locally onto a mobile device. It's an ambitious endeavor, but is the Nvidia Shield able to achieve those lofty goals? The Shield is well-constructed, but is a bit too bulky. At its core, the Shield is an Android device through-and-through, albeit a powerful one. Inside is Nvidia's new Tegra 4 SoC clocked at 1.9GHz. In mobile performance benchmarks it scored a 19,343 in 3DMark, 4,582 in Geekbench, and 40,541 in Antutu. That makes it one of the fastest, if not the fastest, Android part out right now. All of this graphical prowess is brought to life on a beautiful 5-inch, 720p touchscreen display that offers fantastic viewing angles. A set of phenomenal (for the size) speakers help round out the experience, even besting some laptop speakers we've tested.  Of course, the bulk of the handheld is taken up by the Shield's controller, which shares the same layout and button configuration as the Xbox 360 controller. Even the construction quality is similarly solid, but at 6.2x5.3x2.2-inches, it's a little bulkier and doesn't contour to the hands as comfortably. Furthermore, at one pound, 4.7 ounces, the Shield is also on the heavy side, weighing a little more than two PlayStation Vitas combined. It's a shame Nvidia couldn't have engineered the Shield to come in at a more reasonable weight, as holding the system for extended periods can fatigue wrists. You'll definitely want to rest it on your lap or a table for lengthy sessions.  Many Android games work great on the Shield, but unfortunately most Android games are shallow. The center of the controller is where you'll find several physical Android buttons for home, back, volume, start, and the games launcher. One surprising omission is the lack of any haptic feedback at all, which according to Nvidia was done to save on weight. As for the operating system, the Shield currently runs a nearly stock version of Android Jelly Bean version 4.2.1. While this may not be the newest version of Android—4.3 at the time of this writing—Nvidia says its goal is to provide the latest OS updates within eight weeks of Google's release. So this means you can use the Shield just like any other Android device. All your favorite Android apps can carry over and you'll be able to watch movies, listen to music, and surf the web just as you would expect to. Still, it's not a perfect Android experience, as the bulky controller can get in the way of accessing the touchscreen keyboard. Thankfully, the battery life is excellent. Even after watching a four-hour 1080p video on the Shield, the device still had 79 percent battery life left. But you probably don't intend to buy the Shield to just watch movies, so let's get to the real meat of the device: the gaming! Here the Shield offers three options: Android gaming, the ability to stream PC games from your desktop to the device, and emulators. Android games work great on the Shield, provided the games support controllers. We counted about 100 at this point. Unfortunately, some popular standouts such as Crazy Taxi and Need for Speed: Most Wanted do not. The bigger problem with Android games currently is that many are tailored to touch-only devices and are extremely shallow experiences as a result. Furthermore, trying to play with the touchscreen here is quite cumbersome as the bulky controller gets in the way. Although the future of Android games is ever-evolving, it requires too much blind faith for us to trust at the moment. The Nvidia Shield features a silver magnetic backplate. You can get them in different colors, but they cost $20 each. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Shield is the ability to stream PC games from your desktop locally over Wi-Fi, sort of the way the Wii U can stream to its tablet controller, but it's marred by some unfortunate setbacks. In order to take advantage of this feature, you'll need a GTX 650 video card or higher and a dual-band router. While we were set on the GPU-side with our Titan, we tried testing the Shield with a typical Linksys E1200 home router. This $45 single-band router couldn't cut it. Switching to a $140 Asus RT-N66U Dark Knight dual-band, the streaming worked well for the most part with minimal compression and input lag. But even with this premium router, we would still experience random fits of disconnects.  Another disappointment we had is that the Shield is supposed to work with any controller-supported game on Steam, and while it did work flawlessly on the dozen titles we tried it on, we couldn't get the Shield's controller working with Final Fantasy VII or Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed, even though both titles work well with an Xbox 360 controller. It's worth noting that this streaming service is still in beta, so these issues may eventually be resolved, but it's again an issue of faith. Surprisingly, the most compelling way to game on the Shield at the moment is with emulators. It's remarkable how well classic console games run on this thing with little-to-no tinkering. Still, do you want to pay $300 for a portable emulator? No matter how kick-ass that emulator may be, that's not pocket change.  We like the Shield a lot, but its steep price tag, great barrier to entry, various bugs, and bulk leave something to be desired at this point. It's a solid freshman effort, but if Nvidia hopes for the Shield to be anything more than a niche product, it still has a lot of work to do.  $300, www.nvidia.com Specifications

Corsair Launches Entry Level Force LS Series Solid State Drives Posted: 21 Aug 2013 12:16 PM PDT May the Force (LS) be with you Corsair today added to its ever expanding line of solid state drives with a new entry level offering, the Force LS Series. These new drives are powered by a Phison SATA 6Gbps controller, the first in Corsair's Force family of SSDs to deviate from LSI's Sandforce SF-2200 controller. They also features multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory built by Toshiba on a 19nm manufacturing process. Initially there will be three capacities to choose from. These include 60GB, 120GB, and 240GB. All three are 2.5-inch form factor drives measuring 7mm; they come in desktop and laptop upgrade kits. Even though the Force LS Series is considered a budget line, the drives are rated to run fairly fast with sequential read speeds of up 560MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 535MB/s. Other features include TRIM support, RAID support, BGC (Background Garbage Collection), built-in advanced dynamic and static wear-leveling algorithms, and SMART monitoring. The drives cost $70 (60GB), $110 (120GB), and $200 (240GB) and are backed by three year warranties. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Sony PlayStation 4 Launches November 15 in U.S. and Canada Posted: 21 Aug 2013 09:38 AM PDT Let the countdown begin You could say that the next generation console wars began when Nintendo's Wii U launched a year ago. Fair enough, though Sony and Microsoft have yet to release their much anticipated consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, respectively. Well, come November 15, 2013, Sony will officially join Nintendo in the next generation console battle with its PS4, which will be available on that date in the U.S. and Canada, the company announced. Starting November 29, 2013, the PS4's availability will expand to Europe including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. At launch, the PS4 will support Twitch, a live Internet streaming service for gamers to show off their moves. Twitch already receives more than 38 million visitors per month, and that number will surely go up once the PS4 heads into retail. Microsoft's competing Xbox One console will also launch in November, though a specific release date has not yet been revealed. Pricing will start at $500 for the Xbox One and $400 for the PS4. At present, Wii U pricing still starts at $300. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Razer Launches Kraken 7.1 Surround Sound USB Gaming Headset Posted: 21 Aug 2013 09:10 AM PDT Razer releases the Kraken (again) In need of a new audio headset? Razer's Kraken is back, this time in the form of a 7.1 surround sound USB headset for gamers with an advanced virtual surround sound engine that the company claims is capable of ultra-low latency audio processing simulating a 360-degree surround sound experience normally only achievable with multiple positional speaker drivers in each cup. The new version is built on the same platform as the analog Kraken Pro. In addition to surround sound, it also has an enhanced omnidirectional digital microphone equipped with an optimized algorithm for crystal clear voice chat and a superior signal-to-noise ratio than a standard analog microphone. There's a mic mute button, along with an LED indicator on the tip to let you know when the mic is active. "As we continue to develop and build on our software front, we're able to add more and more capabilities to our products. What we put into the Razer Kraken 7.1 is a great example of just that, from the customizable, personalized surround sound engine, to the optimized digital microphone algorithms that gives this headset its incredible performance," says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director. "With its superior software capabilities, unrivaled sound quality and comfort, the Razer Kraken 7.1 is the definitive USB surround sound headset for PC gaming." Some specs: Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20,000Hz Impedance: 32 Ω at 1 kHz Sensitivity (@1 kHz, 1 V/Pa): 112dB Output Power: 30 mW Drivers: 40 mm, with Neodymium Magnets Inner Ear Cup Diameter: 50 mm / 1.97 inches Cable Length: 2m / 6.56 ft braided USB cable Approximate Weight: 340 g / 0.75 lbs Connector: Gold plated USB The Razer Kraken 7.1 USB headset is available now for $100. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg Has a Plan to Bring Internet Access to Everyone Posted: 21 Aug 2013 08:42 AM PDT A rough draft on connecting the planet's population Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is ambitious, if nothing else. Whether you're into the social networking scene or not, you have to credit the whiz kid for building the world's largest social playground with over a billion active users around the globe. That's impressive, but it pales in comparison to what he wants to do next. The social star now wants to connect every person in the world to the Internet, and he has a plan to get it done. It's really more of a rough draft, as Zuckerberg himself makes clear in a multi-page outline (PDF) of a new initiative to bring Internet access to all. He's not alone, either. Zuckerberg is joined by some big names in founding Internet.org, a global partnership aimed at making Internet access available to the next 5 billion people. In addition to Facebook, other founding members include Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung. "Everything Facebook has done has been about giving all people around the world the power to connect," Zuckerberg said. "There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it." There are obviously several challenges that need to be overcome if this vision is ever going to be realized. Primary among them is cost. Partners will collaborate to develop and adopt technologies that make mobile connectivity more affordable, though that's only part of the equation. Focus will also be placed on using data more efficiently and helping businesses drive Internet access by developoing a new model to get people online. If you care to read his outline, Zuckerberg dives into more granular details on the technical side about how this can be achieved. It's a long-term plan that's currently in the very early stages of development. "I hope this rough plan can serve as a blueprint for some of what we'll all need to do to connect the next 5 billion people," Zuckerberg says. Image Credit: Flickr (Andrew Feinberg) Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Gaming Laptops Defy Slumping PC Sales Posted: 21 Aug 2013 08:01 AM PDT Gaming is still a goldmine Since the beginning of time, gaming and gamers have driven innovation in the PC realm. Seriously, there's probably a cave somewhere with scribblings from our caveman and cavewoman ancestors giving credit to primitive games for leading up to the invention of the circular wheel. It should come as no surprise, then, that several notebook players are seeing their gaming laptop business grow even though the overall PC market is in a slump. This applies to second-tier ODMs like Clevo and Shuttle, as well as branded vendors including Gigabyte and MSI, all of which are seeing increased gaming laptop sales, Digitimes reports. We're not just talking about minor bumps in sales, either; the gaming PC industry typically sees growth in the neighborhood of 10 percent every year. Granted, the gaming PC industry also sees limited shipments compared to regular PCs, but higher gross margins and less competition are two factors that attract second-tier players to the market, Digitimes says. Clevo, a major provider of gaming laptops and desktop replacements, expects its notebook shipments to grow to 180,000 to 200,000 units in 2014, up 40 percent compared to 2013. After factoring in lower production costs and high proit margins from gaming laptops, Clevo is expecting its profits to skyrocket next year. Gaming laptops have also been good to MSI. After the company started focusing its attention on gaming notebooks in the second half of the year, its overall notebook business begain to flip a profit. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Intel Core i5 4670K Haswell, AMD A10 5800K Trinity, and More! Posted: 21 Aug 2013 06:57 AM PDT Top Deal: If you've held off from hopping on Haswell until its been on the market for awhile and had a chance to prove there are no major issues, now is your chance to finally make that leap. Haswell is fast, efficient, and the focus of today's top deal, which is for an Intel Core i5 4670K processor $230 with free shipping (normally $240 - use coupon code 0813BTS46). It's a quad-core part clocked at 3.4GHz with an 84W TDP. Other Deals: Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler for $75 with free shipping (normally $79 - use coupon code: [0813BTS8]) AMD A10-5800K Trinity 3.8GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU for $110 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [0813BTS47]) Kingston HyperX Black 16GB (2x8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $120 with free shipping (normally $145 - use coupon code: [0813BTS26]) Toshiba 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive for $110 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [0813BTS11])

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