General Gaming Article

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• EVGA's DisplayPort Hub Lets You String Together Three Monitors From a Single Source
• Corsair H110 Review
• Genius GX Gaming Peripherals Now Available in White in the U.S.
• LG Plans to Unveil an All-in-One System Running Chrome OS at CES 2014
• Tourist Plunges Into Bay While Checking Facebook and Nearly Drowns
• Powercolor Launches First Liquid Cooled Radeon R9 290X Graphics Card
• Newegg Daily Deals: DIYPC Adventurer Gaming Case, Netgear N900 Dual Band Router, and More!

EVGA's DisplayPort Hub Lets You String Together Three Monitors From a Single Source Posted: 18 Dec 2013 12:47 PM PST A silent and portable solution EVGA has designed a handy DisplayPort hub that allows for multi-monitor connectivity from a single DisplayPort source, negating the need to invest in another graphics card. The hub supports up to three DisplayPort compatible monitors without any special software or drivers other than your graphics card driver. It does require external power, so EVGA includes an external power adapter in the box. EVGA's DisplayPort hub essentially splits the single DisplaySource output between however many monitors (up to three) are connected. By going this route, users are limited to 1920x1080 per monitor when connecting three displays. Here's a breakdown of the supported resolutions and how they're allocated: 2400 x 600 (3 x 800 x 600) 3072 x 768 (3 x 1024 x 768) 3840 x 720 (3 x 1280 x 720) 3840 x 768 (3 x 1280 x 768) 3840 x 800 (3 x 1280 x 800) 3840 x 960 (3 x 1280 x 960) 3840 x 1024 (3 x 1280 x 1024) 4080 x 768 (3 x 1360 x 768) 4098 x 768 (3 x 1366 x 768) 4320 x 900 (3 x 1440 x 900) 5040 x 1050 (3 x 1680 x 1050) 5760 x 1080 (3 x 1920 x 1080) The device is hot plug compatible and works with all existing DisplayPort 1.2a graphics cards and laptops, EVGA says. It's also totally silent and portable. EVGA sees this being used for graphic design, video editing, 3D animation, CAD/CAM, spreadsheet analysis, and general productivity. You can purchase the DisplayPort Hub now for $100 direct from EVGA. At present, there's a $20 mail-in-rebate available. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Corsair H110 Review Posted: 18 Dec 2013 12:42 PM PST Size isn't everything It seems like every month brings a new liquid cooler to review. Sometimes this rapid pace creates unexpected side effects. Exhibit A: The Corsair H110, which is nearly identical to the NZXT Kraken X60 reviewed on page 81 of this issue. They don't use the same fans, they don't recommend the same fan orientation, and the H110 skips software-based controls, but the rest of it appears to be the same bits manufactured by Asetek. Corsair also charges a slight price premium that we're not sure is justified. The Mirror Universe version of the NZXT Kraken X60? The H110's two 14cm fans use 4-pin PWM connectors that allows them to dynamically adjust their performance as temperatures change within the case—but only if they're plugged into a 4-pin fan header. The pump uses a 3-pin connector. While this cabling is more straightforward, it does occupy three fan headers, whereas the X60 uses one. (The H110 does not come with an adapter to combine its two fan cables or a Molex adapter to plug the pump directly into your power supply.) If your motherboard or its fan software doesn't provide separate controls for different headers, you're in an awkward spot. You don't want all your case fans spinning up and down in lockstep with the H110's fans. And you don't want the pump speed moving around a lot either; that part needs to be maxed out for full effectiveness. Since the H110's fan cables are just 12 inches long, your choices for fan headers are pretty limited, as well. The X60 uses a single 3-pin header, but it also occupies a USB header and a SATA power cable connection. Ultimately, this trade-off greatly increases compatibility, especially if your system uses multiple radiators and lots of air-cooling. The H110's cooling isn't as problematic, since you have flexibility with radiator location and fan direction. You don't have to go with Corsair's recommendation, which is to push exterior air through the radiator and into the system. NZXT recommends that you pull air from the interior and exhaust it. We recorded temps several degrees higher than with the X60, until we flipped the H110's fan orientation to match it. Then the temps were roughly interchangeable. The scores for the H110 in the chart below are the results according to Corsair's recommended fan orientation. Since we're using a Corsair 900D case to test coolers, we have three 12cm intake fans in the front. Therefore, the slight vacuum created by a pull orientation is easily countered. Adding two additional intake fans, which blow through a 280mm radiator and into the case, can introduce a lot of air. A single 14cm rear exhaust fan seems to struggle to keep up. We also noticed that setting up the H110 fans to exhaust created less noise. The H110 is also up against Corsair's own H100i, a 240mm liquid cooler. Despite this other unit having less surface area than the H110's 280mm, it performs a little better and has software controls, a metal backplate (making it resistant to damage from over-tightening), and the same cable connections as the X60, for the same price or less. It also has a five-year warranty, whereas the H110 (and the X60) get two years. The H100i's smaller size and X60-like unified cabling also make it compatible with a wider variety of cases. If the H110 was priced lower, we could see it fitting into the overall ecosystem. But at $130 when this issue went to press, it's a little out of its depth. $130 (street), www.corsair.com

Genius GX Gaming Peripherals Now Available in White in the U.S. Posted: 18 Dec 2013 11:42 AM PST Gaming peripherals shipping in white in time for winter If you're looking for gaming peripherals to match the white computer case you just bought, Genius may be your ticket to color coordination. Genius has just given its GX Gaming series of peripherals a white makeover, including the DeathTaker mouse, Imperator Pro keyboard, and GX-Speed mouse pad, all three of which have started shipping to North America, Genius announced today. "This special collection by GX Gaming has arrived just in time for the holiday season. The new DeathTaker, Imperator Pro, and GX-Speed in white create a zone of cool around any gamer, and serve as an excellent complement to any white themed gaming setup," Genius says. On the flip side, they'll probably reveal a little about your hygiene, too -- if you like to snack on Cheetos but aren't a fan of washing your hands, your white peripherals will end up with an orange tint over time. In any event, both the DeathTaker and Imperator Pro are equipped with a full-speed CPU and built-in memory to save macros. The hardware also supposedly gives gamers a 1ms boost in response time, which translates into being 8 times quicker than without, Genius says. We found the Genius DeathTaker and Imperator Pro both listed on Amazon for $70, though both are currently out of stock. We weren't as lucky in trying to track down the GX-Speed mouse pad. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

LG Plans to Unveil an All-in-One System Running Chrome OS at CES 2014 Posted: 18 Dec 2013 09:02 AM PST All your "Chromebase" belong to LG LG on Wednesday announced plans to show off what it claims is the first ever "Chromebase," otherwise known as an all-in-one (AIO) PC powered by Google's Chrome operating system, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month. The LG Chromebase (model 22CV241) will sport a 21.5-inch widescreen with a Full HD 1080 (1920x1080) IPS display and a "raft of advanced features" all wrapped in a space saving design. Let's start with the few hardware specs LG is willing to share. Inside the AIO will sit an Intel Celeron CPU of some sort. LG didn't say which specific chip, but we suspect it will be one of the newer Celeron parts based on Intel's Haswell architecture. The Chromebase will also have 2GB of RAM, 16GB SSD, HDMI input, three USB 2.0 ports, a single USB 3.0 port, an Ethernet port, built-in 5W speakers, and a 1.3MP webcam. "LG's Chromebase is an exciting new form factor that expands the options available to customers who want a fast, simple and secure computing experience for the home, school or office," said Caesar Sengupta, vice president of product management, Google. "LG Electronics makes great devices that customers love, and we're glad to welcome them to the Chrome family." Same as with Chromebooks, Google's Chrome OS works best when there's an active Internet connection. It is, after all, a cloud-based OS, though you can still work with certain web-based applications offline, which comes in handy if your Internet is down for whatever reason. Consumers have proven they're ready for Chromebooks -- they occupy several spots on Amazon's top 10 best selling laptops and are generally reviewed favorably by users -- but will desktop systems running Chrome OS be equally accepted? It looks like we're about to find out. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Tourist Plunges Into Bay While Checking Facebook and Nearly Drowns Posted: 18 Dec 2013 08:12 AM PST Taking a long walk off a short pier A young Taiwanese woman in her mid-20s nearly became a candidate for a Darwin Award when she walked right off the end of St Kilda pier in Melbourne, Australia. She never saw the end of the pier because she was too busy checking Facebook on her mobile phone. To make matters worse, the woman wasn't a good swimmer, though she did manage to float for around 20 minutes until a high-speed boat arrived. "She wasn't splashing around too much. She wasn't in a panic even though she was in the water for probably 20 minutes," Senior Constable Dean Kelly of the water police squad said, according to The Age. Though she couldn't swim very well, the tourist had on a backpack that may have helped her stay afloat until help could arise. It also seems she kept a cool head after realizing what happened. Or maybe she was still busy catching up on her Facebook feed, though we imagine her mobile phone probably wasn't as lucky as she was. As silly as all this sounds, there might actually be a rise in pedestrian deaths due to texting while walking. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of pedestrians killed from traffic crashes rose from 4,109 in 2009 to 4,432 in 2011 after having declined for decades, The Los Angeles Times reported back in August of this year. In 2011, over 1,500 pedestrians were treated in emergency rooms after being hurt while using a mobile device. Image Credit: Flickr (Looking Glass) Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Powercolor Launches First Liquid Cooled Radeon R9 290X Graphics Card Posted: 18 Dec 2013 07:39 AM PST Nope, you can't find this one in stock either Less than a week after teasing a shot of a liquid cooled AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics card on its Facebook page, Powercolor has gone and introduced a retail version to market. The Powercolor LCS R9 290X uses an EK water block, the same as identified in the Facebook photo, and comes factory overclocked to 1060MHz for the core, up 60MHz over AMD's reference blueprint. It also boasts 4GB of GDDR5 memory that's been goosed 100MHz over reference to 1,350MHz on a 512-bit wide bus. Using liquid cooling will certainly help the card run stable with these modest overclocks, though as an extra layer of protection, Powercolor says the part is armed with a "Gold Power Kit" design, meaning it uses a digital PWM, ferrite conducting power (FCP), and multi-phase design to enhance power efficiency. The full-cover water block cools the GPU, memory, and other parts of the card. Its base is made from nickel plated copper allowing for temperatures under 60C, even under full load, Powercolor claims. Liquid rushes through high-flow 3/8-inch and 1/2-inch fittings with captured o-rings to prevent leakage. No word on how much this card will cost or when it will be available, though with the Litecoin community stockpiling Radeon R9 Series graphics cards, it might be awhile before you see one of these for the taking. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: DIYPC Adventurer Gaming Case, Netgear N900 Dual Band Router, and More! Posted: 18 Dec 2013 06:47 AM PST Top Deal: The death of the full tower has been greatly exaggerated, and the same is true of desktop PCs. So you want to build killer gaming rig in a chassis that looks like it snacks on NUCs? No problem! You can get started by checking out today's top deal for a DIYPC Adventurer 9601G Black Steel Full Tower Gaming Case for $75 with free shipping (normally $130; additional $15 mail-in-rebate). Measuring 20 inches by 8 inches by 19 inches, there's plenty of room for your components. It comes with 5 pre-installed fans and has room for two more, plus an integrated three-channel fan speed controller. Other Deals: G.SkillRipjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL for $64 with free shipping (normally $75; use coupon code: [EMCWVWV36]) DIYPC Adventurer-9601G Black Steel Gaming ATX Full Tower Computer Case for $75 with free shipping (normally $130; additional $15 Mail-in rebate) Asus VE248H Black 24-inch 2ms Full HD HDMI LED Backlight LCD Monitor for $170 with free shipping (normally $230; use coupon code: [EMCWVWV46]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Netgear N900 Dual Band Gigabit Wireless Router with 3.5-inch Storage Bay (WNDR4700) for $100 with free shipping (normally $200; use coupon code: [EMCWVWV52]) CM Storm QuickFire XT - Full Size Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with Cherry MX Brown Switches for $85 with free shipping (normally $100; additional $10 Mail-in rebate)

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