General Gaming Article

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• New Domain Suffixes Finally Rolling Out
• Build a PC: Recommended Builds (October 2013)
• July 2013: 35 PC Problems Solved!
• Thousands of PC Gamers Downloaded a Fake Grand Theft Auto V Torrent Carrying Malware
• Cooler Master Future Proofs All-in-One Liquid Cooling with Expandable Glacer 240L
• CyberPowerPC Introduces Hadron Air Mini ITX Gaming PC Starting at $599
• Toshiba Rolls Out Slim, Two Platter Hard Drive Series for Skinny Laptops
• Newegg Daily Deals: AVerMedia Live Gamer HD, Intel Core i7 4770 Haswell, and More!

New Domain Suffixes Finally Rolling Out Posted: 23 Oct 2013 05:06 PM PDT Arabic, Russian, and Chinese suffixes introduced ICANN—the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers—is finally starting to roll out some new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) after announcing their intentions a few years back. With only 22 gTLDs currently, the 1,400 new domain suffixes might finally spell the end of .com's dominance. "Today, the first new generic Top-Level Domains from ICANN's New gTLD Program were delegated, or introduced into the Internet's Root Zone," Akram Atallah, ICANN's president of generic domains, said in a post on ICAAN's blog. "What does this mean? Well, it means a few things. From a big picture perspective, it signals the beginning of the largest-ever expansion of the Domain Name System (DNS)." This ICANN marketing video explains the basics of domains. The biggest impact that the new suffixes will have is the ability to use non-Latin strings—what ICANN calls: Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). Soon we'll be seeing Russian and Arabic domain suffixes right next to all of the English ones. The first new gTLDs include the Arabic word for web: شبكة, the Russian words for online and web site: онлайн and сайт, as well as the Chinese word for game: 游戏. It'll be a while before any of the new gTLDs catch on, but we've still got the good ol' .com suffix to fall back on.  Follow Ben on Twitter.

Build a PC: Recommended Builds (October 2013) Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:57 PM PDT Baseline, performance, and ultra PC builds! What time is it? It's time to build a PC with our Blueprints! This month, we've built three rigs at three approximate price points: Baseline, Performance, and Ultra. Budget gets you a capable but affordable rig, Baseline gets you a powerful that is suitable for gaming and content creation at 1080p, and Performance gets you even more. These rigs are lab-tested and editor-approved. Feedback is, of course, welcome. Tell us what you think! We're upgrading a few core items this month, but the total cost didn't rise that much, because prices have gone down elsewhere. The biggest change is the case, which used to be a Corsair Carbide 200R but is now the Fractal Design Define R4. Now that this sweet chassis costs just 80 bucks, it's hard to resist. It has two excellent low-noise 140mm fans hooked to a fan controller, pre-installed sound-absorbing panels, removable and even rotate-able drive  cages, and generally high build quality for the money. We also upgraded the power supply from a Corsair CX500M to a 650-watt Seasonic X-Series. The new PSU has premium build quality, near-silent operation, and four PCIe connectors instead of the Corsair's two. It ordinarily costs well over $100, so we couldn't pass it up at $70.     For the first time in many months, we're not changing any hardware at this tier. We considered AMD's new Radeon R9 290X video card, but at press time it was still about a week away from release, and we hadn't seen anything other than the reference design floating around. We'd like to see some vendor-customized cooling with enhanced thermal and acoustic performance before we can recommend one over the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 with its "ACX" cooler, which has roughly the same gaming performance and runs totally cool and quiet. We did see some price dips on the power supply, motherboard, CPU, and SSD, which offset the steadily rising cost of RAM. We selected a four-piece kit because Intel's X79 motherboard chipset works best in a "quad-channel" memory setup.     This month, we finally upgraded the Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboard with the new-and-improved X79 Deluxe. The new board has a host of improvements, and fi rst up is that it has double the SATA 6Gb/s ports, at eight total. Second, it has improved Audio from Realtek by going from ALC898 to ALC1150, and Wi-Fi has also been boosted from 802.11n to 802.11ac. Possibly the most important reason, though, is that the Bluetooth was upgraded from 3.0 to 4.0 (that was a joke). Also, since this mobo only recognizes Intel's new Ivy Bridge-E CPUs out-of-the-box, we upgraded from Sandy Bridge-E to Ivy Bridge-E, as well. We also upgraded the storage subsystem this month, so both our SSD and HDD got a refresh. First, we decided to give our Ultra build a terabyte drive. We know the Samsung 840 Evo is not as fast as the 840 Pro, but the Pro was not available in a 1TB size when we went to press. It also seemed time to upgrade our HDD from a 3TB Seagate Barracuda to a 4GB unit, now that 4TB drives are actually affordable.

July 2013: 35 PC Problems Solved! Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:40 PM PDT In the PDF archive of the July 2013 issue you can find: PC fix-it guide Panels of Parade Hug your ears How to get into Windows without your password EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost SC And More!

Thousands of PC Gamers Downloaded a Fake Grand Theft Auto V Torrent Carrying Malware Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:43 AM PDT There are lessons to be learned here As badly as we all want Rockstar Games to throw us PC gamers a bone and at least confirm that Grand Theft Auto V is being ported over to our platform of choice, there's just no substitute for patience. Unfortunately, impatience can lead to bad decisions, like trying to illegally download a version of a game that doesn't yet exist in hopes that it turns out to be real, only to find out you have a real mess on your hands. Knowing that PC gamers are eagerly anticipating their turn to play GTA V with a keyboard and mouse, malware writers went and crafted a legitimate looking "leak" of the PC port and tossed the torrent online. According to WCCFTECH, which took a look at the torrent, the setup file is a realistic 18GB. Of course, the file isn't legit, though if you tried installing it and held out hope it was real, you wouldn't find out that you'd been duped until you got to the registration window. It's at that point users are sent on a wild goose chase, with a .txt file indicating that a serial is available on a page where the user must complete a series of surveys. Thousands have downloaded the infected torrent file, and maybe thousands more will continue to do so. Either way, GTA V doesn't yet exist for PC, legally or illegally. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Cooler Master Future Proofs All-in-One Liquid Cooling with Expandable Glacer 240L Posted: 23 Oct 2013 09:55 AM PDT A self contained liquid cooler with modular properties The market is flush with all-in-one cooling solutions, most of which look similar to each other, though they offer different levels of performance. Cooler Master's new Glacer 240L is yet another self contained liquid cooler for CPUs, but it's not just the performance potential that separates this model from the pack. Billed as being a "semi-DIY CPU liquid cooler," the Glacer 240L is both modular and expandable, allowing for upgrades down the line. Each Glacer 240L is fully sealed, pressure tested, and ready to be used as an AIO solution out of the box. It's a higher end unit with a pump flow rate of 165 liters per hour, premium radiator with integrated reservoir and two fill-port locations (for vertical and horizontal orientations), and a pair of 120mm Blademaster fans. According to Cooler Master, the Glacer 240L doesn't require maintenance for three years. Looking beyond its stock performance potential, the Glacer 240L allows for upgrades to the loop as desired. It features enthusiast grade 5/8-inch OD black PVC tubing secured by swivel fittings with an elegant clamping system for simple removal and reinstallation, Cooler Master says. The Glacer 240L will be available later this month in the U.S. Pricing has not yet been announced. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

CyberPowerPC Introduces Hadron Air Mini ITX Gaming PC Starting at $599 Posted: 23 Oct 2013 09:28 AM PDT Reclaim your living space It seems every PC maker is suddenly on a quest to build smaller sized gaming rigs, presumably because they envision these boxes taking residence in your living room where they'll host Steam games on your big screen TV. One of the newer candidates is CyberPowerPC's Hadron Air, a mini iTX based gaming system that measures all of 6.6 inches (W) by 12 inches (H) by 12.1 inches (D). To be clear, CyberPowerPC isn't marketing this as a Steam Machine, though there's nothing stopping you from fragging in your living room. Regardless of where you put it, you have two base systems to choose from in the lower end tier, both of which are fairly tame in configuration (more on that in a moment). The first is the Hadron 100a ($599). It includes an EVGA Hadron Air case with 500W 80 Plus Gold Certified power supply, AMD A8-6400K processor (3.9GHz) with Radeon HD 8670D graphics, AMD A75 chipset motherboard, 4GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, 500GB hard drive (7200 RPM), 24X slot-loading DVD burner, and Windows 8.1 64-bit. Prefer Intel? The Hardron 100i ($799) features the same case, optical drive and OS, but comes with an Intel Core i5 4440 processor (3.1GHz), Intel Z87 Express Chipset motherboard, Intel HD graphics, 8GB DDR3-1600 RAM, and 1TB hard drive (7200 RPM). Both are respectable, though if you have additional funds to toss at either configuration, you can customize your build with faster processor options, SSDs, and even full size graphics cards like the Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX Titan. There are also higher end baseline systems to choose from, including the Hadron Air 200i (starting at $1,135) and 300i (starting at $1,589). CyberPowerPC's Hadron Air gaming PCs are available now. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Toshiba Rolls Out Slim, Two Platter Hard Drive Series for Skinny Laptops Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:17 AM PDT Toshiba's first two platter 7mm HDD Laptops are getting thinner with each new generation, and if that trend is to continue, component manufacturers have to step to the plate with slimmer parts. Toshiba seems up to the challenge. The company just unveiled its first two platter 7mm HDD series for notebooks. Toshiba's new MQ02ABF line comes in 750GB and 1TB capacities, both with a 5400 RPM spindle speed in a 2.5-inch form factor. "The MQ02ABF series fulfills our customers' desires for a high capacity 7mm form factor HDD required for today's thin and light laptops," said Don Jeanette (PDF), senior director of product marketing at Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit. "We continue to focus on delivering a wide range of storage devices that enhance the computing experience, and we believe this newest addition to Toshiba's HDD product line will deliver the features our customers need." These new drives measure 69.85mm (W) by 100mm (D) by 7mm (H) and weigh 99g. Other specs include a 12ms average seek time and SATA 3Gbps interface. The drives won't win any performance benchmarks, but they do offer lots of capacity in a thin profile. We expect to see these drives show up in lower cost laptops. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: AVerMedia Live Gamer HD, Intel Core i7 4770 Haswell, and More! Posted: 23 Oct 2013 06:00 AM PDT Top Deal: Epic gaming moments come and go, but if you want them to live on forever, you need to record them. It's not as complicated as might think, so long as you own a good capture device. It just so happens that today's top deal is for an AVerMedia Live Gamer HD Capture kit for $140 with $5 shipping (normally $180 - use coupon code AFNJ2751). With this card, you can capture 1080p@60 and add live commentary. Other Deals: Intel Core i7-4770 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor for $295 with free shipping (normally $310 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVV75]) Corsair Force Series GS 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $200 with free shipping (additional $30 mail-in rebate) Acer G6 G276HLGbd Black 27" 6ms Widescreen Monitor w/ Built-in Speakers for $200 with free shipping (normally $230 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVV248]) Western Digital WD Black 500GB 7200 RPM 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $65 with free shipping (normally $75 - use coupon code: [EMCWXVV23])

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