General Gaming Article |
- Silverstone Tundra TD03 Review
- Phanteks Enthoo Primo Review
- Ericsson Chief Hans Vestberg Wants to Stay Put as Microsoft Continues CEO Search
- Nook to Android Cards Now Support KitKat
- Fashionably Late: Roccat Kave XTD 5.1 Digital Gaming Headset Now Available
- Intel is Abandoning AppUp Store for Windows PCs, Shuts Down March 11
- Newegg Daily Deals: Samsung 24-inch Touchscreen Monitor, Antec NeoECO 520W PSU, and More!
- AMD's Catalyst 14.1 drivers are incoming with Mantle update and more
| Silverstone Tundra TD03 Review Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:56 AM PST A promising first stepEver since closed-loop liquid coolers (CLCs) arrived on the scene, hardware manufacturers have been scrambling to get a slice of the pie. On paper, CLCs can achieve better performance than even the most expensive air coolers, and more quietly. Because PC technology is always evolving, it's rare to see a genuinely new and interesting war front appear—if you're not participating in it, you might get left behind. Silverstone has stepped into the game with its Tundra series of CLCs. Last month, we reviewed its 240mm TD02, and now it's time for the Silverstone Tundra TD03, which is the 120mm version.
The fan cables are short, but the bundled Y adapter gives them plenty of total length. At a glance, the TD03 is similar to the Corsair H80i. The 120mm radiator is paired with two 120mm fans that install in a push-pull orientation, where one fan pushes air into the rad on one side, and the other fan pulls it out. You can reverse the direction, but the temperature difference is usually negligible. The TD03 has a very different look, however. Its tubes are enclosed in white corrugated plastic, the rad's housing is white, and the water block installed on top of the CPU is housed in brushed aluminum. If we were scoring purely on aesthetics, the Tundra cooler would walk away with a gold medal. The rad is also nearly twice as thick as usual (with about twice the fin density, as well); combined with the two fans, you need a whopping 3.75 inches of clearance. Unless you have a cavernous super-tower (our test case is a Corsair 900D), the TD03 is not fitting in the top of your case. It will go in the rear, but high-profile RAM on an LGA2011 motherboard may obstruct it. You may have a 120mm fan mount in the bottom of your case, but a radiator's reservoirs need an inch or two of extra space on each side, so it's not guaranteed to work. And the tubes might not reach. On the bright side, installation for Intel CPUs is made easier with two pre-installed aluminum brackets, and a generally minimized number of widgets. The LGA2011 socket needs only four easily distinguishable bolts, and a set of four screws with springs on them. And the Intel bracket is attached with four screws, so it's an easy swap to AMD. Since aluminum dissipates heat better than the standard plastic housing and is more impact-resistant, it's a good choice for protecting a copper block, albeit a relatively expensive one. That and the extra materials in the jumbo-size radiator put the TD03 in a different price range than a standard 120mm CLC. So, the 64-gigabyte question is, does the TD03 have the performance to justify its premium design? Not as much as we'd like, unfortunately. We tried both airflow directions, different amounts of thermal paste, and even laying the case on its side. But in the end, the TD03 came in a half-step behind the competition in its price range. At around $100 on the street, it's up against the likes of the Corsair H100i and the NZXT Kraken X60, which consistently outperform it, if slightly. Are the TD03's fins too densely packed for its fans? Are the liquid tubes too narrow? We'll leave it to the science wizards to figure that out. But until then, we can't quite recommend this cooler over others in its class. $100, www.silverstonetek.com |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:36 AM PST Phanteks Enthoo Primo Review: A big, monster case with a few little quirksWe appreciate it when a case manufacturer dares to go above and beyond the standard construction techniques we see time and time again. Enter the Phanteks Enthoo Primo case—a chassis that sounds more like a sneeze than a container for your expensive hardware, but one that comes with a few tricks hidden within its jet-black frame. However, a few peculiar quirks make us hesitant to give this $250 chassis a full-on recommendation.
Give up your gym membership; lifting this case up and down is all the workout you'll ever need. To begin with, we were annoyed with the Primo's packaging. Not that the box it arrived in didn't adequately protect the near-40-pound steel chassis with the help of a ton of foam, but rather that Phanteks covered the case with protective wrap that was stickier and gooier and more difficult to take off than what we're used to dealing with. And there's quite a lot of it, too. Moving on to the case itself, the Primo's five 5.25-inch bays are screwless and easy to access by popping off the grilled covers on its front. We just wish we could switch the case's front-panel door from swinging open right-to-left to left-to-right—like on a refrigerator. The Primo's six drive bays all use easy-to-install trays to hold your storage in place, and the case itself comes with two areas on the rear of the motherboard tray where you can double-stack SSDs (so, four total). Slapping an ATX, eATX, or mATX motherboard into this case is pretty easy, given its pre-installed standoffs. Swapping an aftermarket cooler into a build is similarly simple, thanks to the huge, cut-out hole on the upper half of the motherboard tray. Installing a standard video card into the Primo is a bit trickier since a large reservoir bracket covers the right half of the motherboard area. We didn't have any room whatsoever to slap a 10.5-inch GTX 480 in the case as-is; we had to first remove the bracket's cover and, even then, it was an extremely tight fit. Video cards measuring 11 inches or more need not apply. Yes, you can remove the bracket entirely, but it's just one more somewhat annoying step in the installation process.
Phanteks goes to great lengths to help you conceal cables, but its water-cooling apparatuses get in the way a bit. The reservoir bracket, when in place, severely hampers one's ability to effectively manage cables within the case. But even with a standard ATX motherboard installed, two of the case's seven rubberized cable mounting holes on the tray itself are ever-so-slightly covered up; it's not a deal-breaker, but mildly annoying given the sheer size of the full-tower chassis. The case's connectivity is pretty standard: two USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports on top. The connectors themselves are covered by lovely rubber tabs, but these tabs aren't themselves attached to the case in any fashion—making them neat to look at but super easy to lose. An additional button controls the case's lovely lighting, a thin blue strip that runs over the front-right side and up onto the case's top. What we'd love to see on this case is a fan controller. A built-in circuit board allows you to connect up to 11 different fans to a single, 4-pin connector—presumably, you'd be able to control everything via your motherboard. We think a dial, switch, or some other means of changing up your fan speeds on-the-fly would be a lot easier. The Primo is an odd hybrid. It comes with plenty of cooling, support for plenty of devices (including two PSUs, if you dare), and offers a lot on the liquid-cooling front. However, its ease-of-use is countered by a few nagging features that, for a case this costly, should have been eliminated at the drawing board. For this much scratch, you could almost snag a 10/Kick Ass–winning Corsair Obsidian 800D. $250, www.phanteks.com |
| Ericsson Chief Hans Vestberg Wants to Stay Put as Microsoft Continues CEO Search Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:23 AM PST
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| Nook to Android Cards Now Support KitKat Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:37 AM PST
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| Fashionably Late: Roccat Kave XTD 5.1 Digital Gaming Headset Now Available Posted: 30 Jan 2014 09:27 AM PST
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| Intel is Abandoning AppUp Store for Windows PCs, Shuts Down March 11 Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:25 AM PST
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| Newegg Daily Deals: Samsung 24-inch Touchscreen Monitor, Antec NeoECO 520W PSU, and More! Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:28 AM PST
Top Deal: You can tap and poke and swipe your monitor all you want, if it doesn't sport a touchscreen panel, all you'll get is a bunch of fingerprints and smudges while Windows 8.1 stares blankly at your futile attempts to navigate the OS. If you'd like to change that, check out today's top deal for a Samsung S24C770 24-inch USB Multitouch Monitor for $350 with free shipping (normally $400 -- use coupon code: [EMCPWHB48]). In addition to touch support, Samsung's panel features a sliding-tilt stand that adjusts up to 55 degrees. Other Deals: EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 760 2GB w/ EVGA ACX Cooler Video Card for $250 with free shipping (normally $250; $50 off Shield w/ GTX combo & free Assassin's Creed IV, limited offer) Seagate Expansion 1TB USB 3.0 Black Portable Hard Drive for $60 with free shipping (normally $80 - use coupon code: [EMCPWHB44]) Cooler Master Storm Trooper Full Tower Computer Gaming Case for $145 with free shipping (normally $150 - use coupon code: [EMCPWHB35]; adittional $20 Mail-in rebate) Antec NeoECO 520W Power Supply for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCPWHB34]; adittional $20 Mail-in rebate) |
| AMD's Catalyst 14.1 drivers are incoming with Mantle update and more Posted: 29 Jan 2014 10:28 PM PST Mantle update, frame pacing fixes, and more arriving soon
According to AMD, the Mantle patch will arrive via an update through the Origin client for Battlefield 4 on January 30th, at 4:00AM EST. To receive the update you must update the game through Origin. The game won't automatically default to using the Mantle API however, but you'll be able to select it in the game's options. To be honest, we're still a bit unclear on whether you'll be able to run Mantle on a driver other than Catalyst 14.1, but we'll find out soon enough. AMD tells us the Catalyst 14.1 drivers are required to run Mantle in Battlefield 4, so you can update your game apparently but won't be able to run it unless you have the new driver. The highly-anticipated Mantle demo StarSwarm will also be coming out in on Steam January 30th at "roughly" 3:00PM. You can see a video of it in action right here. Since you are probably wondering what kind of performance improvement you will see with the Mantle update, assuming you are using a GCN-based GPU (HD 7000, R9, and R7 GPUs), AMD has sent us information from its testing that will give you some insight. First off, it notes that the biggest gains will be achieved on systems with mid-to-low end CPUs that are essentially CPU constrained. According to AMD, "Mantle makes the most significant (and we do mean significant) performance benefit for gaming scenarios that are CPU-limited." For those of you with beefy CPUs where the GPU is the limiting factor, AMD says don't get your hopes up. It writes, "An API change is unlikely to make a drastic change in these scenarios, as GPU resources are being maximally utilized in a fashion that is difficult to improve at the API-level."
Briefly, here are the numbers AMD has provided for Battlefield 4: CPU: AMD A10-7700K with Radeon R9 290X - 40.9% improvement at 1080p, 40.1% improvement at 1600p. CPU: Intel Core i7-4960x with Radeon R7 260x - 2.7% improvement at 1080p, 1.4% improvement at 1600p.
It also provided numbers for the upcoming RTS demo from Oxide games named StarSwarm: CPU: AMD A10-7700K and Radeon R9 290X - 319% improvement at 1080p, 281% improvement at 1600p. CPU: Intel Core i7-4960X and Radeon R7 260X - 5.1% at 1080p, 16.7% at 1600p. In addition, AMD has released a list of known issues for its Catalyst 14.1 drivers. It told us that rather than delay the release of Mantle because of these issues it wanted to get it into the hands of gamers as soon as possible so it can get real-world feedback as it works to fix the issues. Here they are: 1. Mantle performance for the AMD Radeon HD 7000/HD 8000 Series GPUs and AMD Radeon R9 280X and R9 270X GPUs will be optimized for BattleField 4 in future AMD Catalyst releases. These products will see limited gains in BattleField 4 and AMD is currently investigating optimizations for them as they are the next highest priority products. 2. Multi-GPU support under DirectX and Mantle will be added to StarSwarm in a future application patch. 3. Intermittent stuttering or stability issues may occur when utilizing Mantle with AMD CrossFire technology in BattleField 4. 4. Notebooks based on AMD Enduro or PowerXpress™ technologies are currently not supported by Mantle in Battlefield 4. 5. Portrait mode display configurations are currently not supported under Mantle in Battlefield 4. 6. AMD Eyefinity technology is not currently supported in the StarSwarm application. 7. Disabling AMD CrossFire technology in the AMD Catalyst Control Center may cause a system hang. If you experience this, a reboot will ensure that AMD CrossFire is disabled.
But wait, there's more! In addition to all this the Catalyst 14.1 drivers will also include AMD's "phase 2" frame pacing driver it promised last year. If you recall, the first release of this driver only supported it on one display up to 2560x1600 resolution. It also only worked on DX11 games. Phase 2 broadens support to DX10 and DX11, and allows resolutions higher than 2560x1600, so those of you with 4K panels will appreciate this update. The update also applies to any GPUs that don't feature AMD's XDNA technology, which are the R9 290 and R9 290X boards (it gets rid of the CrossFire cable as they communicate directly through PCI Express). The driver update also helps frame pacing in dual GPU configurations where an APU is coupled with a GPU. Finally, the Catalyst 14.1 driver is also the first HSA-enabled driver, which allows Kaveri APUs to intelligently cooperate with a GPU to share the workload. The only supporting applications listed by AMD at this time are LibreOffice v4.2.0.1+ and Core AfterShot Pro v1.2.0.6+, but it says more will come online soon. That's quite a list, so sit tight while AMD works its fingers to the bone prepping the driver to be in your hands very soon. We hope to have some benchmarks up very soon after release. We will also make a new post when the driver is available, and will update this post as well. Update: When the driver goes live you can download it here. Also, Dice has posted its own Mantle benchmarks using different configs, and you can read them here.
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