General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Build A Budget Haswell PC

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 04:24 PM PDT

We all know AMD makes damned-fine budget parts, but can Intel compete? This month, we build a $650 Core i5 Haswell rig to find out how it stacks up

It seems like whenever we build a high-end system it's powered by an Intel CPU, and budget systems always run AMD parts. This month, we're flipping the script and building a budget-oriented Intel system to see how it compares to AMD's offerings, and to give people a glimpse of what a $650 Intel rig can throw down. For comparison's sake, we recently built budget rigs using AMD's new Richland APU (October 2013) as well as one with a $120 Vishera FX-6300 CPU ("Battle of the Budget Builds," June 2013), and found that both chips serve their niche quite well. For this Intel build, we knew we'd go with Haswell, and wanted to run a Core i3 CPU, which typically comes with two cores and Hyper-Threading (HT), but those haven't been released yet. Note: This article was originally featured in our December 2013 issue of the magazine. So, the next-best CPU we could get was the Core i5-4430— a quad-core CPU without HT for $180. That's a third of our budget on the CPU, which forced us to be frugal elsewhere. We also took this opportunity to try out a new microATX case from Cooler Master that retails for $50, which we felt was perfect for a budget build.

Gathering Intel

Since we're working on a tight budget, we planned this system to be relatively bare-bones, thus allowing us to build inside the smallish Cooler Master N200 microATX chassis. This is a chassis that's smaller than a traditional mid-tower, but larger than a traditional small-form-factor case, with plenty of room for cables and extra-long GPUs. The foundation for our build would be a motherboard from Gigabyte, the GA-B85-D3H (not to be confused with the HD3). It has a fat heatsink on the parts that usually get pretty hot, so we figured the board would be relatively stable. Other than that, it is a budget B85 board, with four SATA 6Gb/s ports, Realtek integrated sound, one PCI Express 3.0 slot, and four RAM slots that can handle up to 32GB clocked at 1,600MHz. It also features Gigabyte's DualBIOS feature, so the motherboard can use the backup BIOS if the primary one fails to boot. The Core i5-4430 isn't overclockable, so we won't be messing with any of that. Although the Core i5-4430 is about $30 more expensive than the A10-6800K that we tried in the AMD budget build, that CPU also wore a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo cooler, which comes out to… about $30. So it's the same difference in the end, though CPU and integrated graphics performance will differ.

Other than that, we're trying to keep the rest of the system similar to the Richland build, to create a level playing field, so you'll see the same 60GB SSD, Corsair power supply, 1TB hard drive, Windows 8, and an optical drive.

INGREDIENTS
PART Price
Case Cooler Master N200

$50
PSU Corsair CX500 $50
Mobo Gigabyte GA-B85-D3H $85
CPU Intel Core i5-4430 $180 (street)
Cooler Intel stock cooler N/A (bundled)
GPU Intel HD 4600 N/A (integrated)
RAM 2x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LP $60 (street)
SSD 60GB Mushkin Chronos MKNSSDCR60GB-7 $65 (street)
HDD 1TB Seagate Barracuda $68 (street)
Optical Drive Samsung SH-S223 $15 (street)
OS Windows 8 64-bit OEM $90 (street)
Total   $663

1. Stating Your Case

The N200 case is about 7.5 inches wide, so cable management quickly becomes an issue as soon as you begin inserting parts. As we began building, the first area of trouble we ran into was with the hard drive cage on the bottom of the chassis, which holds two 3.5-inch drives and one SSD. If we were to use the standard screw holes for the hard drive, it would have given us very little clearance to connect the SATA and power cables on the other side. So we moved the HDD forward by one hole, which gave us some extra space in the back, making it easier to store unused power supply cables out of sight. It's a shame the hard drive cage doesn't have rails, as installing drives is a PITA.

2. Getting Cagey

In order to install hard drives into the included cage, you need to attach screws to both sides of it, but there's no way to access the cage's left side with it inside the system, so you have to remove it altogether first. To do that you need to remove two screws that secure it to the motherboard tray, then flip the case on its side to access four more screws underneath the case (pictured). With those removed, you can pull out the cage and access the holes on its left side.

There are also four built-in SSD installation points—one on top of the lower HDD cage, two on the mobo tray, and one beneath the upper 3.5-inch drive bay—but we used an adapter bracket to install our lone SSD in the 3.5-inch cage. Call us old-fashioned, but we felt it offered the cleanest wiring options. The upper 3.5-inch drive bay also holds a single drive, so despite the N200 being "only" an mATX case, you have plenty of options when it comes to storage.

3. Intercepting Cables

A modular power supply probably would have been easier to use in such a small case, but we used the same PSU from our Richland build, so we had no choice but to find room for all the cables. The side panels each have a bulge to them, but they're not deep enough to squeeze a 24-pin power cable behind the motherboard tray. There's also no cutout for the 8-pin power cable, so we had to route it over the motherboard like in the old days. Since there's no window on this case, we didn't feel too pressured to make the inside look pretty, but we did break out the twist ties in a few places.

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4. Laser Visions

Optical drives are still the easiest way to install Windows, so we'll continue to use them until we're pulling an OS from the cloud. Plus, some motherboards don't play nice when you try to boot from a USB stick, especially if it's a USB 3.0 device. To install an optical drive with this case, you need to remove the front bezel via a hidden handle at the bottom that pulls outward. Once it comes off, you squeeze two tabs on the drive bay cover to remove it. You can see from the photo that the entire front of the case is just one big mesh grill. It holds two 120mm fans, or a 240mm radiator on the inside of the chassis. Though we didn't install a closed-loop cooler this time, it certainly can be done, but it makes for a very crowded interior. Once you put the front bezel back in place, smack it in each corner nice and hard.

5. Error Codes

We use a variety of monitors around the Lab, and during this build we happened to spot an unused 30-inch Dell with a resolution of 2560x1600 looking at us longingly. We thought it would be fun to test the system at that resolution, so we hooked it up only to find that we'd made a small oversight. The DVI connection on the back of this particular motherboard does not support dual-link DVI, it's single-link only. To distinguish the ports visually, DL has more pins in it—24 as opposed to single-link's 18. You need dual-link to get a 60Hz refresh rate at resolutions above 1080p. DisplayPort accomplishes this objective as well, but this board did not have that connector either, leaving us stranded on 1080p island. D'oh! For what it's worth, you can get a motherboard in this price range with dual-link DVI, such as the MSI H87-G43, but that board has one fewer fan header than this Gigabyte board! Those fan headers come in handy, too, because this case has three fan mounts unused right out of the box, on the top, side, and front. The top even accepts 140mm fans, and the case comes with anti-vibration grommets.

6. Loose Ends

Once we had mostly finished our build, we had to find space in the chassis to stash all of our cables, which is tricky in a case this size. Even cables that are in use need to have their middle parts tucked away. By moving our hard drive forward a bit in its drive cage, we were able to free up space behind it, into which we stuffed a lot of cables. We also took advantage of the small gap between the drive cage and the front of the case. Ideally, we would have spread these cables out behind the motherboard tray, but the side panels only bulge a few millimeters, and it didn't seem worth it to squeeze the cables that much just to clean things up, especially  when there's no case window.

One slick feature of this chassis is that the internal 120mm intake fan can be moved to the outside of the case, where it sits behind the front bezel. This is handy if you're trying to set up a push-pull configuration on a radiator mounted inside the front of the case, though you'd need to remove the hard drive cage to accommodate such a setup.

Back to the Haswell

Building systems in these small cases always poses challenges, but it wasn't too bad this time around. It was a bit time-consuming to install the SSD and HDD, since the drive cage had to be removed, but the rest of the build was fairly painless. Once it was up and running, we were surprised by how quiet it was, despite the front of the case being nothing but mesh. You'd think some noise would leak through there, but the system was just about silent, even under full load. In fact, one time it ran for a minute or so without the CPU fan even spinning (the fan cable got caught in the blades, before we secured it with a twist tie). The case fan cables are also about 18 inches long, so they'll reach all the way from one end of the N200 to the other.

In terms of general desktop performance, we already had a good idea of what to expect since we had already tested Intel's Haswell CPU. In testing, the Core i5-4430 was able to encode videos and render hi-res panorama photos much faster than a comparably priced AMD CPU. Even when we overclocked the AMD 6800K to 4.7GHz, it couldn't keep up with a Core i5-4430 running at 3GHz.

The same can't be said for its gaming performance, though, as AMD clearly takes the crown from Intel. In general, Haswell's HD 4600 graphics are around 40 percent slower than the AMD 6800K's graphics. Then again, the Core i5-4430's non-GPU performance outclasses either AMD chip.

In the end, going Intel or AMD at this price range really comes down to what your needs are. You can get an FX-6300 for about $120 right now and add a Radeon HD 7770 for about $75 (at least after a mail-in rebate). So, for gaming on a budget, AMD provides the best value. If you're editing HD videos and hi-res photos, though, Intel wins by a comfortable margin.

All in all, the Intel system put up a heck of a fight against the AMD builds, at least in the computing realm; not so much in gaming. The system was fast enough for basic needs though, and if we had used a motherboard with DisplayPort and/or DL-DVI, we could call this build an all-around success.

Benchmarks

ZERO

POINT
Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec) 1,710 1,135
 
ProShow Producer 5.0 (sec) 1,947 1,685
x264 HD 5.0 (fps) 9.0 11.65
3DMark11 Performance 1,668 1237 (-26%)
Stalker: Call of Pripyat (fps) 8.3 8 (-33%)

Our Richland system was a quad-core 4.1GHz A10-6800K at 4.7GHz, 8GB of Kingston DDR3/1600, on a Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-D3H motherboard. It ran Radeon 8670D integrated graphics, a Mushkin Chronos SSD, and Windows 8 64-bit.

Facebook “Gets the Big Picture,” Says Carmack About Oculus Deal

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 03:16 PM PDT

John CarmackCarmack speaks on pending Facebook acquisition of Oculus

Oculus chief technology officer John Carmack has offered his opinion on Facebook's pending acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion. The deal has sparked outrage and confusion from consumers to the point that death threats have been made against Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey while cooler heads have questioned whether or not Oculus should refund Kickstarter backers their money. 

Carmack, a veteran game developer who left id Software to work at Oculus VR, expressed his views about the deal in a response to a blog post written on the topic. While Carmack admitted that he shared some of the "misgivings about companies 'existing and operating only to be acquired,'" he also expressed his optimism by saying, "Honestly, I wasn't expecting Facebook (or this soon). I have zero personal background with them, and I could think of other companies that would have more obvious synergies. However, I do have reasons to believe that they get the Big Picture as I see it, and will be a powerful force towards making it happen. You don't make a commitment like they just did on a whim."

Bringing Valve into the conversation, Carmack believes that a lot of the disappointment regarding Facebook stemmed from the idea that many people were expecting Oculus VR to build themselves up like the Half-Life developer. However, he pointed out that the big difference between the two companies is that Valve "had the field to themselves," while "VR won't be like that."

Do you agree with John Carmack's view of the situation? Sound off in the comments below!

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Researcher Claims a Smartphone Kill Switch Could Save Consumers $2.6 Billion Annually

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 12:07 PM PDT

PhonesWhat's holding smartphone makers back from implementing a kill switch?

A new research report suggests that if smartphone makers implemented a technology into handsets to remotely disable them when stolen, it could potentially save consumers $2.6 billion per year. For that number to be accurate, a kill switch would need to be mandatory in mobile devices. It takes into the account the cost of replacing a stolen smartphone as well as how much is spent on smartphone insurance.

Creighton University Heider College of Business professor and consumer advocate William Duckworth, Ph.D., surveyed 1,200 smartphone owners and found that not only would mobile phone owners welcome a kill switch feature, they've come to expect it. It's easy to see why when breaking down the numbers.

Based on his research, Americans spend about $580 million per year replacing stolen smartphones, and another $4.8 billion per year paying for premium cell phone insurance from wireless carriers.

"My research suggests that at least half of smartphone owners would in fact reduce their insurance coverage if the kill switch reduced the prevalence of cell phone theft," said Duckworth. "Overall, it seems clear that Americans want the kill switch and that an industry-wide implementation of the technology could significantly improve public safety and save consumers billions of dollars a year."

Unfortunately for consumes in favor of such a thing, the idea of a kill switch isn't yet embraced by the CTIA, a lobbying group that represents the telecom industry. Instead, the CTIA wants to build a database that blocks stolen phones from being reactivated by new subscribers, though such an idea only has limited international reach.

Image Credit: Flickr (West Midlands Police)

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Microsoft Puts Phil Spencer in Charge of Xbox Division

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 11:22 AM PDT

Phil SpencerPhil Spencer is now in charge of Microsoft's Xbox business

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella might be new to his post, but he's already making his presence known by shaking up the management team. Perhaps the biggest move of the day is the promotion of Phil Spencer to lead the Xbox, Xbox Live, and creative teams including Xbox Music, Xbox Video, and Microsoft Studios. His was one of several changes to management, though will it be the last?

We'll have to wait and see. For now, there's plenty to digest, starting with Spencer's new role.

"Combining these teams will strengthen the connection between some of the world's most innovative creators and those building the Xbox itself," Spencer stated in a blog post. "I am incredibly proud of the talented Xbox employees around the world and believe, like they do, in the power of technology to bring games and entertainment to life across console, PC, tablet and mobile devices. It's been a remarkable year for Xbox and I am honored to lead the team at this incredible time for Microsoft and the games industry."

Nadella's other changes include the promotion of Scott Guthrie to Executive Vice President of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise organization, as well as bringing former Nokia chief Stephen Elop on board as Executive Vice President of the Microsoft Devices Group. Elop's role will become official once the deal with Nokia closes next month.

"Recently, I've discussed with the Microsoft leadership team the need to zero in on what truly makes Microsoft unique. As I said on my first day, we need to do everything possible to thrive in a mobile-first, cloud-first world," Nadella stated in an open email to employees. "The announcements last week, our news this week, the Nokia acquisition closing soon, and the leaders and teams we are putting in place are all great first steps in making this happen."

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DisplayMate Determines the Best Smartphone Display Belongs to Samsung's Galaxy S5

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 10:18 AM PDT

Samsung Galaxy S5The Galaxy S5's display impresses a well renowned testing firm

It looks like Samsung may have yet other bragging point -- best smartphone display in the world. That was the determination DisplayMate's Dr. Raymond M. Soneira came to after an extensive round of lab tests and measurements, in which he concluded that the Galaxy S5 sports the best smartphone display he's ever tested. It was an easy conclusion to come to after the Galaxy S5 left in its wake a bunch of broken records.

The Galaxy S5 set new standards for several of DisplayMate's smartphone tests, including Highest Brightness, Lowest Reflectance, Highest Color Accuracy, Infinite Contrast Ratio, Highest Contrast Rating in Ambient Light, and smallest Brightness Variation with Viewing Angle.

"The Galaxy S5 has raised th bar for top display performance by another notch -- an impressive achievement for OLED technology!," Dr. Soneira stated.

It's important to note that these are objective tests with measurable results, as opposed to a subjective analysis. Dr. Soneira is also known for not being swayed by factory specifications.

"The variation of Brightness, Contrast, and Color with Viewing Angle is especially important for smartphones because of their larger screen and multiple viewers. The typical manufacturer 176+ degree specification for LCD Viewing Angle is nonsense because that is where the Contrast Ratio falls to a miniscule 10," Dr. Soneira notes.  For most LCDs there are substantial degradations at less than ±30 degrees, which is not an atypical Viewing Angle for smartphones and tablets."

As good as the Galaxy S5's display is, one thing that could still use improvement in the OLED arena is power efficiency. This is an area where OLED technology still trails LCDs, though Samsung did make some strides here with the S5 featuring a 27 percent improvement in power efficiency compared to the S4.

You can read more in DisplayMat'es Galaxy S5 Shootout.

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Rumors of a 500W Dual-GPU Radeon R9 295 Graphics Card Hit the Web

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 09:26 AM PDT

Radeon R9 290XThis could be AMD's answer to the Titan Z

It's been nearly a week since Nvidia unveiled its dual-GPU Titan Z, a monster dual-GPU graphics card with 5,760 CUDA cores, 12GB of memory, and a massive $2,999 price tag. Will AMD counter with a dual-GPU card of its own? Of course it will -- we don't want to imagine a world where these two companies don't go back and forth trying to one-up each other. Rumor has it that AMD's dual-GPU counter punch is going to be a rather power-hungry Radeon R9 295.

According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, AMD's dual-GPU Hawaii card "might be the first ever 500W card that will end up water cooled." We're not sure where Fudzilla's plucking its information from, but if it ends up being true -- and that's a big "if" -- then we would certainly expect to see some kind of advanced cooling apparatus to keep temps from getting out of hand. As a point of reference, AMD has never revealed the TDP for its Radeon R9 290X, though Maximum PC Senior Editor Josh Norem notes in our hands-on benchmarking of the card that the company stated to us "in an offhand manner that it's in the neighborhood of 250W."

Based on AMD's existing line-up, wccftech.com surmises that a Radeon R9 295 could show up wielding 5,362 stream processors, 4GB to 8GB of GDDR5 per GPU (so 8GB to 16GB in all) with a 512-bit (x2) memory bus, and dual 8-pin PCI-power connectors.

Both sites think the price tag will run north of $1,000 though come in cheaper than the Titan Z. That too is speculation, so take all this with a heaping pile of salt.

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Intel's Stock Climbs Following $740 Million Investment in Cloudera

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 08:27 AM PDT

Intel TruckIntel and investors align in vision of the future

Investors can be a funny, unpredictable bunch. Sometimes they overreact to small blips in sales estimates -- Apple investors seem to do this every time the company issues a financial report -- and other times they get excited over seemingly nothing. The good news for Intel is that investors are reacting positively to a massive investment in Cloudera, an enterprise data hub powered by Apache Hadoop.

Intel and Cloudera announced last week a broad strategic technology and business collaboration, as well as a "significant equity investment" from the former into the latter. The Santa Clara chip maker initially kept mum about how much it invested, though today revealed that it equated to around $740 million for an 18 percent stake, which values Cloudera at $4.1 billion.

"By aligning the Cloudera and Intel roadmaps, we are creating the platform of choice for big data analytics," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group. "We expect to accelerate industry adoption of the Hadoop data platform and enable companies to mine their data for insights that inform the business. This collaboration spans our data center technology from compute to network, security and storage, and extends to our initiatives for the Internet of Things."

After Intel revealed how much it invested in Cloudera, its stock began to rise, going up 1.1 percent to $25.91 on Monday. While it's early, investors are clearly excited about the move, or at least optimistic. With this deal in place, Intel will move away from its own version of Hadoop and rely on Cloudera to promote Big Data analysis, which itself could lead to more sales of Xeon server chips.

Image Credit: Flickr (IntelFreePress)

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Newegg Daily Deals: Acer S2 24-inch White Monitor, WD Black Series 2TB HDD, and More!

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 07:46 AM PDT

Acer S2 24-inch Monitornewegg logo

Top Deal:

Between the Cheetos and Pizza Pockets and constant supply of tasty snacks to stay fueled up and gaming into the wee hours of the morning, investing in a white-themed PC can be dangerous. That's okay because we like to live dangerously, and always have -- we used to return VHS tapes to the video store without rewinding them. Yeah. Hardcore, right? And we're not afraid to rip off the label on a new mattress. You dig what we're saying? Then you won't be afraid of today's top deal for an Acer S2 White 24-inch Widescreen Monitor for $130 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code: [EMCPGHB44]). This is a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) display with a 5ms response time and white bezel. Thug life, homie.

Other Deals:

WD Black Series 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $140 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code: [EMCPGHB23])

Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCPGHB22])

G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory for $69 with free shipping (normally $76 - use coupon code: [EMCPGHB33])

Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics for $320 with free shipping (normally $340 - use coupon code: [EMCPGHB42])
Posted by Shri Krishna

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