General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article


Digital Storm Bolt II Overview Video

Posted: 05 May 2014 03:29 PM PDT

Digital Storm Bolt IIWorthy micro tower sequel corrects original's weak points

Sequels aren't easy to make, but Digital Storm has just uped the ante with its second revision of the Bolt micro tower. The Bolt II takes a big step forward with the addition of a closed-loop liquid cooler to reduce noise and to allow for a healthy overclock. In the video below, Gordon Mah Ung kicks the tires and gives you the details of the micro tower monster.

 

The Bolt II features a Core i7-4770k overclocked at 4.5 GHz, an Asus Maximum VI Impact (Z87 chipset), 16GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3/1,600MHz, a Geforce GTX Titan Black, 256GB Samsung 840 Pro, 2TB WD Black 7,200 RPM, a Blu-ray burner and a custom / 500 watt Digital Storm Bolt II Edition Gold Plus rated PSU. The CPU heatsink is a rebranded Corsair H100i. Look for the full review in the June issue of the magazine! 

Supercharge Your PC with an SSD!

Posted: 05 May 2014 02:52 PM PDT

It's hands-down the best upgrade money can buy

Over the years, we've upgraded every nook and cranny of our rigs, from major parts like GPUs and CPUs, to minor things like trying different thermal pastes and swapping out case fans in an attempt to squeeze a few more degrees out of a rig's ambient air temperature. It's a bit OCD, we admit, but the point is, we've tried everything, and usually we're only able to see a small gain from our investment of time and elbow grease. That is not the case with SSDs, which deliver an eye-popping, profanity-inducing speed increase for relatively little cash outlay. If you've heard the hype about SSDs, we're here to tell you two things: First, the hype is real, and second, you need one in your system.

For the uninitiated, SSDs are solid-state drives, and they are like hard drives in that they store data, but instead of using slow, spinning platters, they are made from small slabs of quiet, fast memory. Adding an SSD to your rig can cut your boot time down to less than 10 seconds, and programs will open almost before you click the icon—they're that fast. In this feature, we'll tell you what you need to know to buy an SSD, how to upgrade, and how to take care of your new drive. An SSD will rock your rig's world, so let's jump right into it.

SSD Buyer's Guide

What to look for before pulling the trigger

The chip in the center is the controller, and it's responsible for a drive's performance.

The chip in the center is the controller, and it's responsible for a drive's performance

The Controller 

What truly differentiates every SSD is its controller, which is silicon with custom logic and firmware tailored by the manufacturer to meet specific performance and durability goals. Some manufacturers, like Samsung and OCZ, create their own controllers, while others, such as Seagate, Intel, Crucial, and Corsair (to name just a few), use a third-party controller along with their own custom firmware. We can't say that one approach is better than the other, but generally speaking, if a company's controller is designed in-house, it's not a stretch to imagine it would be able to more finely tune its firmware.  

Capacity 

SSDs are available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB, for the most part, and as a rule, performance increases with capacity. The reason why is that an SSD's controller has to erase a block before it can write to it, so if it already has data on it, the operation takes longer than just writing to an empty block. So, larger-capacity drives give the SSD controller a lot more "empty" blocks to work with, thereby increasing overall performance. It's always nice to have some room to grow, too, so in general we recommend at least a 256GB drive, or a 512GB if you can swing it.  

Over-provisioning 

Over-provisioning is unique to SSDs, and is basically "missing capacity," for lack of a better phrase, that's used to improve drive performance and endurance. When you see a drive listed as 240GB or 480GB instead of 256GB or 512GB, that's because the extra space that is "missing" is being set aside. You cannot get this space back, nor can you ever access it. Instead, it's reserved so the SSD has a large block of relatively unused flash that it can use as a swap file, or for wear leveling. This is important since NAND flash has a finite number of program/erase cycles. In general, having an extra 16GB–32GB of NAND just for file management allows the SSD to better maintain its overall performance over time.

The Importance of Trim

When you delete a file on an SSD, it doesn't really get deleted. Instead, the drive's controller marks the block as "garbage" and will delete it when it has time to do so, typically when the drive is sitting idle. If you have too many undeleted blocks of data on your drive, performance suffers, since each block has to be deleted before it can be written to. "Garbage collection" helps prevent this. It's supported on all SSDs natively that we are aware of, and runs on its own schedule. In addition, Windows will also periodically send the Trim command to the drive, which basically tells the drive to discard any deleted data.  Windows 8 will let you manually Trim an SSD (right-click the drive and go to Properties > Tools > Optimize) but Windows 7 users just have to assume it's occurring. However, we'll tell you how to make sure it's working below.

Software

It's a little-known fact that some SSDs include extremely useful software that lets you monitor the drive's health and optimize it. Granted, there aren't a lot of times when you want to check in on your SSD, just like the hard drive before it. You just want it to work, basically, and not be bothered with the details. However, it can be useful from a performance perspective to be able to ensure the drive is operating in tip-top shape. Right now, the only SSDs with top-tier software are from Intel and Samsung, though Corsair and OCZ do have rudimentary software packages.

The SATA 6Gb/s Bottleneck

For the past year or so, all the fastest SSDs have been bottlenecked by the SATA 6Gb/s interface, so when you see a drive hitting 520MB/s or so in read speeds, that means it's saturating the interface. You can get around this by running a few drives in RAID 0, or by using an SSD that caches data to your system's DRAM, but generally speaking, we're all waiting for the next-gen interface to arrive. That interface is named SATA Express, and it's due to arrive sometime in late 2014 or early 2015 with Intel's next-generation 9-series chipset.  Until then, we all have to hold tight, but we don't recommend waiting to upgrade until then. 

 Samsung and Intel offer excellent drive-monitoring software.

 Samsung and Intel offer excellent drive-monitoring software.

Click the next page to read what you need to know before you upgrade to an SSD.


 

Before You Upgrade

Like any major PC overhaul, planning and preparation is required

This is the first big question: Do you want to clone your existing OS installation to your new SSD (if you are even able to do so), or start fresh with a clean installation? There's no "right" answer here, and we'll walk you through both choices on the next pages, but here are some things to keep in mind. First, if your existing OS installation is larger than the SSD you have acquired, that's a problem for obvious reasons. Second, cloning an existing installation typically requires the use of third-party software (not a huge deal, but still something to consider), and if you have an OEM-built partition from Dell, HP, Toshiba, or other PC manufacturer, there are many steps to cloning the partition.

Due to the somewhat complex nature of cloning an OS to a new volume and having it be bootable, we recommend simply starting fresh and reinstalling your OS. Besides, since the ultimate goal of this whole operation is a performance boost, nothing is faster than a fresh install of Windows, and on a brand-new SSD it'll be astonishingly fast.

Where Does It Go in your pc?

Since SSDs have no moving parts and don't emit any heat or noise, you can pretty much stick them anywhere inside your PC case and they'll be fine. We're not proud of it, but we have let a few dangle on the floor of our PC case in the past and nothing bad happened. To mount it properly though, you'll want to attach the drive to a 3.5-inch hard drive bay—in most newer cases there will be holes for 2.5-inch drives. In an older case, you are likely to need an adapter. Some SSDs even include 3.5-inch drive bay adapters, though it's not terribly common. Cooling is not a concern, as SSDs rarely get more than slightly warm to the touch, even after prolonged use.

Cloning your existing OS to a new SSD is the fastest way to get up and running, but it may not be easy, or possible.

Cloning your existing OS to a new SSD is the fastest way to get up and running, but it may not be easy, or possible.

Be Sure to Use SATA 6Gb/s Ports

You might not have paid attention to which drives were connected to which ports on your motherboard previously, but you will definitely need to do so if you want to extract maximum performance from your SSD. On modern Intel chipsets only specific ports are able to perform at SATA 6Gb/s speeds; typically they are a different color than the slower SATA 3Gb/s ports. There might also be two Marvell-based SATA 6Gb/s ports. We recommend you consult your manual to figure out which ones are the native Intel ports, and use those for best results. All the ports are SATA 6Gb/s on AMD's FX boards, so you can plug away without hesitation.

SATA 6Gb/s ports are distinctly colored on your mobo.

SATA 6Gb/s ports are distinctly colored on your mobo.

An SSD Upgrade Will Blow Your Mind

We've been upgrading PCs since just after the Proterozoic era, and in all that time we have only witnessed two truly quantum leaps in PC performance. The first was the leap from software to hardware rendering for 3D games, and the second was when we went from dial-up modems to broadband. Both of those "upgrades" made us say to ourselves, "Holy sh*t," while we stood there with our mouths agape. We got the same feeling the first time we booted a PC with an SSD. Granted, the first wave of 3.5-inch SSDs weren't the fastest, and they were outrageously priced, but the experience of seeing the Windows log-in screen within just a few seconds, and then seeing programs load almost instantly, brought tears of joy to our eyes. To give you some numbers, a typical 7,200rpm drive takes 10ms to find a file; an SSD takes .01ms. An SSD boots Windows in 10 seconds versus 60 seconds on a hard drive. You can install Windows 7 to an SSD in 10 minutes. Yes, it's ridiculously fast, and the first time you see an SSD in action, you will never, ever go back to a spinning hard drive for your OS.

Click the next page to see how to perform a fresh install of your OS on to the SSD.


 

Perform a Fresh Install of Your OS

A clean install of Windows will guarantee maximum performance

1. Disconnect All Other Drives

Before you begin your OS install, disconnect all other drives and volumes from your system, leaving only your optical drive attached. This helps eliminate confusion and reduces the possibility of you accidentally formatting a drive that is full of data. Windows also freaks out sometimes during installation if there are other drives attached, and by freaks out we mean it acts really weird, and might prevent you from installing your OS to the SSD. We've Lab-verified this "weird" behavior, too, so always fly SSD commando when installing your OS. We also recommend leaving the door off your PC case during the installation, so you can easily reconnect everything once it's finished.

2. Set Your BIOS to AHCI

Once your SSD is installed in a drive bay (or stuffed somewhere inside the case) using the previously discussed methods, attach the SATA cable to a SATA 6Gb/s port, and a power cable to the PSU. With your SSD secure, power on the system and head into the BIOS by mashing the Delete key as soon as the system comes to life. Next, navigate to the section that gives you the option to change the behavior of the SATA controller. You are going to need to switch it from IDE to AHCI. You must do this before installing the OS to the SSD, as it becomes a bit difficult to do it after the fact.

3. Install Windows

With your SATA controller set to AHCI mode, reboot with just the SSD and optical drive attached. Next, hit F11 or F12 (consult your manual) to select your boot volume, and choose the drive with the Windows installation files on it (i.e., the optical drive). Just follow the prompts from there. Once installation is finished, reconnect your old hard drive and any other drives. When you're back in Windows you should have a fresh installation of Windows on your SSD and your old installation of Windows and all your data on your old hard drive. We'll show you how to properly navigate this new operating environment with respect to your "user" files below.

4. Pull Desktop Files off Old Drive

One "issue" with Windows is that it puts all your data files (music, documents, etc.) into a folder named Users. This is great for a single, large drive, but can create problems in multi-drive systems like the one you have now—but more on that later. For now, you will want to go and grab your desktop files by opening your old drive and navigating to Drive/users/username/desktop. You can also grab your browser's bookmarks too, so hit up Google to find the location used by your specific browser. Install any drivers and programs you need but hold off on Steam for now.

 

Click the next page to learn how to clean your existing OS on to an SSD.

 


 

Clone Your Existing OS Installation

If you can squeeze your old OS onto your new SSD, go for it

1. Make Target Drive Bootable

To begin, connect only the SSD and the cloning source drive to simplify the procedure. Once just the two drives are connected it's a simple matter of following the prompts provided by your program of choice, but to demonstrate, we'll be using a free program (for home users) named XXClone that we've used in the past with great success. Once you fire up the program it'll scan your partitions and let you choose the cloning source and target. If you want to make the clone bootable you'll need to check a box under Cool Tools labeled "Make Bootable," which copies the MBR, BOOT.ini file and the boot sector to the target volume.

2. Clone Your Drive

Once you've confirmed your source and target, feel free to proceed with the cloning. It'll show you a "this is your last chance to stop" warning, so for the love of Pete, please make sure you have selected the proper target and source. The program we are using encourages users to use volume labels on the drives instead of just C:\ and D:\, so please, please, please use them. We have inadvertently wiped out entire OS installations with cloning mistakes, so please be cautious. The cloning operation will typically take about 15–30 minutes, so go grab some coffee.

3. OEM Workaround

Folks who have a pre-built system may want to clone their factory-fresh OS installation, but a lot of times systems do not come with Windows on a disc. Also, some OEMs take measures to protect their factory restores and keep them hidden from view. Other systems allow you to see the recovery partition, but you can't clone it using software. Here's a workaround. Use the built-in Recovery software to create a recovery disc. Next, just replace your hard drive with the SSD and run the recovery program. It should restore your OS in factory condition with all drivers intact, and you'll be good to go.

4. 4K Alignment

When moving an image from a hard drive to an SSD, you need to make sure both are "4K aligned" or performance can suffer. If you do a fresh install of the OS you never have to worry about this, but it can be a problem when transferring an install to a disk with partitions. You can check your drive's alignment by opening a command prompt and typing wmic partition get Name, StartingOffset. Take the number it gives you and divide by 4,096; if that results in an even number, you are aligned. If you're not, most SSD manufacturers provide software alignment tools that can help.

Living with Your New SSD

Tips on getting your new drive to work with your old drive

We recommend keeping your user data on the large hard drive, and just linking to it from your new OS installation.

All installations of Windows have a Users folder that stores all your music, movies, documents, and pictures. As you can imagine, this folder can get quite large over time, so it's best to keep it off the SSD, as your SSD might not be large enough to hold all that data. Plus, in this scenario, all of this data already exists on your older hard drive, so we're going to keep it where it resides (on the hard drive) and just change the links to it within the OS. We'll show you how for one folder, then let you repeat it for the rest of the folders. On Windows 7, you can start by clicking the Start button, hovering over any of the user data links (music, movies, documents, or pictures), right-click, and select Properties. Next, click the button labeled "Include a folder..." and navigate to the folder on your old hard drive, which will typically be D:\Users\username\music, etc. Select that older folder, then highlight it in the window and click "Set save location." You can then select the Music folder on the C drive and click "remove." Click OK to save and you're done. Repeat these steps for the other links. Now when you click any of the links within the OS to user data, it'll open the folders on the hard drive.

Managing Your Steam Folder

If you're like us, your Steam folder is Xbox huge, so we want to keep it on the old hard drive so that it doesn't saturate our shiny new SSD. This is rather simple actually, as you can just install Steam and when it prompts you for the installation location you can point to the hard drive and it should be able to "discover" the files that are already there and transition to that drive. If you already have Steam installed on your C drive and want to move it to the D drive, just do the following. Exit Steam, then open your Steam folder (C:\program files\Steam) and delete everything in the folder except the \steamapps folder, which is where all your games are stored. Copy and paste the folder into the new location (D:\games\Steam, for example), and rename the old folder but don't delete it, just in case. When you launch Steam it should find the new location, update itself, and all new games will be installed to this location going forward.

Ensure Trim Is Working

Once you are up and running you're going to want to check to make sure the Trim command is working. We can't say definitely that things would be bad if it wasn't, as the drive's built-in garbage collection routine should be able to accomplish the same goal, but it's good housekeeping to have it enabled. To do that, type cmd in the Start box in Windows, then right-click and select "Run as administrator." Next, type fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify and see what value is returned. A "0" means it's working, a "1" means it's not. If the value is 1, type fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0 to turn it on, then run the original query again to make sure it's enabled. Now you're Trimming!

Checking to see if Trim is enabled requires a simple DOS query (hell yeah, old school).

Checking to see if Trim is enabled requires a simple DOS query (hell yeah, old school).

The SSD Leaderboard

All the top SSDs benchmarked and compared

If you have the patience to comb through the chart below, you'll notice a few patterns. First, all the drives with five-year warranties are the top performers in every benchmark, and there's a reason for that. A five-year warranty is pretty much the calling card of the premium drives, so those drives are the best of the best. In addition to a super-long warranty, these drives also offer highly tuned controllers and high-quality NAND flash, hence the premium performance across the board. Our Best of the Best drive in the top tier is the Samsung 840 Pro, as it has class-leading performance, is priced competitively, and features a software package that's head-and-shoulders above anything the competition offers. Also, we have to add a note here about OCZ drives, because as we went to press the company was in the process of being sold to Toshiba. It obviously doesn't affect the Vector's smokin' performance, but warranty support is somewhat of a question mark, so we'd steer clear of that drive until the matter is settled.

At the end of the day, the truth is that any modern SSD will feel extremely fast, especially if you've never used one before. You honestly won't be able to feel the difference between 500MB/s and 429MB/s on a day-to-day basis, so choose a drive you can afford that you think will be reliable, and as always, back up any data you have that is crucial, because any drive can fail at any time. The fact is, SSDs are just as prone to failure as spinning drives. In our experience, they have become more reliable as their technology matures, but as always, do your research before you buy.

Benchmarks
  Samsung 840 Pro Corsair Neutron GTX SanDisk Extreme II Plextor M5 Pro OCZ Vector Samsung 840 Evo (Rapid Mode) Samsung 840 Evo (Normal Mode) Crucial M500 Seagate 600 Intel 335
Controller MDX LAMD Marvell 88SS9187 Marvell 88SS9187 Barefoot 3 MEX MEX Marvell 88SS9187 LAMD SF-2281
Capacity 512GB 480GB 480GB 256GB 512GB 1TB 1TB 480GB 240GB 240GB
Warranty 5 years 5 years 5 years 5 years 5 years 3 years 3 years 3 years 3 years* 3 years
CrystalDiskMark                    
Avg. Sustained Read (MB/s) 534 441 521 534 502 594 519 480 515 470
Avg. Sustained Write (MB/s) 514 478 484 451 499 591 500 422 462 240
AS SSD - Compressed Data                    
Avg. Sustained Read (MB/s) 513 507 511 510 507 855 506 493 510 510
Avg. Sustained Write (MB/s) 495 475 425 443 494 1,002 496 408 435 214
ATTO                    
64KB File Read (MB/s) 524 345 525 479 511 519 494 502 526 430
64KB File Write (MB/s, 4QD) 497 485 493 371 480 659 510 422 465 502
Iometer                    
4KB Random Write 32QD
(IOPS)
82,927 85,375 42,699 84,870 83,531 88,859 89,423 89,423 84,390 42,289
PCMark Vantage x64 75,205 67,426 38,093 78,218 75,863 100,797 57,306 71,619 58,145 47,571
Sony Vegas Pro 9 Write (sec) 294 286 275 340 314 272 277 485 322 634

Best scores are bolded. All tests conducted on our hard drive test bench, which consists of a Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 motherboard, Intel Core i5-3470 3.2GHz CPU, 8GB of RAM, Intel 520 Series SSD, and a Cooler Master 450W power supply.
*Seagate covers the drive for 73TB of writes or 3 years, whichever comes first.

Core i7 Class CPU, 64-bit Windows OS Needed to Play Wolfenstein: The New Order

Posted: 05 May 2014 10:43 AM PDT

Wolfenstein: The New OrderBethesda announces PC system requirements for upcoming Wolftenstein title

You may remember playing the original Castle Wolfenstein on a Commodore 64 system over three decades ago. Boy, have times have changed. PC system requirements have gotten more stringent with each new Wolfenstein title, and if you want to experience Wolfenstein: The New Order at a solid 60 frames per second, you'll need to bring a Core i7 or equivalent AMD chip to the party.

You'll also need 4GB of system RAM, 50GB of hard drive space, an Nvidia GeForce 460 or AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6850 or higher graphics card, high speed internet connection, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8.

"The system requirements are based on the game being a next-gen experience running at 60fps. These are the system requirements to deliver the PC game as it was intended to be experienced," Bethesda announced in a blog post.

A Steam account and activation will also be required, so heads up there.

How does your PC compare? Do you plan on playing Wolfenstein: The New Order?

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Oculus Denies ZeniMax's Allegations of IP Shenanigans

Posted: 05 May 2014 10:24 AM PDT

Oculus RiftOculus contends that all of ZeniMax's claims of code theft are false

You don't have to tune into daytime soap operas to see drama unfold, just sit back and watch Oculus and ZeniMax argue over Rift technology. In short, virtual reality startup Oculus today issued a statement disputing claims made by Maryland-based game maker ZeniMax Media that it owns the intellectual property (IP) rights powering the Oculus Rift VR headset.

Let's back up a moment. Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that ZeniMax Media is laying claim to the above mentioned IP. Based on letters that ZeniMax's team of lawyers sent Oculus and Facebook, ZeniMax is claming that former employee John Carmack improperly shared the company's IP with Oculus, and did so both before and after joining Oculus last August.

That's a hefty allegation, and one that Oculus isn't taking lightly.

"We are disappointed but not surprised by ZeniMax's actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false," Oculus said in a statement sent out to members of the press.

In the statement, ZeniMax goes on to clarify a few points. Here they are in full, as provided to Maximum PC in an email:

  • There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products.
  • John Carmack did not take any intellectual property from Zenimax.
  • Zenimax has misstated the purposes and language of the Zenimax non-disclosure agreement that Palmer Luckey signed.
  • A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company.
  • Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax's demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.
  • Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers.
  • Despite the fact that the full source code for the Oculus SDK is available online (developer.oculusvr.com), Zenimax has never identified any 'stolen' code or technology.

Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that Oculus says ZeniMax is only coming out of the woodwork because of the lucrative Facebook deal in which the social networking site purchased Oculus for $2 billion last March.

Stay tuned, this bound to get interesting.

Image Credit: Flickr (Sergey Galyonkin)

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Nokia Lumia 520 Takes Bullet for Brazilian Police Officer's Backside

Posted: 05 May 2014 08:58 AM PDT

Nokia Lumia 520How a Windows Phone saved a police officer's ass (literally)

Hollywood's already envisioned various objects saving a potential victim's hide by absorbing a bullet, but apparently it doesn't only happen in the movies. Reading like an action movie script, an overseas report tells the story of an off duty police officer in Brazil who was fired upon by two men attempting to rob his parents' house. The officer turned around in time for the bullet to deflect off his Nokia Lumia 520 handset in his back pocket.

According to the translated report spotted by PC Magazine, the crooks fired on the officer when they saw his uniform, which he had draped over his arm. He was bringing the uniform over to his parents' house to have it washed only to find that they had been taken hostage in a burglary attempt.

One of the crooks fired off two shots, one of which destroyed the officer's Windows Phone and hit him in the buttocks, and the other whizzing by before bouncing off a neighbor's gate. The criminals fled, making off with cell phones, watches, jewelry, and money, according to the report.

The Nokia Lumia 520 isn't a particularly pricey device, selling for less than $100 in most places.

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AOC's mySmart All-in-One Touch Display Comes Wrapped in Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Posted: 05 May 2014 08:30 AM PDT

AOC mySmart All-in-One A2472PW4TA new all-in-one line with an old version of Android

AOC is getting the work week started by rolling out a pair of mySmart All-in-One systems running Android 4.2 Ice Cream Sandwich. There are two versions: the 22-inch A2272PW4T and the 24-inch A2472PW4T. Other than the size and physical screen real estate, they're configured exactly the same, right down to the Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) resolution and odd decision to run a version of Android that's two generations old.

Both models sport touchscreen ADS In-Plane Switching (IPS) panels. Other shared specs include an Nvidia T33 quad-core processor clocked at 1.6GHz, 2GB of LPDDR3 memory, 8GB of eMMC storage, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 720p HD webcam, four USB 2.0 ports, SDHC card read, a pair of 2W stereo speakers, and both VGA and HDMI inputs.

"The mySmart All-in-One delivers technology that empowers consumers to stay connected to the things that matter in today's constantly evolving digital world," said Steve Young, AOC Channel Marketing Manager. "The mySmart line extends AOC's longstanding tradition of providing award-winning technology that combines an intuitive, user-friendly experience with visually appealing yet functional design at a competitive price point."

AOC says the A2272PW4T and A2472PW4T are available now at national retailers for $300 and $400 MSRP, respectively.

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EVGA Shows Off Rowdy Z97 Motherboard Family

Posted: 05 May 2014 08:05 AM PDT

EVGA Z97 Classified

Three decked out boards, two of which you can preorder today

One thing we can say with certainty is that Intel's refreshed Haswell processors will have no trouble finding suitable homes in Z97-based motherboards. We've already seen several pop up online, and now EVGA has revealed its initial Z97 motherboard lineup. It includes three boards to get things started -- the EVGA Z97 Classified, EVGA Z97 FTW, and EVGA Z97 Stinger Core3D.

Starting with the Z97 Classified, this board is "engineered for the enthusiast and built from the ground up" for overclocking. It comes with a GUI BIOS focused on functionality, a new software interface for overclocking within the operating system, high quality components, Core3D audio, 8-layer PCB with memory trace layout, 4-way SLI support, eight SATA 6Gbps ports, six USB 3.0 ports, six USB 2.0 ports, two Intel GbE NICs, and four DIMM slots with support for up to 32GB of DDR3-2666MHz+. This is an EATX board.

Next up is the Z97 FTW "engineered for performance users with excellent overclocking features." It's an ATX motherboard with a 6-layer PCB, eight SATA 6Gbps ports, half a dozen each of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, 2-way SLI support, a single Intel GbE NIC, and the same RAM support as the Classified.

For small form factor (SFF) builds, there's the Z97 Stinger Core 3D. It's a mini ITX board with a 10-layer PCB, four SATA 6Gbps ports, six USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, two DIMM slots, Core3D audio, and a few other goodies.

You can preorder the EVGA Z97 Classified for $380 and the EVGA Z97 FTW for $200. The EVGA Z97 Stinger Core3D is also priced at $200, though it's not available to preorder. All three boards are scheduled to ship later this month.

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Newegg Daily Deals: Cooler Master HAF X Case, Intel Core i7 4930K Ivy Bridge, and More!

Posted: 05 May 2014 06:14 AM PDT

Cooler Master HAF Xnewegg logo

Top Deal:

One storage drive is enough, they said. So you bought five! One graphics card is also enough, they said. So you bought four! Air cooling will get the job done, they said. So you purchased a liquid cooling kit! Optical is dead, they said. So you purchased a Blu-ray burner! Now that you've gone above and beyond the status quo, where are you going to fit all those parts? Allow us to introduce you to today's top deal -- it's for a Cooler Master HAF X Full Tower Case for $150 with free shipping (normally $180 - use coupon code: [EMCPEPH39]; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). This towering chassis has a windowed side panel, a pair of hot swapt bays that work with 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives, USB 3.0 support, and can hold all the hardware mentioned above.

Other Deals:

Western Digital WD Green 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCPEPH22])

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Steve Ballmer Topples Bill Gates as Microsoft’s Largest Shareholder

Posted: 04 May 2014 11:46 PM PDT

Steve Ballmer

58-year-old Ballmer owns over 333 million shares

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who last year expressed his desire to continue "as one of Microsoft's largest owners," is now officially the Redmond-based company's largest individual owner, having just overtaken its co-founder and former chairman Bill Gates.

Microsoft CEO for a 14-year period stretching from January 2000 to February 2014, Ballmer became the company's largest shareholder after Bill Gates sold off 4.6 million shares in April. As a result of that sale, Bill Gates now owns 330.1 million shares, which is just a shade behind Ballmer's 333.2 million.

In an interview he gave to The Wall Street Journal in March, Ballmer said he wasn't sure how much longer he would continue as a Microsoft director, a post he clung onto despite some opposition. Interestingly, Microsoft shares have climbed nearly 25 percent since Ballmer announced his retirement.

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Asus Prepping Two New Convertible Laptops

Posted: 04 May 2014 10:33 PM PDT

Asus Vivobook Convertible LaptopsTP300L and N542L Windows 8.1 laptops outed in FCC filing

Ever since the release of Windows 8 in late 2008, we've seen a number of notebooks capable of transforming into tablets and back at the drop of a hat. Taiwanese PC vendor Asustek, which has to its credit such ambitious devices as the dual-screen Taichi 21 and the three-in-one Transformer Book Trio, is getting ready to introduce two Lenovo Yoga-like laptops with 360º-adjustable touch screen panels.

Outed by documents Asus filed with the FCC last month, the Vivobook TP300L/Q302L and N542L/Q502L both sport high-definition touch screens that can be rotated all the way back to a point where both the screen and the keyboard are facing exactly opposite directions. While the former is a 13-incher, the latter has a 15-inch display.

Here's what the two nearly identical user manuals filed with the FCC have to say on the subject:
"Your Notebook PC's touch screen panel can be adjusted all the  way into a 360º angle. This feature allows you to quickly turn your device from a Notebook PC into a touch-enabled tablet PC."

"This high-definition touch screen panel provides excellent viewing features for photos, videos, and other multimedia files on your Notebook PC. It also allows you to operate it using touch
screen gesture."

German site Mobilegeeks.de, which discovered the FCC filings, expects the company to make the two convertibles official at the upcoming Computex 2014 trade event (June 3-7). We will update you when more details are available.

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