General Gaming Article

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• Microsoft Skins Mobile Mouse 3500 with Halo's Master Chief, Goes Up for Pre-order at Gamestop
• AMD Uncages A10-7800 and A8-7600 Kaveri APUs
• 9 Horrific Game Launches
• Seagate 1TB Hybrid vs. WD Black2 Dual Drive
• Security Researchers Discover Fundamental Security Flaw in USB, No Fix in Sight
• Lian Li Introduces PC-V2130 Full Tower Case
• Newegg Daily Deals: Dell UltraSharp IPS 24-inch Monitor, Logitech G710 Plus Mechanical Keyboard, and More!

Microsoft Skins Mobile Mouse 3500 with Halo's Master Chief, Goes Up for Pre-order at Gamestop Posted: 31 Jul 2014 04:39 PM PDT An affordable rodent for Halo fans It's a bit of an odd cross promotion, but to draw attention to Halo: The Master Chief Collection for Xbox One, GameStop is offering up for pre-order Microsoft's new Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 Halo Limited Edition: The Master Chief. Microsoft outfitted its existing Mobile Mouse 3500 with a highly detailed scene featuring Master Chief in his two-tone green MJOLNIR Power Assault Armor and gold hued visor. "With this mouse, you get Master Chief and all the awesomeness that comes standard with the popular Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 such as its ambidextrous design, snap-in nano transceiver, 2.4 GHz wireless technology, and two-color battery light indicator. You also get BlueTrack Technology that allows you to use the mouse on virtually any surface including granite, marble, carpet, and wood," Microsoft said in a blog post. The Mobile Mouse 3500 uses BlueTrack technology for tracking on virtually any surface. It also features a plug-and-go nano transreceiver and up to 8 months of battery life. If you're interested, you can place your pre-order at GameStop for $30 today; it will ship in October. You can also place your pre-order for Halo: The Master Chief Collect at GameStop for $60; it ships November 11, 2014. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

AMD Uncages A10-7800 and A8-7600 Kaveri APUs Posted: 31 Jul 2014 04:17 PM PDT New APUs solve the Twitter teaser picture mystery We now have our answer to a Twitter picture teasing a new AMD A-Series APU launch that made the rounds last week. The picture showed a dozen robots on the side of a semi-truck, leading to speculation that AMD might release a 12-core APU. In a sense, that's what AMD launched today, though not in the way you might think. AMD's updated Kaveri parts released today include the A10-7800 and A6-7600 APUs, the former with 12 Compute Cores (4 CPU and 8 GPU) and the latter with 10 Compute Cores (4 CPU and 6 GPU). In a more traditional sense, the higher-end A10-7800 is a quad-core chip clocked at 3.5GHz (up to 3.9GHz via Turbo), while the A6-7600 is also a quad-core part, but clocked at 3.1GHz (up to 3.8GHz via Turbo). They both feature AMD's Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) that allows the CPU and GPU to tag team tasks, TrueAudio technology, Mantle support, and configurable TDPs. "The AMD A-Series APUs bring a superior level of gaming and compute experiences to the desktop PC," said Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Business Unit, AMD. "With support for AMD's acclaimed Mantle API that simplifies game optimizations for programmers and developers to unlock unprecedented levels of gaming performance transforming the world of game development to help bring better, faster games to the PC." AMD's A10-7800 and A6-7600 are available now for $158 and $104, respectively (MSRPs). Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

9 Horrific Game Launches Posted: 31 Jul 2014 02:47 PM PDT DRM issues, poor performance, and crashing servers If you're like us, you like the Internet, but there are unfortunately downsides to the service. It seems that over the years, developers have been releasing unfinished buggy games, hoping to just patch the situation later.  While some games get better with patches and updates over time, there's really nothing that can completely erase the memory of a rocky launch. With that said, here's a look of the 9 worst PC game launches. What's the worst game launch you've experienced? Let us know in the comments below!

Seagate 1TB Hybrid vs. WD Black2 Dual Drive Posted: 31 Jul 2014 12:27 PM PDT Seagate 1TB Hybrid vs. WD Black2 Dual Drive Every mobile user who is limited to just one storage bay wants the best of both worlds: SSD speeds with HDD capacities. Both Seagate and WD have a one-drive solution to this problem, with Seagate offering a hybrid 1TB hard drive with an SSD cache for SSD-esque performance, and WD offering a no-compromise 2.5-inch drive with both an SSD and an HDD. These drives are arch rivals, so it's time to settle the score. ROUND 1: Specs and Package The WD Black2 Dual Drive is two separate drives, with a 120GB SSD riding shotgun alongside a two-platter 1TB 5,400rpm hard drive. Both drives share a single SATA 6Gb/s interface and split the bandwidth of the channel between them, with the SSD rated to deliver 350MB/s read speeds and 140MB/s write speeds. The drive comes with a SATA-to-USB adapter and includes a five-year warranty. The Seagate SSHD uses a simpler design and features a 1TB 5,400rpm hard drive with an 8GB sliver of NAND flash attached to it, along with software that helps move frequently accessed data from the platters to the NAND memory for faster retrieval. It includes a three-year warranty and is otherwise a somewhat typical drive aimed at the consumer market, not hardcore speed freaks. Both drives include free cloning software, but since the WD includes two physical drives, a USB adapter, and a longer warranty, it gets the nod. WD's Black2 Dual Drive is two individual drives in one enclosure, and it has the price tag to prove it. Winner: WD Black2 ROUND 2: Durability This category is somewhat of a toss-up, as the WD Black2's overall reliability is degraded somewhat by the fact that it has a spinning volume attached to it, giving it the same robustness of the Seagate SSHD. There's also the issue of the WD Black using the slightly antiquated JMicron controller. We don't have any reliability data on that controller in particular, but we are always more concerned about the SSD controller you-know-whating the bed than the memory, which is rated to last for decades, even under heavy write scenarios. Both drives also use two-platter designs, so neither one is more or less prone to damage than the other. In the end, we'll have to go with the Seagate SSHD as being more durable, simply because you only have to worry about one drive working instead of two.  Winner: Seagate SSHD ROUND 3: Performance Seagate is very clear about the performance of its hybrid drives, stating that they "boot and perform like an SSD," but it never says they're faster. It also claims the drive is "up to five times faster than a hard drive," which seems like a bit of a stretch. It's difficult to actually benchmark a caching drive because it won't show on standard sequential read tests, and it gets killed by SSDs in access time tests. That said, we did see boot and PCMark Vantage scores improve significantly over time. Our boot time dropped by more than half, going from 2:27 to 1:07 after several boots, and our PCMark Vantage score shot up from 6,000 to 19,000. Still, these times are much slower than what we got with the WD SSD, which booted in 45 seconds (the system had three dozen programs installed), and hit 33,000 in PCMark Vantage. Winner: WD Black2 ROUND 4: Cloning Package Both drives include free software to help you clone your old drive and, in an odd twist, both companies use Acronis software to get 'er done. Seagate's software is called DiscWizard, and works on OSes as old as Windows 98 and Mac OS 10.x. WD throws in a copy of Acronis True Image, though it only works with WD drives attached via the included USB-to-SATA adapter. We tested both software packages and found them to be nearly identical, as both let us clone our existing drive and boot from it after one pass, which can be tricky at times. Therefore, we call the software package a tie since they both perform well and use Acronis. However, WD's $300 bundle includes a USB-to-SATA adapter that makes the cloning process totally painless. Seagate makes you forage for a cable on your own, which tips the scales in WD's favor. Winner: WD Black2 ROUND 5: Ease of Use This round has a crystal-clear winner, and that's the Seagate SSHD. That's because the Seagate drive is dead-simple to use and behaves exactly like a hard drive at all times. You can plug it into any PC, Mac, or Linux machine and it is recognized with no hassle. The WD drive, on the other hand, only works on Windows PCs because it requires special software to "unlock" the 1TB hard drive partition. For us, that's obviously not a problem, but we know it's enraged some Linux aficionados. Also, the WD drive only has a 120GB SSD. So, if you are moving to it from an HDD, you will likely have to reinstall your OS and programs, then move all your data to the HDD portion of the drive. The Seagate drive is big enough that you would just need to clone your old drive to it. Winner: Seagate SSHD Seagate's hybrid drive offers HDD simplicity and capacity, along with SSD-like speed for frequently requested data. And the Winner Is… This verdict is actually quite simple. If you're a mainstream user, the Seagate SSHD is clearly the superior option, as it is fast enough, has more than enough capacity for most notebook tasks, and costs about one-third of the WD Black2. But this is Maximum PC, so we don't mind paying more for a superior product, and that's the WD Black2 Dual Drive. It delivers both speed and capacity and is a better high-performance package, plain and simple. Note: This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of the magazine.

Security Researchers Discover Fundamental Security Flaw in USB, No Fix in Sight Posted: 31 Jul 2014 10:54 AM PDT The bad side of USB Oh great, as if it wasn't bothersome enough knowing that all our online communications are susceptible to government spying with very little we can do about it, now we've come to find out that just by having a USB port, there exists a pretty serious security risk every time we plug in a compatible peripheral. The problem is that virtually any of the millions of USB devices out there can be reprogrammed for malicious purposes, and there doesn't appear to be much we can do about it. Security Research Labs in Berlin has given a name to the fundamental flaw in USB -- "BadUSB." At issue is that every USB device has a controller chip that controls the USB connection to other devices. Those controllers have firmware, and if reprogrammed -- which is easy to do since the USB-IF focused more on compatibility than security -- a benign device like a keyboard or mouse can suddenly turn evil. "A device can emulate a keyboard and issue commands on behalf of the logged-in user, for example to exfiltrate files or install malware. Such malware, in turn, can infect the controller chips of other USB devices connected to the computer," SRLabs explains. The device can also spoof a network card and change the computer's DNS setting to redirect traffic. Unfortunately, there are no known defenses against this other than not using your USB devices. Malware scanners can't access the firmware running USB devices, and behavioral detection isn't reliable since a BadUSB device's behavior simply looks like a user plugged in a new device. "Once infected, comptuers and their USB peripherals can never be trusted again," SRLabs added. The best analogy so far comes from ExtremeTech, which likens the situation to having unprotected sex. In other words, if you plug your USB device into another PC, you can assume it's been compromised. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Lian Li Introduces PC-V2130 Full Tower Case Posted: 31 Jul 2014 10:15 AM PDT A full tower chassis with room for multiple water cooling radiators Lian Li today added another big case to its lineup, the PC-V2130. As you might have guessed, this one sports a brushed aluminum design, a popular motif at Lian Li, and is an updated version of the PC-V2120. The PC-V2130 improves upon its predecessor by adding robust water cooling support, more versatile drive bay options, and an enhanced cable management scheme. According to Lian Li, the PC-V2130 has 94L of space inside and can support motherboards up to HPTX. There's a tool-less removable top panel that allows for 240mm or 280mm radiators. Two additional 280mm radiators can be installed at the front and bottom of the chassis. For cable management and cooling, there are 8 grommeted holes, 31mm (1.2 inches) behind the motherboard tray to hide bundles, two 140mm fans up front, two 140mm fans on the bottom, a single 120mm fan on the rear, and optional fan mounts on the top. Other amenities include dust filters, wheels to move the case, thumbscrews, stealth covers, and more. The PC-V2130 will be available soon for between $499 and $569. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Newegg Daily Deals: Dell UltraSharp IPS 24-inch Monitor, Logitech G710 Plus Mechanical Keyboard, and More! Posted: 31 Jul 2014 09:03 AM PDT Top Deal: Think about the one thing you stare at all day during work hours. Right, the ceiling -- it's the best way to space out when you're at work. And the second thing? Your monitor, of course. Since that's the case, why skimp on an inferior panel? Be kind to your eyeballs and check out today's top deal for a Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24-inch LED Monitor for $240 with free shipping (normally $265 - use coupon code: [EMCPCHA48]. This monitor sports an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel with a 2,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 300 cd/m2 brightness, and flexible stand (pivot, swivel, height). Other Deals: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $81 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCPCHA35]) Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile Desktop Memory for $80 with free shipping (normally $93 - use coupon code: [EMCPCHA33]) Logitech G710 PLUS USB Wired Gaming Mechanical Keyboard for $100 with free shipping Corsair Hydro Series H105 Extreme Performance 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler for $100 with free shipping (normally $115 - use coupon code: [EMCPCHA77])

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