General Gaming Article |
- Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition Unveiled at IFA 2014
- Civilization: Beyond Earth Direct-Feed Video
- Build it: Real-World 4K Gaming Test Bench
- Dell UltraSharp UP2414Q Review
- Corsair Hydro H105 Review
- Toshiba Unveils 7-Inch Windows 8.1 Tablet for $120 and Second Generation Chromebook for $250
- Acer’s Holiday Portfolio: Aspire R Convertibles, Switch 2-in-1 PCs, Iconia Tablet, and Liquid Phone
- Windows 8 Shows Signs of Life (Just in Time for Windows 9)
- NZXT's S340 Mid-Tower Chassis Can Swallow a Kraken
- Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Radeon R9 280 Graphics Card, AMD A8-6600K Richland, and More!
| Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition Unveiled at IFA 2014 Posted: 03 Sep 2014 05:22 PM PDT
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| Civilization: Beyond Earth Direct-Feed Video Posted: 03 Sep 2014 03:21 PM PDT Maximum PC and PC Gamer compare notesIntrepid Editor Tom McNamara and PC Gamer Managing Editor Cory Banks descended upon Civilization: Beyond Earth recently, getting our grubby hands on it ahead of its October 24th release, and our coverage was but words and pictures. We now have a full-blown video that slices together six minutes of direct-feed video, during which you will hear Tom and Cory go over their experience in a charmingly off-the-cuff manner that you are sure to enjoy and recommend frequently to your friends and neighbors. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Build it: Real-World 4K Gaming Test Bench Posted: 03 Sep 2014 12:29 PM PDT This month, we find out what it takes to run games at 4K, and do so using a sweet open-air test benchThe computer world loves it when specs double from one generation to the next. We've gone from 16-bit to 32-bit, and finally 64-bit computing. We had 2GB RAM sticks, then 4GB, then 8GB. With monitor resolutions, 1920x1080 has been the standard for a while, but we never quite doubled it, as 2560x1600 was a half-step, but now that 4K resolution has arrived, it's effectively been exactly doubled, with the panels released so far being 3840x2160. We know it's not actually 4,000 pixels, but everyone is still calling it "4K." Though resolution is doubled over 1080p, it's the equivalent number of pixels as four 1080p monitors, so it takes a lot of horsepower to play games smoothly. For example, our 2013 Dream Machine used four Nvidia GeForce GTX Titans and a CPU overclocked to 5GHz to handle it. Those cards cost $4,000 altogether though, so it wasn't a scenario for mere mortals. This month, we wanted to see what 4K gaming is like with more-affordable parts. We also wanted to try a distinctive-looking open test bench from DimasTech. This type of case is perfect for SLI testing, too, since it makes component installation and swapping much quicker.
Triple ThreatInstead of GTX Titans, we're stepping it down a couple of notches to Nvidia GTX 780s. They provide similar gaming performance, but at half the cost. We're also using "only" three cards instead of four, so the price difference from Dream Machine to this rig is a whopping $2500 (even more if you count the fact that the Dream Machine cards were water-cooled). These cards still need a lot of bandwidth, though, so we're sticking with an Intel LGA 2011 motherboard, this time an Asus X79 Deluxe. It's feature-packed and can overclock a CPU like nobody's business. The X79 Deluxe is running Intel's Core i7-4960X CPU, which has six cores and twelve processing threads. It's kind of a beast. We're cooling it with a Cooler Master Glacer 240L water cooler, which comes with a 240mm radiator. We'll also need a boatload of power, so we grabbed a Corsair AX1200 PSU which, as its name suggests, supplies up to 1200 watts. It's also fully modular, meaning that its cables are all detachable. Since we're only using one storage device in this build, we can keep a lot of spare cables tucked away in a bag, instead of cluttering up the lower tray. All of this is being assembled on a DimasTech Easy V3 test bench, which is a laser-cut steel, hand-welded beauty made in Italy and painted glossy red. It can handle either a 360mm or 280mm radiator as well, and it comes with an articulating arm to move a case fan around to specific areas. It seems like the ultimate open-air test bench, so we're eager to see what we can do with it. \ 1. Case WorkingThe DimasTech Easy V3 comes in separate parts, but the bulk of it is an upper and lower tray. You slide the lower one in and secure it with a bundled set of six aluminum screws. The case's fasteners come in a handy plastic container with a screw-on lid. Shown in the photo are the two chromed power and reset buttons, which are the last pieces to be attached. They have pre-attached hexagonal washers, which can be a bit tricky to remove. We had to use pliers on one of them. You'll need to wire them up yourself, but there's a diagram included. Then, connect the other head to the motherboard's front panel header, which has its own diagram printed on the board.
2. Getting TestyUnfortunately, the Easy V3 does not ship with a 2.5-inch drive bay, nor do standard 3.5-inch to 2.5-inch adapters fit inside the bays. If you want to install a solid-state drive, you need to purchase the correctly sized bay or adapter separately from DimasTech. Since this is an open test bench, which is designed for swapping parts quickly, we chose to just leave the drive unsecured. It has no moving parts, so it doesn't need to be screwed down or even laid flat to work properly. We also moved the 5.25-inch drive bay from the front to the back, to leave as much room as possible to work with our bundle of PSU cables. The lower tray has a number of pre-drilled holes to customize drive bay placement. Meanwhile, our power supply must be oriented just like this to properly attach to the case's specified bracket. It's not bad, though, because this positions the power switch higher up, where it's less likely to get bumped accidentally.
3. Able CablesThe best way to install a modular power supply is to attach your required cables first. This time, we got a kit from Corsair that has individually sleeved wires. It costs $40, and also comes in red, white, or blue. Each of these kits is designed to work with a specific Corsair power supply. They look fancier than the stock un-sleeved cables, and the ones for motherboard and CPU power are a lot more flexible than the stock versions. All of the connectors are keyed, so you can't accidentally plug them into the wrong socket. We used a few black twist ties to gather in the PCI Express cables.
4. Taking a Stand(off)The Easy V3 comes with an unusually tall set of metal motherboard standoffs. These widgets prevent the motherboard from touching the tray below and possibly creating a short circuit. You can screw these in by hand, optionally tightening them up with a pair of pliers. Once those were in, we actually used some thumbscrews bundled with the case to screw the board down on the standoffs. You can use more standard screws, but we had plenty to spare, and we liked the look. The tall standoffs also work nicely with custom liquid cooling loops, because there is enough clearance to send thick tubing underneath (and we've seen lots of photos on the Internet of such setups). For us, it provided enough room to install a right-angle SATA cable and send it through the oval cut-out in the tray and down to the SSD below.
5. Triple PlayThis bench has a black bracket that holds your PCIe cards and can be slid parallel to the motherboard to accommodate different board layouts. It will take up to four two-slot cards, and DimasTech sells a longer 10-slot bracket on its website for workstation boards. We had to use the provided aluminum thumbscrews to secure the cards, since all of the screws we had in The Lab were either too coarsely threaded or not the right diameter, which is unusual. Installing cards is easy, because your view of the board slot is not blocked by a case. The video cards will end up sandwiched right next to each other, though, so you'll need a tool to release the slot-locking mechanism on two of them (we used a PCI slot cover). The upper two cards can get quite toasty, so we moved the bench's built-in flexible fan arm right in front of their rear intake area, and we told the motherboard to max out its RPM. We saw an immediate FPS boost in our tests, because by default these cards will throttle once they get to about 83 C.
6. Cool Under PressureSince the Glacer 240L cooler has integrated tubing that's relatively short, the orientation pictured was our only option. We could have put the fans on the other side of the radiator, but since performance was already superb, we decided we liked the looked of them with the grills on top. To mount the radiator, we used the bundled screws, which became the right length when we added some rubber gaskets, also included. The radiator actually doesn't give off much heat, even when the CPU is overclocked and firing on all cylinders, so we didn't have to worry about the nearby power supply fan pulling in a lot of hot intake. In fact, the CPU never crossed 65C in all of our benchmarks, even when overclocked to 4.5GHz. We even threw Prime95 at it, and it didn't break a sweat. Temperatures are also affected by ambient temperatures, though. With our open-air layout, heat coming out of the GPUs doesn't get anywhere near the radiator, and The Lab's air conditioning helps keep temperatures low, so it's pretty much an ideal environment, short of being installed in a refrigerator. Your mileage may vary.
A Golden TriangleDespite our penchant for extreme performance, we rarely build triple-GPU systems, so we weren't sure how well they'd handle 4K, but we figured they'd kick ass. Thankfully, they handled UHD quite well. So well, in fact, that we also tested the system with "only" two GTX 780s and still got respectable gaming performance. For example, with two cards, the Bioshock Infinite benchmark reported an average of a little over 60 FPS on its highest settings. In Tomb Raider, we disabled anti-aliasing and TressFX, maxing out all the other settings, and we still averaged 62 FPS. We benchmarked the opening sequence of Assassin's Creed 4 with AA and PhysX disabled and everything else maxed out, and we averaged 47 FPS. The Metro: Last Light benchmark, however, averaged 25FPS on max settings, even with PhysX disabled. Unfortunately, we had trouble getting Hitman: Absolution and Metro: Last Light to recognize the third card. This issue is not unheard of, and made us think: If you stick with two GPUs, you no longer need the PCI Express bandwidth of expensive LGA 2011 CPUs, or their equally expensive motherboards, or a huge power supply. That potentially cuts the cost of this system in half, from around $4200 to roughly $2100. You could also save money by going with, say, a Core i7-4930K instead, and a less expensive LGA 2011 motherboard and a smaller SSD. But it's still a pretty steep climb in price when going from two cards to three. The test bench itself feels sturdy and looks sweet, but we wish that it accepted standard computer-type screws, and that it came with a 2.5-inch drive bay or could at least fit a standard 3.5-to-2.5 adapter. We'd also recommend getting a second articulating fan arm if you're liquid-cooling, so that one could provide airflow to the voltage regulators around the CPU, and the other could blow directly on your video cards. With the fan aimed at our cards, we instantly gained another 10 FPS in the Tomb Raider benchmark. The Seagate 600 SSD was nice and speedy, although unzipping compressed files seemed to take longer than usual. The X79 Deluxe motherboard gave us no trouble, and the bundled "Asus AI Suite III" software has lots of fine-grained options for performance tuning and monitoring, and it looks nice. Overall, this build was not only successful but educational, too. Benchmarks
The zero-point machine compared here consists of a 3.2GHz Core i7-3930K and 16GB of Corsair DDR3/1600 on an Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboard. It has a GeForce GTX 690, a Corsair Neutron GTX SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Dell UltraSharp UP2414Q Review Posted: 03 Sep 2014 11:45 AM PDT The 4K monitor you've been waiting for?Call it 4K. Call it UltraHD. Either way, massive pixel counts are the next big thing. This year's festival of rampant consumerism at CES in Las Vegas is a case in point. Inevitably, a ton of 4K HDTVs filled the field of view in every direction, but the show also included several 4K and UHD laptops. Meanwhile, phones with full 1080p grids are becoming commonplace. Likewise, tablets with panels over 1080p, including Google's 2560x1600-pixel Nexus 10, are now almost routine.
But what of the PC? Sadly, it's been a bit of a 4K laggard to date. So far, we've only reviewed a single 4K PC monitor, the Asus PQ321. It's absolutely, positively gorgeous, but also punitively priced at around $3,000. So expensive, in other words, that it's pretty much irrelevant to most PC lovers. That's actually rather ironic, because of all the devices out there, the PC is nearest to ready-and-able to make the most of 4K resolutions right now. 4K HDTVs, quite frankly, are a gimmick; there's simply no content to watch on them yet. Super-high-resolution tablets and phones are marginal, too. But not PCs. Ramp up the res and you can immediately enjoy the boost in desktop elbow room, although you may run into scaling and DPI problems with Windows (more on that a bit later). Applications in the video and photo editing spheres certainly benefit from more pixels. Then there's gaming, which is the biggie for us, though the argument here is more finely balanced. In theory, you can run pretty much any game at full 4K. Most will offer the option to render at the maximum resolution of your graphics subsystem. And render they will. The only snag involves achieving that at playable frame rates. As we explained in our Asus PQ321 review, 4K/UHD is essentially four times the resolution of a 1080p pixel grid, so that's four times the workload for your GPU to cope with. Cripes. So, it's into this broader context that we introduce our second-ever 4K PC monitor review. The specimen in question this time is Dell's new UltraSharp UP2414Q. It sports the same 3840x2160 resolution as the groundbreaking Asus PQ321, but there are two significant differences. The first of these is price; the new Dell can be had for slightly under $1,300—less than half the cost of the Asus. That's still not exactly cheap for a monitor, but it's much, much more accessible. The second major change-up involves panel proportions. The Dell spans a mere 24 inches—so that's $1,300 for a 24-inch monitor. Yikes. Of course, you could argue that it's resolution and not size that determines desktop real estate, and you'd be right, but some people will still balk at the very notion of paying so much for a panel size that can be had for little more than $120 these days. The UP2414Q's general metrics are your typical IPS fare, with 178-degree viewing angles for both the horizontal and vertical planes. Likewise, the claimed static contrast of 1,000:1 is very much par for the course, and the UP2414Q's 8ms quoted response is the same as other cutting-edge IPS panels. Of course, all of that means there are some superior options available by some measures. IPS technology is all the rage, but in truth, TN tech is better for pixel response and VA panels offer far superior contrast. Overall, IPS is still the best compromise—just don't fall into the trap of assuming it's universally superior. It ain't quite that simple. Elsewhere, there's an LED backlight and brightness rated at 350cd/m2, and a super-fine pixel density of 185PPI. As for inputs, the UP2414Q has one HDMI, one DisplayPort, and one Mini DisplayPort. Thanks to the super-high resolution, it's only the DisplayPort that offers full native operation. The lone HDMI port is limited to HDMI 1.4, and you need HDMI 2.0 for 4K at 60Hz. Finally, there's a fully adjustable chassis, complete with tilt, rotate, swivel, and height tweakability. What is it actually like to look at? Utterly stunning, is the first impression. Even the epic Asus can't match the crispness and sharpness that you get from cramming all those pixels into such a relatively small panel. As with super-high DPI phones and tablets, you almost don't feel like you're looking at an active display at all. You essentially can't see the individual pixels—they're simply too small—which gives the UP2414Q a wonderfully seamless feel. The colors are exquisite, too, though admittedly, no more so than many other high-end IPS screens; they all look spectacular these days. The same goes for the results in our objective image quality test. Gradient rendering, viewing angles, white and black scales—they're all absolutely immaculate and super sexy—again, just like other pricey IPS screens. Then, there's actually using this 4K beauty for multimedia entertainments. Not that there's much 4K video content to watch, but what there is, by the lords of science, is gorgeous! It more or less ruins standard 1080p HD content for you. Once you've seen 4K, there's almost no going back. The same goes for gaming, except this time round, the narrative is a little bit more complicated and depends on what kind of GPU you're packing. We decided to take the UP2414Q for a spin courtesy of an Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti, the fastest single graphics card you can buy right now, and it can only just cope with that colossal native resolution at full detail gaming in moderately demanding titles. Speaking of technologies that aren't ready for 4K and super-high DPI displays, you can add Windows to the list. Even the latest 8.1 build of Windows does a poor job of scaling, and believe us, you really will want to enable some kind of scaling. If you try running the UP2414Q at native resolution, with standard Windows DPI and standard font size settings, everything on the screen looks preposterously tiny. It just isn't usable. Even If you fiddle around with the fonts and text scaling, you'll still hit problems. Sure, you can achieve something legible, and we'd even concede that many core elements of the Windows 8.1 desktop interface, including Windows Explorer, scale nicely and look superb. Unfortunately, most third-party apps look, if you'll pardon the colloquialism, utterly ass. What you get is a blurred, blown-up bitmap that makes everything look soft and fuzzy. The same goes for nearly all web pages and the Steam interface. The harsh truth is that much of the computing world isn't ready for high-DPI displays, and that becomes all too apparent as soon as you fire up the UP2414Q. Windows 8.1's Modern UI is properly scalable, and looks crisp and clean for the most part, but it's probably not the bit of Windows most people will be planning to use predominantly with a monitor that's not touch-enabled. All of which makes this 24-inch 4K monitor a tricky proposition. It looks absolutely fantastic, but at this stage, it's probably of more interest to content-creation professionals than PC performance and gaming enthusiasts. Instead, it could well be a TN panel that is larger and half the price that makes ultra-HD resolutions a practical, affordable prospect for gaming and other desktop PC applications. $1,300, www.dell.com | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 03 Sep 2014 11:39 AM PDT The H75's big brother is not too shabbyOver the past couple of years or so, we gearheads have transitioned from membrane keyboards to mechanical ones; from mechanical hard drives to SSDs; and from air-cooling our CPUs to using closed liquid loops. All favorable moves, though the latter group suffers from a lack of variety. You can get radiators in 120mm, 240mm, and 280mm sizes, but they're almost all painted plain black with black tubing, although some include the small style concession of a glowing logo on the pump housing. Part of this has to do with just a handful of companies designing coolers for a large number of brands. This plainness may be a drag in a tricked-out rig, but in the case of the Corsair H105, we've discovered that a lack of fanciness can be an advantage. Corsair's H105 radiator is thicker than usual (38mm instead of 27mm), and there's a silver ring on the top of the pump that can be switched out for a red or blue one. But it's not reinventing any wheels. Its tubing isn't thick, and its pump isn't very large. But you'll notice how easily it installs in your system. There's just one basic fan cable for the pump, which you can plug into any header on the motherboard, or directly into the power supply with a Molex adapter. The pump has two speeds: on and off. The fans use PWM control, so they'll spin up and down smoothly, according to temperature readings. Just attach them to the bundled standard splitter cable, then connect that to the motherboard's CPU fan header. And there's no software this time; you just use your motherboard's fan controls instead.
Since this pump does not offer variable speeds, it can be plugged directly into the power supply for maximum effectiveness. Our test bed's Rampage IV Extreme motherboard has Windows-based software called "Fan Xpert" that intelligently controls fan speeds. We ran our torture test with the H105's fans set to "Quiet" in Fan Xpert, and got a pretty respectable 70 Celsius. When pushed to "Turbo" mode, the fans spun up to about 2,000rpm and lowered CPU temps to 65C. These aren't the lowest temperatures we've seen, but they're still pretty respectable, and the H105's noise levels were surprisingly good. However, we couldn't get a clear picture of how much the thickness of the radiator compensated for the modest diameter of the tubing and size of the pump. Those two properties seem to give the Cooler Master Glacer 240L and Nepton 280L an edge. But at press time, the H105 cost less at most stores than the Glacer (we suspect partly because the Glacer is an expandable system), and the Nepton has a 280mm cooler that doesn't fit in a lot of cases. If you want a liquid-cooling system with a 240mm radiator, and you don't care about expandability, then the ease of installation, ease of use, and manageable noise levels of the H105 make it hard to beat for the price. And like all Corsair liquid coolers, it gets a five-year warranty, whereas the competition usually gives you two or three years of coverage. On the other hand, the radiator's extra 11mm of thickness makes it too large for certain cases. Corsair says that the cooler is compatible with "the vast majority" of chassis, but its list leaves off a number of seemingly workable cases of its own, such as the Carbide 500R and the Graphite 600T. If you can spend more money, there are slightly better coolers out there, but the H105 is a well-rounded package. $120, www.corsair.com | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Toshiba Unveils 7-Inch Windows 8.1 Tablet for $120 and Second Generation Chromebook for $250 Posted: 03 Sep 2014 11:31 AM PDT
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| Acer’s Holiday Portfolio: Aspire R Convertibles, Switch 2-in-1 PCs, Iconia Tablet, and Liquid Phone Posted: 03 Sep 2014 09:01 AM PDT
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| Windows 8 Shows Signs of Life (Just in Time for Windows 9) Posted: 03 Sep 2014 07:33 AM PDT
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| NZXT's S340 Mid-Tower Chassis Can Swallow a Kraken Posted: 03 Sep 2014 06:26 AM PDT
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| Newegg Daily Deals: Asus Radeon R9 280 Graphics Card, AMD A8-6600K Richland, and More! Posted: 03 Sep 2014 05:31 AM PDT
Top Deal: Summer break is officially over, but that doesn't mean you need to pack up your games. Whether you're a working stiff or buried in books at school, everyone needs a break every now and then. And if your PC isn't up to par, don't sweat it, that's what upgrades are for! To start with, check out today's top deal for an Asus Radeon R9 280 Graphics Card for $190 with free shippoing (normally $225 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPH25]; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). This is a high-end part with a custom cooling solution. Other Deals: AMD A8-6600K Richland Quad-Core 3.9GHz Socket FM2 100W Desktop Processor - Black Edition for $90 with free shipping (normally $95 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPH27]) WD Se 1TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Enterprise Hard Drive for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPH29]) G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory for $77 with free shipping (normally $85 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPH34]) Seagate NAS HDD 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive for $155 with free shipping (normally $170 - use coupon code: [EMCPAPH33]) |
Mobile VR is on its way
Two different products, two different platforms
Better hang a big stocking
Too little, too late?
Look ma, no optical drives bays!
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