It always impresses us when free time translates into something amazing. Sean Stebor had some free time, and decided to create something different. His vision was for something "bigger than an average ATX case," and something that "would make a statement." Either way, it's badass enough for us to crown it this month's Rig of the Month.
Sean calls it Orogenesis after the Greek word 'oros' (mountain) and 'genesis' (creation). His coworkers think 'Thunder-dome' is more fitting—and we're inclined to agree. It's made from steel rods welded into 12 mesh-covered pentagons. A motherboard tray from an old ATX case serves as the basis of the computer-portion and after getting all of the parts mounted inside, Orogenesis was complete.
Each corner of the case is lit with full-spectrum LEDs with cheap plastic tubing serving as an easy way to diffuse the light. One of the pentagons is removable to allow access to the parts inside and a 250mm Rosewill fan keeps air moving across the system.
Have a case mod of your own that you would like to submit to our monthly feature? Make sure to read the rules/tips here and email us at mpcrigofthemonth@gmail.com with your submissions.
Is is just us, or are power supply ratings approaching insane levels? It won't be long before you can purchase a 35,000 Jigawatt PSU with a little slot on top to insert the plutonium. Egads! If your needs are a bit more pedestrian than that, then check out today's top deal for a Corsair CX500M 500W Modular Power Supply for $35 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCPFWB43]; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). Don't let the rock bottom price tag fool you -- this is a solid unit that's 80 Plus Bronze certified and is both SLI and CrossFire ready. Double egads!
Sopranos, Band of Brothers, and other HBO originals are coming to Amazon Prime Instant Video
Color us impressed with Amazon's negotiating skills. HBO has kept a tight grip on its content and doesn't care to have its shows streamed outside of its HBO Go application, which is only available to HBO subscribers, but for the first time, that's about to change. Amazon today announced it inked a content licensing agreement with HBO that will make Prime Instant Video the exclusive online-only subscription home for select HBO programming.
Before you start jumping up and down thinking you'll finally get to see what all the fuss is about with Game of Thrones, the hit original series isn't part of the package -- drats! However, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you will have access to some older award-winning shows -- Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Big Love, Deadwood, Eastbound & Down, Family Tree, Enlightened, Treme, early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood, Band of Brothers, John Adams, and more.
Make no mistake, this is a huge win for Amazon in the streaming wars, and it comes right on the heels of its Fire TV set-top box launch (side note: HBO Go is coming to Fire TV).
Amazon says the first wave of content will arrive on Prime Instant Video May 21. As time goes on, more shows will be added to the mix -- Girls, The Newsroom, and Veep to name a few -- along with comedy specials featuring Lewis Black, Ellen DeGeneres, Louis CK, and Bill Maher.
Samsung on Wednesday announced that it's Galaxy Tab 4 family of tablets will be available in the U.S. beginning May 1 starting at $200. There are three different size options -- 7-inch, 8-inch, and 10.1-inch, all three of which will be available to pre-order tomorrow. Though each of the three tablets features a different size display, each one has the same resolution (1280x800).
That's a bit of a buzz kill when tablet makers are pushing the envelope with densely packed pixels, though none of these carry a premium price tag. The Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 will retail for $200, the Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 for $270, and the Galaxy Tab 4 10.1 for $350.
A 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1.5GB of RAM power the Galaxy Tab 4 10.1 model. It also features 16GB of onboard storage, microSD card slot, 3MP rear-facing camera, 1.3MP front-facing camera, stereo speaker, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, USB 2.0, 6,800mAh battery, and Android 4.4 KitKat.
You'll find the same specs on the 8-inch and 7-inch models, except the 8-inch version has a 4,450mAh battery and the 7-inch is equipped with a 4,000mAh battery. There's also an 8GB storage option for the 7-inch Galaxy Tab 4.
What could be Nvidia's second generation Shield console makes a benchmark run on AnTuTu
It's been a little less than nine months since Nvidia released its Shield handheld game console to the public, and while there have been software updates since then, there's already talk of a second generation model with improved hardware. While this hasn't been confirmed as the real deal, news of a Shield 2 making a benchmarking run at AnTuTu is making the rounds. Care to venture a guess about its hardware?
According to the benchmark stats, which was first noticed by gforgames.com, the supposed Shield 2 wields an Nvidia Tegra K1 quad-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz with a Kepler GPU comprised of 192 CUDA cores. The System-on-Chip (SOC) is flanked by 4GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage.
The screen resolution is listed at 1440x810, which could indicate that 90 pixels in height are taken up by the on-screen navigation bar. Rounding out the spec sheet is a 0.3MP front-facing camera and Android 4.4.2 KitKat. The device scored 44,500 points in the AnTuTu benchmark.
A typo in the spec sheet on AnTuTu gets our BS meter tingling, so take this one with a dash of salt.
ARM-based chip shipments totaled 2.9 billion in Q1
AMD and Intel have their work cut out for them as both companies try to wrestle mobile market share away from ARM. To kick off the first quarter of 2014, ARM Holdings reported total revenues of $305.2 million, up 16 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. That includes a 38 percent year-on-year increase in processor licensing revenue derived from 2.9 billion ARM-based chip shipments in Q1, which itself is up 11 percent compared to last year.
It's not just smartphones and tablets that are driving ARM-based processor shipments, but also servers, supercomputers, and other segments.
"Q1 was a good start to the year for ARM, with more customers choosing to license ARM technology for their future products, which helped drive ARM's revenues. Licenses are a precursor to future royalty revenues. Our customers are signing licenses with a view to designing ARM technology into an increasingly wide range of markets from servers and supercomputers to embedded sensors and enterprise networking applications and thereby underpinning ARM's future royalty opportunity," noted ARM CEO Simon Segars.
Licensing is a big part of ARM's business strategy. Out of the $305.2 million in total revenues it collected in Q1, $129.9 million come from licensing its technologies to companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm. However, ARM isn't immune to market conditions and was affected by lower than expected sales of high-end smartphones running chips based on its IP. As a result, ARM's royalty revenue was $5 million lower than it was in the same quarter a year ago.
"ARM's royalty revenues in Q1 2014 were impacted by an inventory correction which particularly affected mobile and consumer electronics. As a result, both the year-on-year growth in ARM's royalty revenues and the outperformance compared to overall industry growth are lower this quarter than seen in most recent periods," Segars added. "Inventory corrections of this type occur in the industry from time to time, the last one occurring in H1 2012."
Another explanation is that the high-end smartphone market is starting to become saturated, though ARM is firm in its belief that the drop in royalty revenue is a temporary blip.
My adventure in The Elder Scrolls Online continues this week with my Nightblade Fa'saad making his way through Stonefalls for the Ebonheart Pact. As the format of Choose My Adventure has changed slightly, the polls from the first two articles mold my journey through the rest of the month. At the end of it all, I'll give my summary impressions and tips I learned along the way.
This week it's all about addons as I tried out a dozen or so to report back on my favorites. Addons can aid your gameplay in so many different ways, from stat counters to UI mods to quality of (virtual) life improvements, but they're not for everyone. I'm not usually an addon fan because I think they verge on cheating in a way, so I've approached these addons from the perspective of a skeptic. Did they really help my game? Will I continue to use them?
Firor says that, yes, ZeniMax sees the groups of bots clustered around the game's dungeon bosses and that, yes, it is taking steps to address the problem. "We regularly ban accounts involved in spam and bot activity," Firor says, but the scope of said activity is so large that it accounts for nearly 85 percent of ESO's customer service tickets.
There's also a blurb about de-synched quests as well as a brief preview of the game's first major update that ZeniMax is currently prepping for ESO's test server.
Do you consider yourself something of a military genius? Do you also consider yourself a big enthusiast for player housing? Have you long wished for some form of gameplay that combined your love of building the prettiest dwelling possible with your love of killing other players? Then you're looking for WildStar's Warplots. They're a thing. Yes, they're customizable fortresses that you pit against other customized fortresses from other players, that is the whole deal.
Want to know more? Well, if you see that little "Continue Reading" button down there, you can click that and watch the latest DevSpeak from the development team covering Warplots. Is that not enough for you? All right, then, you can read through our coverage of the gameplay mode from PAX East when we got to take an advance look at it. Still not enough? Maybe you'll need to wait until the game launches in June, then. Do not convert your front lawn into a death fortress and attempt to fight a PvP Nerf war with the mail carrier. That won't go over well.
Apart from the Imperial Agent in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I haven't played a lot of stealth-able characters in MMOs. For me, I just don't see the appeal of sucker-punching bad guys instead of facing off in a fair fight; it kind of makes me feel as though I'm bullying them. Plus, having to walk slower in stealth, constantly worry about positioning, and ignoring the illogic of disappearing in broad daylight all wave me off of such characters.
But that's me and those are my hang-ups. I know that stealthing is pretty popular in certain quarters, and I can concede that when done right (as in the Thief series) it can be a compelling mechanic. So I'd like to hear whether you're into being all stealthy in MMOs and what you think about how these systems have been handled over the years.
Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Overseas MMO expert Steparu is back with another round of Black Desert videos that make North Americans extremely sad about the ongoing Korean beta and the lack thereof here. The videos highlight character creation, specifically the hyperrealistic (and, er, extremely toned) Sorcerer, Warrior, Giant, and Archer models, male and female, complete with musculature and hair mesh toggles and sliders. We're not exaggerating when we say that this is extreme character customization, folks. Enjoy two of the videos below and the rest over at Steparu.com.
We're so behind on addressing our mail on the show that we've decided to dedicate an episode to playing catch-up! Don't worry, as there will still be news, but Bree and Justin need to clean out their inbox to make room for all of the excellent emails to come. You understand.
Get all of our opinions and analysis on the most important stories of the past week right here on Massively Speaking, the industry's leading MMO podcast. And if you have a comment, question, or topic for the podcasters, send an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air!
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SOE Senior Brand Manager Omeed Dariani and Lead Systems Designer Michael Mann present this week's Landmark roundtable video, this time focusing on one of the more detailed components of the sandbox's crafting system: item upgrading, which beat out reinforcing, imbuing, and refining among roundtable voters as the system most worthy of prioritization. Mann explains that item upgrading is intended to reduce the demoralizing effects of RNG; eventually, all crafted items will be created as green-quality items that are upgrade-able depending on player skill and statted according to player direction via relics.
Dariani and Mann also hint that Landmark and EverQuest Next will share the same crafting-related back-end systems and that Landmark's crafting will ultimately "flavor" the crafting system in EQN. The full roundtable video is below.
Gaijin Entertainment posted today that it's launching tank events for War Thunder's closed beta participants. Prices of tanks and associated purchases have been slashed by 90% to facilitate this test phase; accordingly, Gaijin warns, everything will be wiped once again before the WWII combat sim's open beta begins.
CCP is looking to give its fans their admission's worth for Fanfest 2014, as the studio announced that members of its team will be wrestling against MMA fighter Gunnar Nelson during the show. That's MMA, not MMO, by the way. The event, called EVE OF DESTRUCTION, will take place on Friday, May 2nd, in a series of 10 one-on-one wrestling matches.
It's been a long while since Star Trek Online captains had to fear the Undine. This mysterious race has moved off of the radar as the Federation and KDF have explored the Solanae Dyson Sphere, fought back against the Borg and the Tholians, and sought allies upon New Romulus. But the latest patch for the game sees the Undine stepping up their campaign of aggression from fluidic space, sending players through a new series of featured episodes, introducing a new reputation, and offering several new endgame activities.
Season 9 also brings with it a number of other changes, including a revamp to how both kits and reputations work. Both systems are now more flexible, with the former allowing captains more control over which abilities show up on the ground and the latter providing more player choice over the long term. Take a look at the full list of additions and get ready to set a course for new dangers in this update.
Carbine's limited four-part WildStar beta weekend run leading up to release is now in danger of becoming a Friday the 13th-sized franchise, as the studio announced today that it will hold another bonus beta weekend starting on Friday. Anyone who has signed up for the beta will be given a code for the weekend, so there's no reason not to check this game out if so inclined.
The bonus weekend begins on Friday the 25th at 10:00 a.m. EST and will conclude on Monday, April 28th, at 3:00 a.m. EST. The team is raising the level cap to 25 and giving everyone a hoverboard to enjoy. Each day of this bonus beta weekend also counts toward accumulating "boom boxes" full of goodies that will be delivered at launch.
BlizzCon 2014 is coming, boys and girls, to a city near you (that is, if you live near Anaheim, California)! Blizzard announced that its sometimes-annual convention will be on November 7th and 8th at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Even at two hundred bucks a pop, tickets for BlizzCon will no doubt be sold out within minutes thanks to Blizzard's legion of fans. The studio announced today that it will be putting tickets on sale in two separate batches: one on May 7th and the other on May 10th. There will also be $750 tickets put on sale on May 14th for the benefit dinner.
BlizzCon tickets include offer hands-on demos with its games, an e-sports world championship, dev panels, player tournaments, and live admission to the convention. Virtual tickets will also be available at a later point for an unknown fee.
Think you're an MMO achievement master? Maybe so, but you could probably learn a thing or two about World of Warcraft from Хируко, a Russian player who has unlocked all of the game's currently achievable... achievements.
The World of Warcraft team has produced a new video to give players and fans an inside look at PvP and class changes coming in Warlords of Draenor. Also, for the first time, players get a chance to see a bit of the massive war zone, Ashran. Check it out!
The latest WildStar DevSpeak video has been released by Carbine Studios. In this one, the team looks at Warplots, the 80-player PvP extravaganza that combines elements of housing with all-out warfare. Check it out and let us know what you think!
The sky is falling. Or it isn't. Depending who you talk to about The Elder Scrolls Online lately, you might get one or the other of those two responses. The game's first month has been plagued by a few limited, yet sometimes significant exploits and bugs.
A week or so ago, a Black Desert video showing character customization in Black Desert was released that amazed many fans of the upcoming game. This week, Steparu.com has a pair of in-depth videos that show off customization for two of the game's classes: Sorcerer and Warrior. Prepare your eyes for even more astonishing levels of customization. Let us know what you think!
Ghost Recon Phantoms is the latest in the Tom Clancy series, this time with the Free to Play Model and an instant download. When you start, you will be able to choose from 3 Classes, Assault, Recon and Support, with each class having the ability to use 2 technological devices that allow you to provide tactical support to your teammates. Currently there is over 40 customizable weapons with a wide range of customization on top of that.
The Dark Souls II team has released a brand new trailer called "Longing" that celebrates Friday's PC release on Steam. Check it out and let us know what you think! Will you be trying out Dark Souls II on PC?
Blizzard has announced that this year's Blizzcon will take place on Friday, November 7th and Saturday, November 8th in Anaheim, California. Tickets for the always-sold out event will go on sale on May 7th and May 10th.
Instead of discussing the latest news Trion Worlds has on ArcheAge, we're going to focus on the game itself. Last week I found my way into the ArcheAge alpha and was finally able to get hands on with it to see what all the rage is from region to region for ArcheAge. Despite all the 1.0 patch nonsense, now I was able to see why everyone in the community has been voicing their opinions so loudly for Trion to hear.
Gaijin Entertainment has announced that participants in the War Thunder closed beta test can now take part in tank events. Tank events will run at specific times each day and are simple to enter via the game's HUD.
Cryptic Studios has announced that Season 9: A New Accord, the latest content update for Star Trek Online, has officially launched. To celebrate the event, the team has released a brand new video. A New Accord sees players facing off against a new Undine threat, as well as new content, upgrades, and a new Earth space dock among much else.
Research house SuperData recently released some findings on the average revenue per user for 10 prominent free to play online games. This is an area in which there has never been much readily available data. So, while limited, the bits that were revealed about the likes of World of Tanks, Guild Wars 2, DOTA 2 and League of Legends grabbed my attention and got me wondering.
In one of the more unusual announcements about this year's CCP Fanfest, the development team has announced that several members will be facing off in martial combat against MMA fighter Gunnar "Gunni" Nelson.
Citing the huge success of the first-ever League of Angels cross server PvP tournament, Reality Squared Games has announced the second one scheduled to begin on April 23rd.
The next English closed beta phase for the Leadhope version of Kingdom Under Fire II is scheduled to begin on Friday, April 25th. Leadhope has also announced that European and North American players can indeed take part in the beta!
It's heavy, huge, and incredibly handsome
Sopranos, Band of Brothers, and other HBO originals are coming to Amazon Prime Instant Video
Mark your calendars for May 1 (if you want one)
ARM-based chip shipments totaled 2.9 billion in Q1
Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's 
