General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

The Maximum PC State of the Union

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 11:51 AM PDT

Exciting times ahead for us, and for you

Two magazine issues ago I wrote an article indicating that you were part of the Maximum PC crew. It wasn't a joke. I really do believe that our readership very much guides us in a fashion that's congruent to us guiding you on the next hardware upgrade. And so the emails started coming in.

Maximum PC

Long emails, short ones, rants, suggestions, I've read them all. I've been trying to respond to all the emails sent to me, but between the enormous workload at publication and getting back to the feedback, I've admittedly been falling behind in replies—I promise I'll get back to you eventually though, if you have written in.

In the photo above, you'll see the group of us there getting ready to do a podcast. There are many more people involved in Maximum PC that unfortunately can't be in a group photo, but they make the publication awesome and I want to say thanks to them too.

To get right to the heart of the matter though, here's what we've been working on:

Step one: bring on a host of new features. Some of what we have in store include a face-off feature, where our writers and editors duke it out, and a section where we point out what to avoid, and what's utter garbage. I reckon that some companies might not like that section too much, but hey, we're here to look out for you. There's more editorial content coming. We're talking about more reviews, more content that helps you choose the best options for different budgets and different usage scenarios.

While we don't usually give a head's up to readers about what we're working on, I thought everyone would like to know, since I did ask for input afterall. One thing I wanted to mention too is that we're going to start introducing Linux content. I know a lot of you have written in asking for Linux content. Don't worry, I feel ya.

The team is growing now, and we have resources to cover a lot more topics.

Step two: involve the community. We continue to get involved in comments, and later on in the year, we're going to revamp the commenting system as well as the forum. I've also given out my Twitter ID, but in case you didn't get it: @blankspace. I'm also looking to bringing in the PCMasterRace and /r/buildapc community—shoutouts to you guys on Reddit!

Step three: revamp the whole website. Admittedly, maximumpc.com is pretty dated. Yeah, I said it. In fact, I'm being pretty polite. We're working on a new back-end that'll let the team produce content faster, and present it better. And on the front-end, it'll allow you to get to what you're looking for faster too.

Step four: we've been thinking of ways to integrate experiences from readers such as yourself into the fold. I think one of the best ways to vouch for any product is to look at what the crowd is saying. We're thinking of how to integrate this in a way that makes sense for the Maximum PC audience.

These are essentially the four major areas that we're going to execute on this year. However, if you feel that we might be misguided in our efforts, rest assured, we're not forgetting our roots. Some say that we've lost our touch. Some say we've gone too mainstream. I'm here to say we're moving into the future, and we're treading cautiously but with vigor and optimism.

A wise person once told me, sometimes if we don't stop being sentimental about what we've done, we won't be able to do something better. Maximum PC is going to be better than ever.

/ Tuan

Newegg Daily Deals: Asus DirectCU II Radeon R9 290 Graphics Card, Crucial BX100 250GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 11:18 AM PDT

Asus DirectCU II OC Radeon R9 290

Newegg

Top Deal:

It's time to stop procrastinating, don't you think? After all, those collection of games in your Steam library aren't going to play themselves! We feel your pain -- Steam sales always seem to have at least one game (or half a dozen) that we just can't pass up, and each time we promise ourselves we'll get to them all, next week, next month, next year. How about right now? And if you need a new graphics card before getting started, check out today's top deal for an Asus DirectCU II OC Radeon R9 290 for $270 with free shipping (normally $290 - use coupon code: [EMCAPKX25]; additional $30 mail-in-rebate). It's cool, quiet, and fast, and ready to tackle to your backlog of games!

Other Deals:

Crucial BX100 2.5-inch 250GB SATA 6Gbps (SATA III) Micron 16nm MLC NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $190 with free shipping (normally $200)

Corsair HX750 750W ATX12V Modular Power Supply for $110 with free shipping (normally $120 - use coupon code: [EMCAPKX43]; additional $30 Mail-in rebate)

Asus M5A97 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard for $80 with $1 shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCAPKX42])

Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor for $210 with $2 shipping (normally $225 - use coupon code: [EMCAPKX33])

All Four Major Browsers Hacked in Pwn2Own Contest

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 10:37 AM PDT

HackingNot a single browser was left standing

Could the world use yet another browser? Sure, if security is at the forefront of your mind. At the annual Pwn2Own hacking contest that took place this week, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all fell prey to remote code execution exploits by the second day. Not to make a mountain out of a mole hill, this isn't unusual, as every year hackers gather at CanSecWest's conference to show off their skills for prizes.

Credit goes to JungHoon Lee (known online as lokihardt) for taking down a 64-bit build of Internet of Explorer with a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability allowing for read/write privileges, which netted him a prize bounty of $65,000.

Lee then took out Chrome with a buffer overflow race condition, followed by an info leak and race condition in two Windows kernel drivers to get SYSTEM access, earning him the biggest payout in Pwn2Own history -- $75,000 for the Chrome bug and an extra $25,000 for the privilege escalation to SYSTEM, plus another $10,000 from Google for a total of $110,000. That worked out to $916 per second for his two-minute demonstration, HP reports.

Before wrapping up work for the day, Lee hacked Apple's Safari browser using a use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability in an uninitialized stack pointer and bypassed the sandbox for code execution. His reward was $50,000, bringing his total for the day to $225,000.

In all, researchers earned $442,500 in bounties over the course of two days.

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Supermicro Readies an Intel Broadwell-E Capable Gaming PC

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 09:25 AM PDT

Supermicro SYS-5038AD-IAn unexpected face in the consumer gaming space

You've probably at least heard of Supermicro, a well established player in the server and workstation markets. Supermicro also dabbles in small form factor (SFF) cases, but as far as full fledged gaming PCs go, options are few and far between. Nevertheless, Supermicro is getting ready to expand its limited gaming system lineup with a rig built around Intel's Haswell architecture that will be upgradeable to Broadwell-E.

The folks at Fudzilla caught a glimpse of the new PC in person, and we're glad to see Supermicro is using a better looking chassis than the fugly one found in the SYS-5038AD-T. That said, Supermicro still hasn't mastered the art of creatively naming a PC gaming line, as the new model barebones SKU is simply called labeled with part number SYS-5038AD-I. Supermicro tells Maximum PC that it's based on the company's own C7X99-OCE motherboard and the S5 chassis -- "the complete system configuration is going to be based on our channel customers' requirements," Supermicro says.

In any event, the new PC boasts an Intel Core i7 5960X Extreme Edition processor cooled by an Asetek higher performance liquid cooler, a server grade C7X99-OCE motherboard that supports overclocking, 16GB of DDR4-2133 RAM, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics cards in SLI (the demo system on display is rocking three GeForce GTX 980 cards), and a 1,200W Platinum PSU.

There's no mention of storage, otherwise it seems like a nice collection of parts (we'd have went with a higher end graphics card or two), assuming the cost is in line with what's being offered. Unfortunately, there's also no mention of price or a release date.

Image Credit: Fudzilla

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