General Gaming Article |
- Intel Revenue Falls Flat as Desktop Sales Decline, IoT Picks Up the Slack
- Here’s What GTA V Looks Like Maxed-Out on 3 Titan Xs
- Cheap PC case review roundup
- Tt eSports Ventus X Gaming Mouse Targets Gamers with Sweaty Palms
- Net Neutrality Faces Political Opposition in Congress and Legal Challenge in Court
- Valve Offers Refunds for Grand Theft Auto V Installation Woes
- Consider a Giant TV for PC Gaming Instead of a Monitor
- Deepcool Gamer Storm Maelstrom 240 Review
- Polywell MiniBox X9900x Review
- AMD Radeon R7 240GB Review
| Intel Revenue Falls Flat as Desktop Sales Decline, IoT Picks Up the Slack Posted: 14 Apr 2015 03:40 PM PDT
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| Here’s What GTA V Looks Like Maxed-Out on 3 Titan Xs Posted: 14 Apr 2015 02:34 PM PDT Benchmark info and 4K pictures galoreGTA V finally launched for the PC yesterday. Given that GTA IV was a resource hog of a port coupled with Rockstar's numerous delays of the PC version, we thought we would run the game through its paces using the beefiest rig we had in the Lab. We opted for Origin PC's new Millenimum Genesis PC, which is equipped with not one or two GeForce Titan Xs, but three of those water-cooled bad boys in SLI. The system also has Intel's 4960X CPU. Suffice it to say that, on paper, it's a beast of a machine (Look for the full review of the rig soon). |
| Posted: 14 Apr 2015 01:37 PM PDT Budget doesn't have to mean junkCheap cases. They're not as scary as the phrase implies, even though we acknowledge that the lower end of the case spectrum can deliver some real clunkers. Thankfully, none of the cases in our roundup this month fit that profile. In fact, we're seeing a number of features previously reserved for pricier cases start to grace more inexpensive models.
Think about it: Cases, under $100, designed specifically for liquid cooling? We've always felt that someone willing to plunk down hundreds of bucks for top-quality liquid-cooling parts—and suffer the hours of setup (and soggy components) that can come from one's adventures in liquid-cooling land—would want to pick up a more expensive case to accommodate their build. Not anymore! One of the cases in our roundup practically screams "stash a radiator in me." Of course, not all is perfect in the world of computer chassis. It's tough to find that diamond in the rough—a case that comes with all the features we think you should have, and only a few (or no) annoyances. None of the cases in our roundup fit that profile, but a few come quite close. Give them a read; perhaps you'll find that you can deal with their imperfections for their oh-so-low prices. What Makes a Great (Cheap) CaseWe teased the concept of "a diamond in the rough," so it's time to shine a light on all the facets that make a cheap chassis sparkle. There's not that much, but you'd be surprised at the little details that make for a more pleasurable building experience when cases get them right, versus when they don't. First up, we're big fans of cases that use as few normal screws as possible. We don't like having to bust out the screwdriver to install parts and pieces if we can avoid it. Fewer screws also usually means fewer parts to lose once the build is done. Thumbscrews are much preferred if screws have to be used at all, but we love cases that use simple locking mechanisms for add-in cards, the case's side panels, and 5.25-inch devices (preferably, 5.25-inch bay locking mechanisms that you can remove, as some two-bay devices won't play nicely in these situations). As for hard drives, we like either trays or rails. We're slightly biased toward the former, especially if they allow one to mount 3.5-inch hard drives or 2.5-inch SSDs in a typical 3.5-inch bay. That said, we're not opposed to cases that do things a little differently—like, say, building in a combination mount that allows you to switch a chunk of bays between supporting 2.5-inch or 3.5- inch drives. The popularity of SSDs and price drops have meant that even cheaper cases are starting to include "hidden mounts" for 2.5-inch drives behind one's motherboard tray. The more the merrier, we say; you can never have enough secret storage. Ample cable mounting holes are a key part of today's cases. We need to see at least two big chunks taken out of the motherboard tray to the right of the motherboard itself, as well as one near the power supply. Up top, we'd really prefer a tiny, easy-to-access hole to string our 12V through. We have no opinion on a case's materials per se, so long as the case has been designed so that there aren't any pokey, sharp edges—bleeding on one's PC is never fun, as this writer learned from his time in the Maximum PC Lab. Aluminum or steel is fine. Even a case with all sorts of plastic trappings on the outside is OK, so long as it looks good. What we find ugly, you might love (and vice versa). Fans play greatly into a case's cooling and a esthetics. W here p ossible, we prefer larger fans (less noise, more air), or at least ample opportunities to stash 12cm or 14cm fans in the same mounting spot—in case you only have the former, but want to upgrade to the latter later. Fan controllers are starting to creep into cheaper chassis; where possible, we'd like the ability to control more fans than just what a case typically comes with (two, in most bare-bones setups). Dials are great, but we'll accept a "low, medium, high" switch—or even just a two-speed setting. Chassis can come with all sorts of unique little twists on conventional building—sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. In general, these are the kinds of things we look for in an awesome case (but we definitely don't say no to crazy extras, like hotswap mounts for one's hard drives). A good computer case is kind of like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography: You'll know it when you see it. The Cooler Master N600 isn't perfect, but it has a number of the features we look for in a standout budget case. Zalman Z12 PlusMore SSDs! More fan control! Simple. Easy. Effective. We're big fans of most of what Zalman does with its Z12 Plus chassis. Its price feels a bit high for what it offers but, on the plus side, there's nothing about the chassis that's a deal-breaker.
The plastic-and-steel mid-tower case comes in at just around 15.5 pounds in weight, making it a pleasant but not overbearing foot-and-a-half-tall chassis for stuffing under (or on) your desk. We had no issues removing its windowed side panel (thumbscrews) and throwing in a motherboard, save for the curious omission of three of the bottom standoffs (which you have to install yourself). Our test video card, an (aging) Nvidia Geforce GTX 480, fit without issue in the Z12 Plus. While it did cover a bit of one of the Z12 Plus's four cable management holes, Zalman's design offers a little breathing room between the 10.5-inch card's edge and the start of the 5.25-inch bays. Installing hard drives into the case's five standard 3.5-inch bays (and one 2.5/3.5/5.25-inch conversion bay) isn't a screwless process, but it's still simple: Four screws and four rubber anti-vibration rubber grommets go directly into your hard drive's mounting holes. Slide the drive into one of the bays, and a preinstalled locking mechanism catches the screws and holds your drive in place. Any 5.25-inch devices you want to stash into the case's four standard bays require the normal screw treatment; you also have to pop off the case's front panel, which features a small amount of sound-dampening foam over all its mesh sections. Curiously, the thin bay covers that one normally just twists off of a case are actually screwed into the Z12 Plus. We're not quite sure why that's necessary, and it does add an extra step to an otherwise easy installation. The case comes with three fans preinstalled: a 12cm front blue LED fan, a similarly sized (and colored) top LED fan, and a 12cm rear fan (no lights). Presumably, Zalman wants you to hook the two LED fans into the provided connectors for the case's high/low fan controller. If you're big on looks, know that adjusting the voltage of the fans is also going to adjust the brightness of the LEDs. Rounding out the Z12 Plus's attributes are four USB ports (two USB 3.0 on top; two 2.0 on the lower-right of the case's front), a hidden installation point on the rear of the motherboard tray for one 2.5-inch drive, and two rubberized holes for water-cooling tubes on the case's rear. The Z12 Plus is a no-nonsense kind of a case. While we wish we had more room for 2.5-inch drives, and want to hook up more fans to its built-in controller than it allows by default, these issues don't significantly detract from the case's quality. Unless, of course, you're looking to stash a ton of SSDs in your new system. Verdict: 7(+) Good amount of space; great cable management; ample 3.5-inch slots. Price: $90, street
Cooler Master N600Great for liquids, not for air (or SSDs). We appreciate the sheer versatility of Cooler Master's N600 chassis. It's not a case we'd give to beginners, but those of you who don't mind rolling up your shirt sleeves when installing your mid-level system will mostly enjoy your time spent.
Our major dissatisfactions with the case were cosmetic, though you'll want to focus on fixing them up given the giant, acrylic window on the case's side panel. The case's cooling is adequate, but not overly impressive: a single, non-LED 12cm fan on the rear, and a single, white LED 12cm fan preinstalled on the case's front. A built-in fan controller allows you to run the two fans at a low or a high setting; doing so affects the brightness of the front LED fan. (You can also switch the LED fan's light on and off via a hard-to-push switch on the case's front). The front LED fan doesn't provide nearly as much light as we'd hoped for. A rear LED fan to boost the lighting would have been much preferred. Our front LED fan was also a bit loud on its high setting, more than we'd want to hear under our desk. The case's three 5.25-inch drive bays are entirely screwless—we like. The case also comes with three 3.5-inch drive bays built into the chassis, but supports an additional four more, depending on how you set up an additional 3.5/2.5-inch "combo cage." You can't have both, however; set the cage up for SSDs, and you're limiting yourself to just three 3.5-inch hard drives. Go for seven 3.5-inch drives, and the only other place you can install an SSD is via a two-screw fixture on the rear of the motherboard tray. The combo cage, which faces front-toback, can be completely removed if you value cooling over storage. Do that, and you can attach a 24cm radiator to the case's right side (there's also space for a 24cm radiator on the case's inside-top, and room for a smaller 12cm radiator on the rear). However, we do wish that Cooler Master carved out more room for SSDs; you can't convert the existing 3.5-inch bays into 2.5-inch bays, and we'd hate to be stuck with one SSD slot if we liquid-cooled. We also wish Cooler Master had carved an additional rubberized hole in the motherboard tray for cable stringing, as our GTX 480 video card blocks the top half of the tray's middle hole (of three total). On the plus side, the cables to the front-panel connectors (including its two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports) are nice and long, which helps cable management a bit. We wouldn't try to stuff our top-shelf system into this case, but the N600 makes for a good middle-of-the-road chassis; we love the support for liquid cooling, just not the built-in air. Verdict: 8(+) Plenty of space for 3.5- and 2.5-inch hard drives; very liquid cooling–friendly; lots of USB ports. Price: $80, street Rosewill BlackhawkLet's play whack-a-Molex. We enjoy most of what Rosewill has done with its $100 Blackhawk case. Many of the design features are what you'd likely see in more expensive chassis, but there are a few areas where Rosewill appears to cut corners—or just misunderstand solid case design. At the price you're paying, you could do better.
The case's tinted, arrow-shaped side panel window looks lovely; it's a refreshing change of pace from the simple clear acrylic we often see. On the inside, we love that Rosewill includes a Velcro strap to secure your power supply to the case (and reduce noise and vibration). Standoffs come preinstalled for an ATX motherboard, and the tray itself has five rubber holes for cable management. When you put a motherboard in, however, it mostly covers the tiny hole Rosewill sticks in the tray's upper-left corner— presumably designed to stuff a 4- or 8-pin ATX12V connector through. You'll either have to really wedge that cable around your motherboard or you'll have to shoot it across your motherboard from one of the right-most rubber holes, which is hardly a good-looking solution. The case's three drive bays (two drive trays each, which support 3.5- and 2.5-inch drives) can be removed in various configurations, should you be sporting an extralong video card or want to try and slap a 24cm radiator in the front of the chassis (occupied by two 12cm blue LED fans). A 14cm blue LED fan sits on the case's top, joined by a 12cm fan on the case's rear and side (both non-LED). If that sounds like a lot of cooling, it is; the case is at about a medium level of noise when they're all fired up, though the blue glow looks great through the case's side window. Unfortunately, only one of the fans uses a three-pin connector. The rest all use Molex connectors for power, which means that you have no way of actually controlling their speed without an adapter of your own. In a system that runs five fans out of the box, a fan controller (or some way to control volume/speed) would be much preferred. Installing a 5.25-inch device is seemingly easy, though we had trouble getting our optical drive into the top of the case's four free bays. The wiring for the Blackhawk's (awesome) front-panel connectors—four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and a hotswap SATA connection—got in the way of our optical drive, and it took a lot of wedging to get the wires into the case's top and our optical drive into place. Locking it in was easy. Rosewill's Blackhawk offers plenty of space for building, and installing a system into the case isn't that problematic. Added together, however, this case's minor flaws start to make its price look all the larger. Verdict: 6(+) Lovely tinted window; plenty of air cooling; SATA hotswap; great aesthetic. Price: $100, street Enermax iVektorStylish and low cost, to boot. Enermax's iVektor might get the company sued by Apple. In the meantime, you owe it to yourself to give this svelte, smooth midtower chassis a try. Minus a little airflow, which we're happy to upgrade, this inexpensive chassis offers much.
After popping off the tinted, windowed side panel (thumbscrews), we first noticed just how roomy the seemingly small Vektor actually is. Motherboard standoffs come preinstalled, and the case's right-most combination drive bracket is preconfigured to support four 2.5-inch drives. Unscrew its left-most support and move it to the 3.5-inch configuration, and Enermax says you can stuff three 3.5-inch drives in the space. We installed four, and the entire configuration still gave us a smidge of room between the bracket and a 10.5-inch long video card. Three fixed drive bays below the aforementioned bracket support 3.5-inch drives only, and there's no other place to stash an SSD unless you configure said bracket into 2.5-inch bays. Spring-loaded covers on the front panel can be removed without popping the panel off, which makes installing devices into the case's three 5.25-inch bays a breeze. A very tiny cable-management hole in the motherboard tray's upper-left corner doesn't leave much to work with for your system's 4- or 8-pin ATX12V connector. Two holes to the right of the motherboard are much larger, as is the giant hole to the right of where one stashes the power supply. The space between the rear of the tray and the motherboard's side panel is ample, more so than most cases we've looked at—happy cable stuffing! The case's add-in card brackets use real screws, not thumbscrews, so get ready to bust out the tools to install your add-on cards. It's a mild letdown, but Enermax's insistence on providing rails for both one's 3.5- and 2.5-inch drives makes up for it. A bigger annoyance is the system's cooling: a single 12cm blue LED fan in the front and a 12cm fan in the rear. They're both wired to a "high, nothing, or low" fan controller whose switch sits on the top of the case near its two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports. Thanks to foam padding that covers the case's mesh parts, the iVektor is very, very quiet when the fans are on "low." You'll give up airflow on low, though. Kick the fans up to high, and you're increasing the volume to a slightly more noticeable amount. It makes us wish Enermax opted for 14cm fan mounts instead—the price one pays for a smaller-sized chassis. Enermax's iVektor might not be perfect, but it's smooth—literally. A lovely external aesthetic, spacious interior, and ample drive support almost makes us forget a few of its tiny flaws. Verdict: 8(+) Lots of space on the inside; ample USB connectivity; good cable management; plenty of drive bays. Price: $80, street Enermax Coenus ECA3190AMore than meets the eye? No, not really. Enermax's Coenus chassis (specifically, the ECA3290A) copies a number of features from the company's iVektor lineup (reviewed on previous page). Or perhaps the iVektor was an upgrade from the Coenus. Regardless, the things we liked about the iVektor continue to work in the Coenus's favor. However, a few less-than-ideal differences allow the iVektor cases to leave their Coenus peers in the dust.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we're not big fans of the chunky, gray plastic paneling that Enermax slaps all over the front and top of the ECA3290A. It looks a bit like a child's toy enlarged to extreme proportions; the case's front reminds us of a Transformer logo, and it makes the whole aesthetic look a bit juvenile. It's the kind of look we'd go for if we were building a system for a middle-schooler (or a lateblooming college student). The case's insides are great to build in: Motherboard standoffs come preinstalled, all drive bays come with rails for easy installation (three 3.5-inch, and a combo bracket that fits four 2.5- or 3.5-inch drives), and the case's 5.25-inch bays use a handy locking mechanism to secure your devices. You get two cable-routing holes on the side of the motherboard tray and one larger one to the right of where the power supply goes. More importantly, there's a ton of room behind the motherboard tray for your cables; stash away! The tiny cable-management hole in the tray's upper-left corner for your 4- or 8-pin ATX12V connector can be a little tricky to work with, but it's manageable. The case's add-in card slots all use screws, not thumbscrews, so you'll definitely need a screwdriver on hand to complete your system build. Unfortunately, the ECA3290A doesn't use the fun spring-locking 5.25-inch bay covers found on its iVektor cases, so you'll have to pop off the front paneling completely just to install your optical drive (or what-have-you). The ECA3290A only comes with two USB 3.0 ports; the iVektor has those and two extra front-panel USB 2.0 ports. It also has more foam covering its mesh areas on the case's front and top, which helps reduce the noise of its front and rear 12cm fans a bit. The ECA3290A comes with the same fan configuration, sans the iVektor's fan controller, so there's no way to quiet them via the case itself. That said, we're talking about fairly minor acoustic differences—nothing that made us want to cover our ears. All in all, the Coenus and iVektor cases hover right around the same price point (depending on where you're shopping). We'd rather take our money to the betterlooking, better-performing iVektor chassis. Leave this little Coenus cousin behind. Verdict: 6(+) Lots of space on the inside; good cable management; plenty of drive bays. Price: $70, street |
| Tt eSports Ventus X Gaming Mouse Targets Gamers with Sweaty Palms Posted: 14 Apr 2015 01:18 PM PDT
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| Net Neutrality Faces Political Opposition in Congress and Legal Challenge in Court Posted: 14 Apr 2015 12:31 PM PDT
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| Valve Offers Refunds for Grand Theft Auto V Installation Woes Posted: 14 Apr 2015 09:38 AM PDT
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| Consider a Giant TV for PC Gaming Instead of a Monitor Posted: 13 Apr 2015 07:50 PM PDT There are fancy 4K TVs that cost less than their monitor equivalentsDisplays have come along way since the old days of CRTs. Everyone's gone flat, and then there is the curved stuff, which I don't really buy into yet. I mean, even the screen on Jean-Luc Picard's desk was flat, and that's way into the future. If you want a big immersive experience today though, you might consider going with a TV instead of a computer display. Here's why.
SizeSize is a big part of the overall gaming experience. Sure, you regulate yourself to the 20-something inches universe, but why stay small when you can go big? Bigger is, of course, not always better. If you go with a TV, you might not get the response rate you want for competitive FPS gaming, but if you're into a wide variety of games, a big 40-inch TV might suit you well. There are a variety of TV sizes available, but we recommend going with something within the 40-inch range. If you go to 50-inches, it might be difficult to see everything that's going on all at once, and you might end up with neck cramps. Of course, if you sit back far enough, neck injuries won't be a problem. Resolution4K TVs are all the rage right now, and they're much cheaper per square-inch than 4K computer displays. If you're not doing heavy graphics and design work, true-to-life color accuracy might not be at the top of your importance list, which makes a TV an excellent substitute. Besides, TVs that pump out 4K goodness can stand in just fine as a computer display, since screen real-estate becomes a thing of the past. We often find that using very high DPI displays at small sizes makes things unreadable. Text and controls becomes ultra small, and unless your OS is HiDPI aware, you'll be squinting a lot. Windows is still not the greatest at handling high-DPI displays, but it's slowly getting better. PricePrices of 4K TVs are actually tumbling down fairly quickly, thanks of course to competition. The land of 4K content is still barren, but that's where games come in. Plus, companies like Vizio are driving the prices down, which is good for everyone. In fact, Vizio just announced its M-Series line of 4K TVs. You can nab a 43-inch model for $600. While we haven't had the pleasure of testing this unit out, one couldn't even dream of this kind of pricing just a year ago. This makes a 4K TV an extremely juicy option as a primary display for a gaming rig. Here's Vizio's price sheet for the entire lineup: M-Series 43" Ultra HD Full Array LED Smart TV $599.99 Vizio is, of course, not the only brand out there, but it is making the cheapest solutions in its class at the moment. And you do get a susprising bundle of good technology with the M-Series: full-array LED backlighting, which helps with black levels by individually turning off zones; built in smart TV apps including Netflix and Hulu; 802.11ac wireless built in; and a 6-core ARM processor. The M-Series also does a refresh rate of 120Hz, which should help with FPS games, provided that you have a beefy enough machine to pump those kinds of frame rates at 4K. But hey, since we're playing in the big leagues now, might as well throw in a few more Benjamins for Crossfire or SLI. What you lose out onThere are some down sides. First, you can't pivot a TV the way you can with a computer display, so you're really going to have figure something out unless you're fine with your display being totally horizontal. Second, things get big, which means they take up a lot of room if you plan on sitting a 40-something-incher on your desk. You might be better off going really big and turning your living room into a gaming setup. Third, there's no FreeSync or G-Sync enabled TVs. At 4K, FreeSync and G-Sync become really helpful, especially if your gaming rig can't quite keep up the 60 frames per second. These are some of the things to consider, based on your gaming needs. If you're not really gaming though, a 4K TV might work out really well. Big optionsThere are plenty of options for a display, and prices are always getting better, as is innovation and competition. Some say that it's not size that matters, it's how you use [a display]. I find that 27 inches is becoming more commonplace, but is there a ceiling for how big one can go? What do you currently use for your primary display, and would you consider using a 4K TV? Maybe you already do. Let us know in the comments. |
| Deepcool Gamer Storm Maelstrom 240 Review Posted: 13 Apr 2015 04:19 PM PDT Wading into the deep end of the poolDeepcool has been around for 18 years, but it's kept out of the closed-loop liquid cooling (CLC) fray until now. Its Gamer Storm series includes several CLCs, and the Maelstrom 240 is the top of the line. It's a sleek red-and-black affair with ribbed tubing, sleeved cables, and a slowly pulsing logo on the top of the pump. They've clearly put some work into visual appeal. But since the CLC market has gotten pretty crowded in the last couple of years, we'll need to see performance to match. Installation is fairly standard. You get two sets of brackets for the pump, one for AMD and one for Intel. Pre-installation of the Intel bracket is common now, but Deepcool leaves that part off. It only takes a minute to put the brackets on, though, and it gives us an appreciation for their machining—these thick pieces of metal are unlikely to bend or dent. The backplate is also thick metal, as are the screws that go through and get secured on the other side. The cabling is a bit funny, though. Instead of using a splitter cable, Deepcool opted for a triangular bar a few inches long that acts as a fan hub. You get adhesive to stick the bar to a flat surface inside the case, but the gadget itself seems an unnecessary expense. Many builders also prefer to hide as much of their cabling as possible, which makes the hub's relative bulk a little tricky. On the bright side, the hub has connectors to hook up two additional fans. Spin CitySpeaking of fans, the Maelstrom's are encased in hard TPE rubber, which is clever. It helps to reduce noise in a way that doesn't require extra widgets or finicky installation. You just treat them like normal fans, although you have to be careful not to overtorque the screws (the rubber has more give around the corners of the fan). The Maelstrom doesn't come with software to control the fans, but the light on the pump at least indicates the unit is running. Besides, we can use the "Fan Xpert" software on our Asus Rampage IV mobo. On the "silent" setting, we got good performance when idle and under load, though the cooler didn't perform at the highest tier. When we switched to "Turbo," the fans spun up louder than usual, and the temperatures weren't as good as the noise level would indicate. So at the 240mm level, Corsair still has the best performance we've seen (though its software can be tricky). 280mm coolers, such as the Cooler Master Nepton 280L, still reign supreme in the CLC department. But we can't recommend those universally because the majority of cases on the market aren't large enough. The gap between the Maelstrom 240 and the Corsair H100i is only a few degrees Celsius, but it means the H100i can also handle higher CPU voltages when overclocking. And the Corsair unit has a five-year warranty, whereas the Maelstrom has a more standard three-year plan. The Maelstrom 240's retail availability was also unclear as this issue went to press. So, if we needed to buy a 240mm CLC right now, it would still be Corsair's H100i. |
| Polywell MiniBox X9900x Review Posted: 13 Apr 2015 04:17 PM PDT Fast, compact and loudAs both certified performance enthusiasts and smaller-PC fetishists, we wondered how long it would take to get Intel's new eight-core hotness, the Haswell-E, in a tiny case. While Polywell's MiniBox X9900x doesn't exactly qualify as "tiny," it's probably as small as you're going to see with Intel's Core i7-5960X powering it. With the hefty size of the LGA2011-v3, it'll probably never make its way into a mini-ITX mobo. Full details of the parts used in this box are below, but the highlights include the eight-core Core i7-5960X chip. The chip normally runs a stock 3GHz with a boost of 3.5GHz on one core. The MiniBox Polywell does a decent overclock to 4.2GHz. This can't be done with air cooling; it's up to the Antec closed-loop cooler to keep it from melting the case to the ground. For a foundation, Polywell plugs the Hassy-E into an Asrock X99m-Extreme4 mobo and pairs it with 16GB of Crucial DDR4/2133 RAM. Graphics are handled by a single Gigabyte Windforce Radeon R9 290X. The PSU running all of this is a de-branded 750-watt 80+ bronze unit. Why Polywell decided to de-brand the PSU, we're not sure. Of course, you don't care about any of this—all you want to know is how it performs. As this is the first formal sighting of a Haswell-E in a pre-built PC, we all want much smoking of all before it that we're surprised the FDA didn't slap a health warning on the MiniBox X9900x. And we don't mean by 2 or 5 percent either. The MiniBox X9900x finishes our Premiere Pro benchmark 62 percent faster; in x264 HD 5.0 it moves up to 67 percent. The record holder had been a Digital Storm Ivy Bridge-E box OC'ed to 4.7GHz. Not anymore. The Polywell MiniBox X9900x sprints past the DStorm by up to 29 percent in Premiere. That same Aventum II also held the record in X264 HD 5.0, but the MiniBox X9900x encodes video roughly 31 percent faster than that big-ass tower. Nobody's PerfectThe world is not all multi-threaded, though. In tasks that can't use all those cores, high clock speed (and microarchitecture, of course) matters more than core count. Even there, the MiniBox doesn't disappoint. It easily eats our zero-point by a hefty 21 percent in both Stitch.Efx 2.0 and ProShow Producer 5.0. Against the Haswell Core i7-4790K in Dream Machine 2014 running at 4.7GHz, the MiniBox is only 2 percent slower in Stitch.Efx 2.0 and 4 percent in ProShow Producer 5.0. Yes, all this from a small form factor box. Where the MiniBox can't hang is in gaming. With its single Radeon R9 290X, it's not going to beat multi-card systems. But we'll note that size isn't everything. For kicks, we ran the numbers against the Falcon Northwest Tiki-Z we reviewed in September. With its single Titan Z card (essentially two down-clocked Titan Black cards) the Tiki-Z offers roughly twice the gaming performance of the MiniBox. To be fair, the MiniBox pays back in CPU benchmarks, too. If it sounds like the MiniBox is cruising for an easy victory, it is. Except for one problem: It's loud. The Gigabyte Windforce cards are typically very quiet under load but when pushed here, all three fans spooled up and become quite noticeable. The Antec Kuhler H20 650 cooling the CPU also gets noticeable under CPU loads. It's not as annoying as the GPU but you can tell this may be just a little too much hardware for this system. One solution would be to add more fans to move the heat out of the case, which might tone down the GPU. The Prodigy case's internal layout makes this tough, but we think Polywell could have added more fans. This does color our view of the Mini-Box, but how much should the noise dock the score? That one's hard to say. While the noise is bad in gaming (although we've heard worse), CPU loads aren't that bad. And then there's the price. At $2,900, there's a lot of performance per buck in the MiniBox. Plain? Yes. Loud at times? Affirmative. Stupidly fast in CPU chores? Hell, yes. |
| Posted: 13 Apr 2015 04:11 PM PDT The CPU and GPU maker expands to SSDsThe market for solid-state storage has gotten pretty crowded, and most SSDs can use up all available bandwidth on the SATA III bus. With SATA Express and M.2 devices emerging, the transition away from older, slower technology is in full swing. Despite this, AMD is expanding its Radeon brand from video cards and RAM sticks to SSDs. But the R7 is not the company's own tech, so its investment is much lower than usual. This line (available in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB sizes) is the product of OCZ Storage Technology, which Toshiba bought this year. The unit is very similar to OCZ's Vector 150, but with a lower-clocked Barefoot 3 controller chip, and a more up-to-date set of NAND memory. The Radeon SSD also has a f our-year w arranty, one more than standard. Like the Vector 150, it has hardware-accelerated 256-bit AES encryption and ships with a 3.5-inch drive bay adapter and download code for Acronis True Image HD, a popular tool for creating backups and managing drive partitions. Looking at performance, we see results similar to the OCZ Vertex 460, which also uses the Barefoot 3 controller. Neither drive fully saturated the SATA III bus in our tests, but the R7 SSD also fares oddly in the ATTO benchmark. At the 64KB file size, it's reading and writing at about 400MB/s. We usually see numbers closer to 500MB/s. At the 128KB tier and above, the drive shoots up to the normal range of 525–550MB/s. If you're moving a lot of image fi les, the performance gap will become apparent. But as a boot drive, the sheer access time of SSD technology matters more, and the Radeon R7 does fi ne there. Plus it's possible to fix some performance quirks with a fi rmware update. You'll be able to use the OCZ Toolbox software for updates and secure erases. It doesn't come with the drive, but you can easily download it. Money MattersTransfer speeds aren't as high as we'd hoped, given the $160 MSRP. OCZ's Vertex 460 has a street price of $125 and also bundles True Image HD, though its warranty is only three years. Then there's the Crucial MX100, a popular competitor at $110. So a lot of the R7's appeal depends on where the street price lands, and how much you want True Image HD. Since 2012's original Vector, OCZ hasn't been known for aggressive pricing, but new ownership and a collaboration with AMD could spell change. We're more confi dent about its warranty, with its "ShieldPlus" support. You can use the drive's serial number, instead of a receipt, and OCZ claims it will replace it with a brand-new unit (rather than refurbished products). It'll provide shipping labels and it'll do "advanced product placement," meaning it will ship you a new SSD before it's received your old one. It looks like OCZ and AMD are eager to please. If they stick to a support plan of this caliber, it can increase their appeal in a highly competitive sector. Samsung has shown that people are willing to pay a premium for high-quality SSDs. |
Where does Intel go from here?
Don't sweat it, playa'!
And so it begins
Valve, we have a problem
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