General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Origin PC Genesis Review

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 03:02 PM PDT

Aggressive in more ways than one

You already know that Nvidia's Titan X is Kick Ass, but do you know what's even more bad-ass? Three of them in SLI. With that philosophy in mind, Origin PC sent us its new Genesis rig to review. The box has three of those bad boys, all water-cooled, coupled with a 5960X CPU and 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM, wrapped up in the company's own bold full-tower chassis. 

Externally, the chassis still looks as striking as ever. Ours came in an all-black finish, but there are different color options available. You also have some fancy lighting options, both on the inside and outside of the case, that you can control via an included wireless remote. While the frame of the chassis is mostly metal, we're not too fond of the external casing, which is mostly composed of plastic; it feels a little fragile. Both doors also come off completely, but don't re-attach as easily as they should; we often found ourselves having to push them back on snugly before we could securely lock them into place. And like the Cooler Master stacker chassis before it, this case also has an expandable bay on the bottom. In our case (no pun intended), the bottom bay houses most of the chassis fans.

The black and red aesthetic gives it that HAL 9000 vibe.

Speaking of cooling, the beautiful-looking water setup comes by way of Koolance, which water cools both the CPU and GPUs. In terms of performance, Origin PC's box flew. In anticipation of some of the monster rigs to come, we've updated our desktop zero point PC to have three GTX 980s and a 5960X CPU, but this Origin rig completely blew it out of the water. Three 980s is a plenty fast setup, but in our newly updated suite of graphics benchmarks, three Titan Xs smokes it by 20–60 percent. 

It is worth noting, however, that we did not initially see these graphical performance gains. As a matter of fact, in both the Batman and Tomb Raider tests, Origin's system actually performed worse than our ZP. We tried playing around with and re-downloading drivers, but nothing worked. After scratching our heads for a few days and working with Origin to resolve the issue, we discovered that the system's Asus X99-Deluxe motherboard had its PCI-e configuration set to auto, and wasn't scaling up to Gen 3 mode. When we manually switched it over in the BIOS, our performance issues went away. Origin says it is working with Asus to solve this issue moving forward, and luckily it's not hard to fix, but when you're paying more than $9K for a PC, this shouldn't be an issue.

The CPU performance also ended up being really impressive, besting our own closed-loop water cooled 5960X by 13–24 percent in our benchmarks. That's a huge difference when you consider that both systems are running the same CPU. You can attribute that to Origin's aggressive overclocking. Unfortunately, however, it appears that Origin might have gone overboard with its overclock by bumping its proc to 4.5GHz, as we encountered a CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT blue screen twice while running our multithread-heavy X264 benchmark. When we spoke to Origin about this, the company said that it might have been a result of the overaggressive overclock and said it is willing to help customers downclock their CPUs through multiple means of customer support if necessary. Still, when you're spending so much cashola on this box, things like this shouldn't happen. 

Finally, another small gripe we had with the system is that one of its front-facing USB ports didn't work right out of the gate. When we opened its internals, we found the USB connector to be a little loose on the motherboard, so we plugged it back in and that solved the issue. While you could chalk that up to a rush job, it could also have happened during shipping. 

As you can see, the box is not perfect, and our various issues with it hold us back from giving the Genesis our Kick Ass seal of approval. Fortunately, these issues can be solved with a few simple tweaks. If you can stomach what might be isolated incidents, you'll be left with one beautiful and bad-ass PC. 

$9,278, www.originpc.com

Our desktop zero point PC uses a 5960X CPU, three GTX 980s, and 16GBs of RAM. Arkham City tested at 2560x1440 max settings with PhysX off. Tomb Raider at Ultimate settings. Shadow of Mordor at Max settings.

Newegg Daily Deals: MSI GP60 Leopard Pro 825 Gaming Laptop, Two OCZ Arc 100 120GB SSDs, and More!

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 11:57 AM PDT

 

MSI GP60Newegg

Top Deal:

The pool's closed, it will be several hours until breakfast is served, and you've flipped through all the channels on the TV in your hotel room, but there's nothing to watch. It's a good thing you brought a gaming laptop. You did bring one, right? If you're in need of one but don't want to spend a fortune, check out today's top deal for an MSI GP Series GP60 Leopard Pro 825 for $849 with free shipping (normally $999 - use coupon code: [EMCARNR46]). It's a 15.6-inch laptop with an Intel Core i7 4720HQ CPU, 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M graphics.

Other Deals:

2x OCZ ARC 100 2.5-inch 120GB Solid State Drive (SSD) for $110 with free shipping (normally $130)

LG 34UM94-P Black 34-inch UltraWide WQHD Monitor w/ Built-In Speakers for $750 with $1 shipping (normally $900 - use coupon code: [EMCARNR44])

Corsair Vengeance 1400 Dual 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Gaming Headset for $40 with free shipping (normally $50)

G.Skill Ripjaws Series 4GB 204-Pin DDR3L 1600 Laptop Memory for $28 with free shipping (normally $33)

Lenovo's ThinkCentre Chromebox Targets Education and Small Businesses

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 11:30 AM PDT

Lenovo ThinkCentre Chromebox and Tiny-in-OneFirst Chromebox to support to Lenovo's Tiny-in-One display

Is there room for Google's Chrome OS in the mini PC market? Lenovo aims to find out by launching its ThinkCentre Chromebox, a system purposely designed for education and small business users looking to live high in the cloud. For those users, the ThinkCentre Chrombox offers a compact and relatively affordable system that's ready to rock in Google's ecosystem.

One thing that's unique about the ThinkCentre Chromebox is that it's the only Chromebox in the world that can hook up to Lenovo's ThinkCentre Tiny-in-One, which is essentially a 23-inch monitor with a Full HD 1080p resolution. It features a 5ms response time, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 250 cd/m2 brightness, Kensington Lock Slot, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, a mini USB 2.0 port, audio output, and a few other bullet points.

The pitch from Lenovo is that you can attach the two devices together for an instant 23-inch all-in-one solution. Otherwise, you can use the Chromebox on its own. The device measures 7 inches (H) by 1.4 inches (W) by 7.2 inches (D). It has four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, microphone/headphone combo jack, and Ethernet connectivity.

Oddly enough, there's no mention of the hardware and features in the press release or on the product page, just that it will be available in June starting at $199; the Tiny-in-One is available now for $279.

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Take a Moment of Silence for Google's Discontinued Nexus 7 Tablet

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 09:39 AM PDT

Nexus 7 Maximum PCPopular Android device is officially defunct

It took some time before Android tablets hit their stride. In the beginning, they were expensive, as manufacturers tried to compete with Apple's iPad on price, which negated one of the primary benefits of Android -- it's an open source platform and products should be cheaper than their proprietary counterparts. It took Amazon's Kindle Fire (now just Fire) line to drive the point home, though it was Google's Nexus 7 that finally got things right. Fast forward to today and Google's Nexus 7 is sadly discontinued.

There's no official announcement, but if you head over to Google's Nexus 7 product page, you'll see a message in red that reads, "The Nexus 7 is no longer available for purchase." That's it -- no farewell message or anything of the sort, just a curt notification that you're too late to the party.

What made the Nexus 7 so awesome was that it found the balance between features and price, while avoiding the third-party bloat that wireless carriers and hardware partners like to shovel onto devices in an attempt to differentiate themselves. The Nexus 7 was simply a fast tablet with a stock Android experience backed by Google, meaning new Android builds would roll out in a timely manner, the latest being Android Lollipop.

The good news is, you can still find Nexus 7 tablets, assuming you're interested in what's now a two-year old device. Amazon has some in stock, and of course there's eBay and Craigslist. Otherwise, you can pick up an updated model from Google, the Nexus 9, which is larger, faster, and more expensive.

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Acer to Attack Gaming Market with Predator Line of PC Products

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 08:41 AM PDT

AcerLaptops and desktops and monitors, oh my!

The last Predator product I remember seeing from Acer was the Predator AG3 Series desktop, a configurable machine that entered the U.S. market a couple of years ago with a starting price of $1,000. I don't think the line gained much traction, though Acer isn't giving up on the brand. Instead, Acer's getting ready to release several Predator brand products, including a laptop, desktop, monitor, and even a tablet.

According to Digitimes, Acer put together a task force to develop related products and also support professional gamers. Presumably the idea is to build brand exposure for its Predator line, which apparently will also include motherboards. This will be an ongoing thing for Acer, with product updates every two to three months.

Some of these products have already been captured on camera. If you head over to The Verge, you'll spy several pics of new Predator systems, all of which are clearly aimed at gamers with aggressive angles and loud styling. The desktop especially stands out with a design that you'll either love or hate (I doubt there will be much middle ground there).

As for the laptops, which will come in both 15-inch and 17-inch form factors, you can see some gaming features, such as a red border around the WASD and arrow keys. Also visible are USB 3.0 ports, gold plated audio jacks, what could be dedicated macro keys (they're blurry), and sizable vents that comprise what Acer calls a "massive" cooling system.

There's also a funky looking Predator tablet that appears to have traded thinness for a mean aesthetic. It has four front-facing speakers, and haptic feedback that will shake in your hands while playing games.

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Samsung 850 Pro Review

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 08:28 AM PDT

Big fish in a small pond

Samsung has built a good reputation for fast and high-quality SSDs. It introduced the 470 to desktops four years ago, and its SSDs were in high-end laptops before that. The company also distinguished itself by designing its own controller chips and manufacturing its own NAND flash memory. Indeed, Samsung's reduced reliance on partners has given it greater opportunities to try different things. The result? The 850 Pro combines all that expertise and strategic advantage in one blisteringly fast piece of hardware, but at a hefty price.

Samsung 850 Pro Review

As we went to press, the 1TB model had a street price of $650. The 512GB model was $350, and the 256GB model was $200. For reference, the company's 1TB 840 EVO could be had for $418 (and it's no slouch), and the 512GB Crucial MX100 was going for $210. To be fair, our testing indicates the 850 Pro is the fastest desktop SSD around. It also has some pretty fancy technology, such as 3D V-NAND. "V" stands for "vertical." The tech layers NAND chips on top of each other, saving space for higher storage capacities. Samsung has used this before, but it's been refined, upping the layer count from 24 to 32. The 850 Pro also sports Samsung's Rapid Mode, which uses part of your system RAM as a drive cache. This has doubled transfer speeds in previous tests.

The Power of Magic

Samsung has also brought in TCG Opal 2.0, so it has some nice self-encryption features, always important on theft and loss-prone laptops. It's also keeping Dynamic Thermal Guard, designed to prevent your SSD from getting cooked in the heat. Lastly, Samsung has its slick Magician software, a hub for jobs like getting firmware updates, performing manual garbage collection, and enabling Rapid Mode. SanDisk and Corsair are developing similar software, but there's a noticeable gap. Magician has the look and feel of something you would expect to pay for separately.

The 850 Pro does excellently, but you can see from the charts that the SATA III bus has become a bottleneck for premium SSDs, even when you enable Rapid Mode. This mode allocates several gigabytes of your system RAM to your Samsung SSD, to use as a high-speed cache. The most commonly accessed files will get stored here, for quicker retrieval than the drive can accomplish with its own internal memory cells. Performance will be slower when dealing with files larger than the cache can hold. But overall, Rapid Mode will push day-to-day performance past what you'll see from non-Samsung SSDs (at least, the ones that don't use their own RAM cache).

But it's hard to shake the feeling the 850 Pro's extra cost comes from its lengthy warranty, and, with SSD tech evolving so quickly, that isn't compelling enough to make the price work. M.2 and SATA Express are coming. And those aren't even the long-term solution. NVM Express is the true heir to the I/O throne, and it will be well-established before the 850 Pro's huge warranty comes into play.

Lenovo U31 Notebook Could Hit U.S. Store Shelves After All

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 06:29 AM PDT

Lenovo U31Laptop seen in FCC filing

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Lenovo introduced the U31 laptop, a 13-incher the Chinese company said it did not plan to bring to the North American market.  A recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), however, seems to suggest otherwise.

According to Liliputing, the 13-inch laptop cropped up in documents Qualcomm Atheros filed with the FCC recently. Therefore, while this could be an indication that the U31 is headed toward U.S. shores, there is no guarantee that this is indeed the case.

The U31 starts at $499 and can be configured with up to a Core i7 Broadwell processor, Nvidia GPU (optional), up to 8GB of RAM and a maximum of 1TB hybrid storage (or 500GB HDD storage, or 256GB SSD). It boasts a full HD 13.3-inch display. Watch out, though: the Windows 8.1-running laptop may end up getting sold as the Lenovo S31 in some markets.

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Acer Announces $200 Chromebook 15 Variant

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 02:29 AM PDT

Chromebook 15The cheapest 15-inch Chromebook

Not that long ago, the distinction of being the biggest Chromebook belonged to the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook (14-inch), but that changed earlier this year when Acer introduced its 15.6-inch Chromebook 15 at CES. Acer now plans to outdo itself by launching the cheapest 15-inch Chrome OS-running machine on the market.

"After launching the Acer Chromebook 15, the industry's first Chromebook with a 15.6-inch display, Acer today expands this line with a new model, the Acer CB3-531, available at a wallet-friendly price of only $199.99," the company said in a press release Thursday.

The cheapest Chromebook 15 variant right now costs $250, while the most expensive one costs $350. Sure, it's hardly anything you could call expensive, but let's not forget the whole concept of a cloud OS-based machine pretty much rests on affordability and so this latest SKU is a welcome addition.

According to the company, the CB3-531 packs an  Intel Celeron N2830 dual-core processor processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB eMMC storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity, and a battery capable of lasting 11.5 hours on a single charge. It will hit the market in July.

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Dropbox's Online Note-Taking Service Enters Beta

Posted: 27 Apr 2015 12:11 AM PDT

Dropbox NotesProject Composer becomes Dropbox Notes

A few weeks back, some sites chanced upon Project Composer, an Evernote-esque note-taking tool Dropbox was testing silently. Curious as to what the fuss was all about, many flocked to the limited-access service, only to be turned away at the gates. While entry is still restricted, you can at least request an invite now.

Now called Dropbox Notes, the collaborative note-taking tool has entered beta. Details are thin at this point in time, but judging by its official page, Notes appears to be aimed at businesses and not consumer — at least for now.

The page requests that those interested in joining the invite-only beta furnish their name, e-mail address and company name, and then wait until "an early version is ready for you." There are no details, save for a screenshot showing some fairly basic collaborative note-taking capabilities.

Notes is being seen as the fruit of Dropbox's acquisition of HackPad about two years ago. It is quite interesting, however, that HackPad's online collaborative notes service continues to be available to both new and existing users. Perhaps that will change once Notes has exited beta.

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Intel's Skylake-S Lineup Reportedly Leaked

Posted: 26 Apr 2015 11:33 PM PDT

Skylake Engineering SampleTen Skylake desktop CPUs supposedly outed

It may only have been a few months since the first Broadwell CPUs (finally) hit the market, but Intel is already looking set to move on from the Haswell's troubled 14nm die shrink. Media reports in February suggested that the chip maker could showcase its 6th generation Skylake-S desktop chips at its IDF conference in August, a little later than previously expected. A Chinese website believes it knows which SKUs await us.

As previously rumored, the various Skylake-S SKUs supposedly outed by Chinese site Benchlife fall into three broad categories in terms of power consumption: 35W, 65W and 95W. There are 10 SKUs in all, ranging from the power-efficient T series chips to the powerful, unlocked K series CPUs.

As you can see in the table below, these are all Core i5 and Core i7 parts with support for DDR4. And as you may be aware, Intel is moving to the new LGA 1151 socket with Skylake; the socket has an extra pin compared to its predecessor, the LGA 1150.

Skylake is a "tock" in Intel's tick-tock processor release cadence. In other words, it is a whole new microarchitecture and thus a more substantial upgrade over Haswell than Broadwell, which is simply the latter's 14nm die shrink, or a "tick" in company parlance. If purportedly leaked benchmarks are to be believed, we could see a 15-percent bump in performance.

Image Credit: Benchlife

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