General Gaming Article |
- No BS Podcast 239: Skylake, Windows 10, and Jarred's Intro
- Digital Storm Bolt 3 Review
- Newegg Daily Deals: Intel 750 Series 400GB SSD, Asus GeForce GTX 970, and More!
- Rambus is Transitioning to Fabless Chip Production
- Mozilla's Working Towards Real Private Browsing in Firefox
| No BS Podcast 239: Skylake, Windows 10, and Jarred's Intro Posted: 17 Aug 2015 03:02 PM PDT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 17 Aug 2015 01:11 PM PDT The bold and the beautifulMini-ITX machines are the hotness right now, and have been for a while. And why wouldn't they be? We think that it's super sexy to be able to stuff loads of power into a small form factor box. Digital Storm, no stranger to SFF builds, is trying to up the ante even further with its latest Mini-ITX offering: the Bolt 3. Measuring 18.3x15.1x5.8 inches, the Bolt 3 also ups the ante in size with a new case designed by Lian Li. It's roughly 25 percent larger than the Falcon Northwest Tiki we reviewed last month. While the box isn't huge, and is smaller than mid-tower cases, it does feel a little too beefy to act as a console replacement next to your TV. Luckily, though, the Bolt 3 is a sexy beast, and it's got a clear acrylic window to show off its innards. We think that if you've got a window, it had better be super clean on the inside. The Bolt 3's interiors are damned near immaculate. Inside, the Bolt 3 features a custom-loop cooler for the CPU, with a slick LED-backlit Digital Storm logo on the water block. Our configuration's liquid came with yellow liquid and yellow ribbon cables. Truth be told, the yellow may not be for everyone, as there were mixed opinions about it in our Lab. Fortunately, the Bolt 3 has the option of red dye variants, too. The case sports LEDs along the bottom and back, which really make the inside pop; you can change the color of these lights and the LED logo on the front of the case to your heart's content using Digital Storm's pre-installed software. The software also allows you to change fan speeds and monitor temps. In case you want to access the inside of the chassis, both the glass panel and the panel on the opposite can be removed via four thumb screws. Once you're inside, you'll notice a unique placement for the 600-watt SFX power supply. Normally, PSUs are tucked into the corners of a case, but here, it's just about smack-dab in the middle, and has slick Digital Storm branding on its top side. Tucked behind it is the slim slot-loading Blu-ray player. At the top of the case is a 240mm radiator, and there are also two Corsair static pressure fans to go along with it. All of this is wrapped up in a chassis with a black brushed-aluminum finish. On the front of the case, you've got headphone and mic input, two USB 3.0 ports, and the power button. And in case you were wondering, the Bolt 3 can be used standing up or laid flat on its side. While Digital Storm allows you to customize your rig, the company sent us a configuration with a 4790K CPU overclocked to 4.6GHz, 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM clocked at 1,866MHz, and a GeForce GTX 980 Ti from EVGA that was overclocked by 200MHz across the board. All of this is sitting atop an Asus Maximus VII Impact mobo. For storage, we've got a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD and a 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive from Seagate. For a little bit more future-proofing, we would have liked a 2TB HDD, considering our configuration costs over three grand. Performance-wise, the Bolt 3's overclocked Devil's Canyon part was actually able to give our zero-point's 5960X CPU a run for its money, besting it by 14–24 percent in our single-threaded benchmarks. Of course, the octo-core CPU gave the quad-core a proper 40 percent thrashing in our thread-heavy X264 benchmark. And in the GPU benchmarks, it's not really a fair comparison comparing our ZP's three 980s versus the Bolt's single 980 Ti, where it got beat by roughly 30–40 percent. Just know that you will be able to play games at 4K with a single 980 Ti, but expect to have to turn down a few settings or run under 60fps. You could certainly build the Bolt 3 yourself for several hundreds of dollars less (without Digital Storm's service and warranty), and yes, it is bigger than we would like, but the system still has a lot going for it. It's a beautifully put together rig, and it's got excellent cable management across the board. Digital Storm has got an eye for detail, and it shows. It also runs extremely quiet, which is a huge plus for a SFF machine. We wouldn't bolt out and get one right away, but it's definitely worth your consideration. $3,070, www.digitalstorm.com Benchmarks
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. Specifications
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Newegg Daily Deals: Intel 750 Series 400GB SSD, Asus GeForce GTX 970, and More! Posted: 17 Aug 2015 12:56 PM PDT Top Deal: It isn't a question of whether or not to equip your PC with a solid state drive, it's just a matter of which one. Your choices grow by the day, including one of the more recent options and today's top deal, an Intel 750 Series 400GB PICe Internal SSD for $340 with free shipping (normally $390 - use coupon code: [EMCAWKR87]). No ordinary SSD, this model is rated to deliver sequential read and write performance of up to 2,200MB/s and 900MB/s, respectively. That's what happens when you move away from AHCI and into the land of NVMe. Other Deals: Sennheiser HD439 Over-Ear Headphones for $35 with $2 shipping (normally $60 - use coupon code: [EMCAWKR27]) G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCAWKR28]) Asus GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card for $309 with free shipping (normally $325 - use coupon code: [EMCAWKR33]; Free Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain game w/ purchase, limited offer) G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $43 with free shipping (normally $48 - use coupon code: [EMCAWKR43]) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rambus is Transitioning to Fabless Chip Production Posted: 17 Aug 2015 10:27 AM PDT Going in a different directionRambus is a name we haven't heard in some time, though it's one we certainly remember. The company has made numerous headlines over the years, many of which were related to litigation over IP disputes. That's because the Rambus of old built a business around licensing DRAM technology and accusing firms of patent infringement. The Rambus of new is going in a different direction. For the first time in the company's 25-year history, Rambus is going to design and sell its own brand chips, starting with a new DDR4 server memory chipset, the RB26. It's the introductory offering of the company's new family of R+ chips. "At Rambus, we have a rich history of innovation and expertise in high-speed memory interface design – the introduction of this chipset is a natural progression that enables us to deliver maximum value to the industry," said Dr. Ron Black, president and chief executive officer at Rambus. "Expanding our offer beyond IP into chips with standards-based offerings that feature leading-edge performance and advanced functionality amplifies our growth strategy and furthers our engagement with the market." The RB26 is JEDEC DDR4 compliant. It will consist of Registered DIMMs (RDIMMS) and Load Reduced DIMMS (LRDIMMS) for servers and will include a DDR4 Register Clock Driver (RCD). Rambus will also produce data buffer chips for LRDIMMs. As a fabless player, Rambus won't manufacture its chips. Given the high costs associated with producing chips, that's not an usual move. Nvidia, for example, is fabless, and so is AMD, which joined the fabless fray when it spun off its chip manufacturing business in 2009 (Globalfoundries). Rambus said it's currently sampling RB26 to potential customers and will demonstrate its server DIMM chipset at IDF later this week. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mozilla's Working Towards Real Private Browsing in Firefox Posted: 17 Aug 2015 08:53 AM PDT Stop following me! All the major browsers come with a private browsing mode of some sort so that you can, ahem, shop for birthday gifts and, uh, plan surprise parties without leaving any trace of what you've been up to. Or, more realistically, to visit seedier sides without leaving a potentially embarrassing trail. Whatever the use case scenario, these private browsing modes are mostly designed for local peace of mind. They erase your history and take other steps to hide where you've been from anyone else who might use the same PC, though Mozilla wants to take things further. Mozilla rolled out a few experimental enhancements to its Private Browsing feature that are currently available in pre-beta versions of Firefox, including Firefox Developer Edition on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and Firefox Aurora on Android. These enhancements are designed to actively block website elements that might be recording your activities or otherwise collecting data about your online activities without your knowledge. The enhanced protection can sometimes come at a cost -- specifically, some websites might appear broken when Firefox blocks elements that track your behavior. However, you have the option of unblocking finicky elements to view a website normally. Mozilla's new Tracking Protection mechanism also blocks some websites and domains outright. "Tracking Protection allows you to take control of your privacy online. While Firefox has a Do Not Track feature that tells websites not to monitor your behavior, companies are not required to honor it. Firefox's Tracking Protection feature puts the control back in your hands by actively blocking domains and sites that are known to track users," Mozilla explains. If you want to test out the Firefox Developer build for yourself, you can download it here and run it alongside your regular Firefox browser (it creates a separate profile). |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC latest stories To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
