General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article


Newegg Daily Deals: Asus GeForce GTX 970, Samsung 850 Evo 120GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 29 Sep 2015 12:03 PM PDT

Asus GeFor-ce GTX 970

Top Deal:

There are many ways to relieve stress. If we were to list them out, gaming would be No. 2 on our list (we'll let your mind run wild with what No. 1 is). Of course, without a dedicated graphics card, trying to game would only increase our stress level, so why mess around with integrated graphics? We wouldn't, and if you don't plan to either, then check out today's top deal for an Asus GeForce GTX 970 Strix Graphics Card for $309 with free shipping (normally $325 - use coupon code: [EMCAXN22]; additional $20 mail-in-rebate). This is a factory overclocked card with high quality parts and a custom cooling solution that's cooler and quieter than reference.

Other Deals:

Samsung 850 Evo 2.5-inch 120GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCAXNX23])

Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [ESCAXNX24])

Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 Desktop Memory for $83 with free shipping (normally $108)

MSI 970 Gaming AM3+ AMD 970 6 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Motherboard for $80 with $3 shipping (normally $99)

AMD Releases Catalyst 15.9 Beta Driver Optimized for Star Wars: Battlefront

Posted: 29 Sep 2015 11:39 AM PDT

Getting ready to rumble

Battlefront

If you're running Radeon graphics and plan to play the Star Wars: Battlefront beta when it comes out next week, AMD has a new Catalyst driver release that might be of interest.

It's Catalyst 15.9, which itself is also a beta release. According to AMD, its latest beta driver contains "performance and quality" optimizations for Battlefront, along with the DirectX 12 optimizations for the Fable Legends: Benchmark.

In addition to performance tweaks, Catalyst 15.9 resolves several issues. They include:

  • [59474] Diablo 3 crashes in the Act 2 Desolate Sands area of the game
  • [59081] The AMD Catalyst Control Center 'update' option fails to download the latest driver
  • [58800] Dragon Age: Inquisition may crash if launched in Mantle mode
  • [58781] The DirectX Diagnostic tool does not report DirectX12 available on supported products
  • [58677] World of Warships may crash on some AMD Radeon HD5000 and HD6000 series products
  • [58646] Assassin's Creed®Unity may experience minor frame stutter when AMD CrossFire mode is enabled
  • [58485] Anti Aliasing settings not being retained after changes are applied
  • [58450] Some Benq 144Hz Freesync monitors may lose the signal while uninstalling the driver
  • [58495] DiRT Rally crashes during gameplay and benchmarking when launched in DirectX11 mode on some Benq 144HZ Freesync monitors

There are also a bunch of known issues, such as GTA V crashing on some Radeon R9 390X GPUs and flickering in the Battlefront beta if Crossfire is enabled. You can read the full list of issues in the release notes.

If and when you're ready to download the driver, go here (32-bit) or here (64-bit).

As for Battlefront, it releases in beta form on October 8. EA is considering it a "technical test" to give fans a small taste of what to expect. There will be three modes spread across three planets, including Walker Assault on Hoth (40-player battle with Rebels trying to destroy the Empire's onslaught of AT-ATs), Drop Zone on Sullust (8v8 matches as you fight for control of escape pods), and Survival Mission (play alone or with a friend to hold off waves of Imperial forces).

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Microsoft Attempts to Soothe Privacy Concerns Over Windows 10

Posted: 29 Sep 2015 10:43 AM PDT

Can privacy and Windows 10 go hand-in-hand?

Microsoft Sign

Since launching two months ago, Windows 10 has been simultaneously praised for bringing the focus back to the desktop, and soundly criticized for potentially stepping over privacy bounds at every turn. Speaking to the latter, Microsoft's Terry Myerson says that from the very outset, WIndows 10 was designed with two straightforward privacy principles in mind.

The first is that "Windows 10 collects information so the product will work better for you", and the second is that "you are in control with the ability to determine what information" Microsoft collects. Those statements alone aren't likely to be sufficient to appease Windows 10 users who are concerned about privacy, so Myerson goes on to explain things in a little more detail.

"We collect a limited amount of information to help us provide a secure and reliable experience. This includes data like an anonymous device ID, device type, and application crash data, which Microsoft and our developer partners use to continuously improve application reliability," Myerson states. "This doesn't include any of your content or files, and we take several steps to avoid collecting any information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address, or account ID."

Microsoft's attempting to walk a fine line here. On one hand, Myerson acknowledges that Windows 10 shares information about you with Microsoft, but on the other hand, he's saying it's largely anonymous and for the benefit of certain features.

What about Cortana? "Note that with new features like Cortana, which require more personal information to deliver the full experience, you are asked if you want to turn them on and are given additional privacy customization options," Myserson explains.

Myerson also took a subtle shot at Google by saying that "unlike some other platforms," Windows 10 doesn't scan the contents of email or other forms of communication to deliver targeted ads.

The blog post isn't likely to sway users who believe Windows 10 is little more than a mass spying platform for Microsoft. However, it does at least open a dialog and confirm that Microsoft is aware of the negative privacy perception surrounding its OS.

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Logitech Adds G140 Atlas Spectrum to Mechanical Keyboard Arsenal

Posted: 29 Sep 2015 09:19 AM PDT

Compact and colorful

G410 Atlas Spectrum

Logitech today announced its new G410 Atlas Spectrum, a tenkeyless (no dedicated number pad) keyboard with mechanical switches. Unlike many of the mechanical planks out there, the G410 Atlas Spectrum doesn't use Cherry-brand key switches.

Instead, Logitech designed its own "Romer-G" switches and tasked Omron with building them. If the name Omron looks familiar, it's probably because they make button switches from several high-end gaming mice.

As for the G-Romer switches in the G410, Logitech says they offer 25 percent faster actuation than standard competing switches with an actuation point of 1.5mm. The pitch is that they receive commands faster, which in turn will give gamers an edge in competitive matches.

The G410 uses center-illuminated RGB backlighting for gaming in the dark. You can customize the backlighting and synchronize various effects to in-game situations, such as having them turn red when your health reaches a critical low.

Logitech didn't include a built-in LCD in the construction of the G410, but the keyboard does come with an Arx Control dock that you can position wherever you like. It's essentially a stand for your smartphone or tablet. Using Logitech's Arx Control app for Android or iOS, you can use your mobile device to display in-game information, system stats, and more.

"We worked closely with gamers of all ages and our eSports teams to create this ultra-light keyboard that is durable and comfortable," said Ujesh Desai, vice president and general manager of gaming at Logitech. "The result is something that we think meets the needs of eSports athletes, but is also great for younger gamers looking to buy their first gaming keyboard."

The G410 Atlas Spectrum will be available in October for $130 MSRP.

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Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB Review

Posted: 29 Sep 2015 07:52 AM PDT

At a Glance

(+) Speed Freaks: Fast; compact; great for laptops.

(-) Speed Limits: High price per GB; limited capacities; BIOS support for booting; OEM-only.

Compact, fast, and built for OEMs

Last week, we posted our new SSD test suite and set our baseline expectations. Our baseline SSDs consist of one of the fastest SATA drives, two good SATA SSDs in RAID 0, and Intel's SSD 750 PCIe NVMe drive. The Intel drive is a force to be reckoned with, easily beating the other SSDs in most of our tests, but it's also the first NVMe drive we've tested. Today, we're reviewing Samsung's first NVMe offering, the SM951 NVMe M.2 256GB. A quick overview of storage interfaces is in order before we continue.

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a new standard designed specifically around the needs of SSDs, where previous SSDs used the AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) command set that was built for SATA drives—which initially consisted solely of hard drives and other slow storage options. NVMe connects to storage via a PCI Express interface, opting to use the existing standard rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. The core differences between NVMe and AHCI are that NVMe has significantly more queues and supports more commands per queue (65536 queues and commands per queue, compared to one queue with up to 32 commands), it has more interrupt options, and there's significantly improved parallelism for the interface and devices. If you're just interested in what this means to the end user, NVMe has much higher bandwidth and some optimizations to reduce latency and improve throughput.

Intel's SSD 750 is awesome, but there are a few limitations. The biggest issue is price: The smallest version is 400GB and costs just under $400, while the larger 800GB and 1.2TB models double and triple the capacity and price. There are other potential concerns, though, like the need for an x4 PCIe 3.0 slot to realize maximum performance, and a motherboard that has BIOS support for NVMe. Intel offers the drive in a 2.5-inch form factor as well, though it requires relatively rare SFF-8643 (Serial Attached SCSI) connector. Basically, very few people are going to have a board with SFF-8643, so there's not much demand for those drives.

That brings us back to the Samsung SM951 NVMe M.2 256GB. This aims to take all the NVMe goodness and stuff it into a convenient M.2 PCIe form factor, naturally—we love names that tell you pretty much everything you want to know! Just to clarify a few things, it's important to note that the SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD was already available a while ago, but the earlier release uses the AHCI command set. The SM951 NVMe is essentially the same core device but with some minor tweaks to switch from AHCI to NVMe; going forward in this article, when we say "SM951" we're specifically talking about the NVMe model. There's also one major problem with the SM951: It's intended for OEMs, typically going into laptops, so it's not widely available, though you can still find it for sale on Amazon.com and Newegg.com.

Hail to the King

One thing to note before we get into the results is that Samsung elected to send us their 256GB model for testing. This will have an impact on certain performance metrics as the larger SSDs often have better parallelism, particularly for write operations. Samsung specifies the 256GB model with read speeds of up to 2,150MB/s and write speeds of up to 1,260MB/s, while the 512GB model has slightly higher peak write performance of 1,550MB/s.

So, how does the Samsung SM951 perform, and can it hope to dethrone the Intel SSD 750? As we noted in our revamped SSD test suite article, we've updated to a new test bed for storage, running a Skylake processor in a Z170 motherboard. We had initially planned on using our X99 GPU test system, but the M.2 slot unfortunately only runs at x2 PCIe Gen2. Which makes for an interesting comparison point, so we've added it to our graphs to show what happens if you run the Samsung drive on a narrower bus.

Here's our test system (except for the PCIe Gen2 results), followed by the benchmarks.

Maximum PC 2015 SSD Test Bed
Platform LGA1151
CPU Intel Core i7-6700K (4–4.2GHz)
Mobo ASUS Z170-A
GPU Intel HD Graphics 530
SSDs Intel SSD 750 1.2TB PCIe x4
Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SATA
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SATA 2x in RAID 0
Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB M.2
PSU be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws V 2x8GB DDR4-3000
Cooler be quiet! Dark Rock 3
Case be quiet! Silent Base 800

Considering the relatively low capacity, the SM951 does well in our sequential and random transfer results. The Intel 1.2TB drive is faster, but if we had the 400GB Intel vs. the 512GB Samsung, things would likely be much closer—and you'd get 112GB of additional storage from Samsung. The QD64 AS SSD Random Write results are the one area where Intel still holds a significant advantage, but that's a pretty unlikely use case for consumers.

As we continue through the benchmarks, IOmeter confirms the AS SSD results, but an interesting thing happens when we get to the "real world": Samsung wins out in both the file copy test and PCMark 8 Storage. The PCMark 8 Storage Score, of course, reflects system-wide performance, so the SSD has less of an impact and most of the drives are "tied," but Samsung is clearly delivering better bandwidth. The same is true of file copying, where Samsung enjoys a moderate lead. Somewhat interesting is that even on an x2 Gen2 PCIe connection, the SM951 is still generally faster than SATA SSDs, including RAID 0 SATA drives, but there's clearly a bottleneck.

Here's what the charts won't tell you: The Intel SSD 750 is basically useless for laptops and notebooks. This is the intended market for the SM951, and not only does it offer great performance, but it does it in an M.2 form factor that you can find in most modern laptops. The catch is that you still need a laptop BIOS that supports booting from an NVMe drive; otherwise, the SM951 will only work as secondary storage. That sort of defeats the purpose of buying an NVMe M.2 device, which is probably why Samsung is positioning the drive as an OEM-only product.

Coming Soon: Samsung 950 Pro

There's a lot to like with the Samsung SM951, but even with great performance, it may not be the M.2 drive to get. Samsung just briefed us on their upcoming 950 Pro SSD, which will be a retail product with full NVMe support. Hopefully, that should mean better prices and wider availability, though we don't have internal performance numbers just yet. Interestingly, Samsung didn't compare performance of the 950 Pro with the SM951, but on paper there's a bit of give and take going on. The SM951 uses planar NAND while the 950 Pro will use V-NAND, so 950 Pro should have better endurance and require less power. The peak read speeds are slightly higher on the 950 Pro as well, but peak write performance may be down slightly.

In other words, while the SM951 is speedy, this review is really setting us up for the Samsung 950 Pro launch in October. There likely won't be a huge difference between the two drives in overall performance, but the retail 950 Pro should be more easily available for purchase.

If you don't care about the M.2 form factor, e.g., for desktop use, the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB is still the drive to beat when it comes to pure performance; it also wins out for capacity, as the SM951 tops out at 512GB. If you don't need the additional space and you want an M.2 NVMe drive today, the SM951 is still a great drive and definitely worth a look. Frankly, there aren't many other options out there, and of those that we've tested (more SSD reviews coming soon!) the SM951 comes out well ahead of the competition. But that price will still make you think twice, and you still have to deal with system requirements. There's also the fact that as an OEM-only product, you won't get any warranty from Samsung. Caveat emptor.

Here's some more food for thought. Samsung's SM951 may be over twice as fast as a good SATA drive in many of our benchmarks, but for less demanding users, it's hard to go wrong with the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB. Not coincidentally, you get more than twice the storage capacity of the 256GB SM951 for less money as an added benefit. It may not be the new hotness, but SATA is still more than fast enough for most users. That's likely to be a recurring theme with high-performance SSDs for the coming year, but someone has to blaze trails and eventually the price discrepancy between SATA and M.2 drive should fade away. And by the time that happens, we should also see a wider installed base of motherboards and laptops with NVMe support.

Samsung's SM951 ends up being an awesome little drive with a few disclaimers. For those who fall into the target demographic, it's easily the best of its class, but in the fast-changing world of SSDs that title may not last long. Swing by next month and we'll see where things stand.

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How To: Future-Proof Your Home Network

Posted: 29 Sep 2015 12:00 AM PDT

10 gigabit Ethernet in your home in about two hours

Chances are high that if you've ever tried moving a file larger than 1GB from one device to another over your Wi-Fi network, you've noticed that you have just enough time to floss your teeth, clip your nails, and stare at that old pencil mark on your desk for a solid minute before that file makes it to its destination. As you sat there waiting you probably thought to yourself, "There's gotta be a better way!"

There is! It's called a "wired network" and it has been around since Intel was a pup. While not as easy or as buzzword-laden as Wi-Fi, you can't beat a wired network for serious, intense throughput. And we're going to show you that it's not as tough to install in a home as you might think. C'mon, let's get dirty!

WARNING: Check your local regulations on permits and cabling in your area!

Tools you'll need:

Sure, we could have gone with plain old Cat5e cable rated for gigabit Ethernet transfer speeds, but this isn't "Average PC" is it? No, we want future-proofing and room for 10-gigabit Ethernet, son! Arr! We're also using a patch panel that handles 24 ports to allow room for later expansion. Note that we're assuming you already have a Gigabit router/switch available (which would include 802.11ac Wireless routers); 10GbE switches are still very expensive, but they'll drop in price as sure as you can say "gravity," and when they do you'll be ready.

To start, you should measure your wall height and the approximate run of your cable from your source to the area you'd like to install your new wall jack. You want the jack on an interior wall to avoid dealing with insulation, and at least one stud away from an electrical outlet to lessen the chances that you'll nip a live wire and black out the neighborhood. You also want it centered between wall studs to make the drilling portion easier. Wall studs are about 16 inches apart, but some are 24 inches; you'll need to use your stud finder to see what standard your home uses. Use a pencil to lightly mark the studs on each side of your work area.

Find Your Supports

Image001
A stud finder shows you where boards are in your wall.

Once your new outlet spot is chosen, measure 12 inches upward from the baseboard. Mark this point as the bottom of your jack. The idea here is to make the hole of your new wall jack the same height as existing electrical and phone plugs for continuity. Use a pencil and draw a square using your single gang bracket as a template. Now, look at the spot you just drew. Really look at it, because in about a minute we'll be making that hole permanent.

Use the Single Gang as a Template

Image002
Templates make art class so much easier.

Happy with your placement? Let's get down to business.

For safety you should walk to your breaker box or fuse box and turn off the electricity to the room you're working in and the one on the opposite side of the wall. You may not run into a wire, but we want you safe. All good? OK, get your wall saw. We prefer the Stanley FatMax six-inch Jab Saw for rigidity and easy sawing in sheetrock. You do not want a flimsy, flexible saw for this procedure. Starting at the bottom-right corner of your receptacle drawing, push the saw into the wall, and begin sawing horizontally along the bottom. You may need to use a hammer to lightly tap the saw into the wall to start.

At the first corner, pull out the saw and start again, this time cutting your line vertically (upward). This allows you to turn your cut if you run into a stud that you missed with your studfinder. Complete your cut the same way on the remaining two sides, then pull the cutout out of the wall and set it aside. It may fall into the wall. This is fine unless we have to mud up the hole due to wires or other issues.

Remove the Cutout

Image003
Your jack location exposed.

Take your single gang bracket and test your work by fitting it in the hole. The goal is to make for a tight fit. Now, let's do some drilling. To keep fire from moving easily from room to room, our homes now have a horizontal board between some studs called a fireblock.

Fireblock

Image004
Fire safety first!

Use your stud finder and slowly move upward from the hole you sawed. Assuming a standard home, you'll hit your fireblock within 3 feet of your receptacle. If your studfinder doesn't signal a stud running horizontally in your wallspace, you are in an open wall, you have an older home, or you simply missed it; try again. If you found one, mark it with a pencil.

Going Fishing

Image005
A fish bit eats through fireblocks for breakfast!

Get your fish drill bit and push it into the hole and upward at an angle away from any electrical outlets in the same wall. The goal is to work it to the fireblock into one corner where it meets up with a stud. Running the drill in reverse can help the drill bit "walk" up the wall stud easier to reach the fireblock. To be sure you're hitting wood pull the bit out about 4 inches then poke it back up to the fireblock hard enough to make a noise. It should sound like wood. Anything else is danger. Stop now and call a licensed electrician. If you choose to stop, use wall mud and the cutout piece of sheetrock to fill the hole you made. Let it dry for 24 hours and paint over it.

If you hit wood, connect your drill bit to a cordless drill and start your hole. Once finished, take your wall saw and cut another, identical hole about four feet from your ceiling, but this time there are two differences: First, use a pumpkin cut. A pumpkin cut is a side-slanted cut to form a bevel, like you make on a pumpkin's lid. And second, don't make the cut across the top. Leave that part attached so the lid will flip up and down easily, but not fall off of the wall.

Pumpkin Cut

Image006
Cut with the blade at an angle to allow the plug to reseal easily.

Put the drill back into the wall in your pumpkin cut. Feel the resistance of the bit as you drill upward through the ceiling cap boards toward the attic. It should give resistance for about four inches, then break free into the attic. If you find yourself drilling more than four and a half inches or past your taped mark on the shaft, you may be in a rafter of the attic and you'll need to move your drill bit to the opposite corner of the ceiling and the fireblock then try again from the beginning. Thankfully, we're working on an inside wall and this is very unlikely.

At this point you can pull out the bit and use your glow rods to push up through the wall. For our home, we needed three sections of glow rod to make it from the jack into the attic space. At the end, connect about three inches of your cat6 cable to the glow rod with electrical tape. Use more tape to cover any bumps in the connection to prevent snags.

Become the Tape Master

Image007
Tape the cable to the glow rods.

Then push the rods up through the wall along the same route you took with the fish bit. It should slide into place easily.

Up with the Rods

Up with the rods - corrected
Once more into the breach!

Grab a strong, reliable flashlight and head up into the attic. WARNING: Attics are scary, dangerous places. Only step on the wooden crossbeams while in the attic unless you want a visit to a hospital and do some tricky ceiling mudwork. Avoid the overhead nails and any metal ductwork you see. Also, most insulation is fiberglass or rock wool, which is very itchy. Don't touch it more than you have to. Always wash hands or shower afterward to avoid itching. Finally, if your home was built between 1930 and 1950, you may have asbestos insulation. Asbestos has been shown to cause cancer when inhaled. Have your insulation tested if you're unsure.

Typical Attic Route

Image009
Easiest route in a standard attic. Go forward, then cut across to target area.

Watch Your Step!

Image010
Step only on the crossbeams.

Duck Your Head

Image011
Watch for overhead spikes.

Silver Is Soft

Image012 Side
Don't lean or walk on ductwork, you'll fall!

Work your way over to the area of the attic you believe to be above your wall. You should see the glow rod sticking out of the insulation like a beacon.

Finding the Glow Rod

Finding the glow rods
A shining beacon from below.

Once you reach the glow rod, slowly but firmly pull the cable up through the wall. Again, snags can and do happen all the time. If you hit a snag, just push the rod down and pull it back up again. Keep firm upward pressure on the glow rod and it should pull through. You may need to disconnect some lengths of the glow rod as you pull it up to keep from hitting the ceiling. Once the glow rods pull through completely, keep pulling until you have a enough cable in hand to reach across the attic and down the wall to your router. The cable should pull freely through the wall. If you feel a snag, head back downstairs and untangle the wires from your spool. You don't want a kink in this cable. If you bought an industrial-size box of cable (500–1000 feet), it will feed through the wall easily by design. Do not disconnect the cable from the glow rod. We'll use it to feed down to the router later.

Now, work your way carefully across the attic to the general area of the router, stringing the cable along behind you and laying it across the insulation but away from your walking area. You don't want to step on a cable and break a wire inside. You may have to use cable tacks to affix your cables to the crossbeams if your local regulations require. They're available at your local hardware store. Coil the cable, set it down, and head back downstairs.

Laying track

Image014
Lay the cable on the insulation out of the main walkway to prevent stepping on it.

Tack It Down

Tack it down
Cable tacks hold the cable in place and tidy up the look.

We repeat the process on the wall by our router. Leave the drill bit in the hole poking up into the attic. Now, crawl into the attic and view the drill bit to get an idea of the location. Clear insulation from around the hole.

We Struck Oil!

Image016
Locating the drill can be easy if it's high enough.

After removing the drill bit, start feeding your glow rod down through the hole you just drilled and into wall until it stops. Take a moment here to replace any insulation you moved as best as you can. Holes leak heat and heat costs money.

Head back downstairs and fish the glow rod from the cutout in the wall using a coat hanger or a hook. Once through the hole, pull the glow rod down until you see the end and cable emerge. Disconnect the cable from the glow rod and pull enough cable through the hole to reach your patch panel location.

The rest of our cabling happens inside. Get your new crimping tool and use the cutting blade to cut the cable entering the wall at your destination point if there is excess or if you used a cable box.

Affix your wall brackets to the wall using the screws provided in the pack. Don't overtighten these screws or you'll pull the braces through the wall. You just want it immobile, not bending the fabric of time.

Install the brackets

Image017
Tighten just snug.

Now, use the sheath-stripping part of the crimping tool to remove the sheath from your cable ends. Ideally, you'll want no more than one inch of wire unsheathed to protect bandwidth. Any more than that and you chance line interference.

Strip It Off

Image018
Remove one inch of sheathing from the cable.

The next step depends on the type of jack connectors you bought.

*Tip: The standard pinout order for cable 568A is white/green, green, white/orange, blue, white/blue, orange, white/brown, and brown. 568B is white/orange, orange, white/green, blue, white/blue, green, white/brown, and brown.

Single-piece wall plates are more commonly used for phone jacks than Ethernet cable, but they are much easier to install for a newbie or those with big hands. The main drawback is to single-piece plates is the length of exposed, untwisted wire. This makes them more prone to interference, which can slow a full 10 gigabit connection, though this generally isn't a concern on an inside wall away from electrical outlets. You will need to strip the sheathing back about three inches to have sufficient wire to stretch to the screw mounts.

Stripping Crazy!

Image019
Strip the sheathing farther on single piece wall plates.

Starting with the bottom-left corner, wire them in order for your chosen standard, either 568A or 568B. For ours wired with 568A, we went with white/green to blue, green to orange, white/orange to black, and blue to red up the left side.

Wiring on the Left

Image020
Wire the left side as shown.

On the right side we connected brown to blue, brown/white to brown, orange to yellow, and blue/white to green.

Wiring on the Right

Image021
Wire the right side as shown.

Once the jack is wired up, you can screw it into the mounting bracket. Take care to screw it down just snug, as the faceplate will crack if you apply too much pressure.

Button It Up

Image022
Screw your new jack to the wall.

Stick with us here, we're almost finished!

On the router wall again, you can now mount your mounting bracket in the opening on your wall exactly as before. Then add your hole-style wall plate and secure it with the provided screws. If you're not using a patch panel, you can simply put another jack on this wall too, then plug it into the router and you're off and running. However, using the patch panel and a hole-style receptacle wall plate allows for expansion for running cable to your new TiVo, your refrigerator, security cameras, or anything else that connects to the "Internet of Things" in the future. It's something to think about.

You should now mount your patch panel bracket in a place that is easily accessible to plug new devices into your router. If mounting to a sheetrock wall, mount only on the studs at least one stud from any electrical outlet. You'll need to use the stud finder again to find them through the wall. Some use brackets that allow for the panel to swing outward in one direction or another to make mounting new cable easier. Be sure to allow for the swing if yours does this. The mount we chose is a simple vertical mount that we'll be affixing to the bottom of a built-in desk for easy access.

"Jerk Screws"

Image023
GRK fasteners drill their own pilot holes and provide strong holding power.

To affix our bracket, we chose what we affectionately refer to as "jerk screws." These self-tapping, hex head screws made by GRK Fasteners are corrosion resistant and strong enough to back out multiple times if necessary. And when you're finished you can build a house with the leftovers.

Hold your bracket up and mark the mounting holes with a pencil. Then run the screws in about a quarter inch to create a guide hole at each pencil mark. Finally, mount your bracket using the holes.

To create a smooth-looking patch panel, we started mounting our wires on the side that faced the wall that our wires entered the room. This prevents a big curve in the bulk of cable running from the panel. That meant for us the first cable punched down was number twenty-four. Afterward, simply zip-tie the cables in bundles of two or three as you go down the patch panel for a clean, streamlined look. Then zip-tie the cables every six inches until you reach the wall receptacle.

Punch Down the Cable

Image024
Start filling your panel on the side the cable enters for easy expansion.

After connecting your cables, test them all with a cable tester. If problems happen they are likely at the patch panel because of misaligned wires or wires that were too short to make contact. Once you correct any problems, mount your panel to your bracket. 

Now, pat yourself on the back. You did it! Want to take it a small step further? Take a sharpie to your new jack and mark it with a small number corresponding to the number on your patch panel. This would be 1–24 on our panel. Next, label your panel with a sticker or a bit of tape. This will make tracking down connection issues much easier.

Label Your Jacks

Image025
Human-friendly sticker labels are easy to identify without tracking down numbers.

Let's clean up. Get that tub of wall mud.

Wall Mud

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We prefer the low-dust variety in case we have to do some sanding.

A word about texturing: In our example home, the walls are textured in the popular style where the mud is simply drawn in big sweeping paths going in different directions. This makes for easy repair. For flat walls, simply sand down the dry mud after 24 hours to a consistent height. For the style that looks similar to worm trails in the wall, you can use wall mud on a moistened automotive sponge, dabbing the sponge in the mud, then on the wall with straight, short jabs to retexture. We promise it is not as hard as it sounds.

Start with opening the pumpkin cut. Lift up the swinging part of the wall and smear a good ½ inch of mud into the mating surfaces of the cut. This will serve as "glue" to hold the cut back together.

Mud the Pumpkin

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Any excess will be scraped off the front and help fortify the back.

Once you have all three surfaces of the pumpkin cut mudded properly, you can fold the top down and press gently until it is seated. Don't press too hard. Use your putty knife to smooth out the surface portion of the hole. If your walls are like ours, simply spread the mud to texture now. While you're at it, you may as well mud up those old nail holes.

Texture and Wait

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Cover the wall-wrecking evidence!

Now, the waiting begins. You should wait 24 hours to paint or you may end up with cracks in your wall, forcing you to start over again. While you wait, run the vacuum to remove all the dust and chunks of wall left behind. You can take any painted chunks to your local hardware store to get your paint color matched for free. 

That's it! You're done! Enjoy your new blazing-fast speeds. The future is now.

If you were brave enough to follow our tutorial on running cables in a standard home, send us pics of your project to comments@maximumpc.com. We'd love to see how it turned out.

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