General Gaming Article |
- Newegg Daily Deals: Seasonic 660W Power Supply, LG 23.8-Inch Monitor, and More!
- Razer Chroma Workshop is Your One-Stop Destination for Lighting Effects
- Lenovo's Yoga 700 is a Cheaper Alternative to the Yoga 900
- Palmer Luckey Discusses the Future of VR
- Razer Kraken Pro Review
| Newegg Daily Deals: Seasonic 660W Power Supply, LG 23.8-Inch Monitor, and More! Posted: 29 Oct 2015 11:13 AM PDT Top Deal: Want to know a secret? You probably don't need a super high wattage power supply for your new build. We say "probably" because we don't know what you're planning, but save for the most extreme builds, a 1,000W PSU or even 800W PSU is overkill. You can save yourself some coin by going with a quality PSU with a lower wattage rating and divert those funds elsewhere in your build, like a faster graphics card or more storage. Need a recommendation for a PSU? Check out today's top deal for a Seasonic SS-660XP2 660W PSU for $100 with free shipping (normally $134 - use coupon code: [EMCKANW23]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate). This thing is fully modular and is 80 Plus Platinum certified, and serves up a respectable 55A over the all-important +12V rail. Other Deals: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB w/ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling Graphics Card for $280 with free shipping (normally $315; Free Rainbow Six Siege or Assassin's Creed Syndicate, limited offer) LG 23.8-inch 5ms HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS 250 cd/m2 DFC 5,000,000:1 (1000:1) for $130 with free shipping (normally $156 - use coupon code: [EMCKANW22]) Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.3 GHz LGA 2011-v3 140W Desktop Processor for $375 with free shipping (normally $400 - use coupon code: [EMCKANV26]) Seagate NAS HDD 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [ESCKANV29]) | ||||||||||||||
| Razer Chroma Workshop is Your One-Stop Destination for Lighting Effects Posted: 29 Oct 2015 11:00 AM PDT A collection of lights Razer continues to grow its catalog of Chroma peripherals with fancy lighting effects, and if you own one, there's a new microsite you can go to and find all Chroma-enabled game titles, apps, and community created Chroma lighting profiles. Currently supported Razer Chroma devices include:
If you own one of the above and want to play around with some neat lighting effects, the Chroma Workshop is where you want to go. At present, it contains 216 Chrome profiles with names like Texas Flag, ToxicHeart, and PacMan. Each one has an accompanying YouTube video so you can preview the effect. Some of them are pretty creative, like this one called Shooting Stars: "With an ever-growing list of games with integrated Chroma Lighting effects, stand-alone Chroma Apps like the Audio Visualizer or retro-game classic Snake and a community driven Marketplace for user-created Chroma profiles, the Chroma Workshop provides thousands of different ways to light up your gaming rig," Razer says. Head here to check it out. | ||||||||||||||
| Lenovo's Yoga 700 is a Cheaper Alternative to the Yoga 900 Posted: 29 Oct 2015 09:33 AM PDT Learning to Yoga on a budget If you want a Surface Pro-like system for a cheaper price, Lenovo last week unveiled its Yoga 900, a convertible PC that comes with a keyboard and starts at $1,200. And if you want to pay even less, Lenovo today added two sub-$1,000 Yoga 700 convertibles to the mix, an 11-inch version and a 14-inch model. The 11-inch Yoga 700 starts at $649, which is just over half the price of the Yoga 900. It's a thin and lightweight 2-in-1 that weighs 1.1kg (2.43 pounds) and measures 15.8mm (0.62 inches) thick. Lenovo's press release is short on specs for the 11-inch Yoga 700, though according to our sister site TechRadar, it's powered by an Intel Core m5-6Y64 processor and can be configured with 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a 256GB Samsung SSD. Starting at $799, the 14-inch Yoga 700 adds a bit more oomph. Like the 11-inch version, it sports a 10-point multitouch IPS display with a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) resolution, up to a 256GB SSD, and up to 8GB of RAM, but it's powered by up to a 6th Generation Intel Core i7 processor (Skylake) and optional Nvidia GeForce 940M discrete graphics. Both versions boast an ergonomically designed AccuType backlit keyboard and Dolby stereo speakers, Lenovo says. And of course both are running Windows 10. The 11-inch and 14-inch Yoga 700 convertibles will be available this month direct from Lenovo and at Best Buy. | ||||||||||||||
| Palmer Luckey Discusses the Future of VR Posted: 29 Oct 2015 12:00 AM PDT "Virtual reality is likely to be the final form of media," says the Oculus founderJust ahead of the Oculus Connect 2 event held last month, we had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. In our 12-minute interview, we cover a variety of high-level topics. In the discussion, Luckey gives us the status and outlook for VR. In the near future, he believes we will see an explosion of people using VR, and tons of VR games in development. Considering this isn't VR's first foray into the market, we also talk about the medium's past pitfalls and how Oculus VR's situation is going to be different. Luckey asserts that a key reason why VR is going to work this time around is that the technology simply wasn't fast enough before. "People just didn't have machines that could render an experience that was anything close to comfortable or compelling, and that's all changed," Luckey stated, adding, "It's almost entirely a timing issue. It would have been impossible to start Oculus in even the mid-2000s." When we asked him if he thought traditional 2D displays would start going away, he replied, "Eventually, but it's only a matter of time," adding, "You're going to see the convergence of AR (augmented reality) and VR technologies into the same headset eventually. It will be something you wear all the time or at least [it will be] something you carry around all the time, and the rendering horsepower will be on the headset or in your pocket and not tied to a big desktop PC." Will VR would ever go mainstream in the same way that smartphones are now mainstream? Luckey thinks that it's "just be a matter of time" and that VR will become "truly mainstream when VR headsets drop under $100, like smartphones today." Asked if he thinks refreshed VR headsets will come out yearly, sort of following the same cadence as major smartphone releases, he said that he believes it will get there eventually, but not now. On a tangential note, Luckey stated that he thinks the smartphone market will slow down with its yearly iterations once the market matures, "This is just my pet theory, but [smartphones] are going to stop refreshing so fast in the future, because there's not going to be much further for them to go. There's not going to be a reason to refresh every single year. You'll be able to have one solid device that lasts you several years. Just like you have a car. People don't replace their car every year." Is it likely that VR might be just a niche product? Luckey asserts, "Virtual reality will be a niche product for at least some time," then added, "If you look at the Palm Pilot, it's sort of a good example. The Palm Pilot was very well known. It was very influential, but it wasn't something everyone wanted to use or could justify. They sold millions of units and lots of people recognized Palm Pilot as a great brand, but you could say the Palm Pilot was [still] a niche product… Eventually the technology got good enough, the cost came down enough that we had things like the iPhone, where it really took off and everyone could justify having the tech in their lives. I think virtual reality will be on the same continuum. It can be successful as a niche product. It doesn't have to be mainstream and appeal to everyone in the world in order to be successful, but that is the eventual end goal; to build something everybody will have a use for. I think that virtual reality will inevitably have a use for everyone because anything you can imagine of doing in real life, you can do as good or better in virtual reality without physical laws governing what you can do." Palmer then cited travel, education, and even virtual past time travel as examples of what VR could do. "We can't [virtual time travel] with any other technology," he exclaimed. When asked what the most popular type of experiences VR will bring about, he replied, "I think in the long run, there won't be one type of content that dominates. If you look at books for example, you have a wide range of things. Some are educational, some are fun, some are fiction, some are non-fiction. I think VR will be kind of similar. …it's going to [have] a wide range of uses." Setting his sights for VR high, Luckey asserted,"Virtual reality is likely to be the final form of media," Backing up his claim, he added, "It's hard to go up against something that can not only be its own set of media, but replicate every other form of media that's ever existed." | ||||||||||||||
| Posted: 26 Oct 2015 05:45 AM PDT at a glance(+) Cracking (-) Cracked This article was published in the December 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here. All about the buttery biscuit bassWhat is it with Razer and just not doing so great lately? If there was ever a time for it to shine, you'd think it would be now. After years of research and development, it should be winning hearts and minds with its LED-encompassing peripherals of power. However, that's simply not the case. That's not the way the cookie crumbles, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the Razer Kraken Pro. Headsets have come a long way over the last decade. And even though this variant of Razer's prestigious Kraken series is priced competitively, at around $80, it just doesn't hold its own when compared to solutions from competitors such as QPad, Steelseries or Asus. It suffers from "gamer's syndrome." What do we mean by that? Simply put, too much bass. For some reason, many peripheral manufacturers have a tendency to lean too heavily on the bass production side with their headsets. And although this is great if you're looking to have dubstep playing at max volume constantly, it just doesn't cut it if you're looking for high-quality audio fidelity. This may be news to Razer, but a well-rounded headset consists of mastering not only the lows, but also the mids and the highs. The treble and the mids are just as important as the bass. Even in gaming, you need to hear the crunch of the explosions, the gun shots, the clash of swords, not just the dull thud of the bomb going off as it reverberates around your eardrums, slowly caressing them into oblivion. If you're looking to get these headphones for well-rounded sound reproduction, don't. Unless, of course, bass-heavy noise is your thing. In which case, these could be for you. However, it's not all doom and gloom for poor old Razer. The headset is a lovely fit. There's just enough tension, meaning that even after long periods of listening to music or gaming, it's still exceedingly comfortable. The earcups are a little small, though they do entirely surround your ears (as long as they're fairly small). Razer also provides an extension cable to ensure you have enough room to maneuver. Could Be WorseThe headset looks pretty stylish, too. The white finish for this particular special edition makes it a solid-looking headset. But unfortunately, you still wouldn't want to wear these things in public. Even with the retractable microphone, the garish Razer typeface littered across the top of the headband makes you feel like a bit of a donkey—not a design choice we're fans of here. The retractable mic is a fantastic addition, and has extensive noise-cancelling features, so much so that in some cases we couldn't get it to register sound at all. You might need to tweak it to actually get it to pick up your own voice, but all in all, it's quite the challenge just to register any noise on the poor thing, even in a busy office environment. Ultimately, these headphones just don't provide a compelling offer to anyone who's looking at Razer for more than brand worship. They don't provide good sound reproduction, the microphone is flaky at best, and, if you have ears even slightly more than average-sized, you're going to struggle to fit them comfortably around your lugs. The extension-capable, retractable mic, and four-pole adapter for mobile usage are nice additions, but they're just not enough to redeem its prior sins. When there are better, cheaper alternatives out there, such as the Kingston HyperX Cloud Gaming or QPad's QH-85, we're genuinely confused as to what Razer is playing at here. $80, www.newegg.com
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