General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Technolust: To Catch a Photon

Posted: 09 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

Everything you need for a great time lapse experience

Building PCs is an expensive hobby, but there is no shortage of other hobbies that are just as (or more) expensive. Photography ranks supreme among pricey pastimes. Buying a few lenses and a body can easily max out a moderate credit limit.

When I was in journalism school, I focused the majority of my energy on photography. It was a passion I picked up while in the military, and I loved the idea of doing it for work. I idolize the work of photographers like Nick Ut and Tim Hetherington.

Even though I do far more writing than shooting now, I still love that feeling of being behind the viewfinder, looking for the right moment to capture some photons. As with any activity, you start to lust after some of the gear that would make life easier.

One hot bod

That body, though.
That body, though.

When it comes to camera gear, the general guidance is to buy a cheaper (possibly used) body, and save all your money for lenses. The glass will cost you much more, and bodies will usually last a long time, provided you get a new shutter. But sometimes, you want the new shiny thing.

Nikon's top-of-the-line D4S is sexy in all the ways a photographer could want, and has the price to match. At $6,000, this body costs twice as much as the budget we allow for our Turbo build. Just think about that: For the price of two high-end gaming PCs, you can get one camera body. Told you this was an expensive hobby.

The D4S has a 16.2 megapixel full-frame (FX) sensor, 36mm wide by 23.9mm high. That sensor offers an ISO range of 100 to 25,600, which means low light is much less of a challenge. High ISOs come with noise, so the body also has ISO noise reduction with variable levels.

As with other Nikon DSLRs, the D4S can save images as RAW (NEF format), JPG, RAW+JPG, or TIFF. The D4S only takes compact flash, which means stocking up on new storage media.

For shooting video, the D4S offers 1080p/60 video recording, which is pretty awesome if you ask me. That allows the option of 60fps video or slow-motion (half-speed) playback at 30fps.

While some fans may scoff at the choice of Nikon over Canon (honestly, these debates can get as heated as the Intel vs. AMD debate), there are a few things that guide any decision when looking at a camera body. First, your ability to shoot and compose a frame is far more important than the body you use. After that, I always tell people to use the system that they're familiar with. However, buying into a system means being locked into that ecosystem (not unlike mobile phones).

I have two Nikon bodies already, which will guide my decisions when buying a new body. My trusty D90 got me through a lot of my shooting in college. My F2 is a prized possession; it was given to me by a close friend. The F2 was his grandmother's, who worked as a professional photographer and artist in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

Since both cameras use Nikon's F-mount, I can swap lenses between the two without adapters. That's the type of thing that adds value to any lens collection. The D4S uses the same mount, so going with team yellow is an obvious advantage for me.

What does the D4S have that my D90 doesn't?

Well, as trusty and solid as my D90 is, there is plenty of room for improvement. First off, the D90 is a cropped (DX) sensor. That means the effective sensor area is smaller, and can collect fewer dots than a full sensor. While you can still get great images out of a cropped sensor camera, a full-frame sensor will offer a bigger image and more detail.

Secondly, my D90's video mode is limited to 720p. That was fine when the D90 first came to market, but it just won't cut it these days. Today, 1080p is a standard for everything from cell phone cameras to laptop screens. Recording your source video at anything less than 1080p is pretty much unacceptable.

Finally, the camera body offers a much higher ISO range, which allows for better shooting in low-light. As challenging as some sports and action shots can be, I've found the hardest shots have been in dark rooms (like theaters), or those with warm lighting without any sunlight (like school board of directors meetings). With a higher ISO that can stay clean, a whole new world of subjects is open to me, even with the current lenses I own.

Move that body

Timelapse motion made easy.
Timelapse motion made easy.

As much as I love editorial feature photography, I've more recently become a fan of time-lapse photography. Time lapse is very technical and requires a lot of planning, since the shoot will likely span several hours. Even with that planning done, a time-lapse shot can look very boring without any motion.

Moving the camera during a time-lapse sequence requires very precise, small movements. To do this, I'd love to get my paws on a Rhino Slider Evo Carbon and a Rhino Motion to go with it. The Slider Evo Carbon is a high-end slider that allows for precise pans. The Motion is a motor and controller unit for the Slider Evo Carbon, and allows for precise movements of the camera over the course of the time-lapse capture.

The Slider Evo Carbon features (as its name suggests) a pair of interchangeable carbon-fiber rods that the camera carriage slides across. Since some of the most stunning time-lapse sequences are captured in places you might have to hike to, going with carbon-fiber saves a lot on weight. When you're packing things on your back, every ounce matters.

You can buy both items as a kit. The 42-inch rail Evo Carbon and Motion is $1,200, while the 24-inch version is $1,100.

If you have no idea what time-lapse is, check out these awesome examples.

House of Cards Main Title Sequence from Drew Geraci (District 7 Media).

EXISTENCE A TIMELAPSE PROJECT from Michael Shainblum.

Los Angeles Time-Lapse - TimeLAX 01 from iVideoMaking.

So, what do I get out of the Rhino Slider?

If you watched those time-lapse sequences, you'll notice that a lot of them feature motion where the camera is moving. It's really cool because it creates a kind of parallax effect, where the background tends to move less than the foreground. It's also near impossible to do by hand.

By using a precision motor and rail system, you can consistently get panning time-lapse shots.

A lens to match

The AF-S Nikkor 24mm f/1.4G is sexy fast.
The AF-S Nikkor 24mm f/1.4G is sexy fast.

Of course, you can't shoot a time-lapse sequence with a body and motion rig alone. You need a lens to help collect those photons and send them barreling into your CMOS sensor.

For every shot, you really have to consider your lens choice. Focal length and aperture (speed) are crucial things to consider when choosing the right lens. When we're talking about time lapse, it's generally better to go nice and wide (lower focal length), so you can capture more stuff in the image.

Every photographer needs a good wide lens. For my imaginary camera bag, I'd definitely keep a Nikkor AF-S 24mm f/1.4G. The full-frame lens is sexy fast and runs around $2,000.

If you're not a photographer and those numbers make your head spin, let me break it down for you. Nikkor is Nikon's brand of lenses, while the AF-S designation means that the lens features its own autofocus motor, which is actuated by signals from the camera body. AF lenses, on the other hand, use a mechanical linkage to the camera body to move the lens while autofocusing. Both lens types can be set for manual focus mode.

The most obvious number in the model is the focal length, in this case 24mm. Basically, the lower the focal length, the wider the angle, and vice versa. The second number, f/1.4 refers to the widest aperture possible. Nikon's G designation means that there's no manual aperture control ring on the lens, and aperture is controlled through the camera body. This is the only real disadvantage of this lens that I can see. (It means that I can't use it with my F2.)

The aperture is like you eye's iris, and is one of the things that control the amount of light that hits the sensor. The lower the aperture number, the wider the dilation of the aperture. Since a wide aperture lets in more light, it allows for faster shutter speeds while still producing a properly lit image. Thus, a low aperture number like f/2.8 is said to be "faster" than a lens with an aperture of f/4. At f/1.4, this lens is about as fast as you can get.

Why do I need a new lens if I have some already?

The one disadvantage to buying into a DX lens system with my D90 is that the lenses get chopped at the knees when I move to a FX body. DX lenses are meant for DX sensors. If you mount the lens on a FX body, the lens will still work just fine, but the camera will crop the sensor to DX dimensions automatically. There's no real way around this, since the DX lenses are built to project light on the area of the smaller DX sensor.

By upgrading to an FX body like the D4S, you also have to upgrade your lenses to take full advantage of the full-size sensor. It's awesome that I can use any F-mount lens on any NIkon DSLR or SLR, but nobody said there weren't caveats.

Taken together, these tools would make for a great time-lapse kit to take on my next hiking trip. 

Are you a photographer? Let us know what would be in the camera bag of your dreams in the comments.

We've Seen the Future of TV: Perfect Black on LG's OLED Screens

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 07:52 PM PST

LG OLED TV

Perfect Black is the Next Step

Before LCDs came around, we watched movies and TVs on sub-par CRT screens (don't judge us—it was the best we had at the time!). But times change, and plasmas and LCDs revolutionized the home entertainment experience with super-wide, thin screens with much higher quality display.

Now we're on the verge of the next big revolution in screen technology: OLEDs, capable of presenting the illusive "Perfect Black" color that screen makers have been chasing for years. LG has finally found a way to create Perfect Black in their new OLED screens, and it looks incredible.

Let's take a look at the basics: what Perfect Black is, and why it can make every movie you've ever watched look even better.

LG OLED Contrast

What is Perfect Black?

There have been four types of display technology in the history of television: Cathode Ray Tube (CRT), Plasma, LCD, and OLED. Each of those offered massive improvements in picture quality over their predecessor, but OLED might be the biggest leap we've seen yet.

And that's because the OLED screen doesn't need a backlight—the shared bane of all previous display tech. Each individual pixel can emit light all on its own, which enables the OLED to create the perfect shades of black and gives the screen an infinite contrast ratio!

Both of those achievements have been impossible with backlight technology, and we're super excited to see LG leading the way with OLEDs so we can leave those weak colors in the past forever.

Dark Knight Poster

How Big of a Difference Does Perfect Black Make?

Unless you're super into TV specs, you might not immediately realize how big of a deal Perfect Black really is when it comes to display quality. Black level is actually one of the two most important elements in TV.

Just think back to any movie you watched recently and consider how often you saw the color black on screen. Batman's cape or Star Wars' space or the Godfather's suit. It's one of the most common colors on screen, and it's always sabotaged by a backlight. Until now. LG's OLED screens finally gives space the dark, empty vastness it deserves, and adds an extra touch of broodiness to Bruce Wayne's nighttime getup.

LG Light Pollution

A Side-By-Side Comparison

Metaphors are always fun. Think of it similar to light pollution when you're looking at stars in the sky. When you're in a bright city, the ambient light drowns out the smaller light sources in the sky, so you can't actually see most of the stars up there.

It's only when you're out in the wilderness (closer to Perfect Dark) that you can see the beautiful starlight more clearly. OLED screen tech makes sure there's no backlight drowning out nearby colors -- removing that light pollution. Everything pixel light and color is exactly as it should be.

Look at the images above and notice how washed-out things look when a backlight is on, and how crisp and precise every white dot is on LG's screen tech with Perfect Black. That's the difference.

LG OLED

See For Yourself

LG put together a fun video "Colorful Sensation in Black" that helps emphasize the importance of effective black rendering in determining the accuracy of today's advanced displays. It also has some pretty nifty parkour moves and some adorable kids playing along.

Check out the video, and then head over to LG's slick website to check out their gorgeous array of curved, widescreen OLEDs, and start to picture how much better your favorite movies would look with Perfect Black.

Sponsored by LG

Newegg Daily Deals: iBuyPower Core i7 Desktop, CM Storm Stryker Case, and More!

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 12:11 PM PST

iBuyPower Desktop

Top Deal:

We're obviously huge proponents of building your own rig, but in cases where that's not possible -- short on time, recommending a system for someone else, etc. -- there are valid reasons to buy a pre-built machine. If that's the boat you find yourself in, paddle over to today's top deal for an iBuyPower Desktop Computer Source Series NE784K-SL  for $1,500 with free shipping (normally $1,606). It has an Intel Core i7-5820K processor, 16GB DDR4 memory, 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD, GeForce GTX 980 graphics card, and Windows 10 Home. Game on!

Other Deals:

Dell 24.1-inch 6ms Dual HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor IPS, height & pivot adjustable for $240 with free shipping (normally $260 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAX23])

G.Skill Ripjaws 4 Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Memory Kit for $120 with free shipping (normally $146)

CM Storm Stryker - White Full Tower Gaming Computer Case with Handle and External 2.5-inch Drive Dock for $155 with free shipping (normally $167; additional $30 Mail-in rebate)

Dell 23-inch 5ms Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 1,000:1 for $130 with free shipping (normally $180)

Intel Readies Skull Canyon NUC with Iris Pro Graphics

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 12:01 PM PST

Hello, Iris Pro!

Skull Canyon

We've been intrigued with Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) since its first iteration, which packaged general purpose computing capabilities in a small size box. There have been several followup releases since then, but its most powerful configuration is right around the corner.

Slated for an early 2016 launch, Intel is teasing a new NUC called Skull Canyon. Intel's calling it "the most powerful NUC ever...now with Intel 'Iris' Pro graphics."

Beyond that, official details are non-existent, though according to Fanless Tech (which brought this to our attention), Intel's likely referencing a 6th Generation (Skylake) Core processor with Intel's Gen9 Iris Pro 580 GPU (GT4e).

That would be quite the upgrade. Iris Pro isn't yet available on any Skylake parts, but if the upcoming NUC does wield an Iris Pro 580 GPU, it will attack graphics with 72 execution units and 128MB of eDRAM L4 cache.

It's still an integrated solution, but compared to Intel's Iris Graphics 540 and 550 GPUs (GT3e) with 48 execution units and 64MB of eDRAM, Iris Pro 580 would provide the upcoming NUC with a decent boost in graphics performance. It will be interesting to see what gaming would be like on Skull Canyon.

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IDC Provides Rational Explanation for Short Term PC Shipment Decline

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 11:32 AM PST

PC upgrades are coming

HP Windows 10 Laptop

For a long while, the tired narrative from market research firms and analysts was that tablets were replacing the PC. They backed their claims with numbers showing a rapid rise in tablet shipments coinciding with slowed growth among desktop and laptop PCs, but fast forward to today and at least one firm is singing a refreshing tune.

In its latest report, International Data Corporation (IDC) notes that worldwide PC shipments are on track to fall 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, which in turn would drag the year-over-year growth rate down to negative 10.3 percent. But instead of pointing to tablets or, as Tim Cook would have you believe, gadgets like the iPad Pro, IDC says the decline is a short term thing.

IDC said it's "optimistic" that the market will stabilize once home consumers and businesses begin replacing their PCs. Why isn't that happening already?

"Despite the substantial shift in spending and usage models from PCs toward tablets and phones in recent years, very few people are giving up on their PC – they are just making it last longer," said Loren Loverde, Vice President, Worldwide Tracker Forecasting and PC research. "The free upgrade to Windows 10 enables some users to postpone an upgrade a little, but not indefinitely. Some consumers will use a free OS upgrade to delay a new PC purchase and test the transition to Windows 10."

Even though the free upgrade to Windows 10 is breathing new life into old machines, IDC expects that PC owners will ultimately upgrade, especially as detachable (2-in-1) devices become more attractive.

The market research firm also expects the end of support for Windows 7 to spur replacements, just as Windows XP's EOL helped boost shipments in 2014.

And what of those tablets that analysts once thought would destroy the PC market?

"Despite declining competition from slate tablets, demand for PCs has remained price-sensitive and slow," said Jay Chou, Research Manager, Worldwide PC Tracker. "Nonetheless, the market is still evolving in more positive ways. IDC expects continued growth for all-in-one desktops as well as convertible and ultraslim notebooks. Going forward, these designs will continue to gain share, even in the face of stable PC volumes and competition from detachable tablets."

Put another way, tablets and smartphones (and the mobile movement in general) may have played a part in delaying PC upgrades, but fear now, traditional PCs are still very much long for this world.

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Corsair Flips PC Building on Its Head, Intros a Pair of Inverted Cases

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 10:46 AM PST

First time for everything

Corsair Carbide 600C Inside

Corsair is a long time veteran in the PC building space with a vast assortment of enclosures to choose from. However, one thing you wouldn't have found in its catalog of cases was an inverted ATX chassis. That changes today with the introduction of not one, but two inverted ATX cases, the Carbide 600Q and Carbide 600C.

These are both cases built around a minimalist philosophy, at least in terms of styling. The inverted design will inevitably draw attention to your build, though only the 600C comes with a side window.

Corsair didn't just flip the mobo around for spits and giggles, the inverted design places head producing components in the airflow path of two 140mm intake fans and a single 140mm exhaust fan. Along with extra wide vents, Corsair is championing a high level of air cooling here.

Corsair Carbide 600Q

All the fans are low noise ones, and for an added level of hush-hush, the 600Q sports high density sound dampening material fitted in the front panel, side panels, and roof.

Both cases sport a curved front panel that houses two 5.25-inch drive bays stealthily placed behind a hinged flap. On the inside are two tool-less 3.5-inch drive bays and three tool-free 2.5-inch bays.

Neat freaks will appreciate the "plethora of cable routing holes, tie-downs, and cable grommets" that Corsair says eases the process of building in either chassis.

The Carbide 600Q and Carbide 600C will both be available sometime this month, though Corsair didn't say how much they'll cost.

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USPS Will Email Images Of Your Snail Mail

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 07:38 AM PST

USPS Informed Delivery

Remember that box that sits out in front of your house, office, or apartment? The one that Bill seems to favor? The one that doesn't have a separate spam box and likes to stockpile more retail fliers and other junk than legitimate letters? Yeah, that's the one. It's become less important now that email has taken over most of your communicating duties.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is seemingly acknowledging that fact by offering a new service called Informed Delivery. Essentially, customers will no longer have to make daily trips to the mailbox. Taking advantage of how we keep our eyes glued to smartphones, tablets, and notebooks, all customers have to do is open their inbox to see what's outside in the mailbox.

Convenient.

The USPS says that participants in the program will receive 10 mail piece images in the morning. If the customer has more mail than that waiting in the box, the additional images will be waiting to be viewed online via the dashboard of his/her My USPS account. The images will be black and white, showing both the user's address and the return address. Nothing will be opened.

According to the official FAQ, the service is provided at no additional cost. Also, setting up a My USPS account is easy and free. Right now the only drawback is that Informed Delivery works with letter-sized mail; catalogs and magazines aren't supported, but may be added sometime in the future, the USPS says.

Unfortunately, this service isn't rolling out nationwide at this time. The USPS actually began testing the service in Northern Virginia back in 2014. However, the service is currently undergoing tests in the New York City metro area including select areas in New York and Connecticut. Additional areas are being considered for 2016.

The FAQ also states that Informed Delivery will work for those who use a PO Box, but is not currently being offered to businesses. Also, if the user does not receive mail that day, then no email notifications will be sent to that customer. Only one notification will be provided each day there's new mail in the outside box.

Have we gotten so lazy that we now need a service like Informed Delivery to exist? Would something like Informed Delivery be convenient? When on a trip… yes. Imagine staying in a hotel room across the country and logging into the My USPS account to see if that important paper check has arrived in the mail. Or better yet, what if the mailbox is a mile down the road? Informed Delivery would be super convenient, no?

VIA: TNW

AMD RTG Summit: HDR, Displays, FreeSync, and More

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 06:00 AM PST

AMD RTG Summit

Welcome to the RTG Summit

Earlier this month, AMD hosted their first-ever RTG Summit, replacing the former AMD Technology Summit. (Side note: it's interesting that the branding was all about Radeon; the AMD logo was not seen as far as I can recall.) The subject was all about graphics technologies, and the message was clear: AMD is not resting on its laurels when it comes to graphics. Unfortunately, we can't discuss all of the information we were presented yet, so this is the first of three parts covering the new and exciting technologies we should see over the coming year. For this first installment, we're digging into the Visual Technologies, focusing mostly on the displays you're actually going to look at rather than the hardware generating the pixels.

The RTG Summit is a nice break from the usual presentations in that most of the presentations were from senior engineers rather than marketing. Even better is that we were able to meet with these engineers over the course of two days, to get a deeper understanding of what the technologies mean, and in some cases to provide feedback regarding what we feel are the most important emerging trends and things we'd like to see. So if there's anything you'd like us to pass back to AMD, let us know in the comments.

 

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 07

Your Current Display Is So 1930

Kicking things off was a discussion of why our displays are holding us back. This has been a long-standing problem, dating back to the creation of many of our early display technologies in the 1930s. At the time, CRT displays were very primitive and offered a very limited range of output. We've progressed a lot since those early CRTs, but unfortunately our content and hardware hasn't really kept pace. When you consider what our eyes see in the real world with what displays can do, there's a vast chasm:

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 10

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 11

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 12

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 13

The sRGB color space is still the default in Windows, for example, and it comes nowhere near covering the colors our human eyes can perceive. Other expanded color spaces exist, including AdobeRGB (defined way back in 1998), along with newer standards like P3 and Rec. 2020. These new standards will move us from our limited sRGB outputs to High Dynamic Range (HDR) content, promising a large step forward.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 18

What that means for the coming year is that you're really going to want a display that can support HDR content. This is different from the HDR rendering seen in games, as internally much of the rendering is done in HDR but the final output still needs to be dumbed down to fit in an SDR panel. This process is called tonemapping, and we've been doing it for years. Now we're going to need to change the algorithms to accommodate displays that natively support HDR content, and then we're going to need to use those new displays. Hollywood already has end-to-end HDR content and hardware available, and now AMD is working on bringing that same fidelity to PC gaming and workstations in 2016.

The one aspect of HDR that's a bit concerning is the supported output range. Do we really want displays that can sear our eyeballs with 10,000 nits? I have a laptop that does 450 nits, and at maximum brightness it often feels like way more than I need (though it's handy outdoors). What we really need is better contrast, not just insane brightness levels. I shudder to think about future retail demo units getting cranked to maximum brightness to demonstrate superiority over displays that "only" reach 1000 nits. The idea is to create more lifelike visuals, but if you're watching a movie in a dark room, do you really want your display to do a flash-bomb 10,000 nits for on-screen explosions?

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 26

FreeSync Evolves to Support HDMI

Next up was a discussion of all things FreeSync, which encompasses several sub-topics. The big headliner is that FreeSync is using the HDMI vendor extensions to support variable refresh rates over HDMI going forward. Considering many inexpensive displays only support HDMI input, this sounds like a big win, but there's a pretty massive catch: It isn't possible to support FreeSync on older displays. That may seem obvious, but it means if you want FreeSync over HDMI, you're going to need to buy a new display, and if you're already buying a new display, you might consider spending more for a display that supports DisplayPort as well as HDMI. At least current FreeSync-enabled GPUs will be able to support HDMI FreeSync, so it's a net win.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 20

Other FreeSync news ends up being far more promising. From a market standpoint, we're seeing a lot of FreeSync displays, and AMD is quick to point out that the FreeSync displays cost less and there are more of them compared to competing G-Sync offerings. That's all true, and since FreeSync only uses standards that are already a part of the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, most new displays are able to support the technology. The problem is that Nvidia has a much larger market share for GPUs right now, and so far they have proven unwilling to support FreeSync, which means for the time being we're at an impasse. Until we have a unified standard, consumers will ultimately lose out, but it could be years before that happens.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 22

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 23

One of the big announcements for FreeSync last month came with the launch of Radeon Software Crimson Edition, which brought support for Low Framerate Compensation (LFC). This basically improves the algorithms on the GPU side to give a more fluid experience when you fall below the minimum supported refresh rate. This mostly brings FreeSync up to the level of G-Sync for lower framerates, which is good news. The bad news is that it's only something that works with certain FreeSync monitors, specifically monitors where the maximum supported refresh rate is at least 2.5 times higher than the minimum supported refresh rate. So if you have a 40-144Hz FreeSync display, you're golden; that 48-75Hz LG Ultrawide on the other hand gets left out in the cold, along with the 30-60Hz 4K panels.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 24

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 25

AMD also announced that the first FreeSync laptop is now shipping, in the form of the Lenovo Y700. This features an R9 M380 GPU with an AMD FX-8800P Carrizo APU, paired with a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS-type panel. (That might mean AHVA or PLS, but the net result is wider viewing angles than TN.) All of this sounds promising, but the actual supported refresh rates leave us scratching our heads: 40-60Hz. See above for the LFC discussion, and then you have to wonder why Lenovo didn't opt for a more sensible 30-75Hz range. Pricing at least is decent, at $899 via Best Buy, with more FreeSync laptops slated to launch over the coming weeks.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 31

Higher Refresh Rates with HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.3

Last but not least, AMD announced that their future 2016 GPUs will support HDMI 2.0a and DisplayPort 1.3. HDMI 2.0a support will be good for existing displays that feature that standard, but DP 1.3 is what really gets us excited. HBR3 (High Bitrate 3) over DP 1.3 provides up to 32.4Gbps of bandwidth, an 80 percent increase over HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.2. Why would we possibly need all that bandwidth? There are three primary reasons: higher resolutions, higher refresh rates, and HDR.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 33

Starting with HDR, it will require more bandwidth than SDR. That dovetails into the second item, which is support for higher resolutions—with and without HDR. You can do SDR at 60Hz with 4K content, but HDR would require more bandwidth. Similarly, 5K displays need 78 percent more bandwidth than 4K displays, which is why existing solutions like Dell's UltraSharp 5K display use dual DisplayPort. DP 1.3 will allow for a single cable and connection to run 5Kp60.

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 34

Finally, and this is the one that excites us, DP 1.3 will enable support for higher refresh rates. Sure, 240Hz at lower resolutions sounds cool, but we don't generally perceive a huge improvement going above 120Hz. But 4K at 120Hz? Hell yeah, sign us up! We've played with several 4K displays over the years, including the Acer XB280HK with G-Sync support. While getting variable refresh rates at 30-60Hz is nice, where things really become smooth is in the 75-100Hz range. Sadly, DP 1.2 simply can't accommodate the bandwidth for higher refresh rates at 4K, at least not without dropping from 4:4:4 chroma down to 4:2:2 or 4:2:0. DP 1.3 fixes all of that and should allow for much better FreeSync ranges on future monitors.

 

AMD RTG Visual Technology Slide 02

Wrapping Things Up

The good news for many of the above technologies is that the hardware and standards are ready. FreeSync over HDMI will work with AMD's R9 300/Fury and upcoming 2016 GPUs, and these same GPUs will be able to support HDR content as well—though you'll want a DP 1.3 connection for the best experience going forward. The bad news is that you'll need a new display to take advantage of most of this stuff. This is particularly important considering the lifespan of most displays. They're not like CPUs and GPUs where upgrades are relatively common; instead, most users only update their display when their old one breaks or becomes hopelessly outdated.

Consider those who jumped on the 30-inch bandwagon way back in 2005; even ten years later those old displays are still hanging around. As someone who only recently shifted to a 4K panel on the desktop, I can say that in many ways going from WQXGA IPS (2560x1600) to UHD 4K TN (3840x2160) was more of a lateral move than a clear improvement. Higher resolution support and variable refresh rates were all well and good, but going from IPS to TN was a clear downgrade, and HiDPI isn't all it's cracked up to be either. Now, of course, all existing displays are about to be made "obsolete," even though it will be years before the majority of users upgrade.

If you're thinking about buying a new computer display in the near future, our advice right now is to carefully consider what will be happening in the coming year. If you're okay with SDR content, no worries—you're not alone. But if you're thinking about buying a "dream" display, don't blow a wad of cash on something that will be superseded in the very near future. And when you do get around to upgrading, buy the best display you can reasonably afford, because more likely than not you're going to be staring at those pixels every day for years to come!

Looking at the bigger picture, while we can't release details of everything that was presented at the RTG Summit (yet), the event overall conveyed a great message. With Raja Koduri heading up the  Radeon Technologies Group, AMD has the right man in place to lead their charge into the next era of computer graphics. There was a positive vibe and energy among the AMD engineers that has been lacking in previous years. RTG is still young, and there's plenty of work yet to be completed, but the launch and then hotfix of the Crimson drivers shows that AMD is serious about making some much-needed changes. Not all change is bad.

Newegg Daily Deals: Acer Core i5 Desktop PC, Lenovo ThinkPad T420 (Refurb), and More!

Posted: 07 Dec 2015 02:47 PM PST

Acer Desktop

Top Deal:

The neat thing about Skylake is if you're willing to buy a system based on a previous generation architecture, like Haswell, you can score a snazzy deal. So it goes with today's top deal for an Acer Desktop Computer w/ Intel Core i5-4460 (3.2 GHz) for $400 with free shipping (normally $600; Free Sandisk 2.5-inch 128GB SATA III SSD with purchase, limited offer). It also features 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 2TB HDD, built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 8X DVD burner, Windows 10 Home, and USB keyboard and mouse.

Other Deals:

WD Blue 1TB Mobile 9.50mm Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5 Inch for $55 with free shipping (normally $100)

CyberPower Intelligent LCD Series CP1350AVRLCD UPS for $120 with free shipping (normally $133)

Lenovo ThinkPad T420 14-inch Notebook - Intel Core i5-2520M 2.5GHz - 4GB RAM - 160GB SSD - Webcam - DVD - Win 7 Pro (Refurbished) for $240 with free shipping (normally $350)

Intel Core i5-6600 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.3 GHz LGA 1151 65W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530 for $220 with free shipping (normally $230)

Bethesda Releases First PC Patch for Fallout 4

Posted: 07 Dec 2015 11:48 AM PST

Addressing a buggy wasteland

Fallout 4

Have you gotten stuck in a terminal in Fallout 4? It's one of the more common complaints with the PC version of Bethesda's latest nuclear wasteland title, and as promised, the developer addressed the issue with its first major patch (version 1.2).

It's one of several issues the patch fixes. It also introduces the usual round of stability and performance improvements for a better gaming experience all around. Specifically, the release notes list the following fixes:

  • General memory and stability improvements
  • Performance improvements inside the Corvega Assembly Plant
  • Optimizations to skinned decal rendering
  • Fixed issue with player becoming stuck in terminals
  • Fixed issue where equipped weapons become locked after completing Reunions
  • Fixed issue with "When Freedom Calls" where the quest would not complete
  • During "Confidence Man" fixed issue where player's health would continuously regenerate
  • Fixed crash related to jumping into water and reloading saved games
  • Fixed issue where Launcher would not save God Rays Quality setting properly (PC)

Outside of squashing a few bugs, Bethesda added some new features, too. After applying the patch, the number pad keys can be used for remapping. Bethesda also notes that remapping activate will work on quick container after applying the patch.

Bethesda said it's working release a Fallout 4 patch for consoles later this week.

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Dropbox to Shutter Mailbox and Carousel Services Next Year

Posted: 07 Dec 2015 10:08 AM PST

Living on borrowed time

Dropbox

Dropbox is finding out how tough it can be to juggle multiple services. It can become a distraction to your core business, so rather than continue down that road, Dropbox announced it's shutting down both Mailbox and Carousel.

Mailbox, which Dropbox acquired in 2013 to leverage the market shift in mobile email, will shut down for good on February 26, 2016. For those who need it, there's an FAQ that deals with the shutdown process and gives users tips on how to make the transition to a new mail client.

"Thank you to everyone who helped bring Mailbox to life, whether by spreading the word, letting us know what you liked (and didn't like), or simply using the product. You taught us so much, and we're deeply grateful," the Mailbox team stated in a blog post.

Carousel, a separate and standalone photo management app to help Dropbox users corral all their pictures and videos, will linger on slightly longer with a termination date set for March 31, 2016.

The good news for Carousel fans is that their photos won't be lost.

"On March 31, 2016 we'll be shutting down Carousel as a standalone app, and returning to a single Dropbox photo experience. All your photos will still be safe in Dropbox, but the Carousel app for iOS and Android will no longer function," Dropbox said.

Dropbox knows fans of both Mailbox and Carousel will find the news disappointing, and for that, the company says it's sorry.

"It's not easy to say goodbye to products we all love. But ultimately, we think this increased focus will help us create even better experiences for you in the months and years to come," Dropbox said.

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Asetek Sics Legal Hounds on AMD, Demands Halt of Radeon R9 Fury X Sales

Posted: 07 Dec 2015 09:47 AM PST

Losing your cool

AMD Radeon R9 Fury X

After taking Cooler Master to court over patent infringement claims and winning a permanent injunction earlier this year against certain products, cooling guru Asetek now has AMD and Gigabyte in its sights, GamerNexus reports.

Asetek has reportedly sent both firms cease and desist letters, Gigabyte for its GeForce GTX 980 Water Force graphics card and AMD for its Radeon R9 Fury X part.

Starting with Gigabyte, Asetek's issue with the GeForce GTX 980 Water Force (model number GV-N980WAOC-4GD) is that it's equipped with Cooler Master's Seidon 120M, an all-in-one liquid cooler that's among the ones Asetek won an injunction against.

Asetek is also in the process of obtaining a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Water Force (model number GV-N98TXTREME W-6GD) for evaluation to see if it uses an infringing cooler. Like the non-Ti version, it's one of several Xtreme Gaming cards Gigabyte introduced in November 2015.

As for the Radeon R9 Fury X, it features an all-in-one liquid cooler supplied by Cooler Master, one that Asetek feels also infringes on its patents. Whether or not AMD works out an arrangement with Asetek or disputes the validity of the claim remains to be seen.

Backstory

While the cease and desist letters to AMD and Gigabyte are new, this has been an ongoing issue between Asetek and Cooler Master over the past several years.

Asetek, founded in 2000, took Cooler Master's parent company CMI to court in 2014 over patent infringement claims. The jury ruled in Astek's favor and awarded the company damages based on a royalty rate of 14.5 percent for all of Cooler Master's Seidon, Nepton, and Glacer products. An interesting side note is that the Glacer 240L was essentially a rebrand of a Swiftech cooler that was pulled from U.S. markets following a cease and desist letter in 2013.

In any event, CMI appealed the decision, but it backfired. A judge in September doubled the damages award for products sold during the year to reflect a royalty rate of 23.375 percent and ordered the company to stop selling the infringing products. Cooler Master is in the process of appealing that decision, too

This brings us back full circle to Gigabyte and AMD. Asetek claims their respective coolers use CLC from Cooler Master that was already found to infringe on its patents, so they too much stop selling their cards as currently constructed, or so Asetek's letters demand.

Asetek also told GamersNexus that "there is no licensing agreement in place with Cooler Master, nor do we plan to offer any in the foreseeable future." If Asetek holds firm to that stance, it could lead to Gigabyte and AMD swapping out Cooler Master's designs for Asetek's, if they can work out an agreement. That assumes Asetek's claims are valid.

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Asus Ships 1440p Panel With 1mm Thin Bezel

Posted: 07 Dec 2015 05:53 AM PST

Asus Designo MX25AQ

Asus is now shipping the Designo MX25AQ, a new "frameless" display that sports a bezel thickness of just 1mm, a 25-inch AH-IPS screen, and a native 2560x1440 resolution. The company calls this display a "work of art" thanks to an award-winning design that includes a sundial-inspired base and a sturdy metal stand.

The list of specifications show that the panel has a 100 percent (sRGB) color saturation, a pixel pitch of 0.216mm, a max brightness of 300 cd/m2, and an Asus Smart Contrast Ratio of 100000000:1. Other specs include 178-degree viewing angles, a 5ms response time (gray to gray), and support for 16.7 million display colors.

This monitor also comes packed with two 25mm diameter 3W speakers that support the company's SonicMaster technology, which was co-developed with ICEpower | Bang & Olufsen tech. The company boasts premium, immersive audio as the result of an embedded MobileSound 3 chip that promises "incredible" audio fidelity. Preset modes consist of gaming, movie, music, and a user-designed setting.

Asus Designo MX25AQ

On the connectivity front, the panel includes an HDMI port that supports MHL 2.0, which allows the user to connect a MHL-compatible mobile device and watch its stored contents on the big screen while the device receives a charge from the port simultaneously. The panel also provides two additional HDMI ports, a DisplayPort 1.2 port, and an earphone jack. Sorry, there's no VESA connector offered here.

Additional Asus technologies provided on this panel include the TÜV Rheinland-certified ASUS Flicker-Free technology, designed to reduce flicker. There's also a Blue Light Filter to protect the user's eyes from the strain that comes from viewing blue light. The panel provides an OSD menu that allows the user to choose between four different filter settings on the screen.

Finally, the panel includes Asus Splendid technology that optimizes the visuals by adjusting the color brightness, contrast, and sharpness via eight preset modes. VividPixel reduces noise bars and enhances image outlines while QuickFit Virtual Scale lets users preview their documents and photos in their actual sizes prior to printing by pressing a single hotkey. For gamers, there are four different built-in crosshairs and a timer.

Asus doesn't offer a price, nor does the panel appear on the company's online shop, so actual availability and pricing here in the States is unknown at this point.

VIA: Hexus

Builders' Woes: Skylake Misadventures

Posted: 07 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

Fatal errors

It's enough to make you want to cry. A Haswell CPU, left, sits next to a broken Skylake CPU, right.
It's enough to make you want to cry. A Haswell CPU, left, sits next to a broken Skylake CPU, right.

Sometimes we all do things that make us feel a little stupid. A couple of months ago, I felt like an idiot when I bent the corners of an Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake. The worst part was, it wasn't even Maximum PC's CPU that I wrecked.

While building the "Caged Power" build for the Holiday issue of the magazine, we had to borrow an i7-6700K Skylake CPU from PC Gamer's Skylake rig, since Max Barbanell hadn't received his own CPU yet and we were under deadline to get the build done. We planned on using the new CPU with Gigabyte's Z170N-Gaming 5 mITX motherboard and on using EKWB's new all-in-one cooler, the EK-XLC Predator 240. 

We couldn't get the EKWB cooler to work with the system, and replaced it with the Deepcool cooler that made it into the issue. This was after trying to replace the RAM, PSU, and checking power connections to figure out what was wrong.

This build is where all our problems began.
This build is where all our problems began.

The trouble arose while I was trying to reinstall PC Gamer's Skylake CPU into their Skylake test system. The system has a Corsair H90 140mm closed-loop cooler that I had to reattach. However, this particular cooler had a damaged plastic backplate.

Some of the nuts that help hold the waterblock and pump in place had stripped away at the plastic, which allowed the nuts to spin freely. In order to keep them in place, I had to use pliers to hold them while screwing in the mounting screws with the other. In order to accomplish this, I had to use a screwdriver. It's not always best practice to use screwdrivers while attaching coolers, but if it's done with care, it's usually no big deal. 

Except that for this CPU, it was a big deal. A very big deal, in fact. A day or two later, PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon showed me the CPU: The corners had been bent, killing the $380 piece of silicon and metal, along with my pride. I had killed only one CPU in my life before this, by bending a pin on an Athlon 64 I had back in 2004. 

SON OF A $%*@!
SON OF A $%*@!

One of the coolers applied enough force to bend the CPU. We think that the H90 is the culprit. It may have been the EKWB, since the CPU socketed just fine, even when bent. (We doubt it was the EKWB, since I would've noticed a bent CPU before I put it into PC Gamer's mobo.) While we originally suspected user error, we now doubt it. We've used tools to install CPU coolers in the past, and haven't had a single issue with Haswell parts.

Until just now, I had tried to wipe this memory from my mind, but I found out that I'm not the only one that has killed one of Intel's pricey new quad-core CPUs.

Small margin for error

The folks over at Legit Reviews posted an article (noting an article on the German website PC Games Hardware) showing bent Skylakes. A quick look at their article showed that Skylake CPUs use a thinner substrate than their Haswell cousins do.

That's not the only thing at issue. According to specs reported by Legit Reviews, Skylake CPUs are rated for 50lbs (22.6kg) of static pressure for mounting coolers, just like Haswell. It appears that Skylake's thinner substrate can't actually take the pressure, so to speak. The rating, paired with a thinner substrate, has resulted in bent CPUs when paired with popular aftermarket coolers and water blocks. Legit Reviews also noted that systems that ship with coolers attached may increase the chance for damage. If you stay with Intel's OEM cooler, everything seems to be A-OK, though.

On the left, a Haswell i3-4330. On the right, a Skylake i7-6700K.
On the left, a Haswell i3-4330. On the right, a Skylake i7-6700K.

We took PC Gamer's busted Skylake CPU and put it next to a Haswell Core i3-4330 we had sitting around. Sure enough, we can confirm that the substrate for the Skylake chip is thinner than Haswell, and appears to be made from a different material as well.

Legit Reviews also noted that it could be possible that some cooler manufacturers may be exceeding Intel's spec. If they do, the wiggle room that Haswell offered isn't there with Skylake. It remains to be seen if the fix will come from cooler manufacturers or Intel.

A note on building with Skylake

We've recently featured the i7-6700K in some builds, most notably the Fall 2015 Midrange build (using a Corsair H80i GT cooler). As such, I feel that it is only responsible to issue a warning to builders: If you're choosing to go with Skylake, build with caution.

Attaching a cooler to a CPU can be tricky business. There's no real way to know exactly how much pressure you're exerting on the CPU. When it comes to tightening those screws, what might have been fine with Haswell could possibly break a Skylake. If you're planning on using an aftermarket cooler, be a little gentler than you might otherwise be. If you have fat fingers like me and must use a screwdriver to fix things in place, be conservative with pressure.

And if you've busted a Skylake already, you're in good company. We can't help you with the pain in the wallet, though.

Have you had any issues building with Skylake? Let us know in the comments.

Newegg Daily Deals: Toshiba 3TB HDD, Asus 24-Inch Monitor, and More!

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 10:57 AM PST

Toshiba HDD

Top Deal:

There are few sounds more frightening than a dying hard drive. You know what we're talking about -- an HDD on its last legs will click and grind in agony, and the longer you rely on it without replacing it and/or backing up your data, the scarier it is. Don't wait until it's too late. If you have an HDD that's about to pass over into the PC afterlife, check out today's top deal for a Toshiba 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive Retail Kit for $80 with free shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [ESCKNAP23]). It's a 7,200 RPM drive with 64MB of cache and a 3-year warranty.

Other Deals:

Asus 24-inch 2ms HDMI LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor for $140 with free shipping (normally $160 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAP66]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Intel Core i5-4690 Haswell Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 for $210 with free shipping (normally $225 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAP33])

TP-LINK Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter for $30 with free shipping (normally $40 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAP44])

Samsung 850 EVO 2.5-inch 500GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive for $143 with free shipping (normally $150 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAP25]; Free Assassin's Creed Syndicate Game Code w/ purchase, limited offer)

Net Neutrality Dispute Heads Back to Court

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 10:49 AM PST

Fight rages on

Net Neutrality

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. will begin hearing arguments today on the topic of net neutrality. The arguments will be heard by a three-judge panel that includes Judge David Tatel, who twice wrote rulings against the FCC since 2010, Reuters reports.

At issue are the net neutrality rules set forth by the FCC earlier this year when it was successful in reclassifying broadband Internet service as a utility. Doing so gave the FCC the power it needed to set certain rules, known officially as the Open Internet Order, which are currently focused on preventing ISPs from blocking or throttling web services or creating paid fast lanes on the Internet.

The FCC's argument is that an open Internet paves the way for a better broadband infrastructure and keeps the playing field level.

Companies like AT&T that oppose the reclassification and FCC intervention feel the government shouldn't be responsible for the Internet. AT&T in particular recently said it shelved several potential services because its team of lawyers couldn't figure out what would and would not be permissible under the new net neutrality rules. In other words, the FCC's Open Internet Order is having the opposite effect by stifling innovation, or so AT&T wants people to believe.

One thing that's interesting about the case is that it doesn't necessarily come down to whether or not net neutrality is a good thing. The bigger issue that's likely to be argued is whether or not the FCC had the power to implement rules in the first place.

Several groups and companies, including Twitter, Yelp, and Reddit, filed a joint legal brief warning the three-judge panel that overturning the net neutrality rules would put freedom of speech online at risk.

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Corsair Builds a Low Profile Liquid CPU Cooler for SFF Setups

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 10:15 AM PST

How low can you go?

Corsair Hydro Series H5 SF

Corsair is no stranger to the cooling scene, though one thing that was missing from its extensive product lineup was a low profile liquid CPU cooler for small form factor (SFF) builds. Not anymore, folks.

The new Hydro Series H5 SF is Corsair's first low profile liquid cooler. It measures just 84 mm tall, is purportedly easy to install, and offers up to 15W of heat dissipation. So despite being able to squeeze into compact cases, it's a cooler that can handle modern CPUs with cooling headroom to accommodate overclocking, Corsair claims.

Corsair says its new cooler sports a new design that allows it to fit directly on top of any mini ITX motherboard with no need to attach the assembly to any external fan mounts or brackets.

Once installed, the Hydro Series H5 SF uses a high-performance copper cold plate to draw heat away form the CPU. An integrated 120mm x 40mm radiator keeps things chilly, while a low-noise 120mm blower fan shows heat the door.

"Fully compatible with Corsair's Obsidian Series 250D, Carbide Series Air 240, and Graphite Series 380T cases, the H5 SF is also critical to Corsair's upcoming Bulldog chassis, allowing the new case to deliver low-noise, 4K living room gaming without compromising CPU choice," Corsair says. "Now enthusiasts can take advantage of Bulldog's H5 SF cooling for themselves and fit even the most demanding of CPUs, into the smallest of cases."

The new cooler will be available soon for $80 MSRP with a five-year warranty.

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Samsung Reluctantly Agrees to Pay Apple $548 Million in Patent Dispute

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 09:56 AM PST

Big payday

Apple Samsung

Now going on nearly five years of litigation, Samsung is ready to pay Apple a significant sum for allegedly infringing on certain mobile patents, though the payment comes with a caveat.

In paperwork (PDF) filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Apple and Samsung issued a joint statement saying the South Korean electronics maker will pay the Cupertino outfit the $548 million partial judgement that was decided by an appeals court earlier this year, Fortune reports.

While $548 million is a significant amount, Apple originally asked for $2.75 billion in damages when the issue first went to court four years ago. Apple won its dispute, but the initial award was for a little over $1 billion, which was later reduced to $930 million, and then again shaved down to $548 million in May. 

It's that last amount Samsung has agreed to pay within 10 days of receiving an invoice from Apple, but there's a caveat.

"Apple notes that Samsung purports to reserve rights to obtain partial reimbursement in the future of judgement amounts it has paid. Apple disputes Samsung's asserted rights to reimbursement," the court document states.

In other words, though Samsung is finally ready to pay up on the damages Apple was last awarded, it wants to make clear that the fight isn't over. Should things tilt in Samsung's favor down the road, it wants the courts to force Apple to return all or part of the $548 million it's about to receive.

Apple's response? Go fly a kite, basically. Or in legal terms, "Apple disputes Samsung's asserted rights to reimbursement."

The bottom line is this -- over half a billion dollars will change hands, but the underlying dispute isn't over.

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Fast Forward: XPoint Upsets the Memory Hierarchy

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

This article was published in the December 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

Will XPoint technology shake up the storage industry?

Reader surveys indicate that most Maximum PC readers are using SSDs as boot drives. You're apparently still using large hard drives for mass storage, however, creating a hybrid system that blends maximum speed with affordable capacity.

Now, imagine adding another new memory technology that will further boost your computer's performance to a similar degree. Interested? You bet. And that's what Intel and Micron are promising with XPoint memory, which is a cross between DRAM and flash memory.

I've avoided writing about XPoint until now because I wanted more technical details. Intel and Micron still haven't disclosed enough information to judge it fairly. From what we know, however, it's
likely to significantly boost system performance and shake up the industry, just as SSDs have. Like many new technologies, XPoint will appear first in servers before trickling down to PCs.

XPoint probably won't replace any existing memory technology. Instead, it will find a new place in the memory hierarchy. In descending order of speed and cost and ascending order of capacity, that hierarchy now includes SRAM, DRAM, flash, hard disk drives, and tape. (Yes, servers still use tape drives for archival backups.)

XPoint is a nonvolatile solid-state technology that fits between DRAM and flash memory. It's nearly as fast as DRAM, but retains its state when powered down, like flash. But it's about 1,000 times faster than flash and has much better endurance (read/write life). Although it will probably cost more than flash, it will cost less than DRAM. Together, these qualities prevent XPoint memory from replacing DRAM or flash unless future refinements make it faster than the former or cheaper than the latter—and those memory technologies keep improving, too.

PCF309.wired intro.309 HW2

XPoint's resistive material is stacked in a 3D lattice.

Intel plans to initially deploy XPoint memory in SSDs for servers. Next it will come in DIMMs that plug into server DRAM slots. The idea is to put this fast, nonvolatile memory close to the processor, where it will supplement the slightly faster DRAM while buffering the much slower (!) flash-based SSDs. Behind the flash SSDs will be the usual HDDs and tape drives. This new hierarchy will enable servers to hold large databases and other enterprise applications entirely in DRAM and XPoint memory, thus avoiding the relatively slow access to the storage drives.

Production volumes will be low at first, keeping prices beyond the reach of most PC users, but within reason for enterprises that can justify the high cost by pumping up performance. Though Intel and Micron say future refinements will cut costs, here's where things get fuzzy. Neither company is disclosing enough technical detail to estimate the cost curve or analyze other factors, such as power consumption.

Even the basic technology is a secret. Unlike SRAM, DRAM, and flash, XPoint doesn't use transistors. In fact, the technical illustrations resemble core memory, a 1960s technology that stored binary bits in tiny magnetic doughnuts woven into a wire fabric. I'm guessing that XPoint is resistive RAM (RRAM), a similar nontransistor technology that's been kicking around the labs for 10 years or so. Whatever it is, XPoint looks like the biggest thing to happen to computers since SSDs. It's coming to servers in 2016 and probably to a future Dream Machine—wherever cost is no object.

Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report.

Newegg Daily Deals: EVGA 850W PSU, Samsng 850 Pro 512GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 12:16 PM PST

Evga Psu

Top Deal:

It only takes getting burned by a crappy, generic-labeled power supply once before you swear them off forever in favor of reliable, name brand units. And by burned, we don't mean it literally, though we have seen generic PSUs go up in smoke. It's a scary sight, and you can reduce the likelihood of that happening by opting for a quality PSU. Need help? Check out today's top deal for an EVGA 80 Plus Gold 850W Power Supply for $120 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAN22]; additional $40 Mail-in rebate). Efficient? Check. Modular cables? Check. Plenty of power, SLI ready, and 10 year warranty? Check, check, and  checkmate. 

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Samsung 850 Pro 2.5-inch 512GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive for $198 with free shipping (normally $210 - use coupon code: [ESCKNAN27])

G.Skill Mobile Devices (microSD) 64GB microSDXC Flash Card for $15 with $1 shipping (normally $22 - use coupon code: [ESCKNAN26])

WD Red 2TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive - Intellipower SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-inch for $80 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [ESCKNAN23])

Windows 10 Share Now at 9 Percent, Still Trails Windows XP

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 11:57 AM PST

Inching closer to XP

Windows 10 PCs

Microsoft wasn't messing around when it launched Windows 10 to the public on July 29, 2015. By offering it as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 users, Windows 10 raced out of the gate to claim a greater than 5 percent share of the OS market in its first month. Now four months later, the rate of adoption has slowed, but the OS is still gaining ground.

If we go by the accounting methods of Net Applications, Windows 10 is installed on exactly 9 percent of the world's PCs, up from 7.94 percent a month ago. That's not quite the 5 percent leap witnessed in its first month, but it's a pace that Windows 10 has been able to maintain every month thereafter.

Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 both also gained ground in November. The former went from 10.68 percent at the end of October to 11.15 percent at the end of November, while Windows 7 inched up from 55.71 percent to 56.11 percent in the same time frame.

Only Windows XP saw a decline, though it's share is still in double digits at 10.59 percent, down from 11.68 percent a month prior. If Windows 10 continues to gain users at a clip of around 1 percent per month, it will surpass Windows XP within the first month of 2016.

Over at StatCounter, the numbers are slightly different but they tell the same story. StatCounter has Windows 10 sitting pretty on 9.33 percent of PCs, up from 8.23 percent a year prior. And if using StatCounter's figures, Windows 10 is already ahead of Windows XP, which is down to 7.78 percent.

Getting the exact percentage right isn't what's important. The bigger issue for Microsoft is ensuring that Windows 10 continues to find its way on more PCs every month, and at least for now, that seems to be the case.

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AT&T Still Hates Net Neutrality Rules, Canadian ISP Shames Overdue Customers

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 10:42 AM PST

As the wireless world turns

Att

Apparently AT&T had some awesome new things planned for customers, but we may never know what they were because they've been indefinitely set aside. So says an AT&T executive who blamed net neutrality rules for whatever party favors the wireless outfit planned on passing out.

"Since the Open Internet order came out we've had weekly calls with the business units and literally 15 lawyers who are all trying to figure out whether that stuff we've invested in ... would be a violation of the order," AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn said, according to Politico. "We've had to shelve a bunch of stuff because we've got to wait and see."

It sounds like a bunch of sour grapes to us, especially since the Open Internet Order hasn't stopped other wireless companies from rolling out new services. Take T-Mobile and its BingeOn service. Customers subscribed to qualifying Simple Choice plans can stream unlimited video at 480p on 4G LTE through Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu, and several other services without it counting against this data cap. It's an amenity that has the blessing of the FCC.

AT&T made similar statements last year when it claimed that net neutrality rules would force the company to stop or delay investments in fiber optic cable roll outs.

"We can't go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at the time, according to Reuters. "We think it is prudent to just pause and make sure we have line of sight and understanding as to what those rules will look like."

Shaming Overdue Customers

In other news, Canadian ISP Senga Services saw fit to post the names of customers to Facebook who were behind on their bill.

"We always got excuses from everybody," the ISP told CBC. "Promissory notes and everything, and it never arrives. So we found the most effective way is to publicly post the names."

As can be expected, the collective reaction to the post on Facebook was pretty negative. Residents responded with angry comments about the ethics and questioned whether what Senga Services had done was legal.

Jennifer Simons, who works with Senga Services, fired back to the criticism.

"It is a lesson to not live outside your means... maybe their family can step up and help them out, maybe their families had no idea that there are issues," Simons wrote. "We run a business not a charity, we have bills to pay and paying customers who deserve to have services. Essentially not paying your bill is stealing."

"People who can't afford services shouldn't get them. Period," Simons added.

According to Simons, there's nothing illegal about posting the names of customers with past due accounts, so long as there's no other identifying information, such as a Social Security number, birth date, or address.

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Ballmer Drops BS Bomb on Microsoft's Cloud Revenue Disclosure

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 10:03 AM PST

Fuzzy math

Steve Ballmer

Former Microsoft CEO isn't all that happy with his hand-picked successor, Satya Nadella. That much became obvious when Ballmer used an expletive to criticize the way Microsoft reports its cloud revenue.

The ex-CEO's issue is that Microsoft isn't disclosing profit margins or sales figures for its cloud and hardware businesses. Instead, it reports an annualized revenue run rate, which looks at sales for a certain point in time and uses those numbers to calculate a yearly run rate. The problem with that is it assumes whatever numbers are used will remain consistent throughout the full year.

Instead of using a run rate, which Ballmer classified as "bullshit," he wants Microsoft to report the actual revenue for both businesses, Bloomberg reports.

"It's sort of a key metric -- if they talk about it as key to the company, they should report it," Ballmer said.

This isn't a new criticism. Ballmer has brought the issue up with Microsoft before, but after two years removed as CEO, he says he wouldn't even be able to guess at the actual numbers.

Chris Suh, Microsoft's general manager for investor relations, offered up a canned response to the criticism. Suh said Microsoft's engages in a "regular dialogue" with its former CEO, adding that it "welcomes his input and feedback, as we do from our other investors."

Windows Phone Strategy

The run rate isn't the only thing Ballmer isn't happy with at Microsoft. When someone in the audience asked Nadella to talk about the lack of popular apps on Windows Phones, Ballmer took issue with Nadella's response that Microsoft's strategy is to appeal to developers by letting them write universal software that will run across a variety of devices.

Simply put, Ballmer said "that won't work." What will work, according to Ballmer, is giving Windows Phones the ability "to run Android apps."

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New VTech Data Shows Breach Includes 6.4 Million Kids

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 05:13 AM PST

Now Hackers Can Steal Your Data With Lasers, Too

On Wednesday, Republican Representative Joe Barton and Democratic Senator Edward Markey sent a letter (pdf) to VTech's Allan Wong Chi Yun, stating their concerns about the recent VTech hack that exposed the information of millions of parents and children.

In the letter, they question why the company is collecting said information, and how this collection complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Passed in 1998, COPPA requires website operators to notify and obtain permission from parents before collecting personal information of children. These websites are also required to take the necessary steps to protect any information regarding these underage clients.

The letter includes nine questions, one which asks about VTech's data collection for each product. They also want to know if VTech shares this information to third parties or data brokers, and exactly how VTech protects its customers. They also want to know if VTech plans to offer services to parents and children that were affected by this specific breach.

The letter arrives after VTech updated its official FAQ with new numbers, revealing that 4,854,209 parent accounts and 6,368,509 related children profiles worldwide are affected by the breach. These numbers include approximately 1.2 million Kid Connect parent accounts, the company states. There are also 235,708 parent and 227,705 children accounts in PlanetVTech.

The United States has the most affected users with 2,212,863 parent accounts and 2,894,091 child profiles. France comes in second with 868,650 parent accounts and 1,173,497 child profiles exposed. Following France is the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Latin America, Australia, Denmark, Luxembourg, and New Zealand.

"Regretfully our Learning Lodge, Kid Connect and PlanetVTech databases were not as secure as they should have been," the FAQ admits.

Recent reports have revealed that the hacker not only gained access to email addresses and physical addresses, but images of parents and children taken with VTech products, chat logs, and audio files. The company has acknowledged these reports and said that while the investigation is ongoing, it cannot confirm the reports at this time.

However, the company says that audio files are encrypted by AES128 whereas chat logs are not encrypted. Chat logs are also only stored temporarily on the server if they are marked undelivered. The company states that these messages expire in 30 days.

Profiles of children that were exposed in the hack include their name, gender, and birth date. Other information stored on the server includes the parent account information (encrypted password, secret question, etc), download sales report logs, progress logs to track kids games, and encrypted Learning Lodge content, which includes profile photos, undelivered messages, bulletin board postings, and content such as games, ebooks, and so on.

VTech says the information is used to identify and track customer downloads.

"As customer safety and privacy are of utmost importance to us, we are making all necessary adjustments to our system security, which will include only storing such information as is required for our customers to download and enjoy our services. All other information will be deleted from our servers," the company says.

Google is Spying on School Kids, Claims EFF

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 05:08 AM PST

Poweredbygoogletat Geekytattoos

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that Google collects and uses the personal information of students without authorization, when they are logged into their Google accounts. The suit alleges that search engine giant keeps track of what students are doing and using in and outside of the Google Apps for Education suite, including saved passwords and Internet searches.

The big stink centers on Google's "Sync" feature, which is baked into the Chrome Web browser. This setting is turned on by default on Chromebooks that are sold to schools across the nation. With this feature turned on, Google can allegedly track everything that the student does; Google doesn't obtain permission from parents or the students, and because Chromebooks are sold directly to schools, parents can't prevent Google from data mining their children.

Google recently signed the Student Privacy Pledge, which is a "legally enforceable document" that prevents companies from collecting, using, or sharing the personal information of students. The only way companies can use this information is if they get permission from the parents, or the information is used for "legitimate" educational purposes.

The EFF also points a finger at the administrative settings, reporting that they allow personal information to be shared with third-party websites, which is in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge. The EFF says that this form of data collection follows the child wherever they use Chrome to log into their Google accounts. That means they can be tracked on dad's iPad, a home computer or some other device that supports the Chrome browser.

According to the EFF, Google can "track, store on its servers, and data mine for non-advertising purposes, records of every Internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords."

To Google's defense, it told the EFF that it will disable specific settings on school Chromebooks that allow Chrome Sync data to be shared with all the other services Google offers. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google told the paper that any data generated by students when using Google Apps for Education will not be used "outside of that context."

"We are confident that these tools comply with both the law and our promises, including the Student Privacy Pledge," a Google spokesman said.

But that doesn't seem to be enough for the EFF.

"While that is a small step in the right direction, it doesn't go nearly far enough to correct the violations of the Student Privacy Pledge currently inherent in Chromebooks being distributed to schools."

Samsung 850 Evo 2TB Review

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

At a Glance

(+) Super Nova: Tons of capacity; great price per GB; good performance, endurance, and warranty; SATA is ubiquitous.

(-) Black Hole: 2TB SSDs are still expensive; not as fast as PCIe solutions; SATA is limiting.

A giant among stars

Solid-state drives are a game changer when it comes to the responsiveness of your PC, but they also tend to be relatively expensive compared to traditional hard drives. The general advice we give to most people is to use a moderate size SSD for the OS and apps, with a larger hard drive for mass data storage. These days you can find 250GB-class drives for under $100, with 500GB-class drives starting as low as $150, and that's generally enough for most people.

But what if you're not "most people"? What if you think good old Sol is too puny and you want to explore the vast universe, maybe setting up camp around a red super giant? For those who want to put every last document, image, movie, and game onto fast solid-state storage so that they never have to worry about waiting for files to load, never fear. Samsung has your back, with not one but two 2TB SSDs to choose from. Yes, these are still SATA drives, so you're not going to get the unadulterated speed of a PCIe NVMe SSD, but the largest M.2 SSDs have half the capacity, and outside of a few storage intensive tasks, 6Gb/s SATA is still plenty fast.

We have a double-header going on today, with reviews of both 2TB Samsung drives—see the Samsung 850 Pro 2TB review here. Originally listed with an MSRP of $1,000, the 850 Pro 2TB has since come down to more palatable levels—not that $875 is affordable for most of us, but it's moving in the right direction. The 850 Evo on the other hand has been the darling of the budget-minded computer enthusiast since it first launched, and even more than a year later it's still difficult to find a better value. The launch MSRP of the 2TB 850 Evo was more than twice the price of the 1TB model, at $800, but we've seen prices range from $645 to $670 on Amazon.com during the past week.

Let's put that into perspective. The least expensive SSD we can find right now, in terms of price per GB, is Crucial's new BX200 (review forthcoming). The 480GB model goes for $132 online while the 960GB model costs $300, giving a final cost of $0.274 to $0.3125 per GB. [Spoiler alert!] The problem is that the BX200 is very much a budget offering, with performance that is at times underwhelming. It's much faster than a hard drive for random accesses, but it can't touch the Samsung 850 Evo when it comes to performance. Even with the better performance, however, the 850 Evo 2TB costs just $0.335 per GB—a mere seven percent increase compared with the 960GB BX200.

Your Digital Bag of Holding

It's not just about performance and value, however. Samsung is the 800-pound gorilla of the consumer SSD industry, and the only drives currently competing with Samsung's offerings are both more expensive and more limiting in terms of use cases. Intel's SSD 750 line is the overall performance leader, but you can't put one of those in a laptop, and even in a desktop you're stuck with at most 1.2TB of storage. If you want 2TB of NAND in a single drive, outside of the enterprise market, you're limited to Samsung.

How much of a market is there for 2TB SSDs that cost well over half a grand? That's a more difficult question to answer—how much of a need is there for interstellar travel? We have to start somewhere, and if you're the type of enthusiast that likes dream-level hardware like the i7-5960X and GTX Titan X or GTX 980 Ti, you should have no problem considering the merits of 2TB SSDs. Even with 30 modern games installed on the drive, plus the OS and a collection of applications we regularly use, and topped off with some videos and music…we still haven't even passed the 50 percent full mark. It's a nice change of pace, not having to think about where to install new games like Fallout 4 or Rainbow Six Siege: everything goes on the monster 2TB drive right now—for testing, naturally.

And if you're thinking 2TB is an insane amount of NAND—or in this case, V-NAND—Samsung is working on 4TB models for release some time in the next year. It's like a virtual bag of holding for all of your data, and outside of large movie collections or raw video footage, there's plenty of room. The only potential concern is that if anything ever goes wrong, you could lose a lifetime's worth of files, so make sure you don't neglect your backup strategy.

Samsung 850 Evo/Pro 2TB Comparison
Drive 850 Pro 850 Evo
Capacity 2,048GB 2,000GB
DRAM Cache 2GB 2GB
Interface SATA 6Gb/s SATA 6Gb/s
Form Factor 2.5-inch 2.5-inch
Controller Samsung MHX Samsung MHX
Memory Type Samsung MLC V-NAND Samsung TLC V-NAND
Max MB/s Read/Write 550/520 540/520
Max IOPS Read/Write 100,000/90,000 98,000/90,000
Endurance 300TB 150TB
Active Power Read/Write 3.3W/3.0W 4.4W/4.0W
Warranty Ten years Five years
Price $875 $645–$669

If there's one potential drawback, other than the price, it's the aging SATA interface. With a single drive, real-world throughput over SATA generally tops out at 550MB/s. That's way faster than a hard drive, but when you look at the 850 Pro and 850 Evo specs above, you have to wonder how much faster the NAND and controller could run without the SATA bottleneck. This is actually a good thing for the Evo, however, as it means despite the price difference, it can still hang with its big brother. It might be 10 percent slower under heavy workloads, but for many activities there's no discernable difference. This is basically as good as SATA gets, and since SATA is practically everywhere (except for laptops that eschew 2.5-inch SATA drives in favor of M.2 or mSATA), any desktop or laptop made in the past five or even ten years can upgrade to an SSD.

Looking at the raw specs for Samsung's 2TB SSDs, the only real difference is going to be in peak performance and warranty/endurance. This is largely due to the use of TLC (Triple-Level Cell, three bits per cell) NAND as opposed to MLC (Multi-Level Cell, two bits per cell), which means each NAND cell has to track eight stored voltage states compared to four stored voltage states. Just like the move from SLC (Single-Level Cell, one bit per cell) to MLC was inevitable, we're seeing more and more manufacturers working on TLC drives. So far, however, no other TLC drive has come close to dethroning the 850 Evo.

As we noted in the 850 Pro review, the 500GB/1TB/2TB drives all have the same endurance rating, which is a bit odd since technically with two or four times the NAND, the larger drives should be able to write two or four times as much data before running out of program/erase cycles. The reality is that you would need to be running an enterprise-class workload to burn through all the P/E cycles in five years on the 500GB Evo (about 82GB written per day for five years!), in which case you should be looking at enterprise-grade SSDs.

I'm a Rocket Man

Raw specs don't tell the whole story, however, so let's find out how the drives actually perform in our SSD test suite. We're using a Skylake test bed, outline below, and we've highlighted the two 2TB Samsung drives in the charts. The other drives provide a reference point for some of the fastest and slowest modern SSDs.

Maximum PC 2015 SSD Test Bed
Platform LGA1151 (Skylake)
CPU Intel Core i7-6700K (4–4.2GHz)
Mobo ASUS Z170-A
GPU Intel HD Graphics 530
SSDs Corsair Neutron XT 480GB SATA
Intel SSD 750 NVMe 1.2TB PCIe x4
Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB M.2
OCZ Trion 100 480GB SATA
OCZ Vector 180 960GB SATA
Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SATA
Samsung 850 Pro 2TB SATA
Samsung 850 Evo 2TB SATA
Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SATA 2x in RAID0
Samsung 950 Pro 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

The 850 Evo 2TB isn't designed to be a nimble star fighter, but instead it's a large freighter lugging your data around the known universe. That might not seem particularly exciting, but remember that it's running on a hyper-drive V-NAND engine that makes HDD airplane engines look archaic. Looking at the charts, a few things should be obvious. First, the fastest SATA drives are all hitting the limits of that interface. Even a merely "okay" PCIe SSD like the Kingston HyperX Predator is able to beat the fastest SATA SSDs in many of our tests. Second and perhaps more importantly, while the 850 Pro is faster than the 850 Evo, at best it's a 20 percent gap, and at worst it's a tie. Saving $200 for nearly the same performance is an easy call to make.

Samsung 850 Evo 2TB Front

The only question that remains is whether your PC adventures need copious quantities of NAND. If not, there's no need to splurge on a 2TB drive—1TB and even 500GB models are readily available. But if you're a data packrat like me, there's no such thing as having too much NAND.

Recently, I got tired of managing my inventory in Fallout 4 and used a cheat code to boost my maximum carry weight. (100,000 pounds of carry weight? Yes, please, thank you!) A 2TB SSD is like a real-world cheat code that lets you never go back to spinning platters, unless you want to. Granted, you have to pay for this particular "cheat," but considering the price per GB on SSDs keeps dropping while capacities continue to increase, the days of the hard drive are quickly coming to an end. With higher density V-NAND in the works, not to mention Intel and Micron's 3D XPoint Technology, that end can't come soon enough.

Samsung 850 Pro 2TB Review

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

At a Glance

(+) Vast: Tons of capacity; good performance; great endurance and warranty; SATA is ubiquitous.

(-) Empty: Very expensive; not as fast as PCIe solutions; SATA is limiting.

More storage than you can shake a stick at

Don't get us wrong: We love super-fast SSDs like the Intel SSD 750 or Samsung 950 Pro. But while the performance can be impressive, there's something to be said for carrying around a metric ton (that's 2,000GB in the Imperial system) of storage. Perhaps equally perplexing is that both the 950 Pro and the 850 Pro appear to use the same V-NAND, which means you can get roughly four times the capacity (2TB) as the 512GB 950 Pro for only twice the price. Yes, the old SATA interface is a bottleneck at times, but for the typical home user it's frequently not much of a problem, and the ubiquity of the SATA 6Gb/s interface means most systems can handle multiple drives if you're so inclined.

Samsung is currently the leader in the consumer market for SSD capacities, as no one else even makes 2TB-class SATA drives. In the enterprise market, you can find all sorts of crazy capacities, but pricing tends to be prohibitively expensive, and the drives are frankly overkill for the consumer market—unless you happen to be doing 10 full drive writes per day of activity? Make no mistake, however; 2TB of NAND, even with a SATA interface, will set you back a pretty penny. The 850 Pro 2TB we're looking at today currently costs $873, though it's worth noting the drive is already $127 below the original $1,000 MSRP.

The question we're here to answer today is how much performance you give up by going for a higher capacity SATA drive compared to a lower capacity PCIe drive. And that's not the only thing we need to discuss today, as we're doing a double-header of 2TB drive reviews—see the Samsung 850 Evo 2TB review here. The other offering also comes from Samsung, but it's their value-friendly 850 Evo 2TB. That drive uses a slightly different controller with TLC V-NAND, but the price is also 70 dollars less—currently $645, though with the holiday sales it's difficult to tell if that's representative of pricing we'll see going forward, or merely a short-term sale. If you're willing to give up the performance of PCIe SSDs to save some money and go for raw capacity, it makes sense to look at saving even more money, right?

Bottlenecks, Schmottlenecks!

Getting back to that SATA bottleneck for a moment, the current standard allows for the transfer of up to 6Gb/s of information. With the 8b/10b encoding, that equates to 4.8Gb/s of actual data, which gives us the maximum throughput of 600MB/s. There's some overhead involved with any transmission of data, so you won't actually see 600MB/s, but a good SATA SSD will hit around 550MB/s under load.

And there's the crux of the issue: "under load." What exactly constitutes a storage load that's worthy of 600MB/s, let alone moving to the even higher throughput offered by the PCIe interface? One thing that doesn't qualify as such a load, generally speaking, is the normal daily tasks of most users. Booting your OS is arguably the most intensive task of the day for a lot of people, and even that will rarely push the limits of SATA as there's plenty of data processing happening in the background (we'll look at this in more detail in a future article). In fact, for the typical home and office user, the only time you're really going to push storage performance is if you're doing a lot of file copying—installing programs is another example of a task that does a lot of file copying.

That doesn't mean there aren't other viable reasons to have faster storage—there are plenty of other tasks that will benefit, including database accesses, servers in general, and heavy A/V editing—but most of those tasks are outside of the normal purview of PC consumers. Even if the benefit is mostly unused, it's still nice to have up to four times the performance on the few occasions where you do happen to pound the storage subsystem. But if you're trying to balance performance and capacity against price, SATA SSDs still have plenty to offer, and you can always use a RAID 0 configuration to improve throughput in a pinch.

Two Tremendous Terabytes
Samsung 850 Pro/Evo 2TB Comparison
Drive 850 Pro 850 Evo
Capacity 2,048GB 2,000GB
DRAM Cache 2GB 2GB
Interface SATA 6Gb/s SATA 6Gb/s
Form Factor 2.5-inch 2.5-inch
Controller Samsung MHX Samsung MHX
Memory Type Samsung MLC V-NAND Samsung TLC V-NAND
Max MB/s Read/Write 550/520 540/520
Max IOPS Read/Write 100,000/90,000 98,000/90,000
Endurance 300TB 150TB
Active Power Read/Write 3.3W/3.0W 4.4W/4.0W
Warranty Ten years Five years
Price $875 $645

Given we're looking at both of Samsung's 2TB offerings, it makes sense to start with a look at raw specs. These numbers don't necessarily tell the whole story, but one thing they make abundantly clear is that Samsung doesn't see a massive difference in performance. Instead, the main difference is in longevity/durability, where the 850 Pro has twice the endurance rating and warranty length. It's worth noting that 512GB and 1TB 850 Pro models have the same 300TB endurance rating, which means in practice you're likely to be able to write far more than 300TB of data to the 2TB model—it just won't be under warranty. The same holds for the 850 Evo, where the 500GB and 1TB also have the same 150TB endurance rating.

Other than the minor differences in maximum read/write performance, about the only other advantage the 850 Pro has is slightly lower power use. Both idle at less than 60mW, so mostly we're talking about active power, when the drives are reading/writing data. TLC NAND ends up requiring a bit more work, leading to slightly higher power use. The 1W difference isn't likely to affect things like battery life, however, unless you happen to be doing heavy disk traffic—which would generally mean you're doing other things that will hurt battery life a lot more than storage power use.

So, how do the drives actually perform in our SSD testing? Here are the details of our Skylake test bed, followed by performance charts where we've highlighted the two 2TB SSDs. Keep in mind that the NVMe drives, while notably faster in some benchmarks, are also far more expensive per GB.

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 Corsair Neutron XT 480GB SATA
Intel SSD 750 NVMe 1.2TB PCIe x4
Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB M.2
OCZ Trion 100 480GB SATA
OCZ Vector 180 960GB SATA
Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SATA
Samsung 850 Pro 2TB SATA
Samsung 850 Evo 2TB SATA
Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SATA 2x in RAID0
Samsung 950 Pro 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

There are two key takeaways here. First, Samsung is about the only company so far that really has a handle on doing high-performance TLC controllers and SSDs. The proof is in the near-parity of the 850 Pro 2TB and 850 Evo 2TB; at best, the Pro version is about 15 percent faster than the Evo, and on average the difference is only about five percent. The second takeaway is that it's really hard to justify buying any SATA drive right now other than the 850 Evo—it is a force to be reckoned with!

Which isn't to say that the 850 Pro 2TB is bad; it's just hard to justify spending an extra $200 for the small bump in performance. If you need more speed, the Intel SSD 750 is over twice as fast as the Pro, and in some tests more than four times faster! But you do have to give up some capacity, as the largest SSD 750 is "only" 1.2TB. The Samsung 950 Pro also offers impressive performance, but it currently tops out at 512GB, making it a poor fit for anyone eyeing a 2TB SSD. An interesting alternative is doing RAID 0 of 1TB drives; the 250GB 850 Evo is slightly slower than its weightier brothers, but overall it offers a performance benefit over the 850 Pro equal to that of the 850 Pro over a single 850 Evo.

That's the problem the 2TB 850 Pro has to face: It offers plenty of capacity, it's arguably the best SATA drive around, and the current price of $0.427 per GB is actually pretty compelling; we remember only a year or two back when the largest SSDs often carried a 50 percent price premium. But when you look at the 2TB 850 Evo at $0.323 per GB—which is actually a better price now than buying two 1TB 850 Evo drives for RAID 0—it doesn't add up. You're paying extra for endurance that you likely won't ever need, and gaining only a small bump in performance; besides, if endurance is really that much of a concern, you should probably be looking at enterprise class SSDs.

As it stands, both the 850 Pro and 850 Evo are bumping into the SATA interface ceiling. It's effectively a hard speed limit enforced on these 18-wheelers, and there's not much difference in the way of improved handling or acceleration to separate them. Unless you absolutely need the capacity and can't look to PCIe SSDs, and you're willing to pay more for an extra 5–10 percent performance, these behemoths are close enough to equal that you're better off saving money and going with the Evo.

Newegg Daily Deals: Toshiba 1TB HDD, LG 34-Inch UltraWide Monitor, and More!

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 10:48 AM PST

Toshiba HDD

Top Deal:

Western Digital is being all braggadocios about shipping the industry's first 10TB helium-filled HDD, but it's intended for the enterprise market, not home consumers. If you're needs are a bit more modest -- as in, you don't own a data center but would like to store your vacation photos and videos -- then check out today's top deal for a Toshiba 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive for $40 with free shipping (normally $53 - use coupon code: [ESCKNAK22]). It's cheap (just 4 cents a gigabyte!), has 32MB of cache, and spins at 7,200 RPM.

Other Deals:

LG 34UC87C Black 34-inch 5ms Ultrawide QHD Curved Monitor IPS Panel for $640 with free shipping (normally $670 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAK62])

WD Black 4TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-inch for $190 with free shipping (normally $197 - use coupon code: [ESCKNAK26])

D-Link DAP-1650 Wireless AC1200 Dual Band Gigabit Range Extender for $60 with free shipping (normally $83 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAK44])

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory for $30 with free shipping (normally $35 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAK65])

Western Digital First to Ship 10TB Helium HDD

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 10:39 AM PST

It's not for home consumers

HGST Ultrastar 10TB

Western Digital is in full gloat mode at having been the first to start shipping a 10TB perpendicular magnetic recording (PRM) hard drive. It's the HGST Ultrastar He10 and the first 10TB drop-in ready HDD available.

In addition to the providing the highest capacity from a single drive, it also boasts the lowest power consumption per terabyte and the highest reliability rating for all HDDs on the market, WD says.

To put some numbers next to WD's claim, compared to 8TB air drives, the HGST Ultrastar He10 offers 25 percent more capacity, is 56 percent more power efficient, and 25 percent more reliable

"Our HelioSeal platform has defied next-generation expectations around capacity, reliability and power in HDDs," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. "We were the first to recognize the benefits of Helium and have pushed the boundaries while others are scrambling to catch up. The Ultrastar He10 represents the third generation of our HelioSeal line. It redefines enterprise capacity HDDs, showing the industry where storage devices need to go, to stay in front of the future that data growth is hurtling towards."

The new drive is available in both SATA and SAS models. It's a 7,200 RPM drive with a beefy 256MB data buffer. Other specs include a 4.16ms latency, ms read seek, 8.6ms write seek, and a 225MB/s sustained transfer rate.

Good stuff, though these drives aren't being marketed at home consumers. WD is targeting enterprise customers, including Netflix, which already uses the company's HGST HelioSeal drives in its data centers.

Continued Decline in SSD Prices Will Lead to Fewer HDDs in Laptops

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 09:41 AM PST

Pricing parity awaits

OCZ SSD Sticker

Just a few short years ago, a solid state drive was a high priced luxury that, for many, was tough to justify. And now? Lower prices have led to SSDs becoming a mainstream consideration, both on the consumer side and with OEMs building and selling new laptop models.

According to a new report by DRAMeXchange, manufacturers will be using SSDs in around 25 percent of their laptops by the end of the year, ComputerWorld reports.

That figure is expected to jump to 31 percent in 2016, and a year after that, 41 percent of consumer laptops will rock an SSD instead of (or alongside) an HDD.

The key to this expanded adoption, of course, is lower pricing. This is where things get interesting -- for the fourth straight quarter, SSD prices have dropped by more than 10 percent. Looking ahead, the cost will continue to decline while HDD prices will stay the same, DRAMeXchange predicts.

Let's have a look at the numbers. From 2012 to 2015, SSD pricing has fallen from $0.99 per gigabyte to $0.39 per gigabyte. In that same time, HDD pricing has gone from $0.09 per gigabyte to $0.06 per gigabyte.

If DRAMeXchange's crystal ball is working, HDD prices will stay at $0.06 per gigabyte up through 2017, while SSD prices will fall to $0.24 per gigabyte next year and $0.17 per gigabyte in 2017.

That's still nearly three times as high per gigabyte as an HDD, but at just $0.17 per gigabyte, laptop makers are more likely to go with a smaller capacity SSD versus a larger capacity HDD.

"Branded PC vendors and channel distributors are holding back on their SSD purchases due to lower-than-expected notebook sales," said DRAMeXchange senior manager Alan Chen. "However, 256GB SSDs will be moving close to price parity with mainstream HDDs in 2016, so the adoption of SSDs in the business notebook segment will rise."

The continue decline in pricing will also make it more tempting for consumers to consider 1TB SSDs. Instead of paying $300 to $400 for a 1TB SSD, the average cost in 2017 will be around $170.

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New Dad Mark Zuckerberg Pledges to Donate 99 Percent of His Facebook Shares

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 09:03 AM PST

Daddy Big Bucks

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is officially a father. He and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan announced the arrival of their daughter Max (short for Maxima) in a Facebook post, which is accompanied by an open letter to their little one. In it, the Zuckerbergs revealed plans to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares towards charitable causes.

At their current value, the shares would be worth $45 billion, though Mark and his wife don't plan to give it all away at once, or even soon. For at least the next three years, the couple will limit donations to no more than $1 billion annually. Part of the reason for that is because Mark and Priscilla laid out a series of long terms goals and plans, ones that would require investments over the course of the next "25, 50, or even 100 years." 

"The greatest challenges requires very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking," the coupled stated in their letter.

The other reason to cap donations is because Mark "intends to retain his majority voting position" through stock ownership "for the foreseeable future," as revealed in an 8-K filing (PDF) with the United States Security and Exchange Commission.

Philanthropy isn't new to Mark, though he is the latest billionaire to make a commitment to give away all or nearly all of his wealth. Perhaps most famously, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet vowed to leave their significant fortunes to charity. Their commitments gave birth to what's known as The Giving Pledge, a campaign to get the world's richest people to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.

Compared to other wealthy individuals who have committed to giving away their fortunes to charitable causes, Mark and Priscilla's decision is notable because it comes at relatively young ages -- Mark is 31 and Dr. Chan is 30 years old.

"For your generation to live in a better world, there is so much more our generation can do. Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges," Mark wrote in his letter to Max. "I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work. By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives." 

The true value of what the Zuckerbergs are donating could be much more than $45 billion, depending on how long they string it out and if Facebook is able to increase its stock price over the years.

Technolust: Tag Heuer Smartwatch, HoloLens, and HTC Vive

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

A super expensive smartwatch, augmented reality, and virtual reality

With the holidays here, my tech wishlist this week is full of expensive and unreasonable things to ask Santa for, but then again, that's the whole point of our Technolust column.

$1,500 Tag Heuer Connected smartwatch

Up until now, I've been a watch guy, but I haven't been much of a smartwatch guy. Usually both the look and the battery life, or lack thereof, don't appeal to me. While the Tag Heuer Connected smartwatch doesn't solve the battery issue, it's arguably the best looking smartwatch I've seen yet. This is partially because it looks more like a regular watch than a geeky calculator watch (Apple Watch, I'm looking at you).

TAG Heuer Connected

In terms of dimensions, its face has a 1.5-inch diameter and is 12.8mm thick. It also sports a 360x360 resolution screen, which equates to a good 240ppi. With Android Wear, Tag Heuer has provided a couple of different face options to choose from, in case you want to mix things up.

It's not perfect, however; there's no pulse reader so it's not a great fitness watch, if that's what you're looking for. One nice perk about the watch, though, is its trade-in program, which you can use to trade it in for a regular old mechanical watch down the road, in case you feel like your Tag Heuer is getting a bit dated.

Also, at $1,500, it's crazy expensive and I don't ever see myself buying one, but as this is TechnoLust, it's the perfect tech gadget to lust after.

What can I do with Tag Heuer Connected that I can't do now?

While I often wear a regular watch, which adequately tells me the time, with the Tag Heuer, I could get email and social media notifications without having to take out my phone. Also, Android Wear would help me with turn-by-turn navigation when I'm driving or biking somewhere new. Plus, it would make me look a little cooler!

Microsoft HoLolens Developer Edition

Ultimately, I'd want the retail version of Microsoft's augmented reality headset, but the company will soon release a developer edition of its HoloLens headset and I want one! I would love it if Santa brought it to me, considering that a dev kit version cost a whopping $3,000! (My wallet cries just thinking about that one.)

Hololens

I've tried out HoloLens twice before, and while I think Microsoft still has some work to do, I think it's pretty amazing and has the potential to be transformative. Yes, the FOV isn't particularly all that great and is roughly around the 60 degree marker, and I'd like to see additional improvements to weight and ergonomics, but despite those issues, it does an excellent job of augmenting your reality.

What can I do with HoloLens that I can't do now?

Whereas VR takes you to a new virtual environment, an AR headset like the HoloLens injects holograms into your world. This means I could turn my living room into a virtual battlefield or play hide and seek in a Minecraft cave within the confines of my own home. In the future, I could help my parents fix a leaky faucet from the comforts of my couch (assuming that they have HoloLens, too). I could also see how new furniture would look in my living room prior to plunking down my hard-earned cash for it.

HTC Vive Development Kit

If I'm going to include AR in this TechnoLust, I might as well include VR as well. Valve and HTC say that the Vive consumer version will release this year... sort of. In actuality, it's going to be a super limited release with just a few hundred units available (that still counts as a 2015 release, right?) Regardless, if I can't get my hands on the retail version, then I'll settle for one of the dev kits, which I know are floating around.

Htc Vive White

While we haven't seen official images of what the final consumer version will look like (Valve/HTC are saying that the actual headset will be more ergonomic and refined), we do know that it sports roughly a 100 degree FOV and a 2160x1200 resolution. The headset will also sport a 90Hz OLED display. Hopefully, Valve and HTC can nail down the ergonomics of the headset.

What can I do with the Vive that I can't do now?

Coupled with the Vive lighthouses, which track the head-mounted display, and the Vive's motion-tracked controllers, the possibilities are endless. I could be transported to virtual worlds. I could paint in 3D using the Tilt Brush app, watch movies in a virtual cinema, or actually feel like I'm walking around inside a game. The future can't come soon enough.

So, what are you Technolusting after? Tell us in the comments!

VTech Hacker Downloaded Chatlogs, Pics of Kids

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 01:54 PM PST

Now Hackers Can Steal Your Data With Lasers, Too

Last night, additional details were revealed regarding the recent VTech database breach. The hack is worse than previously thought, with the information of more than 4.8 million parents and 200,000 kids exposed. Even more frightening is the fact that the hacker had access to a year's worth of chat logs that took place between parents and their children. The hacker even found thousands of images of parents and children stored in the VTech database.

The news arrives by way of Motherboard who has spoken directly with the hacker, an individual who naturally wishes to remain anonymous. As previously reported, this individual was believed to have only retrieved general user profile information such as the user's name, email address, encrypted password, secret question and answer for password retrieval, IP address, mailing address, and download history.

However, according to the report, the chat logs and photos were retrieved from VTech's Kid Connect service, which allows a parent to communicate using a smartphone app with a child that has a VTech tablet. As the site points out, online tutorials encourage parents and children to take headshots for use within the smartphone and tablet apps. For some reason, VTech is storing "tens of thousands" of these images in its database.

To put this into perspective, the Kids Connect service has 2.3 million registered users. Surprisingly, the hacker was able to download 190GB worth of photos. Motherboard supposedly confirmed this by receiving a "sample" from the hacker that contained 3,832 images. Thankfully, the hacker reportedly has no plans to publishing the photos or anything else he/she has gathered.

As for the chat logs, these dated back to the end of 2014; the most recent entries were in November 2015. The server also stored audio files, some of which were recorded by kids. These chat logs and audio files, along with the photos, can be traced back to specific usernames, the report reveals.

"I can get a random Kid Connect account, look through the dump, link them to their circle of friends, and the parent who registered at Learning Lodge [VTech's app store]," the unnamed hacker tells Motherboard. "I have the personal information of the parent and the profile pictures, emails, [Kid Connect] passwords, nicknames...of everyone in their Kid Connect contacts list."

VTech said earlier this week that its database does not contain credit card information, nor does it store social security numbers, driving license numbers, or any other ID card number. Customers affected by the database breach include those residing in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Latin America, Hong Kong, China, Australia, and New Zealand.

Last night, Reuters reported that several US states have plans to investigate the VTech breach, including Connecticut and Illinois. Meanwhile, Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data Stephen Wong told the news outlet that his office was currently putting VTech through a "compliance check" to make sure the company followed "data privacy principles."

The big question is: Why is VTech storing photos, chat logs, and audio files of parents and children? So far, VTech has not offered an explanation.

MSI Reveals Z170A Krait Gaming R6 Siege Mobo

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 01:40 PM PST

MSI Z170A Gaming R6 Siege Motherboard

MSI said on Tuesday that it has partnered with Ubisoft Entertainment to release the MSI Z170A Krait Gaming R6 Siege motherboard. Based on the Z170A Krait Edition model, the new board features a special black-and-white design, Rainbow Six Siege packaging, and a copy of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege [Standard Edition] for the PC.

The company doesn't provide any specifics in its announcement, but states that it comes packed with high-quality audio components that support the company's Audio Boost 3 technology. There's also DDR4 Boost tech that makes sure the memory signals stay "pure," and features such as USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and Type-C ports.

"For gamers who want to be different and like to fully customize and personalize their game PC while demanding top performance, The Z170A Krait Gaming R6 Siege motherboard is sure to meet any expectation," the company boasts in a press release.

According to the specifications on the global website, this board supports sixth-generation Intel processors, DDR4-3600-[OC] memory, and multiple GPUs that plug into Steel Armor PCIe slots. There's even a Game Boost button that increases the performance of games with just the push of a button, and overvoltage protection to prevent "unforeseen damage."

The company also mentions that customers who purchase the Z170A Gaming M5 motherboard will also qualify to receive a free copy of the game. Like the other motherboard, this model is Windows 10 ready and supports sixth-generation Intel processors up to the Core i7 chip. Other features include support for DDR4-3600-[OC] memory, SteelSeries certification, and more.

The Rainbow Six Siege promotion starts today, December 1, and ends March 1, 2016. The game code that comes with these two motherboards will expire June 30, 2016.

For more information about the new Rainbow Six Siege-themed motherboard, head here.

Newegg Daily Deals: Corsair 750W PSU, G.Skill Ares 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3, and More!

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 12:12 PM PST

Corsair RM750

Top Deal:

Hopefully you were able to take advantage of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday frenzy. Depending on what you bought, you may need a new power supply to bring it all together, and if so, don't fret about the sales being in the rear view mirror. That's because today's top deal is for a Corsair 750W ATX12V v2.31 and EPS 2.92 80 Plus Gold Power Supply for $90 with free shipping (normally $130; additional $20 Mail-in rebate). This is a fully modular PSU with flat black cables and 80 Plus Gold certification.

Other Deals:

CyberPower UPS 1000VA / 600W PFC compatible Pure Sine Wave w/ USB Charging Ports for $115 with free shipping (normally $140)

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: [ESCKNAK26])

Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic compact ATX Mid Tower Case for $55 with free shipping (normally $60 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAK59]; additional $10 Mail-in rebate)

G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory for $60 with free shipping (normally $65 - use coupon code: [EMCKNAK66])

Lenovo Announces New ThinkPad and ThinkStation PCs

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 12:01 PM PST

New PCs for a new year

Lenovo ThinkPad P40 Yoga

Sorry, not sorry, Tim Cook, but the iPad Pro isn't going to decimate the market for traditional laptops and desktops. We're not heading towards a tablet-centric landscape now no more than we were when the first iPad came out, and lest anyone think OEMs are buying into Cook's nonsense, Lenovo is prepping three new systems for 2016.

The first is the ThinkPad P40 Yoga. Lenovo describes it as the first ever multi-mode mobile workstation. As with other Yoga devices, users can situate the system in four different orientations: laptop, stand, tent, and tablet.

A point of focus on the ThinkPad P40 Yoga is its sketching precision through a highly responsive pen and touchscreen powered by Wacom Active ES technology. There are 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity to play with on the 2560x1440 IPS display.

"Sketching is the foundation of everything we do," said Kyle Runciman, industrial designer and strategic content manager, Autodesk. "Designers can sketch for months to hone their ideas, and when they do get them to a point where they feel they're ready for prime time, they can benefit from a separate, ISV-certified mobile workstation to visualize the designs. The ability to perform all of these capabilities on a single machine is huge for our industry."

The ThinkPad P40 Yoga is powered by an Intel Core i7 "Skylake" processor that's paired with up to 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and an Nvidia Quadro M500M GPU.

Lenovo ThinkStation P310

While the ThinkPad P40 Yoga steals the show, Lenvo also announced a ThinkPad P50s with a 3K display and up to 17 hours of battery life, and the ThinkStation P310, a high-end desktop workstation featuring Intel's new Xeon E3-1200v5 processor, up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, support for FLEX drives with Samsung M.2 NVMe SSDs, and Nvidia Quadro graphics options.

All three systems will be available next year. The ThinkPad P40 Yoga will start at $1,399, the ThinkPad P50s at $1,299, and the ThinkStation P310 at $729.

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Nvidia Releases Game Ready Driver for Just Cause 3, Rainbow Six Siege

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 10:58 AM PST

Optimal gaming experience awaits

Just Cause 3

If you're running Nvidia's GeForce Experience software, then you're probably aware there's a new WHQL certified driver available, version 359.06. If not, this is your heads up.

The new driver isn't a major update, but one of Nvidia's "Game Ready" updates with optimizations for specific titles. In this case, the new driver is tuned for a pair of newly released games, Just Cause 3 and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, both now available on PC.

"Prior to a new title launching, our driver team works until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix possible makes it into the Game Ready driver. As a result, you can be sure you'll have the best day-1 gaming experience for your favorite new titles," Nvidia explains.

In addition to Game Ready tweaks, the new driver release also adds SLI profiles for Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, and Umbrella Corps.

Nvidia's latest driver doesn't fix any issues for Windows 10 users, though it does address a crashing issue for Call of Duty: Black Ops III observed in Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista.

Just Cause 3

The minimum requirements for Just Cause 3 look like this:

  • OS: Windows Vista SP2 / Windows 7 SP1 / Windows 8.1 (64-bit required)
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K, 3.3GHz / AMD Phenom II X6 1075T 3GHz
  • Memory: 6GB RAM
  • Storage: 54GB
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 / AMD Radeon HD 7870

Those specs will get your foot in the door, though Avalance Studios recommends an Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-8350 processor (or greater, of course), 8GB of RAM, and either a GeForce GTX 780 or AMD R9 290 graphics card.

Nvidia notes in its Just Cause 3 Graphics & Performance Guide that a GTX 780 delivers an "excellent experience at 1920x1080 when paired with a suitably speedy CPU," but since it's essentially a retired graphics card, the GPU maker suggests a GTX 970 instead.

Rainbow Six Siege

As for Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft's minimum requirements include:

  • OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 (64-bit required)
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-560 / AMD Phenom II X4 945
  • Memory: 6GB RAM
  • Storage: 30GB
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 / AMD Radeon HD 5870

The recommended specs bump things up to a Core i5-2500K or AMD FX-8120 processor, 8GB of RAM, 47GB of free storage space, and a GeForce GTX 670 (or GTX 760 / GTX 960) or AMD Radeon HD 7970 (or R9 280X / R9 380 / Fury X) graphics card.

For Nvidia's take, you can reference its Rainbow Six Siege Graphics & Performance Guide.

The new drivers are available here.

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Patriot Crams 128GB of Capacity into Teeny Tiny USB Flash Drives

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 10:17 AM PST

Big capacity, little body

Patriot Vex

Patriot is in the process of updating several of its compact "lifestyle" USB flash drive lines with 128GB capacity options, the company announced today.

"With the growing need for more storage, Patriot is excited to expand the storage capacities of our most popular lifestyle lines," said Meng J. Choo, Patriot's Flash Product Manager. "These new capacities make it possible to carry even the largest HD videos in your pocket, or easily expand the storage on your current device or platform."

The 128GB capacity will be found on Patriot's new Vex drives, which bring a bit of color to the portable storage arena. Specifically, that color is bright green. That isn't an arbitrary color choice -- Patriot says it will come in handy for college students, as the bright green color will stand out "amongst the mess of a desk." It also has a black plastic top that makes it easier to grip, you know, in case all that Hot Pockets grease is making it difficult to extract a flash drive.

Patriot's new Vex line isn't the only compact drive that will have a 128GB option. So will the company's Tab, a minimalist drive designed to attract the "Apple faithful" in need of expanded storage; the Spark, which boasts a metal uni-body design to help it blend in with any device it's plugged into; and the Supersonic Mini, a rubberized and rugged flash drive that's not actually part of Patriot's so-called lifestyle family, but can "withstand a beating."

These are all USB 3.1 Gen 1 drives, which is the newfangled way of saying USB 3.0 (it's the Gen 2 standard that offer a speed upgrade). They'll deliver up to 110MB/s read and up to 20MB/s write performance.

Look for the drives to be available online and in stores on December 14 starting at $50.

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Xbox Elite Controller Review

Posted: 01 Dec 2015 12:00 AM PST

At a glance
Elite (+) Awesome new d-pad; easy-to-use software; premium design; plenty of sticks to choose from; included audio jack. 
Destitute (-) Expensive; paddle sticks would occasionally fall out; no dual-trigger design; accidentally launches SBP upon shutoff.

Best in class

The PC is no stranger to high-end gaming peripherals. We've got super fancy RGB mechanical keyboards that sport a wide array of switch types, and we also have extremely luminescent gaming mice with crazy DPI options. There are also a multitude of high-end gaming controllers, including Valve's recently released Steam Controller, which offers a ton of customization options in its own ways. Not to be outdone, Microsoft has unleashed its own beast: the Xbox Elite controller. What makes the controller "elite"? Well, first off, at $150, perhaps only the elite will be able to afford it! That said, it really does look and feel super premium, and offers a ton of customization options. 

Xbox Elite Controller

The controller can be used wirelessly with Microsoft's new $25 USB adapter.

The first thing you'll notice about the controller is its looks, which are damned sexy. Its bold black-and-silver design is a thing of beauty. When you pick it up and hold it in your hands, you'll notice how premium it feels. Microsoft uses some high-end rubber materials and expensive steel components here, and the end result feels comfortable and built to last. You'll also notice that the Elite has four paddles on the back, which mirror the controller's ABXY face buttons by default, though you can change that using the Xbox app on Windows. While you can customize these buttons to be whatever you want, we actually preferred gaming without them in most cases, as we sometimes found ourselves accidentally clicking them. Luckily, these back buttons are just held on by magnets and you can take them off easily. 

Other bold changes to the controller include different d-pad and thumbstick mounts. In addition to your traditional d-pad configuration, Microsoft also included a satellite-looking d-pad that you can swap in. We really liked using this satellite style d-pad; it made shooting fireballs in fighting games much easier than the controller's more traditional d-pad. As a matter of fact, despite its unusual look, we'll go out on a limb and say it is arguably the best fighting-game d-pad out there. 

The two joy sticks also get a lot of attention—Microsoft has included three pairs of swappable sticks. So you get the traditional concave sticks, but Microsoft has also included a pair of taller concave sticks, and a PlayStation-style dome setup. The tall sticks are a little too tall for our liking and the dome-style sticks didn't offer as much grip as the regular sticks, so we ended up sticking (no pun intended) with the original pair. It is worth mentioning that you can mix and match these sticks as you please, and that all these sticks and d-pad mounts are held on magnetically, so are easily swapped out. Microsoft also includes a nice carrying case for storing all these accessories. 

The shoulder buttons received some attention, as well. One gripe we have with the regular Xbox One controller is that its shoulder buttons required a little too much actuation force for our liking, but the Elite controller eases up the tension required to actuate and it feels much more satisfying and clicky as a result. There are also two switches on the back of the controller that adjust the "throw," or travel, of the L2 and R2 buttons. 

Xbox Elite Controller 2

The controller has a bunch of customization options.

Not only can you mess around with the hardware, but the Xbox app on Windows allows you to remap all the buttons on the controller. Which means you could remap every button to "X" if you wanted to. You can also adjust the control stick dead zones, configure shoulder button travel distance even further, and there are also five different sensitivity presets to choose from. While you can create as many controller profiles as you want, you can save two local presets to the controller and switch between them on the fly in-game. This means you could have one preset for walking around and another for sniping, which is pretty cool. You can also adjust rumble and even how bright the white Xbox button glows. While the customization options aren't crazy deep like Valve's Steam Controller, the software is pretty easy to use. 

The Xbox Elite has a lot going for it, but it isn't perfect. The magnetic paddle sticks on the back would occasionally come loose; another small gripe is that when you hold down the Xbox button to turn off the controller, Steam Big Picture Mode inadvertently launches. We would have also liked it if the controller offered dual-stage triggers, like the Steam Controller, so you could lightly press on a shoulder button to aim and then press all the way down to fire. All in all, however, if the Steam Controller isn't for you and you prefer traditional setups, this is the best controller in that class that we've tried out so far. It is expensive, but it's meant for professional gamers, and given the fact that high-end keyboard and mice are also super expensive, we don't think it's too crazy to give the Elite Controller our Kick-Ass seal of approval. 

VTech Hack Reveals Details of Parents, Children

Posted: 30 Nov 2015 02:40 PM PST

Now Hackers Can Steal Your Data With Lasers, Too

VTech admits that hackers broke into Learning Lodge and stole info

Over the holidays, children's electronic and educational toy manufacturer VTech Holdings Limited confirmed that hackers gained access to its Learning Lodge app store database on November 14, exposing the details of 5 million parents and children. Learning Lodge allows customers to download apps, learning games, e-books, and other educational products to VTech devices, the company said.

"Our customer database contains general user profile information including name, email address, encrypted password, secret question and answer for password retrieval, IP address, mailing address and download history," the company stated in a press release on Friday.

VTech stressed that the database does not contain credit card information, nor does the company store credit card information on the Learning Lodge website. This information is provided on a secure, third party payment gateway during the check-out process. VTech also does not store social security numbers, driving license numbers, or any other ID card number.

The data breach was first noted by a Canadian journalist who asked about the incident on November 23. The company then conducted an internal investigation and discovered "irregular activity" taking place on the Learning Lodge website on November 14. Thus, the company knew about the breach on November 24 but didn't alert the general public until November 27.

"After confirming the facts surrounding the unauthorized access to our customer database, we informed our customers as swiftly as possible on November 27 HKT," the company says in a FAQ. The company also states that it's currently reaching out to individual customers listed in the database via email, telling them of the hacking and the possibility of their exposed information.

Customers affected by the database breach include those residing in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Latin America, Hong Kong, China, Australia, and New Zealand, the company says.

A cyber security expert at Surrey University told the BBC that VTech's website may have been subject to SQL Injection, which he finds "unforgivable" given that it's such an old method of attack.

"When it's hundreds of thousands of children including their names, genders and birthdates, that's off the charts," adds security expert Troy Hunt. "When it includes their parents as well – along with their home address – and you can link the two and emphatically say 'Here is 9 year old Mary, I know where she lives and I have other personally identifiable information about her parents (including their password and security question),' I start to run out of superlatives to even describe how bad that is."

VTech says it has implemented measures to defend its database against any further attacks, but did not go into detail. The Learning Lodge website has been suspended until further notice.

Newegg Daily Deals: Asus ROG 15.6-Inch Laptop, HGST 4TB HDD, and More!

Posted: 30 Nov 2015 12:58 PM PST

Asus ROG Laptop

Top Deal:

Traveling away from home for the holidays? Going to visit the in-laws? That might not be how you want to spend your holiday break, but to salvage the situation, just bring along a gaming laptop and politely dismiss yourself as needed. Don't have one? Then check out today's top deal for an Asus ROG 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop for $939 with free shipping (normally $1,099). This things sports an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor (Skylake), 16GB of DDR4 memory, 1TB HDD, Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics, and Windows 10 Home 64-bit.

Other Deals:

Asus Laptop Intel Core i5 5200U (2.20 GHz) 4 GB Memory 500 GB HDD Intel HD Graphics 5500 15.6-inch Windows 10 Home 64-Bit for $350 with free shipping (normally $417)

Acer 23.8-inch 4ms (G to G) LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS 250 cd/m2 ACM 100,000,000:1 (1000:1) Built-in Speakers for $110 with shipping (normally $149)

HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch High-Performance Hard Drive for Desktop NAS Systems Bare Drive for $270 with free shipping (normally $340)

Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Memory Kit for $35 with free shipping (normally $45)

AMD Issuing a Crimson Driver Fan Speed Hotfix

Posted: 30 Nov 2015 12:47 PM PST

AMD Crimson Slide 11

On November 24, AMD released a "reimagined" software suite called Radeon Software Crimson Edition (tested by Maximum PC's Jarred Walton, here), packed with a new, streamlined interface, better game load times, up to 1.8 times more energy efficiency capability than the previous suite, and support for AMD LiquidVR technology. Unfortunately, the new suite also brought an overheating issue for some AMD customers.

Affected users have taken to Reddit and other media outlets to report that their cards have throttled down to a maximum 20 percent fan speed limit no matter the GPU load. Others have stated that they have received the Blue Screen of Death once the card gets too hot, while others say that their AMD card is completely fried.

"We are aware of low fan speed reports on select GPUs with Radeon Software Crimson Edition," AMD states on Twitter. "We intend to publish a hotfix on Monday."

Could this be a Windows 10 issue? Blogger Elric Phares of Tech of Tomorrow experienced heating problems related to Crimson Edition and the GPU fans on his Windows 10 machine. After moving his cards to different slots, he managed to get the machine to post, ruling out possible physical damage. However, every game tested on the machine flickered, making them unplayable. He threw the same cards in a Windows 8 machine and did not experience any issues.

"I want to be clear though that Roy Taylor (AMD Corporate Vice President) and staff were instantly on this and trying to help," says Phares." I do not know exactly what in the heck is going on and I really hated that this even happened, but after searching online there have been many folks with some issues so it's just going to have to be a HotFix of which AMD has publicly said they are aware of and fixing so it should all be good in a few days."

Are cards really getting damaged? Typically, graphic cards will throttle down when a temperature "ceiling" is hit, preventing heat-based physical damage to the graphics chip. However, if the reports are true, there's no indication of what AMD and OEMs plan to do about possible replacements at this time.

"We are gearing up to update Radeon Software Crimson Edition," AMD said on Monday via Twitter. "We will publish a hotfix in the next few hours w/ great stability improvements."

AMD customers can check their fan status by heading to "Global Settings" and then "Global OverDrive" within the new Crimson software. If the fan is locked down at 20 percent, users can turn off the lock until the hotfix is issued by following these simple instructions. 

VIA: PCWorld

Websites Crash as Cyber Monday Leads to Record Online Sales

Posted: 30 Nov 2015 10:30 AM PST

Buckling under pressure

Online Shopping

Once again, Cyber Monday, the busiest online shopping day of the year, is on pace to set a record in sales. 

According to Adobe Digital Index, part of Adobe Systems, online shoppers spent $490 million between midnight and 10 AM Eastern. That's a jump of 14 percent compared to the same period a year ago, and websites are having trouble keeping up with the increased traffic.

Target's online portal saw a temporary outage during the initial frenzy. Shoppers also report outages and slow checkouts at PayPal, Neiman Marcus, Walmart, Victoria's Secrete, and Footlocker, Reuters reports.

This is just the beginning. By day's end, Adobe predicts that online shoppers in the U.S. alone will have spent $3 billion.

"Consumers are hyped for Cyber Monday, with social buzz more positive than what we saw on Black Friday, but they need to brace themselves for the highest out-of-stock rates of the season so far," said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Index.

Online shopping is growing in popularity. While Cyber Monday is the busiest online shopping day of the year, consumers are turning to the web for purchases during the Black Friday frenzy, which in recent times has been pushed back to Thanksgiving Day.

According to Adobe, consumers spent over $8 billion online between Thanksgiving Day and Sunday. That's up 17 percent from a year ago. Also up is the average amount per shopper, which jumped 4 percent to $135.25.

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Light-Based Li-Fi Tests Yield Speeds 100 Times Faster than Wi-Fi

Posted: 30 Nov 2015 10:00 AM PST

A light upgrade

Light Bulbs

Imagine being able to download a high-definition movie in just a few seconds. That's the kind of speed upgrade Li-Fi technology offers, though don't go tossing your Wi-Fi router in the garbage.

Velmenni, an Estonian startup and recent finalist at the Slush 100 startup competition in Helinski, has been testing Li-Fi technology at its headquarters and in industrial environments. The results of those tests? The company was able to send data at up to 1-gigabyte per second, International Business Times reports.

The term Li-Fi comes from Professor Harald Hass from Edinburgh University. During a TED talk in 2011, Haas talked of a future in which billions of LED light bulbs could be essentially become Li-Fi hotspots after being outfitted with small microchips.

Li-Fi Graphic

Li-Fi uses visible light spectrum to transfer data. Other than speed, one of the benefits is that it's not susceptible to radio interference. It's also considered more secure than Wi-Fi.

There are also some disadvantages of Li-Fi. It can't be deployed outdoors in sunlight or in other places with unstable conditions.

Nevertheless, it's a promising technology that could one day allow for 224Gbps (28GB/s) data transfers. At that speed, it would only take a single second to download 18 movies that are 1.5GB each. Pretty incredible.

Li-Fi isn't likely to replace Wi-Fi entirely, but it might one day exist alongside it for both businesses and consumers.

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3D Printed PC Mods

Posted: 30 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

Enthusiasts use 3D printers for great PC mods

3D printers, such as MakerBot's Replicator, give enthusiasts a new tool to create their own case mods.
3D printers, such as MakerBot's Replicator, give enthusiasts a new tool to create their own case mods.

In case you've been living under a rock, old-school PC modding is still alive and well—modders still cut new fan mounts, install custom case windows, or completely gut a case interior to make way for a custom water-cooling system. Even in the twenty-first century, we're still using the same tools to enhance our cases—dremels, jigsaws, and even zip-ties. Technology has given us a new tool for the toolbox, however, which can be used to create just about anything our minds can conceive of.

As you may have guessed from the title, we're talking about the 3D printer. Over the past several years, they have become more affordable, and some modders are using them to create their own unique mods to outfit their cases. In this roundup, we'll take a look at some of the more unusual implementations of 3D printing tech that PC enthusiasts have created.

It may be small, but Femke Toele's Flux features Intel's NUC housed in a custom 3D printed enclosure.
It may be small, but Femke Toele's Flux features Intel's NUC housed in a custom 3D printed enclosure.

Sure, it isn't a full-blown desktop rig, but Intel's NUC is still 100% PC. Even micro-computers need an enclosure, which is what Dutch artist Femke Toele created with her futuristic Flux. She designed the case using SolidWorks to get the mounting plate just right, before 3D printing it using PLA filament. She printed the plate, then took to a lathe to custom fabricate the case's aluminum housing, which was formed by hand.

Once the mounting plate was complete, she laser-cut an acrylic cover plate to give it that distinctive blue look. Did we mention that Flux is water-cooled? Femke cannibalized what looks to be a Corsair Hydro Series liquid cooler, which houses the pump inside the aluminum case and routes the coolant through laser-cut acrylic channels, effectively cooling the Core i3 processor. All in all, the case is truly one of a kind and would be a great addition to any home battle station (or office). Check out the story behind the Flux.

Complx's Node is an entirely 3D printed PC case that's portable enough to take to LAN parties.
Complx's Node is an entirely 3D printed PC case that's portable enough to take to LAN parties.

Another interesting case comes from Overclockers.com user Complx, who designed his own Mini ITX 3D printed enclosure for Cooler Master's 2015 Case Mod World Series contest. His original Node build was to be a full-size case, but printing the parts became problematic due to the size and some inconsistencies of the printed parts. In fact, Complx had to start from scratch several times as he outsourced the print job to several manufacturers who couldn't get the print right. He finally settled on one who could do it for $500. Factor in the cost of the components—Intel i7 4790k, Asus Z97I motherboard, EVGA GTX 970 SC, 8GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2,133Mhz, a pair of Samsung 850 EVOs (120/250GB), and a SilverStone SX600-G, and his build certainly cost several thousand dollars. Check out the story of the Node.

Adam Owen's Tiger 1 Tank case is RC controlled, features a camera in the barrel and is entirely 3D printed out of ABS filament.
Adam Owen's Tiger 1 Tank case is RC controlled, features a camera in the barrel, and is entirely 3D printed of ABS filament.

Inspired by the game World of Tanks, Adam Owen decided to build his own PC case to pay homage to the highly addictive MMOG. Adam's Tiger 1 Tank is a completely 3D printed enclosure that doubles as fully mobile RC vehicle, complete with an actuated turret that features a Wi-Fi-enabled PTZ camera housed inside. Concealed in the main area are an Intel i7 4770k, G-Skill 8GB DDR3, Asus Mini ITX motherboard, and an EVGA GTX 750 Ti, all powered by a Cooler Master 550W GX II. Best of all, Adam made all of his design files available to anyone who wants to build their own on the Thingiverse open-source website. Read the story and see more cool pics here.

pOPe's Project M8 case mod is jam packed with 3D printed parts to take care of everything from cable routing to hose brackets.
pOPe's Project M8 case mod is jam-packed with 3D printed parts to take care of everything from cable routing to hose brackets.

While it may be a few years old, it's nonetheless relevant when it comes to 3D printed case mods. We're talking about Overclocker.com user pOPe and his Project M8, which features an incredible array of custom 3D printed pieces to keep the inside of the case neat and clean. pOPe designed printed clamp plates for the power supply to secure the various cables, pieces to hide the cable routing, and connection plates for the coolant tubing. He even machined his own aluminum pump holder and mounting plates for the cooling reservoir, which need to be stable in order to pass coolant through no less than three Aquacomputer radiators. Check out the details of Project M8.

Reaper N1's StarCraft Day Zero case mod makes use of 3D printed aesthetics to give the case a game-worthy look.
Reaper N1's StarCraft Day Zero case mod makes use of 3D printed aesthetics to give the case a game-worthy look.

Some modders use 3D printed parts to give their cases a unique look based on their favorite games, as Reaper N1 (Envious Mods) did with his homage to the StarCraft universe, which shows in his Day Zero case mod. Affixed to the side of the Terran-themed case are a custom-cut Lexan polycarbonate Shield and Eagle logo, both wrapped in carbon fiber and a perfect match for the case's paint scheme. The case was gutted to make room for all the components, most importantly for repositioning the PSU to the front of the case, making it easier for cable management. Rounding out the case's aesthetics are a 3D printed StarCraft logo, along with a custom-printed USB mount for the front of the case. Get the full story on Reaper N1's Day Zero mod at Overclock.net.

Eoma's 3D printed laptop case was made using 22 meters of PLA filament to create a total of nineteen individual parts.
Eoma's 3D printed laptop case was made using 22 meters of PLA filament to create a total of nineteen individual parts.

On the other side of the PC spectrum are laptops, which are a bit tougher to mod. Rhombas-tech.net user eoma decided to build his own to accommodate Libre-based custom-made parts, for a truly personalized laptop. Printing the case was no easy task and came about after wasting an incredible 200 meters of filament, an expensive pain, to say the least. The final build consists of 19 individual parts made from just 22 meters of PLA bolted together. The laptop can accommodate a 15.6-inch screen, full QWERTY keyboard with numpad, 4.3-inch touchpad, and a 5,000mAh battery. You can view all the open-source print files for the laptop, and also get the full story on the laptop.

Newegg Daily Deals: iBuyPower Desktop PC, Intel NUC, and More!

Posted: 28 Nov 2015 09:19 AM PST

iBuyPower Desktop

Top Deal:

Find yourself too busy playing Fallout 4 on your home brewed system to build a rig for your mother's uncle's friend's grandson's neighbor? Don't fret, you can still do the kid a solid by pointing him towards today's top deal for an iBuyPower Desktop PC AMD FX-Series FX-6300 (3.50 GHz) 8 GB DDR3 1 TB HDD Windows 10 Home 64-Bit for $485 with free shipping (normally $570 - use coupon code: [AFNTL23J]). For a fist full of Franklins, he's getting an AMD FX-6300 processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, Radeon R7 360 graphics card, a 1TB HDD, DVD burner, Windows 10 64-bit, and a keyboard and mouse. Not a bad setup for the money.

Other Deals:

Sceptre 20-inch 5ms LED Backlight LCD Monitor for $90 with free shipping (normally $130)

Intel 535 Series 2.5-inch 480GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive for $150 with free shipping (normally $250)

Intel NUC NUC5i5RYK, USB 3.0, Supports M.2 SSD card, Intel HD Graphics 6000, Mini HDMI, Mini DisplayPort for $295 with free shipping (normally $354)

LG 29-inch 5ms LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS panel for $230 with free shipping (normally $310)

Lenovo and Razer Kick Off Partnership with Co-Branded Gaming Desktop

Posted: 27 Nov 2015 11:00 AM PST

Tag teaming the desktop

Lenovo Razer Desktop

Lenovo, the world's largest supplier of PCs, is teaming up with peripheral maker Razer to launch a series of co-branded gaming devices, the two companies announced today.

The partnership will see special Razer Edition models of Lenovo's Y series gaming devices, starting with a new "Lenovo Razer Edition" desktop. Details about the desktop are sparse at the moment, though we expect it will sport an Intel Skylake processor and, based on one of the press photos, up to multiple discrete Nvidia GeForce graphics cards.

"We are thrilled to partner with Razer and bring out the best from both companies to deliver a better, more immersive gaming experience for customers," said Victor Rios, vice president and general manager, Workstation BU, Gaming and Industry Solutions, Lenovo. "While we bring to the table our engineering expertise, design muscle and scale, Razer adds in the finesse and experience of serving the gaming community for the last decade. We believe our partnership is a strong first step that will lead to the delivery of winning PC gaming solutions and a brand new experience to our customers."

The collaboration between the two will extend beyond desktops to include "multiple new designs and products." In addition, Lenovo and Razer committed to working with one another to "fast track the development of new technologies, including gaming experience enhancements."

While that leaves the door wide open for pretty much anything and everything, we suspect virtual reality products and technologies will be in the mix.

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MSI GT72S with GTX 980

Posted: 27 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

At a Glance

[+] Redline: Insanely fast; good build quality; overclockable; great features.

[-] Meltdown: Insanely expensive; large and heavy; only 1080p (for now).

Preparing for battle

For the past year, the fastest notebook GPU has been the GTX 980M. With AMD and Nvidia both stuck on the 28nm process node for 2015, most didn't expect to see any significant changes until 2016. Shoehorning a mobile version of GM200 into a notebook seemed unlikely, as the 980M isn't even using a fully enabled GM204, and yet it still runs into the 100W TDP limit of mobile GPUs. Faced with such an obstacle, Nvidia has decided to change the game and release a notebook version of the desktop GTX 980, using a fully enabled GM204 chip. They're officially calling this the GTX 980 (since GTX 985M was apparently less marketable?), which makes things a bit confusing as it's not quite the same as the desktop GTX 980; we'll refer to it as the GTX 980 for Notebooks for clarity as needed.

How has this been accomplished? Simple: The TDP for the notebook GTX 980 is quite a bit higher than the previous 100W target; Nvidia won't disclose precisely how much higher, but we estimate it's in the 130W to 140W range. MSI is first out of the gate with GTX 980 in a notebook, with updated GT72S and GT80 models, but select Asus and Clevo-based notebooks will also support the new GPU. From MSI's perspective, this is a new class of gaming notebook performance, and the GTX 980 is a $500 upgrade over the same notebook with GTX 980M. It's not just about performance, however, as Nvidia is giving notebook vendors a lot of leeway in terms of what they do with the GPU; MSI takes their newfound freedom and runs with it.

MSI GT72S with GTX 980 for Notebooks
CPU Intel Core i7-6820HK
RAM 4x8GB DDR4-2133
GPU GeForce GTX 980 8GB for Notebooks
Factory Overclocked +110MHz
Display 17.3-inch, 1920x1080 Matte
75Hz G-SYNC Enabled IPS
Storage 2x128GB Samsung SM951 M.2 SSDs in RAID 0
1TB Hitachi 7200RPM HDD
BD-Combo Drive
Connectivity 1x Mini-DP
1x HDMI
Ethernet
SD reader
6xUSB 3.0 (1 charging)
1x USB 3.1 Type-C
Killer 802.11ac WiFi
Bluetooth 4.0
Dimensions 16.85x11.57x1.89 inches
428 x 294 x 48 mm
Weight (Lap/Carry) 8.59/10.63 lbs.
3.9/4.83 kg

Sporting a multiplier unlocked Skylake i7-6820HK processor, MSI allows for BIOS overclocking of the CPU, and GPU overclocking via utilities like MSI Afterburner. The latter comes pre-installed, and on our test notebook the GTX 980 came from the factory with a modest 110MHz bump in core clocks. Even with a 230W AC adapter, the combination of CPU and GPU overclocking will push the power limits—we measured over 220W peak power draw during gaming tests, without overclocking the CPU, though PSU efficiency means there's still another 50W or so before the system truly hits its theoretical limit.

What this means in terms of actual specifications is a bit nebulous, as usual. Nvidia specifies the minimum (base) clock of the GTX 980 as 1064MHz, but GPU Boost is present and enabled. Running stock settings, the typical GPU clocks ranged from 1202MHz to 1228MHz, which means even without the +110MHz overclock the GPU is hitting about 140-160MHz above the base value. What happens with the +110MHz factory overclock? It's not a direct increase, as GPU Boost is still in effect, but it does scale pretty closely. In testing, we saw clocks of 1300-1326MHz, so about 100MHz higher than the stock settings.

MSI GT72S Dragon Edition Right Ports
MSI GT72S Dragon Edition Right Ports
MSI GT72S Dragon Edition Left Ports
MSI GT72S Dragon Edition Left Ports
A Thin Redline
MSI GT72S Benchmarks vs. Notebooks
  Zero-Point MSI GT72S % Increase
Stetch.Efx 2.0 (sec) 962 875 10%
ProShow Producer 5 (sec) 1629 1784 -9%
x264 HD 5.0 2nd (fps) 13.5 14.96 11%
BioShock Infinite 1080p DX11+Ultra 36.1 140.7 290%
Metro: LL 1080p "Normal" 30.4 123.8 307%
3DMark 11 Performance 4170 14115 238%
Battery Life (1080p Video, Minutes) 234 302 29%

Our zero-point notebook is an Alienware 14 with a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700MQ, 16GB DDR3-1600, 256GB mSATA SSD, 750GB 5,400rpm HDD, GeForce GTX 765M, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. BioShock Infinite tested at 1920x1080 at Ultra DX11 settings; Metro: Last Light tested at 1920x1080 at DX11 medium quality settings with PhysX disabled.

When it comes to gaming performance in a notebook, the GTX 980 is the new champion, and VRAM isn't a problem either as most vendors will be using the 8GB model. The GT72S smokes our zero-point laptop and leaves it smoldering on the ground, but even a high-end GTX 980M SLI rig like MSI's GT80 will be hard pressed—the GT80 with SLI GTX 980M is only 10–20 percent faster in two of our graphics tests, but it actually trails by 12 percent in Metro: Last Light. The GT80 is also several pounds heavier and doesn't have an IPS G-SYNC display, piling up the crispy peasant points for the GT72S.

MSI GT72S Benchmarks vs. Desktop GPUs
MSI GT72S
Stock 		MSI GT72S
Factory 		MSI GT72S
Redline 		GTX 980 R9 Nano GTX 970
Batman: Arkham Origins 141.0 147.0 161.0 142.0 156.4 113.0
Grand Theft Auto V 62.5 67.0 73.0 69.1 65.8 58.1
Hitman: Absolution 68.3 70.2 78.1 75.5 82.0 62.0
Metro: Last Light 84.0 87.6 96.9 100.6 90.0 76.7
Shadow of Mordor 89.6 96.0 104.2 96.1 100.9 73.9
Tomb Raider 100.6 105.5 115.4 114.5 103.3 94.3
The Witcher 3 51.2 53.7 58.8 58.3 55.3 45.7
Seven Game Average 85.3 89.6 98.2 93.7 93.4 74.8

While the factory overclock on the GPU is nice, we can do better! Not content with the out-of-box performance, we set out to see how far we could push both the CPU and GPU with overclocking. We're basically redlining the system at this point, and stability might not be totally there, but a 4GHz CPU clock with +220/300 GPU core/RAM was pretty close. (If you're wondering, with GPU Boost the core clocks ranged from 1371-1410MHz, so we're definitely running into the limit of overclocking.) The factory overclock netted a five percent increase in gaming performance, and with additional overclocking we've increased that to a 15 percent boost.

Even against desktops like our GPU testbed, which uses an overclocked 4.2GHz i7-5930K, the GT72S can hold its own. Our desktop with a GTX 980 card posted average performance that's only seven percent faster than the GT72S, albeit with the factory overclock. Perhaps more noteworthy is that with our maxed out overclock, the GT72S is faster than both the R9 Nano and a desktop GTX 980—though both of those could likewise be overclocked. But however you want to slice it, the GTX 980 in notebook form is definitely fast…perhaps too fast.

You see those frame rates for the GT72S? Now consider the fact that the display is limited to 1080p with 75Hz refresh rates. At stock clocks, the GTX 980 for notebooks exceeds that threshold in four of our seven games, and with our additional overclocks we're at the limits of the display in almost every game. What we'd really like to see is a higher resolution display. MSI says a 4K IPS panels will be coming out in the future, but that almost goes too far in the High DPI race as you'll be forced to use Windows' scaling outside of games. We'd still love to see a quality 1440p144 display in a gaming notebook, though perhaps that ship has already sailed.

Trogdor, the Burninator

It's not just a story of great performance, either. The GT72S is loaded with other extras like multi-colored backlighting, switchable graphics with five hours of video playback, a USB 3.1 Type-C connector for future-proofing, and a 75Hz G-SYNC enabled display all help to elevate the GT72S to truly lust-worthy status. It's a true desktop replacement that you can drop into the included backpack for some intense gaming away from home. It's also fairly easy to get at the internals, should you need to upgrade or replace any components (other than the GPU).

The system can get moderately noisy under load (48dB from 18 inches away), but that's actually better than some other gaming notebooks, and it also stays surprisingly cool. Above are several images we snapped of the GT72S under load, using an FLIR One infrared camera that FLIR was kind enough to provide. The hot spots under load can get above 45C, though most of the surfaces you're likely to touch stay under 35C. Still, if you're sensitive to heat, or live in a warm environment (our testing was done in a 22C ambient temperature), the upper-middle portion of the GT72S keyboard can get a bit toasty. And this is before additional overclocking, though to be fair that doesn't affect temperatures as much as noise levels.

MSI GT72S Dragon Edition with Backlit keyboard

One of the great things about the GT72S is that it's not just for gaming—though the Dragon Army styling might look a bit out of place in a board room. This is a powerful notebook, no matter what you're doing. Anyone that needs a portable PC for software development, video and image editing, running virtual machines, or other demanding work will be more than happy with the GT72S. Of course, most of those tasks don't really need a beastly graphics card, but it's there for off hours use. The keyboard and trackpad are comfortable to use and work well. Audio quality is also good, though nothing mind-blowing—this is still a notebook after all.

This is the first of several announced systems with the new GTX 980 for Notebooks, and MSI sets the bar quite high. The only major drawback other than the price is the size. The GT72S isn't the sort of system you want to lug around as a daily driver. While a higher resolution display might be nice, 1080p is still a comfortable resolution on a 17.3-inch display, and right now there's no better option. (Wait until 2016 if you want a 4K 17.3-inch notebook.) For the target audience it doesn't get much better than this. The only thing faster would be two GTX 980 cards in SLI, or wait for the next generation GPUs in 2016.

$3099, www.msi.com

Generation Proc

Posted: 27 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

This article was published in the November 2015 issue of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

How games have learned from art, music, and math—and how the world might learn from games

And on the third day, God made the world. And He saw that it was quite crummy. And He then looked at the other worlds that He'd made, and thought, "They suck a bit, too, infallible as I am."

So He pondered for silent indefinites, as the void drifted tetchily on, waiting for time, space, gravity, bicycles, and all the other concomitants of virtue and vice. Eventually, He got a bit frustrated. "Balls to it all," He thought, blasphemously. "handcrafting a universe is for losers. I'll procedurally generate an infinity of them and just choose the best one." And lo, that was the morning of the third day, and He saw that it was good. So He went and watched fractal zooms on Youtube for the rest of the week.

As a child, I remember being fascinated by Mandelbrot. I didn't at that time know what the word meant, except that in the corner of our IT room at school was a single, fast Macintosh SE that the IT teacher treasured and guarded. The only thing he seemed to run on it was a Mandelbrot simulation, which we used to sit and watch over our lunch break. It would take ages to draw each screen as it zoomed in on each part of the structure, which would always reveal more structure and even more complexity. eventually, sometimes, it would repeat.

A Mandelbrot drawing is a representation of a mathematical set—the set of complex numbers that do not tend to infinity; which is to say, equations involving imaginary numbers; which is to say, numbers that
involve the square root of -1. Which is to say… that I didn't take math past high school and this is really difficult to understand. So I promise there won't be any more equations in this article. Really.

More interestingly for our purposes is that, whatever else Mandelbrot is, it's an equation that throws up astounding complexity and beauty without the user having to create anything themselves. Look closely and you can see it features spirals, valleys, seahorses, tentacles, antennae, double-hooks, islands. The mind's eye sees cityscapes, ships, people holding hands, trees, and organic structures that have never existed. And all this is created from an equation?

Well, only with a computer. Fractal art, like Mandelbrot, mostly exists as an outgrowth of using iterative methods to solve polynomial equations, and that really requires a computer. Looking at generative pieces, it's hard not to agree that they're art—but the artist has at most set the parameters for their creation, not handcrafted the piece, or in this case, handsolved the math.

Similarly, "generative music" can be constructed without direct user input. One could also argue that Bach's fugues were generative, given that they were based on a strict underlying mathematical process out of the control of the creator. There's even generative writing, which has grown from the "cut-up" techniques of writers such as William Burroughs or Georges Perec, and France's mechanical-writing oulipo school.

That's the heart of procedural generation. It's grown out of math, through art and music, and it's taking over gaming. Where will it stop?

PCF309.feat3.opener

Few procedurally generated games have had the success of Minecraft, recently bought by Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

"People have always been fascinated with creating unpredictable things by following rules," explains Michael Cook, an academic who specializes in procedural game design. "Even children's games where you pass along bits of folded paper and each write part of a story. It's all about being delighted at something strange coming from nowhere in particular.

"We've dreamed of machines that make things for a very long time: Ada Lovelace wondered about machines that could write music long before Alan Turing was even born. I think there's just something magical about the idea of something coming from nothing, and I still feel that magic each time I work on a new generator!"

A Rogue's Heart

Cook's main project, Angelina, is a special case, which we'll talk about later. But he's right about our love of the emergent outgrowth of rule structures. "There's nothing better at following rules than a computer, so it didn't take long for programmers to give computers recipes for generating complex, beautiful things. Computers let us transform theoretical patterns and ideas into amazing machines with moving parts that could be poked and examined and executed again and again."

The most standard usage of procedural techniques in modern gaming is in roguelikes and indie games, such as Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, and NetHack. It's an area that Nicholas Vining's Gaslamp Games specializes in, and he's adamant that it's essential for certain genres.

"For the games we make," says Vining, "you have to have procedural generation. Both Clockwork Empires (a steampunk colony builder with a Lovecraftian twist) and Dungeons of Dredmor rely on having a lot of replayability, and a good way to get replayability into a game is to have it change every time. You really want to have random geography and random levels and random stuff being thrown at you."

PCF309.feat3.dungeons ofdredmor

Roguelike indie game Dungeons of Dredmor has procedurally generated dungeons as well as items.

But why use procedural generation? Surely we've got by perfectly well handcrafting them so far? "People want giant experiences, and value for money," says Vining. "AAA games deal with this by giving them 100 hours of hand-massaged content—Dragon Age: Inquisition is the most recent example—but that doesn't scale unless you're making, you know, Dragon Age. (And then you'll end up probably having to make money by DLC.) Being indies, we have to cheat. And frankly, hand-massaging 100 hours of content is more laborious than it needs to be."

Vining is also keen to make the game easy to share and non-repetitive—not just for the end user, but to attract the YouTubers who mostly drive a game's fame today.

"We're now making games for players who want to also show themselves playing the game, on YouTube, and doing stuff. I think you're stuck with that nowadays. I think Minecraft did it to us. So, you have to make a game where YouTuber X playing the game can have a completely different experience than YouTuber Y.

"If you look at the stuff that gets put up on large YouTube Channels, it's things with a creative element, a procedural element, and also Goat Simulator. Procedural content gives you just enough hooks upon which a good storyteller can hang their own hat. I think that's something that Minecraft either got, or stumbled upon. There's a certain level of crudity needed where you can then have a child just stick their imagination on it, and have something wonderful happen, and a lot of the people gunning in the same space have never really figured that one out."

Liminal Proceedings

By contrast, Dr. Tom Betts's motivations are less about speed or fame, and more about interesting outcomes. He started as an arts student. "I was interested in the idea of creating systems that would make art work for me. I'd always been into computers and games so it made sense to combine those interests. I taught myself to program and I've been making generative and proc-gensoftware ever since." He's created art, performed music, and has been the lead programmer at indie games company Big Robot since 2008.

"Working with proc-gen is always a sort of collaboration between the programmer, the program code, and the player. You can't dictate the outcome as precisely as you can in traditional production methods, and that makes it more interesting. Also, in terms of art and music, generative/proc-gen work has its own sort of aesthetic that comes from its ability to produce large numbers of variations on a theme, all of which are different, but maintain a shared style."

Several of Dr. Betts's games have involved procedural generation. Sir, Are You Being Hunted, for example, uses a procedural system to generate all the terrain, housing, flora, and fauna in its open world. "Procedural generation can aid the creation of all kinds of game worlds, especially in the case of large open-world games or anything with roguelike aspects. It can help smaller teams build larger environments and it can automate or assist many of the processes involved in larger studio production pipelines. We'll undoubtedly see the usage of PCG tools and methods grow as games increase in complexity and production cost."

PCF309.feat3.speedtree2

SpeedTree can generate believable trees and foliage using mathematical formulae. It's been used in The Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, and Far Cry 4, among many others.

Cook has yet another motivation to use procedural generation: the reintroduction of genuine exploration to games. "Minecraft showed an entire generation of gamers how procedurally generated worlds could inspire a sense of discovery, exploration, and awe. There are similar revolutions around the corner for generated game mechanics, generated stories, and so on. It's incredibly exciting." Part of that is there can be no walkthrough to a proc-gen world—at most, some recipes and best practice recommendations.

Cook is also interested in the development of aids to game development, which also come under the heading of procedural generation. "There's a lot of interest in building software that can help people design games, either by learning how humans design, or using a big database of rules. For example, imagine feeding every Team Fortress 2 level into a machine-learning system, and then using that system to evaluate, comment on, and even adjust levels designed by modders.

"The other big thrust is the automation of new areas of game design, moving out of the same old areas like dungeons and levels, and looking into generating other, harder kinds of content. I'm really excited by this move. There are genres out there that we can't imagine right now because we're waiting for new generators to come along and show us the way. Last month, at a conference, I saw systems which can generate metaphors, cocktails, dancers, fables, and jokes. I'd love to see all of these things built into games, games that can generate new kinds of content beyond trees and rocks. I want games to write theme songs for my MMO character. I want games to write myths about my epic journey. I want games to procedurally generate me a best friend I can talk to. I want to see new things coming out of our computers."

Bridge of Size

Vinings agrees, particularly when it comes to music. "Repetitive music drives me nuts; once you've listened to Dungeons of Dredmor's entire soundtrack, good as it is, you've heard it all. We tried to modulate this in Clockwork Empires by having the soundtracks adjust themselves as your mood changed, and while it does work pretty well, it doesn't work as well as it could if we iterated on the technology for a few more rounds.

"The problem is that you have to have somebody who is a musician and a programmer, and you have to build tools. It's a very complex process that requires specific sorts of individuals. How do you teach a computer about orchestration?" Despite that, we have taught computers about things like image recognition (see Dreams of the Deep, below).

One of the most interesting procedural-generation benefits has to do with file size. Today, we're growing accustomed to an endless increase in our computer's storage capacity; 1TB drives are now commonplace. But in areas of constraint, procedural generation can massively reduce file sizes, even eliminate the need for in-game assets.

When Naked Sky Entertainment's game RoboBlitz launched on PC and Xbox 360, in 2006, Microsoft decided that the largest downloadable game it would allow on the system was a tiny 50MB, to fit on one of their (tiny for the time) memory sticks. Yet RoboBlitz was the first game to run the then-revolutionary Unreal 3 engine. As Naked Sky's chief technical officer Joshua Glazer told us, they used lots of tricks to get the game down to under 50MB—among them procedural generation.

PCF309.feat3.minecraft2

Minecraft's genius is in combining a procedural world with user customization.

"All those levels would have loaded a lot faster if it weren't for Microsoft's 50MB requirement, coupled with the requirement that we couldn't have any kind of 'install' process that unpacked the game after download," says Glazer. "We procedurally generated the textures for everything except Blitz (the hero) and the baddies. Pretty much every single square inch of the levels and most of the props were procedurally textured using Allegorithmic's cool procedural texture-gen tools. Also, all the animation was procedurally driven by physics. We also procedurally modified our sound effects on the fly so that we could get more use out of the samples we were able to squish in the package. The levels were not procedurally generated—we didn't experiment with that until our 2010 game, Microbot."

Naked Sky's latest game, Scrapforce, has mostly avoided procedural generation, save for an interesting-sounding stochastic AI system. And RoboBlitz isn't the smallest game made using procedural techniques: that prize almost certainly goes to .kkrieger, a 2004 shooter that's only 96KB, but is very impressive for its size.

Hard Limitations

Despite all these positives, there are limits to procedural generation. Firstly, it can be processor intensive. Dwarf Fortress can take several minutes to get a game going, despite only displaying its graphics in ASCII. Gamers who are used to the rapid loading of mobile games might find this frustrating. And it's power-hungry, too, as Cook explains. "If you're generating things like stories, or special abilities for an RPG, you want to know that they make sense, that they're balanced, that they're fun. That's an extremely difficult thing to test, and it often needs a lot of playtesting. That means more computing power."

Another problem is that procedural generation works best in clearly delineated areas. Because it's so hard to define things like "beauty" or "fun," procedural generation often stays in areas where it knows it can perform. In those areas, it's commonplace. "Procedural art systems for trees and rocks are really popular—you probably don't even notice the games they're used in half the time," says Cook. "People don't really notice if a branch is slightly out of place, and trees follow quite clear natural rules that we can give to a computer, so it's a perfect use-case." For example, SpeedTree, the games industry standard tree generator, has appeared in nearly every AAA game for the last few years: The Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, Destiny, Far Cry 4….

PCF309.feat3.speedtreeex1

This is not a photo, but an example of how real SpeedTree's tech can look.

Cook explains that when using "generative software in music, art, or films, we mostly use it to target things where imperfections are hard to see (abstract art instead of portraiture), things that aren't the focus of attention (crowd scenes instead of big centerpieces), and preferably things where there are clear patterns and rules (I think electronic music benefits here)." Games, however, often allow procedural content to be closely scrutinized, increasing the quality threshold hugely.

The game combining all these elements is Dwarf Fortress, currently the high point of procedurally generated games. "One of the strengths of Dwarf Fortress—a huge inspiration for Clockwork Empires—was that everything is procedurally generated," says Vining. "History, terrain, monsters, gods. The newer stuff in the upcoming Dwarf Fortress patch, with procedurally generated libraries full of procedurally generated books and poetic forms, is completely insane in the best way possible."

The Apex

Developed by two brothers, Tarn and Zach Adams, Dwarf Fortress procedurally generates almost everything you could imagine. According to Tarn, in their previous game, Slaves to Armok, "You could zoom in on your character, and it'd tell you how curly his leg hairs were, and the melting and flash points of various materials. It was insane." Dwarf Fortress goes further.

The entire world and its history is generated, epoch by epoch, before you play, with kingdoms rising, gods falling, and magical items being lost for centuries. Then it generates the terrain you're in, the dwarves you're nominally in command of, the local flora and fauna, and a hundred other things, including art and poetry that reference in-game events. Dwarf Fortress is so impressive and rigorous, but also insane, that people have built working computers inside it. That's right, a virtual machine running inside a game.

Michael Cook's Angelina simulation can't claim to be as complex as Dwarf Fortress, but it's increasing comprehensiveness in a different direction. That's because Angelina (www.gamesbyangelina.org) is an experiment in computers designing and evaluating video games autonomously. "The games Angelina produces aren't procedural," he explains. "All the generation happens during the design of the game, but Angelina releases static games like you or I might if we made a game. It's all about how we can procedurally generate a game design, ideas, art, mechanics, music, and put it all together, rather than generating what happens in the player's computer when they're playing."

PCF309.feat3.Siryouare

Sir, You Are Being Hunted used procedural generation to replicate the British countryside… most of the time.

"Angelina is interested in generating everything in a game, which means we have to tackle the hardest problems, like aesthetics and emotions, as well as the more rule-based stuff like mazes and rocks. I want Angelina to generate program code, and game mechanics, and systems of meaning, so it can tell you a story with its games or make you think."

These two types of comprehensiveness—Dwarf Fortress's obsessive inclusiveness and Angelina's procedural game design—are core to the story here. Games, and their successor, VR (see Generating Escapism, below), are a universal experience. They can contain everything else in the world, so they take in every other part of generative art, if everything's not to be handcrafted at great expense. The only way to do that, without us all becoming developers, is procedural generation.

Generating Escapism

Procedural game design academic Michael Cook said something very interesting. "Depending on how VR designers want to take the tech, procedural generation could be the defining tech of the VR age." As we've explored in recent months, AR and VR are taking lessons from games and growing them into whole new fields. Oculus is even employing ex-Pixar staff to make VR kids' movies.

Of course, like AAA games, VR has to be convincing to work, and the hardware can't do it alone. It needs tons of content—a lot more than any game, because it has to be all around the player and in great detail. Procedural generation might not just be helpful, it seems essential.

Valve and HTC's Vive system adds even more complexity, given that it uses extra cameras to map the dimensions of the room. That means shifting the size and shape of the rooms you're experiencing through the device, which means the designers will have to create the game with variable locations for cues and objects. Your fantasy tavern might just be a few feet across and need a keg in the middle to hide your coffee table, or it might be very big and absolutely clear.

Cook has ideas on how this will be dealt with. "The way we'll solve these problems, I believe, is by having procedural generation systems that are intelligent enough to redesign games to fit inside your room. So, the game designer specifies what needs to be in this tavern—a bar, a table, a door—and then your HTC Vive automatically detects where these things should go.

"It generates the layout of the room to make sure you don't walk into that vase you have in the corner, or accidentally put your knee through the TV. To me, VR is an amazing new environment to do procedural generation in."

Dreams of the Deep

There are ways other than procedural generation and handcrafting to generate content. The most spectacular in recent months has been the frankly terrifying and hallucinatory images coming out of the Google Deep Dream project.

Tuan Dream

This project works by starting with a neural network. These are typically piles of 10–30 stacked layers of artificial neurons. The team starts training the neural network, using millions of examples, and then adjusts the network parameters gradually over time so that fidelity isn't lost, but random noise is.

Each layer of the network extracts higher-level features than the previous one, until the final layer decides wha

t the image looks like. So, the first level might detect edges, then intermediate layers might detect recognizable shapes, while the final layers assemble them into complete interpretations. This is exactly how Google Photo works, too.

The reason these horror pictures have been going around, of people with hundreds of dog's eyes making up their face, is that this particular neural network, called Deep Dream, has been fed data from ImageNet, a database of 14 million human-labeled images. But Google only uses a small sample of the database, which contains "fine-grained classification on 120 dog sub-classes."

It's the opposite of Mandelbrot's images. Instead of seeing the same pattern as we go deeper into the image, the computer sees the same pattern everywhere it looks. Sadly, the pattern happens to be that of a dog.

Proc-Gen Media

Fiction book: Life, A User's Manual

Written by Georges Perec, in line with the Oulipo manifesto, this book isn't strictly speaking programmatic, but Perec wrote it in line with formulaic constraints that meant he had to write about a certain room, in a certain building, with certain people and objects interacting in every chapter. Perhaps because of that, it comes across as a weird jigsaw puzzle of a book. And somewhat long-winded.

Fact book: Philip M. Parker

Professor Philip M. Parker has patented a method that automatically produces books from a set template, which is then filled with data from Internet searches. He claims to have produced over 200,000 books, ranging from medical science to dictionaries about just one word, with most of them being print-on-demand only… he's also started generating factual books for under-served languages, in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Music: Brian Eno

Back in 1996, Brian Eno used Intermorphic's SSEYO Koan software to create his album Generative Music 1, which was in fact a piece of software itself. The music ran off a floppy disk and "improvised" within the 150 parameters that Eno had set to create a different track every time. He has continued to experiment throughout his life.

Film: WETA and Massive

The armies in the conversion of Tolkien's trilogy were generated by a collaboration between WETA and a special effects firm called Massive, which created convincing representations of thousands of actors—unless you looked closely and noticed they all looked like Andy Serkis (joke).

Cartoon: Toy Story 3

PCF309.feat3.Box3 toystory

It might seem old-school now, but Toy Story 3 used a ton of groundbreaking procedural generation techniques to animate large-scale scenes. The scene where the toys find themselves in a garbage incinerator? Most of the trash was procedurally generated from the other trash around it. Similarly, the plastic bags wafting through the wasteland and how Barbie tore up Ken's vintage clothing collection.

Game: No Man's Sky

NoMansSky

Yes, it's a game, but Hello Games's No Man's Sky plans to procedurally generate an entire universe, from the flora and fauna, to the planets and stars. Then it generates alien landscapes and lets you land on them and walk around. Amazing.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals Round Up 2015

Posted: 26 Nov 2015 12:00 PM PST

On your mark, get set, SAVE!

Here's a fun fact you can toss around the dinner table on turkey day: Black Friday, now the busiest shopping day of the year, is a term that took hold in Philadelphia back in the early 1960s. It was used to describe the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving, particularly in regard to increased traffic and congested roadways.

By the 1990s, Black Friday had morphed into more of a retail term in reference to stores attempting to go from red (a loss) to black (a profit). That's still somewhat true today, though it's become more of an excuse to ditch the dinner table to go stand in line at whatever store is planning to sell a big-screen TV for hundreds less than it normally goes for. And if the retailer doesn't have a system in place to ensure some semblance of order, like handing out tickets, then the mad rush to the electronics section can look like a scene from The Purge.

Of course, there's a smarter way to shop—at home, in front of your PC or some other Internet-connected device, clothing optional. Clicking and tapping on marked-down items beats the hell out of joining mobs of inconsiderate shoppers in the wee hours of morning, don't you think?

You still need a game plan, and that's where we can help. Just as we've done for the past several years, we're posting links to tech-related deals, broken down by category, for Black Friday (labeled BF) and Cyber Monday (labeled CM). If you don't see a label next to the link, it's a pre–Black Friday deal (retailers are increasingly trying to get a jump on the competition).

We'll constantly update this list up through Cyber Monday, and as deals expire, we'll cross them out but leave them clickable just in case they come back for whatever reason. So, keep a tab open or give this page a bookmark and check back often!

Finally, if you see a deal that isn't listed, feel free to share it in the comments section!

EDIT: Cyber Monday

Many of the deals posted for Black Friday (and even before, extending back to Thanksgiving Day) are simply being pushed over to Cyber Monday. This is especially true of Newegg's links.

We'll still add noteworthy deals as we see them, but if you see something like that's labeled BF or pre-BF, click anyway! There's a good chance it's still for sale.

Processors

Intel Core i7

Intel Core i7-4790K: $300, Newegg (BF)
Intel Core i7-4690K: $210, Newegg (BF)
Intel Core i5-4690K: $210, Newegg (pre-BF)
Intel Core i5-4590: $180, Newegg (BF)
Intel Xeon E5-2630: $660, Newegg (BF)
Intel Core i3-4170: $105, Newegg (BF)
Intel Xeon E3-1231V3: $250, Newegg (BF)
AMD FX-8350 Vishera 8-Core: $150, Newegg (BF)
AMD FX-8320: $120, Newegg (BF)
AMF FX-9590: $200, Newegg (BF)
aAMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core: $90, Newegg (BF)
Intel Core i7-5930K: $460, Newegg (BF)
Intel Core i7-5930K: $480, TigerDirect (pre-BF)

Motherboards

MSI Gaming 970

Asus Z97-A/USB 3.1: $95, Newegg (pre-BF)
ASRock H97M Pro4: $60 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (pre-BF)
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 R5: $80 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI Gaming 970: $75 (after $5 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition: $90, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
MSI H81M-P33: $29 (after $5 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Asus Z97-E/USB 3.1: $75 (after $40 MIR), Newegg (BF)
ASRock H170M Pro 4: $80 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Asus Z170 Pro Gaming: $145 (after $25 MIR), Newegg (BF)
ASRock Gaming Fatal1ty Z97 Killer: $110 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
ASRock H97 Anniversary: $60, Newegg (BF)
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P: $70 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H: $125 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI X99A SLI Plus: $200 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI B85-G43 Gaming: $80 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI Z97 PC Mate: $85 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5: $160 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
ASRock X99 Extreme4: $140 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)

Graphics Cards

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 SC

EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC Gaming: $290, Newegg (BF)
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 SC Gaming: $500 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (pre-BF)
Sapphire Radeon R9 290: $200 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (pre-BF)
XFX Radeon R9 390: $260 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti SC: $629 (after $20 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
XFX Radeon R7 370: $140, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
XFX Radeon R9 380: $143 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Asus GeForce GTX 970 Strix: $270 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI GeForce GTX 980: $410 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI Radeon R9 380: $190 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SSC Gaming: $160 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
MSI GeForce GTX 960: $205 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon R9 390: $270 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
PNY Quadro M4000: $890, Newegg (BF)
Asus Radeon R9 380 Strix: $140 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Asus Radeon R9 390: $275 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Asus GeForce GTX 750 Ti: $90 (after $30 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980: $450 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Zotac GTX 750 Ti: $95, Newegg (BF)

Cases, Cooling, and Power Supplies

Thermaltake Core X9

Corsair Carbide Series 500R Tower Gaming Case: $70, Newegg (pre-BF)
Thermaltake Core X9 E-ATX Cube: $90 (after $30 MIR, Code BLKFRI88), Newegg (BF)
DIYPC Skyline-07-G Full Tower: $70 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Cube Case - Refurb: $80, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Obsidian Series 550D Mid-Tower Case - Refurb: $80, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Arctic White - Refurb: $75, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Carbide Series 500R Mid-Tower Case - Refurb: $65, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Carbide Series 500R White Mid-Tower Case - Refurb: $65, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Obsidian Series 750D Full Tower Case - Refurb: $90, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsiar Obsidian Series 350D Windowed Micro-ATX Case - Refurb: $55, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Obsidian Series 250D Mini ITX Case - Refurb: $45, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Graphite Series 230T Windowed Mid-Tower (Orange): $40, Corsair (pre-BF)
NZXT H440 Mid-Tower Case: $115, NZXT (pre-BF)
NZXT H440 Mid-Tower Case - Black + Blue: $113, NZXT (BF)
NZXT Phantom - Black + Green: $110, NZXT (BF)

NZXT Phantom 530 Full Tower Case: $122, NZXT (pre-BF)
NZXT S340 Mid-Tower Case: $65, NZXT (pre-BF)
NZXT Noctis 450 Mid-Tower Case: $125, NZXT (pre-BF)
Corsair Power Supplies 450W to 1,000W - Refurb: Various, Corsair (pre-BF)
Seasonic 650RM Modular: $60 (after $10 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Ultra X4 Special Edition 850W: $50 (after $30 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Corsair RM Series RM1000 1,000W PSU - Refurb: $100, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Hydro Series H100i Extreme CPU Cooler: $90, Corsair (pre-BF)
NZXT H440 Mid-Tower Case: $110, NZXT (CM)
NZXT H440 2015 Mid-Tower Case: $110, NZXT (CM)
NZXT Phantom Mid-Tower Case: $113, NZXT (CM)
NZXT Noctis 450 Mid-Tower Case: $120, NZXT (CM)
NZXT Phantom 410 Full Tower Case: $92, NZXT (CM)
NZXT Phantom 240 Full Tower Case: $60, NZXT (CM)
NZXT S340 Mid-Tower Case - White: $65, NZXT (CM)
NZXT S340 Mid-Tower Case - Black/Blue: NZXT, $62 (CM)
NZXT H440 Mid-Tower Case - Matte Black Windowed: $110, NZXT (CM)

Keyboard and Mice

Logitech M325c Wireless Optical Mouse, Teal Zigzag: $9, Best Buy (BF)
Razer Naga Expert MMO Gaming Mouse: $40, Best Buy (BF)
Corsair M65 RGB Laser Mouse - Black - Refurb: $30, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair M65 RGB Laser Mouse - White - Refurb: $30, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance M95 Arctic White - Refurb: $37.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Raptor M40 Gaming Mouse - Refurb: $22.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Raptor M45 Gaming Mouse - Refurb: $22.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Gaming Sabre Laser RGB Gaming Mouse - Refurb: $22.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Gaming Sabre Optical RGB Gaming Mouse - Refurb: $22.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance M90 Laser Mouse: $22.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair K65 RGB Compact Mechanical KB - Refurb: $75, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical KB - Cherry MX Red: $100, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical KB - Cherry MX Red - Refurb: $75, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical KB - Cherry MX Blue - Refurb: $75, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical KB - Anodized Black - Cherry MX Blue - Refurb: $75, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical KB - Anodized Black - Cherry MX Brown - Refurb: $75, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance K70 Mechanical KB - Anodized Black - Cherry MX Red - Refurb: $67.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair K95 Mechanical KB - Refurb: $67.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair K50 Gaming KB - Refurb: $40, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair K40 Gaming KB - Refurb: $30, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Strafe RGB Mechanical KB + Scimitar RGB Mouse: $200, Corsair (pre-BF)

RAM/Memory

Crucial DDR DRAM: 10-15 percent off, Crucial (Nov. 27 - Nov. 30)
Adata XPG V1.0 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600: $40, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600: $67, Newegg (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3000: $130, Newegg (pre-BF)
G.Skill TridentX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2400: $85, Newegg (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-2666: $204, Newegg (pre-BF)
G.Skill Ares 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600: $60, Newegg (pre-BF)
G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB DDR3L-1600 SO-DIMM: $30, Newegg (pre-BF)
Patriot Signature 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600: $30, Newegg (pre-BF)
G.Skill Ripjaws 4 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4-3000: $100, Newegg (pre-BF)
PNY Anarchy 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-2400: $75, Newegg (pre-BF)
G.Skill Ripjaws V 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4-3200: $50, Newegg (pre-BF)
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4-3000: $115, Newegg (pre-BF)
Mushkin Enhanced Stealth 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600: $63, Newegg (pre-BF)
Patriot Viper 4 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3000: $92, Newegg (pre-BF)
Team Dark 8GB DDR3-1600: $30, Newegg (pre-BF)
Patriot Signature 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600: $60, Newegg (pre-BF)
Mushkin Enhanced Eco2 8GB DDR3L-1600: $33, Newegg (pre-BF)
Mushkin Enhanced Redline 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3000: $95, Newegg (pre-BF)
PNY Anarchy 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-2400: $78, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata 8GB DDR3-1600 SO-DIMM: $35, Newegg (pre-BF)
Mushkin Enhanced Eco2 8GB DDR3L-1600: $34, Newegg (pre-BF)
V-Color OC Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600: $30, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata XPG V1.0 4GB DDR3-1600: $20, Newegg (pre-BF)
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2400: $72, Newegg (pre-BF)
V-Color Standard Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-2400: $75, Newegg (pre-BF)
Panram Ninja-V 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-2400: $80, Newegg (pre-BF)
Mushkin Enhanced Eco2 16GB (2x8GB) DDRL-160: $69, Newegg (pre-BF)
Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1600: $22, Newegg (pre-BF)
PNY Anarchy X 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4-2800: $90, Newegg (pre-BF)
PNY Anarchy X 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4-2666: $84, Newegg (pre-BF)
PNY Anarchy 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4-2400: $80, Newegg (pre-BF)
PNY Anarchy 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4-2133: $77, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata XPG V2 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600: $43, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata XPG V2 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2400: $110, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata XPG V1.0 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600: $40, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata XPG V1.0 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600: $75, Newegg (pre-BF)
Adata XPG V1.0 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600: $60, Newegg (pre-BF)

Storage

Samsung 850 Pro

Buy Any SSD, Get 32GB USB for $1: Crucial (CM)
Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD: $80, Newegg (pre-BF)
Seagate Desktop 4TB HDD Bare Drive: $100, Newegg (pre-BF)
Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD: $220, Newegg (pre-BF)
Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD: $130, Newegg (pre-BF)
Samsung 850 Evo 500GB SSD: $150, Newegg (BF)
SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD: $200, Newegg (BF)
Samsung 500GB Portable USB 3.0 Portable SSD T1: $170, Newegg (BF)
SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive 128-Bit AES: $28, Newegg (BF)
Seagate Backup Plus 2TB External USB 3.0 Portable HDD: $70, Best Buy (BF)
SanDisk Cruzer Glide 128GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive: $20, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung Evo+ 64GB microSDHC Class 10: $18, Best Buy (BF)
SanDisk Cruzer 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive: $7, Best Buy (BF)
SanDisk Cruzer Glide 64GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive: $15, Best Buy (BF)
SanDisk Cruzer 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive: $4, Best Buy (BF)
SanDisk 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive: $8, GameStop (BF)
SanDisk 16GB microSD Card w/ Adapter: $8, GameStop (BF)
Transcend 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive: $8, GameStop (pre-BF)
Transcend 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive:  $15, GameStop (pre-BF)
OCZ Arc 100 120GB SSD: $40, Newegg (Nov. 27 - Nov. 30)
OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD: $70, Amazon (Nov. 23 - Dec. 1)
OCZ Trion 100 480GB SSD: $120, Newegg (Nov. 25 - Nov. 29)
OCZ Arc 100 480GB SSD: $130, Newegg (Nov. 26 Only)
OCZ Trion 100 120GB: $35, Amazon (Nov. 23 - Dec. 1)
OCZ Trion 100 240GB: $55, Amazon (Nov. 23 - Dec. 1)
OCZ Vector 180 960GB SSD: $260, Amazon (Nov. 23 - Dec. 1)
OCZ Arc 100 480GB SSD: $125, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Corsair Voyager Air Mobile Wireless 1TB - Refurb: $70, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Voayter Air 2 Mobile Wireless 1TB - Refurb: $90, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 Flash Drive - Refurb: $40, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Flash Voyager Slider USB 3.0 64GB Flash Drive - Refurb: $20, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Flash Padlock 2 32GB USB Flash Drive - Refurb: $20, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Flash Voyager GO 32GB Flash Drive - Refurb: $10, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Flash Voyager Slider USB 3.0 16GB Flash Drive - Refurb: $10, Corsair (pre-BF)

Monitors

Samsung Curved Monitor

Dell U2414H 23.8-Inch Ultra-Wide Full HD: $200 (Code BFMNTR), Newegg (BF)
Dell E2414HM 24-Inch LED HD: $100, Best Buy (BF)
Asus VN248H-P 23.8-Inch IPS: $110 (after $20 MIR), Newegg (BF)
LG 25UM56-P 25-Inch IPS: $150, Newegg (BF)
LG 27-Inch Widescreen LED: $130, Newegg (pre-BF)
HP 27-Inch HD LED: $140, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 31.5-Inch Curved Monitor: $350 (Code BLKFRI50), Newegg (BF)
BenQ BL3200PT 32-Inch Widescreen WQHD: $480 (Code BLKFRI372), Newegg (BF)
AOC 23.6-Inch LED: $100, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Dell E2715HM 27-Inch: $179, Microsoft (BF)
Dell E2414HM 24-Inch: $99, Microsoft (BF)
Dell S2716DG 27-Inch Gaming: $599, Microsoft (BF)
Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34-Inch Curved: $699, Microsoft (BF)
Dell D2015HM 20-Inch: $79, Microsoft (BF)
Dell S2715H 27-Inch Monitor: $249, Microsoft (BF)

Systems (Desktops, Laptops, Convertibles, 2-in-1s)

HP Spectre X360

Asus Desktop PC with 4GB DDR3 and 1TB HDD: $300, Newegg (pre-BF)
MSI Gaming Laptop with 8GB RAM and 750GB HDD: $450, Newegg (pre-BF)
Asus EeBook Laptop with 2GB R AM and 32GB SSD: $170, Newegg (pre-BF)
Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop with 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD: $360, Newegg (pre-BF)
Asus UX305FA-ASM1 Zenbook: $600, Newegg (BF)
Acer E5-573G-52G3 Intel Core i5-5200U, GeForce 940M: $430, Newegg (BF)
Asus 14-Inch Laptop with Celeron N2840 and 32GB SSD: $190, Newegg (BF)
Asus 15.6-Inch Laptop - Intel Celeron, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $140, Best Buy (BF)
Acer 11.6-Inch Chromebook - Intel Celeron, 2GB, 16GB eMMC: $99, Best Buy (BF)
HP Pavilion 17.3-Inch - Intel Core i5, 4GB, 1TB HDD: $400, Best Buy (BF)
Apple MacBook Air (Latest Model) 11.6-Inch: $780, Best Buy (BF)
Microsoft Surface Pro 3: Save $300, Best Buy (BF)
HP Envy 15.6-Inch Touch - Core i5, 6GB, 1TB HDD: $478, Best Buy (BF)
HP Envy x260 2-in-1 15.6-Inch - Core i5, 8GB, 1TB HDD: $550, Best Buy (BF)
Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro 2-in-1 13.3-Inch - Core M, 8GB, 256GB SSD: $750, Best Buy (BF)
HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 13.3-Inch - Core i7, 8GB, 256GB SSD: $960, Best Buy (BF)
Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro 2-in-1 13.3-Inch - Core M, 8GB, 512GB SSD: $1,000, Best Buy (BF)
Lenovo Y700 15.6-Inch Touch - Core i7, 8GB, 1TB HDD:  $1,000, Best Buy (BF)
Dell Inspiron 19.5-Inch Touch All-in-One - Celeron, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $330, Best Buy (BF)
Microsoft Surface 3 - Intel Atom, 64GB: $400, Best Buy (BF)
Apple MacBook Pro 13.3-Inch - Core i5, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $900, Best Buy (BF)
Acer One 10 10.1-Inch - Intel Atom, 32GB w/ Keyboard: $130, Best Buy (BF)
Dell Inspiron 15 3000 15.6-Inch - Core i3, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $230, Dell (BF)
Dell Inspiron 11 3000 11.6-Inch 2-in-1 Touch 4GB, 500GB HDD:  $300, Dell (BF
iBuyPower GSL901 Gaming Desktop - Core i7-6700K, GTX 970: $1,280, GameStop (pre-BF)
Asus 15.6-Inch Touch w/ Intel Core i7, 8GB, 1TB HDD: $550 (after $50 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Acer Aspire All-In-One w/ Core i5, 1T HDD: $770, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Dell Latitude 14.1-Inch w/ Core 2 Duo, 4GB, 160GB HDD: $100 (after $60 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Dell Optiplex 780 w/ Core 2 Duo, 4GB, 1TB HDD: $90 (after $30 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
HP 15.6-Inch ProBook 450 w/ Core i5-5200, 8GB, 500GB HDD: $550, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Acer Aspire V Nitro 17.3-Inch w/ Core i7, 16GB, 1TB HDD: $1,000 (after $100 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Dell Inspiron 5558 15.8-Inch w/ Core i7, 8GB, 1TB HDD: $600, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Dell Inspiron 15 i5558-5718SLV Signture Edition Laptop: $399, Microsoft (BF)
Lenovo TS440 Intel Xeon ThinkServer w/ 4GB: $280, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Lenovo ThinkPad E550 15.6-Inch Touch w/ Core i5, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $480, TigerDirect (pre-BF)
Asus 15.6-Inch / Intel Celeron, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $200 (after $50 MIR), TigerDirect (pre-BF)
HP Pavilion 15-ag292nr Signature Edition: $549, Microsoft (BF)
Asus Transformer Book Flip TP200SA-UHBF 2-in-1: $229, Microsoft (BF)
Samsung ATIV Book 9 NP930X2K Signature Laptop: $899, Microsoft (BF)
Acer Aspire V3 Signature Edition Laptop: $399, Microsoft (BF)
Dell Inspiron 13 i7359-2436SLV 2-in-1 Signature Edition: $499, Microsoft (BF)
Lenovo Ideacentre Stick 300 Signature Edition PC: $69, Microsoft (BF)
Samsung ATIV One 7 Curved All-in-One: $799, Microsoft (BF)
iBuyPower Gaming PCs: $630+, GameStop (pre-BF)
Lenovo ThinkPad E555 15.6-inch AMD A6-7000, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $280, Adorama (CM)
Acer Aspire 15.6-inch, Celeron, 4GB, 500GB HDD: $200, Best Buy (CM)
HP 15.6-inch Celeron N2840, 4GB, 500GB: $260, Walmart (CM)
HP Black 15.6-inch, Celeron N2840, 4GB, 500GB, Touch: $300, Walmart (CM)

Printers and Routers

Netgear R6400

Pantum P2502W Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer: $25, Newegg (pre-BF)
HP Deskjet 2545 Wireless All-in-One Printer: $20, Best Buy (BF)
Netgear Wireless-AC 1750 Router: $90, Best Buy (BF)
HP Envy 4520 Wireless All-in-One Printer: $47, Best Buy (BF)
HP Envy 5530 Wireless All-in-One Printer: $57, Best Buy (BF)
HP Officejet Pro 8610 e-All-in-One Wireless Printer: $97, Best Buy (BF)
Netgear Nighthawk x8 AC5300 Tri-Band Router: $300, Best Buy (BF)
Canon Pixma MX922 Wireless All-in-One Printer: $70, Best Buy (pre-BF)

Software and Games

Windows 10

Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit OEM: $120 (Code BLKFRI20), Newegg (BF)
Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials OEM /w Free Mobile Desktop: $400, Newegg (pre-BF)
Symantec Norton Security Deluxe- 5 Device: $15 (after $50 MIR), Newegg (BF)
Madden NFL 16 - Xbox One: $27, Walmart (BF)
Adobe Photoshop Elements 14: $60, Adobe (pre-BF)
Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 + Premier Elements 14: $90, Adobe (pre-BF)
Select PC Games: Up to 85% Off, GameStop (Tue-Sun)
NovaBACKUP PC 17.2 5-Pack w/ Phone Support: $50/year, Novastor (pre-BF)
NovaBACKUP Server 17.2: $200, Novastor (pre-BF)
NovaBACKUP Business Essentials 17.2: $330, Novastor (pre-BF)
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor: $13, GameStop (pre-BF)
Select EA Games PC Downloads: $4.99+, GameStop (pre-BF)
Side Meirer's Civilization Beyond Earth: $20 each, GameStop (pre-BF)
Select Square Enix PC Downloads: $3+, GameStop (pre-BF)
Select Deep Silver PC Donwloads: $5+, GameStop (pre-BF)
Select Kalypso PC Downloads: $1.50+, GameStop (pre-BF)
Dark Souls II Download: $10, GameStop (pre-BF)
World of Warcraft Download: $5, GameStop (pre-BF)
Dark Souls II Season Pass Download: $6.24, GameStop (pre-BF)
Dragonball Xenoverse Season Pass Download: $6.24, GameStop (pre-BF)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Download: $10, GameStop (pre-BF)
Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection Download: $5, GameStop (pre-BF)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Download: $10, GameStop (pre-BF)
SimCity Complete Edition Download: $7.49, GameStop (pre-BF)
Titanfall Deluxe Edition Download: $8, GameStop (pre-BF)
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Download: $5, GameStop (pre-BF)
Dragon Age Inquisition Game of the Year Edition Download: $35, GameStop (pre-BF)
Neor 2016 Platinum: $35, Nero (BF)

Mobile (Tablets and Smartphones)

Apple iPad Air 2

Samsung Galaxy 7-Inch Tab 3: $80, Newegg (pre-BF)
Amazon Fire 7-Inch 8GB: $50, Amazon (pre-BF)
RCA 7-Inch Voyager Tablet 8GB Quad Core: $28.88, Walmart (BF)
Apple iPad Air 2: Up to $125 Off, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 32GB: $400, Best Buy (pre-BF)
RCA G1 smartphone: $106, Amazon (pre-BF)
RCA M1 smartphone: $61, Amazon (pre-BF)
RCA Cambio 10.1-inch 2-in-1 Windows Tablet: $128, Walmart (BF)
RCA 10-inch Viking Pro Android Tablet: $79, Walmart (BF)
Samsung 9.7-Inch Galaxy Tab S2 w/ 32GB - Black: $400, Sears (CM)
iPhone 6: $1+ w/ activation + 2yr contract, Best Buy (CM)
iPhone 6s Plus: $99+ w/ activation + 2yr contract, Best Buy (CM)
iPad Air: Save up to $50, Best Buy (CM)
iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi 64GB: $569, MacMall (CM)
iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi 128GB: $659, MacMall (CM)
iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi + Cellular 64GB: $699, MacMall (CM)
iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi + Cellular 128GB: $789, MacMall (CM)
iPad Mini 2: $199, Walmart (CM)
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite: $100, Amazon (CM)
Amazon Kindle: $50, Amazon (CM)
Amazon Fire HD 6: $70, Amazon (CM)
Amazon Fire Kids Edition: $85, Amazon (CM)

Audio (Soundcards, Speakers, Headphones/Headsets)

Klipsch KG-200

Klipsch X11i In-Ear Headphones: $199, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch R6 In-Ear Headphones: $69, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch R6i In-Ear Headphones: $79, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch KG-200 Pro Audio Wired Gaming Headset: $44, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch R-10B Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer: $499, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch R-115SW Subwoofer: $719, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch R-112SW Subwoofer: $519, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch R-110SW Subwoofer: $439, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-280FA Dolby Atmos Floorstanding Speaker: $959, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-450CA Center Speaker: $679, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klpsch RP-280 5.1.4 Dolby Atmos System: $5,312, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RT-280 5.1.4 In-Ceiling Dolby Atmos System: $4,164, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-280 Home Theater System: $3,414, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-260 Home Theater System: $2,910, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-250 Home Theater System: $2,394, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-160 Home Theater System: $2,205, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch RP-150 Home Theater System: $1,805, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch Gallery G-28 Home Theater System: $2,814, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch Gallery G-16 Home Theater System: $1,814, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch Gallery G-12 Home Theater System: $1,434, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Klipsch Gallery G-42 Passive Home Theater System: $1,138, Klipsch (pre-BF)
Polk Audio RTi8 Floorstanding Loudspeaker: $120, Newegg (pre-BF)
Polk Audio PSW505 12-Inch Powered Subwoofer: $170, Newegg (BF)
Klipsch HD 300 Compact 3.1 Home Theater: $130, Newegg (BF)
JBL Loft 30 Two-Way 4-Inch Loudspeaker Pair: $30, Newegg (BF)
Beats by Dr. Dre Powerbeats 2 Wireless Earbuds: $100, Best Buy (BF)
Insignia Portable Bluetooth Speaker: $10, Best Buy (BF)
Bose SoundTure On-Ear Headphones: $60, Best Buy (BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth 400 - Refurb: $50, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force XP400 - Refurb: $60, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force X42 Wireless: $100, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Heroes of the Storm: $30, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force Z11: $20, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force PX22 - White: $40, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force M Seven: $35, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force X12 Artic Camo:  $35, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force Z300: $95, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force XO Seven Pro - Refurb: $60, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force Z2: $25, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force TM1 Tournament Mixer: $80, Turtle Beach (pre-BF)
Turtle Beach Ear Force Stealth X500: $160, Microsoft (BF)
V-Moda Crossfade M-100 Phantom Chrome: $150, Microsoft (BF)
JBL Flip 2 Portable Bluetooth Speaker - Black: $59, Microsoft (BF)
JBL Bluetooth Wireless In-Ear Stereo Headphones: $40, Microsoft (BF)
Beats Pill 2.0 Wireless Speaker w/ Bluetooth: $140, Microsoft (BF)
Beats Studio Wireless Over-Ear Headphones: $330, Microsoft (BF)
Beats Studio Over-Ear Headphones: $169, Microsoft (BF)
Beats Solo 2 Wireless On-Ear Headphones: $225, Microsoft (BF)
Beats Powerbeats 2 Wireless In-Ear Headphones - Black: $100, Microsoft (BF)
Beats Solo 2 On-Ear Headphones: $97, Microsoft (BF)
Corsair Gaming Audio Series SP2500 2.1 Speakers - Refurb: $145, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Gaming H2100 Wireless 7.1 Headset - Refurb: $45, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance 2100 Wireless 7.1 Headset - Refurb: $43.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance 1500 USB 7.1 Headset - Black - Refurb: $31.49, Corsair (pre-BF)
Corsair Vengeance 1500 USB 7.1 Headset - Silver - Refurb: $25, Corsair (pre-BF)
Astro Gaming A40 TR Headset + Mixamp Pro TR: $200, GameStop (pre-BF)
Astro Gaming A40 TR Headset + Mixamp Pro TR Xbox One Edition: $200, GameStop (pre-BF)
Klipsh Promedia 2.1 Wireless Speakers: $149, Klipsch (CM)
Turtle Beach Headsets (Various Models): Up to 60 Percent Off, Turtle Beach (CM)

HDTVs

Vizio 70-Inch TV

LG 24-Inch 720p LED: $80, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 24-Inch 720p Smart LED: $148, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 32-Inch 1080p Smart LED: $228, Newegg (BF)
Changhong 32-Inch 1080p LED: $165, Newegg (BF)
Samsung 40-Inch 1080p Smart LED: $318, Newegg (pre-BF)
Samsung 40-Inch 1080p Smart LED + $20 Gift Card: $318, Best Buy (pre-BF)
Insignia 40-Inch 1080p LED: $160, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 40-Inch 1080p LED + Xbox One 500GB Lego Bundle: $500, Best Buy (BF)
Sigcus 42-Inch 1080p LED: $225, Newegg (BF)
LG 43-Inch 1080p LED: $285, Newegg (BF)
LG 43-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED: $400, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 48-Inch 1080p Smart LED: $380, Best Buy (BF)
LG 49-Inch 4K Ultra HD LED: $500, Best Buy (BF)
Toshiba 49-Inch 1080p LED: $150, Best Buy (BF)
Vizio 50-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED: $600, Best Buy (BF)
Sharp 50-Inch 1080p LED: $300, Best Buy (BF)
Toshiba 55-Inch 1080p LED: $350, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED: $1,000, Best Buy (pre-BF)
Samsung 60-Inch 4K Ultra HD: $800, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung 60-Inch 1080p Smart LED: $698, Newegg (pre-BF)
Samsung 65-Inch 1080p Smart LED: $898, Newegg (BF)
Samsung 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD 3D Smart LED: $2,000, Best Buy (BF)
Vizio D65U-D2 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart: $1,000, Best Buy (BF)
Vizio E70-C3 70-Inch 1080p Smart LED: $898, Walmart (BF)
LG 55-inch 4K Ultra HD Smart: $698, Walmart (CM)
Hisense 50-inch HDTV: $269, Walmart (CM)
TCL 55-inch 1080p Roku Smart LED: $348, Walmart (CM)

MISC

Xbox One Fallout 4

Amazon Fire TV Stick: $25, Amazon (November 26)
Fitbit Flex Wireless Wristband: $60, Walmart (BF)
Roku SE Streaming Player: $25, Best Buy (BF)
2 x Google Chromecast (2015 Model): $50, Best Buy (BF)
Samsung Gear 2 Neo Smartwatch: $130, Best Buy (BF)
Sony PlayStation 4 500GB Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Bundle: $300, Best Buy (BF)
Microsoft Xbox One 1TB Fallout 4 Bundle: $350, Microsoft Store (BF)
Nvidia Shield 16GB + Controller + Remote: $150, GameStop/Best Buy/Frys/Micro Center (CM)
Nvidia Shield Pro + Controller + Remote: $250, GameStop/Best Buy/Frys/Micro Center (BF)
Xbox Live 3-Month Gold Membership: $12.50, Microsoft (BF)
Xbox One Wireless Controllers: Save Up to $30, Microsoft (BF)
Fitbit Charge Wireless Activity + Sleep Wristband - Black: $90, Microsoft (BF)
Fitbit Charge Wireless Activity + Sleep Wristband - Slate: $90, Microsoft (BF)
Gameband Minecraft: $50, Microsoft (BF)
Roku Streaming Stick: $40, Microsoft (BF)
Zagg Invisible Shield: Buy One Get One Free, Zagg (pre-BF)
PlayStation 4 DualShock 4 Controller: $40, GameStop (pre-BF)
Lunar White Xbox One Controller: $45, GameStop (pre-BF)
New Nintendo 3DS: $180, GameStop (pre-BF)
Xbox One 500GB Gears of War Ultimate Edition Bundle: $300, GameStop (pre-BF)
Xbox One 1TB Holiday Bundle: $350, GameStop (pre-BF)
Xbox One The Lego Movie 500GB Bundle: $300, GameStop (pre-BF)
iFixIt Pro Tech Toolkit: $65, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Pro Tech Screwdriver Set: $40, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt iPhone Screen Kits: $30, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Macro Bit Set: $25, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Classic Pro Toolkit + Magnetic Mat Bundle: $60, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt 54 Bit Driver Kit: $20, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Lock Pick Set: $10, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Jimmy: $4, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Repair Business Toolkit: $220, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Precision Tweezer Set: $10, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt iOpener Kit: $20, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Magnetic Project Mat: $15, iFixIt (BF)
iFixIt Universal Bit Kit: $80, iFixIt (BF)
Select ThinkGeek Items: 30% off + Free Shipping, ThinkGeek (CM)
Amazon Echo: $149, Amazon (CM)
Amazon Fire TV: $75, Amazon (CM)
HTC RE Camera: 60 Percent Off, HTC (CM)
HTC One M9: 40 Percent Off, HTC (CM)
Zagg: 50 Percent Off Sitewide (some exclusions), Zagg (CM)
Bodyguardz: 50 Percent Off Sitewide, Bodyguardz (CM)

Amazon

Amazon

We're giving Amazon it's own category because from Friday, November 20 (four days earlier than last year) through Black Friday weekend, the online retailer will be running new deals as often as every 10 minutes. Prices will be valid at select times and while supplies last.

You'll find these deals at www.amazon.com/blackfriday

Maximum PC

Maximum PC Magazines

Maximum PC magazine subscription: $8.99 and up, Future Publishing

Subscribe to Maximum PC's glossy print edition from only $19.95! Or, for an even smaller price, grab the digital edition and gain instant access to our current issue from only $8.99!

Or for the most value for your money, subscribe to Maximum PC's complete print + digital package and get the print edition delivered to your door every month and our digital edition on your iOS and Android device. All from only $24!

Newegg Daily Deals: Crazy Core i7 / Mobo Combo, XFX Radeon R9 390, and More!

Posted: 26 Nov 2015 11:42 AM PST

Core i7 Combo

Top Deals:

You can venture out into the scary mess that is Black Friday and hope not to get trampled, or you can score a sweat deal right from the comfort of your home. All you have to do is click through to today's top deal for a SuperCombo Black Friday Upgrade Special: Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon 4.0GHz Quad-Core CPU + EVGA Z97 Classified 152-HR Extended Motherboard + HyperX Fury 8GB DDR3 Memory + RaindbowSix Siege for $300 with free shipping (normally $681). That's a lot of sweet gear for not a lot of dough!

Other Deals:

XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB 512-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Video Card for $290 with free shipping (normally $340)

WD Blue 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch for $45 with free shipping (normally $52)

SanDisk Ultra II 2.5-inch 480GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive for $110 with free shipping (normally $170)

Acer Black 27-inch WQHD 1ms LED Backlight LCD Monitor Built-in Speakers for $200 with free shipping (normally $220 - use coupon code: [EMCKKNS79])

Steam Fall Sale Encourages Exploration

Posted: 26 Nov 2015 11:33 AM PST

Explore and save

Steam Exploration Sale

There are sales galore happening right now. Even though Black Friday isn't officially here yet, many stores kick off the deals a day or more ahead of time (check out our ongoing list of Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals to stay plugged in). On top of it all, Steam's annual autumn sale has begun.

This time around Valve is calling it the Exploration Sale because you can "discover thousands of great deals throughout Steam." Valve could have just as easily called it the "Stock Up on More Games You Don't Have Time to Play Sale" because if you're like us, you end up adding discounted titles to your library only to later fret that you never have enough time to play games. First world problem, we know.

As always, the latest Steam sale contains a variety of games at varying degrees of discount. Here's a sample:

Go here to start exploring (sale runs to December 1), and if you find any gems, be sure to let us know about it in the comments section below!

Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook

Synology RC18015xs+ Cluster Review

Posted: 26 Nov 2015 06:56 AM PST

Price Breakdown

RC18015xs+: $4,000 (each)
RXD1215sas: $3,500
Seagate 1200 SSD: $2,800
HGST He8 SAS HDD: $600

In the world of business storage, there are so many options that it can make an IT admin's head spin. What you'll typically find though, if you're looking for rackmount business storage solutions, is that there's often a redundant amount of compute power when you scale out.

There are two primary components to a rackmount storage sever: the actual storage unit and the controller. They're more often than not grouped together into a single unit. When you scale out, another fully optioned unit is added, bringing with it an extra set of CPUs and RAM, since each unit is essentially a fully functional server on its own. The second option is bringing in expansion units, which have no real onboard server brains—just a box full of drives. Expansion units then daisy chain via serial-attached SCSI (SAS).

The primary unit then, is the master server or storage controller. All I/O duties go through it. To add redundancy, you'll want to add another primary unit and slave it. Slaving is done using Heartbeat between the primary and slave controller.

But what if you're a small enterprise just starting out? Going with the above solution adds extra overhead that you may not want to spare the extra expense for, but you also shouldn't spare having your data go down either. What to do?

Synology has a solution that addresses this situation for businesses that have grown beyond single-unit NASes, especially if hosting a redundant local intranet is important, or deploying a collocation setup. 

Aptly named the RackStation RC18015xs+, Synology's solution comes in three parts: dual RC18015xs+ controller units and a single or multiple RXD1215sas storage expansion unit. The idea is to break out primary functions into individual, replaceable, redundant components. The side effect to this, of course, is that each individual RXD1215sas unit you obtain has just the components required for drive control. The bare-bones setup looks like like this:

Layout of an RC18015xs+ cluster.
Layout of an RC18015xs+ cluster.

The setup is based entirely on redundancy: you have two RC18015xs+ units acting as pure controllers, and a RXD1215sas unit, but two RC18015xs+ units are required. Each one of the RC18015xs+ units contain two power supplies for redundancy. The RXD1215sas unit contains two power supplies and two controllers. Operating together, there's no single point of failure for the entire ring.

Inside the RC18015xs+

Synology won the Finalist award at VMWorld 2015 for its RackStation RC18015xs+ setup, and we can see why—everything about the setup is about redundancy. For this class of product, the organization that would see most benefit from the RC18015xs+ would have 15 employees or more, and as the organization scales, so too can the servers.

The following are the specs of the two controllers:

Synology RackStation RC18015xs+ Specifications
Storage Management JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10
Online volume expansion
Online RAID capacity expansion
Online RAID level migration
Global hot spare (1, 5, 6, 10)
CPU Intel Xeon E-1230 v2 3.3GHz Quad Core
Memory 8GB ECC DDR3 (2x 4GB DIMM)
SSD Cache Supported
Drive support 180 drive bays and up to 1440TB (8TB x 180)
200TB max single volume (32GB RAM required)
Network 2x 10GbE, 4x 1Gb Ethernet, 1x Heartbeat
USB 2x USB 3.0
Cooling 6x 40mm x 40mm
Power 2x 150W redundant PSUs
Expansion 1x PCIe Gen 3 x8 slot for 10GbE (pre-installed)
Dimensions 1U rackmount
Weight 12.52 kg / 27.61.26 lbs
OS Synology DSM

Note that the the RC18015xs+ controller has 4 DIMM slots utilizing ECC DDR3. Total capacity can be up to 32GB with four 8GB modules. Ours came with two modules, but this was more than enough for our purposes.

Inside the RC18015xs+ controller.
Inside the RC18015xs+ controller.

Internally, there's really not a lot to the controller. Each one of the power supplies deliver 150W of continuous power to the controller. 

Redundant PSUs.
Redundant PSUs.

Everything is designed with fault tolerance in mind, so you're able to withstand multiple PSU failures (3 in this case) without the system going completely offline. If both PSUs fail, the passive controller immediately switches over.

Dual 10GbE speeds care of Intel.
Dual 10GbE speeds care of Intel.

Taking a closer look, we see the 10GbE NIC is supplied by Intel. There's fault tolerance too, as you can set port monitoring in Synology's DSM management to switch to alternate ports if one should go down for any reason. If the 10GbE card fails entirely, the system will rely on the onboard 1GbE ports, provided you have those connected.

In the second photo above, there is a single Ethernet port above the two USB 3.0 ports that's used for fault tolerance. Utilizing Heartbeat, which is the main product name for Linux-HA (high availability), either controller can be set as active or passive. During a controller down-event, one will take over storage-controlling responsibilities as well as network addresses and user management. Technically, there's no limit to how many controllers Heartbeat can handle.

Inside the RXD1215sas
A RXD1215sas sitting on a single RC18015xs+ controller.
A RXD1215sas sitting on a single RC18015xs+ controller.

The RXD1215sas is where all the storage happens. The unit takes up a 2U rack space and allows you to install up to 12 drives, with each bay accepting up to 8TB in capacity.

Synology RXD1215sas Specifications
Drive bays12
Compatible drives3.5-inch SAS HDD
2.5-inch SAS HHD
2.5-inch SAS SSD
Maximum raw capacity96 TB (8TB x12)
How swappableYes
Ports2x MiniSAS In-ports
2x MiniSAS Out-ports
Dimensions2U rackmount
Power2x 500W redundant PSUs
Cooling4x 60mm x 60mm

As with the controllers, the RXD1215sas is designed for redundancy: two drive controller units and two power supplies ensure Synology's selling point of high-availability. Like all redundant rackmount servers, each component is easily removed and replaced in the event of a failure. You can see below that we've pulled out all the rear components.

This is what high-availability looks like.
This is what high-availability looks like.

Each controller module has a miniSAS in and miniSAS out, letting you expand your cluster with more RXD1215sas units. If you were to stack a column of RXD1215sas units on top of each other, one unit's output would be connected to the next unit's SAS input, per controller. The numeric LED indicators lets you know which part in the cluster the unit belongs to.

A SAS controller module.
A SAS controller module.

Below we've removed one of the rear SAS redundant backplane modules. There's really not much to it; most of the components are used primarily for controlling the drives in the array. Two fans and the primary controller chip reside at the rear.

SAS backplane and interface.
SAS backplane and interface.

Above you can see how both the controller modules are connected to the SAS backplane, right behind where the actual drives are.

Seagate's enterprise 1200 SSD 800GB drive.
Seagate's enterprise 1200 SSD 800GB drive.

Seagate supplied the drives for our test unit. The RXD1215sas was fully loaded with Seagate's enterprise 1200 SAS SSD 800GB drives. For a frame of reference, each drive costs roughly $2,400, giving us a total of $28,800 worth in just SSD drives alone.

What a High-Availability Setup Looks Like

In a business environment where up-time is paramount, typical NAS solutions accessible to consumers just won't cut the mustard. Server resiliency matters more than anything. Even home users will often feel the pain of a crash, and in business, this kind of down-time often leads to a big loss of money.

Each RC18015xs+ connects to the RXD1215sas via serial attached SCSI (SAS).
Each RC18015xs+ connects to the RXD1215sas via serial attached SCSI (SAS).

Synology's topography is simple but effective. Two controllers, and one or more storage units. One controller always acts as a backup, and the two controllers keep a constant check on each other to ensure the other one is still operating and "there."

In more basic HA clusters, the Heartbeat connection is the only mechanism being used to check status. Synology's setup for the RC18015xs+ uses Heartbeat, as well as the hardware components, and data connections within the whole cluster to prevent what's called a split-brain condition. In simple terms, a split-brain condition occurs when both controllers believes the other controller is dead. This causes both controllers to attempt a complete takeover of the cluster, resulting in data loss and errors.

DSM letting us know our cluster is operating normally.
DSM letting us know our cluster is operating normally.

For a truly resilient setup, you'll want to connect your clients via multiple paths to the cluster. This means more than one switch, more than one network port per client, all connected to the available network ports on the cluster. This setup provides more than just protection as you can utilize multiple links to enable load balancing.

In a NAS situation, which is a strength of the RC18015xs+, link-aggregation is highly recommend. You can read more about how to setup link-aggregation here.

In our tests, it took the passive RC18015xs+ controller anywhere between 3 to 5 seconds to completely switch into active mode. But this is due to our volume capacity sum being relatively small. The following is a table showing how long the controllers take to switchover or failover:

Sum of volume sizeSwitchover timeFailover time
60TB60 seconds56 seconds
450TB156 seconds132 seconds

The amount of time is due to the controllers performing graceful shutdowns of services, and ensuring all data is written to disk. There is a risk of transactions failing during a failover however, but the hosts should be setup to perform a re-attempt in the event that acknowledgement of transaction fails.

TestResult
Manual controller switchoverSuccess
Controller A PSU1 failSuccess
Controller A double PSU failFailover to controller B successful
Controller A failover time~5 seconds

It's worth noting that if the storage control module in the RXD1215sas that a controller is attached to fails, it will not be possible to failover to that controller.

TESTS

We've never had the chance to take something like the RC18015xs+ through our labs before. Because of this, we don't have a true reference point to test it against. There are several scenarios that customers will find appealing to use with Synology's RackStation. The first is support for straight scalable NAS storage with high-availability. The second is running VMs. However, with the two-controller setup of a RC18015xs+ cluster, it's more than likely that any VM deployment will be limited. You're going to need much more memory for running VMs at the hundreds or thousands of users level.

We therefore simplified our testing to what we think is the ideal scenario for the RC18015xs+, which would be scale-out NAS supporting a large volume of users. 

Our RXD1215sas was populated with the following drives:

Seagate 1200 SSD 800GB MLCe ST800FM0043 12Gb SAS
HGST He8 8TB HUH728080AL5200 12Gb SAS

12Gb/sec of performance and capacity.
12Gb/sec of performance and capacity.

We used a 10GbE dual-port NIC from Small Tree for our host.

Smalltree P2E10g-2-T dual-port 10GbE NIC.
Small-Tree P2E10g-2-T dual-port 10GbE NIC.

Note that we used four Samsung 850 Pro 1TB in RAID 0 in order to further test the 10GbE performance of the RC18015xs+. We also used the Netgear ProSAFE XS708E switch and configured link aggregation to perform our tests over an aggregated link of 20GbE.

Tests were done with the following hardware:

Test bed
MotherboardASUS X99-E WS
CPUIntel Core i7 5960X
RAMCorsair Dominator Platinum 64GB (4x 16GB) DDR4 2666MHz
SSDSamsung 850 Pro 1TB 4x (RAID 0)
OSWindows Server 2012 R2
NICSmall-Tree Dual Port 10GBASE-T P2E10G-2-T
SwitchNetgear ProSAFE XS708E 10GbE
RouterpfSense SG-2440
CableCAT6 10 ft

Note: Thanks to CyberPower PC for supplying the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSDs!

THE BENCHMARKS:
Test (64KB throughput)Score
Write RAID 02,187.3 MB/sec
Read RAID 02,217.2 MB/sec
Write RAID 51,984.5 MB/sec
Read RAID 52,006.3 MB/sec
Write RAID 61,859.1 MB/sec
Read RAID 61,934.7 MB/sec
Write RAID 101439.5 MB/sec
Read RAID 102,059.5 MB/sec

The above test was utilizing two 10GbE ports in aggregated mode. In RAID 0, we're essentially hitting a ceiling with copper 10GbE. Synology has compiled a detailed benchmark results page, allowing you to see IOPS, as well as other throughput tests such as 256-bit AES encryption. At the moment, even though our lab is 10GbE capable, we don't yet have enough of the necessary host setup to thoroughly run the RC18015xs+ through its paces. However, for a high-availability NAS, the RC18015xs+ does what it's suppose to do, and does it well.

About DSM

Synology is famous for its DSM management OS across its entire line of NAS products. The positive reputation extends through the company's entire lineup, from consumer systems all the way to enterprise products like the RC18015xs+

High Availability Manager letting us see controller switching.
High Availability Manager letting us see controller switching.

If you have experience with Synology NASes for the home, you pretty much can mange a Synology RackStation. The interface is the same as are most of the features and installable "apps." On the RC18015xs+ though, we get high-availability features that aren't available in a normal DSM configuration.

For those who want to see a thorough breakdown of Synology's DSM, check out our review of the company's DiskStation DS2415+.

Serious storage for serious businesses

Synology NASes are well respected in the industry. Now the company is making its mark in the enterprise in a very serious way. The RC18015xs+ is a well designed cluster that could save a business from headache inducing downtime and serious loss of money and data.

Of course, even with high-availability, the RC18015xs+ can't protect you from all events. Fore example, in the unlikely event that a controller A fails and the SAS module connected to controller B fails, the system won't be able to survive the switch. For the majority of scenarios though, the resiliency of the RC18015xs+ is exceptional. Others also agree. During VMWorld in San Francisco earlier this year, Synology won the VMWorld Finalist award for its RC18015xs+ cluster.

DSM also makes management and deployment duties simple to do. The company continually improves DSM on a regular basis, and folks from Synology even told us that the company considers itself firstly a software company before being a hardware company. We can see why they see it this way. After using NASes from several different brands, our favorite NAS management system has become Synology's DSM. The system is reliable and robust.

For all intents and purposes, the RC18015xs+ is a near perfect system.

Newegg Daily Deals: Black Friday Display Edition!

Posted: 25 Nov 2015 11:08 AM PST

Acer Monitor

Top Deal:

Now is the time of year to save big on electronics! We've got a list of Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals that we're continually updating through Cyber Monday, and Newegg kicked off their Black Friday extravaganza on Monday. Not only that, but Newegg will price match any future Black Friday prices on its site and other major retailers (go here for more info). All that plus daily deals, like today's top one for a SuperCombo Black Friday Monitor Pack: Acer XG270HU 27-inch 1ms 144HZ LCD Monitor + 2X Coboc 6ft. Gold plated High Speed HDMI Cable for $300 with free shipping (normally $478). It's a big monitor (27 inches) with FreeSync support and an edge-to-edge frameless design.

Other Deals:

Samsung S32E590C 31.5-inch Curved 4ms (GTG) LCD Monitor for $350 with free shipping (normally $400 - use coupon code: [EMCKKNR24])

Asus PB258Q 25-inch 5ms LED Backlight LCD Monitor AH-IPS for $280 with free shipping (normally $346)

Samsung S24D300H 24-inch 2ms HDMI LED Backlight LCD Monitor for $110 with free shipping (normally $120 - use coupon code: [EMCKKNR22])

Dell U2414H 23.8-inch 8ms (GTG) LED Backlight Height, Pivot, Swivel, Tilt LCD Monitor IPS 250 for $200 with free shipping (normally $350)

Windows Tablet Shipments Gaining Momentum at Expense of Android

Posted: 25 Nov 2015 10:56 AM PST

Onward and upward

Surface Pro 4 Stock

Windows-based tablets may have gotten off to a slow start, but things are changing, and changing fast. According to Strategy Analytics, Windows tablet shipments jumped 58 percent in the first nine months of 2015, and with the holiday shopping season in view, they'll reach 22 million shipments by the end of the year.

If that comes to pass, Windows will account for 10 percent of the global tablet market. That would still put Windows way behind Android (68 percent) and iOS (22 percent), but it's far better than the measly 1.7 percent of the smartphone market Windows owns (based on Gartner's data).

Looking ahead, Strategy Analytics believes that Windows will nearly double its share of the tablet market to 18 percent by 2019. Meanwhile, iOS is expected to bump up a single percentage point while Android will slide 9 percent.

"As the enterprise market becomes increasingly open to the wide scale deployment of Tablet platforms, Microsoft has a key advantage in that its operating systems are found on the vast majority of PC and servers within the enterprise, potentially providing a smoother integration of tablets using the Windows OS into the enterprise," said Peter King, Research Director for Tablet & Touchscreen Strategies at Strategy Anlystics. "Most, if not all, major vendors will have high to premium tier Windows Tablet offerings by the end of 2016 to address prosumers and enterprise currently served by Microsoft's Surface Pro line."

It's an interesting category, but one that's also a little bit challenging to analyze due to so many different form factors. In this instance, Strategy Analystics is taking into consideration 2-in-1 devices like the Surface Pro 4, Acer T100, and Lenovo Miix 700.

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AMD Ends Driver Support for Pre-GCN Graphics Cards

Posted: 25 Nov 2015 10:15 AM PST

Time to upgrade

AMD Graphics Card Pile

AMD is intensely focused on the future of graphics, so much so that it created a new division called Radeon Technologies Group to live and breathe graphics development and officially killed the Catalyst Control Center in favor of Radeon Software (which kicks off with the Crimson Edition). On top of it all, AMD just retired all graphics cards that came before its GCN architecture.

Effectively immediately, AMD's entire batch of Radeon HD 6000 and Radeon HD 5000 series are considered legacy products that will no longer receive driver updates. The same goes for Radeon HD 8000 (HD 8400 and below) and Radeon HD 7000 (HD 7600 and below) graphics cards.

According to AMD, the aforementioned cards have all reached "peak performance optimization" and there's nothing more to squeeze out of them. So, out with old and focus on the new.

"These products have been moved to a legacy support model and no additional driver releases are planned. This change enables us to dedicate valuable engineering resources to developing new features and enhancements for graphics products based on the GCN architecture," AMD stated in a support document.

As one last hurrah, AMD is making available two final driver options for pre-GCN graphics cards. One is the last ever WHQL-certified Catalyst release, version 15.7.1, and the other is an as-is beta of Crimson that brings the new layout and assortment of features to legacy graphics cards owners.

The forced retirement also includes APUs based on legacy GPU architectures. That boils down to everything that came out before Kavari, including Llano, Trinity, and Richland.

"For users passionate about gaming, you may wish to consider upgrading to a modern GPU and benefit from exciting new features, improved performance, lower power consumption, and broader compatibility with the latest PC games," AMD said.

Some of those "exciting new features" AMD references include FreeSync, TrueAudio, and of course DirectX 12, to name a few.

If your game plan is to upgrade, keep an eye on our ongoing Black Friday / Cyber Monday article that we'll continually update with deals up through Cyber Monday.

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Windows 10 Update Might Have Nuked Your Privacy Settings

Posted: 25 Nov 2015 09:18 AM PST

Oops!

Windows 10 Privacy

An oft cited criticism of Windows 10 is that it doesn't respect users' privacy as much as it could, or perhaps should. Microsoft recently tried to allay that concern by updating language in its privacy statement and issuing clarifications on the data it collects, though it didn't do itself any favors by following that up with a Windows 10 update (EDIT: available through its media creation tool) that, for some users, didn't retain some privacy settings.

"When the November update was installed, a few settings preferences may have inadvertently not been retained for advertising ID, Background apps, SmartScreenFilter, and Sync with devices," Microsoft stated in a support document.

According to Microsoft, only an "extremely small number" of Windows 10 users were affected by this when applying the November update (version 1511). To keep it that way, Microsoft pulled the MCT download, fixed whatever was causing it to ignore certain privacy settings, and put it back online.

What about users who already installed the initial update before it was yanked offline and fixed? Microsoft said it's planning to issue a fix in the coming days that will restore privacy controls to their previous settings, though how exactly it plans to do that isn't yet known.

Until then, users can check their settings by going to Settings > Privacy. The General section contains the advertising ID and SmartScreen Filter controls, Other Devices offers access to Sync settings, and the Background apps section allows users to review which applications are allowed to run in the background.

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Geek Holiday Gift Guide 2015

Posted: 25 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

Technolust: Invasion of the Robots

Posted: 25 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

Robot header image

The three laws of robotics

I'm a child of the '80s, and even 30 years later I still have fond memories of watching cartoons after school and on Saturday mornings. One of the classics was The Jetsons. For those who aren't old enough to remember the show, or just never watched it, the Jetsons are a middle-class family living in the future, circa 2062. The show managed to predict various future technologies while missing others, but my main item of interest is the robots.

The Jetsons own a household robot—everyone in the future has one, it seems—named Rosie. And while their model happens to be outdated, it still manages to cook, clean, do some parenting, and even function as a local pharmacy on occasion. Who doesn't dream of owning a robot that can take care of all the mundane household duties so you can spend time doing the fun stuff? Just as long as the robots don't take over everything else (e.g., see I, Robot, Terminator, Matrix, and various other shows), it sounds great. Plus, I'm super lazy at times and am particularly bad at things that should be done on a regular schedule. Robots to the rescue!

Before we get to the actual picks, it's worth noting that the sort of robots I really want—the kind that can do a multitude of tasks—don't really exist yet, though work continues to progress. Instead, most robots only handle a very specific task, and even then they're not adept enough to fully replace humans. Another 50 years might get us there, but the robots at present are chiefly about convenience and compromise. If money is no object, you're much better off hiring a living, breathing person instead of buying a robot. But then, robots don't have feelings (yet?), which can help avoid certain awkward situations.

Besides watching The Jetsons, I also read plenty of sci-fi, including classics like Asimov's robot series. Looking to the future, I'm still waiting for my self-driving car, not to mention robots that can do dishes, laundry, clean my car, and take care of the yardwork. But we have to start somewhere, and today's less capable robots will pave the way for some truly amazing creations in the future. So, here's my short wishlist of household robots.Neato-Botvac Connected

Neato Botvac Connected

Robot vacuums were the first mainstream robot consumer device, and there are a bunch of them. The task at hand is well-suited to automation, as the robot simply needs to be able to navigate around the area to be cleaned. Once you have the navigation smarts working, add on a vacuum and you're golden. iRobot started the vacuum robot craze way back in 2002 with the original Roomba, and they're generally considered the incumbent, but things have come a long way in the past decade. Today, there are dozens of robot vacuums, many of which still look similar to the original Roomba circular pet, but they certainly don't perform the same.

There's something comforting about waking up in the morning to freshly vacuumed carpets. With three kids, cleaning the floors is a constant battle. Here's where I have a confession: We invested in a robot vacuum this past year, and it was absolutely worth the price of admission. Is it okay to have technolust for something I already have? I hope so, because I'm doing it—plus it's a nice segue into the other robots that I don't own. If it helps, just imagine I'm lusting after having a second robot to handle the upstairs.

Anyway, our original robovac died (it was an older refurbished unit, luckily under warranty), and the search began for a replacement. We ended up with two robot vacuums, one from Neato and one from iRobot, and as you can guess, the Botvac wins out. The Roomba tends to be more like a vacuuming ping pong ball, bouncing around the rooms in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Unfortunately, it frequently misses a few areas (including under the kitchen table). The Botvac, in contrast, maps out the floor plan with its laser eye and systematically covers every spot it can reach. Even better, it generally starts with the perimeter of each room before doing a back-and-forth pattern that leaves nice parallel lines on the carpet. Professional carpet cleaners typically use a carpet rake after cleaning for the same reason, and the effect is measurable. (Note that the new Roomba 980 is supposed to do better at leaving parallel tracks, though I still prefer the D shape of the Neato.)

Like most robovac manufacturers, Neato has several models available. Most of the important items like the navigation system are available even on the base model, so you're paying extra for additional features that may or may not be necessary. Scheduling is a must, but everything else is just icing on the cake. The latest Botvac Connected adds Wi-Fi and smartphone app support, along with an improved filter and turbo/eco cleaning modes. The cost is over double what you'll pay for the basic Botvac 80, but if you're after the best current robot vacuum, this is the one I'd pick.

What does the Botvac Connected have that I'm currently missing?

A newer design with Wi-Fi connectivity and a better filter are the chief upgrades here, and honestly, the Wi-Fi and notifications aren't critical. What I'd like to see is something that cleans more quickly and with deeper suction, but it will likely be slow and steady improvements over time than any radical jump in cleaning quality. Getting right to the edges of the room is still an issue (though that's a problem with upright vacuums as well—usually you have to use the hose attachment to suck out the corners), and stains and other items may be missed, but if it means an extra hour or two of free time each week, that quickly adds up.

Now, if only I could get a robot that would vacuum the stairs (and traverse them), picking up toys and other stuff along the way…. And frankly, vacuuming only does so much; what the floors really need is an occasional deep cleaning. Considering the periodic navigation issues—the robovacs I've used get stuck every now and then—having a robotic steam cleaning vacuum probably isn't something I'd want just yet. "Sorry, sir, I got stuck on your child's legos and ended up wetting the carpet for the past 30 minutes, and now my battery is dead. Please return me to the charging station—and have fun cleaning up my mess!" But as the technology evolves, such capabilities will eventually become viable.

Robomow RS630

Robomow RS630

When we first got our robovac, I jokingly said to my wife, "Well, that takes care of the vacuuming; if only someone would make a good robot lawnmower!" The two tasks tend to be quite similar, but the idea of a robot with sharp, spinning blades driving around the yard is enough to make any parent nervous. But there have to be ways around that, right? It turns out there are, and once again there are quite a few robot mowers available.

After looking around, the Robomow RS630 looks to be the best bet right now—or if you have a smaller yard, you could opt for one of the cheaper units, but I'm hoping to someday have a larger yard where the Robomow RS630 is required. There's also the possibility of renting my robot mower to people around the block so it can pay for itself! Seriously, though, the jump in price from a robot vacuum to a robot mower is big enough that it's much more in the dreaming category. And with my waistline pushing at my belt on a regular basis, I'm not sure removing one of my forms of summer exercise is a great idea anyway… but if I could spend an extra six or more hours a month doing a more enjoyable form of exercise than mowing the lawn, it should balance out.

The Robomow RS630 has two spinning metal blades and you have to set up a perimeter wire around the mowing area. (There goes my renting idea.) Once things are set up, the mower will automatically leave its dock, mow the lawn, and return to the charging station. The RS630 can also cover a lot of lawn, up to 3/4 acre, which should be more than enough.

What does the Robomow provide that I'm currently missing?

I've always admired those people who clearly care about the way their yards look, but I'm not one of them. Invariably, I put off mowing the grass until it's well past time to get out there, and then I have to work harder to push the mower around. Plus, the noise, dust/pollen, and sweating aren't really my idea of a good time. Having a robot that will take care of the lawn every week (or even every few days), with no complaining or badgering, would be awesome. I do worry about the potential for toys and other objects to get chewed up by the mower blades, and there's still a real concern about what would happen if my three-year-old son decided to go help out "Robbie the mower." (I've already named him; that can't be good!) But I'm sure I can work around these issues, should I ever acquire a robot mower.

Winbot W930

Winbot W930

Coming up with a third robot for the house is a lot more difficult, as the products aren't things I really see myself needing/using. iRobot makes a robot for scrubbing floors called the Scooba 450 that looks promising, but I've read about problems with it getting onto the carpet, plus I've already picked a vacuum. Something I saw at CES last year that piqued my interest was a window cleaning robot. And I have to be honest: I suck at cleaning windows, as in, I'm not sure most of our upstairs windows have been properly cleaned in the past couple of years—and they need it.

The Winbot W930 is the top-end model from Ecovacs, which means it should also do the best job and have the most features. Here's where things get a bit sketchy, as even the best robot window cleaner seems like it's going to require a fair amount of user intervention. You start by spraying the front of the Winbot's cleaning pad with a cleaning solution, then you attach it to a window and plug it in, and then you press start and away it goes. When that window (or mirror or other surface) is clean, you remove the Winbot and repeat the process with another window.

I just counted, and I have 32 windows/mirrors in my house. Inside and outside for windows means there are actually 60 surfaces to clean. That's going to involve a lot of work moving the Winbot between locations, and I'm not even convinced it would do a superb job. If I can spray and clean a window in the same amount of time it would take to move the Winbot around to each location, that's not really a net time saver. Thankfully, windows don't need cleaning as frequently as floors, which is how a bunch of my windows are managing to survive without proper cleaning.

I haven't tested the Winbot, so it might be better than I think, but I'm not willing to shell out the money to find out. Maybe someday we'll have a robot window cleaner that's smart enough to spray the windows with a solution, move between the panes, etc. For now, I'm content to dream about a robot that cleans all my windows.

What does the Winbot provide that I'm currently missing?

Hopefully, it provides clean windows without me falling off a ladder or risking life and limb—or spending a bunch of time on a Saturday running around the house and cleaning windows on my own. I'm not fond of cleaning windows, and even my oldest child does at best a poor job, leaving streaks and missing spots. The Winbot would hopefully do better, and it would be a good impetus to actually tackle some of the harder-to-reach windows in our home.

What I really need is a wall-crawling robot that can manually navigate between the floors and ceilings, cleaning as it goes. It would vacuum (and steam clean as necessary) the floor, mop, wipe down walls, clean windows (removing and replacing screens as necessary), thoroughly wash the bathroom, and more. It would also mow the lawn, trim the bushes, wash the cars, weed the flower beds, and make healthy dinners for the family. This is the holy grail of a household robot, and while in theory it's something any good cleaning/maid service could provide, in practice using such a service can quickly add up. Or I could just suck it up and use some good old elbow grease to do the jobs myself, which is far more likely. Where's Rosie when I need her?

Gartner Predicts Record Level Migration to Windows 10

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 01:54 PM PST

This is the big one

Windows 10 PCs

There have been some pretty big Windows releases since its inception way back in 1985. With few exceptions, each new release has been more popular than its predecessor, and if you ask Gartner, Windows 10 is positioned to be the most widely installed version of Windows of all time.

The market research firm is talking about Windows 10's overall footprint, both in the home consumer sector and among enterprise customers.

"In the consumer market, a free upgrade coupled with broad legacy device support and automatic over-the-air upgrades ensures that there will be tens of millions of users familiar with the operating system (OS) before the end of 2015," said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. "For enterprises, we expect that implementation will be significantly more rapid than that seen with Windows 7 six years ago."

How much more rapid? By January 2017, Gartner predicts that half of all enterprises will have either upgraded to Windows 10 or begun deploying the OS. It's a bold prediction considering that upgrades in the enterprise are way more involved than they are for home consumers.

Nevertheless, Gartner says enterprises will be driven to Windows 10 by awareness of the end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020, robust compatibility with Windows 7 applications and devices, and a pent up demand for tablet and 2-in-1 devices.

Gartner also predicted that by 2018, touchscreens will be shipped on a third of all laptops, and that 30 percent of enterprises will spend more on display screens than on PCs.

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Asus ROG Outs Maximus VIII Hero "Alpha" Mobo

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 12:55 PM PST

Maximus VIII Hero Alpha 3 s1

Asus Republic of Gamers introduced a new motherboard on Tuesday that's based on the ROG Maximus VIII Hero board: an upgraded "Alpha" version. It's an ATX Z170-based motherboard packed with premium Asus technologies for PC gamers, as well as two integrated RGB four-pin headers for 12V RGB LED strips, perfect for illuminating your rig's innards.

According to the specifications, this visually striking mobo provides four DIMM slots for a maximum of 64GB DDR4 memory. The expansion slots include two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (x16, x8/x8 modes supported), one PCIe 3.0 slot (maximum x4 mode supported), and three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The board also supports two-way/quad-GPU Nvidia SLI technology and three-way/quad-GPU AMD CrossFireX tech.

For storage, there are six SATA 3 connections, two U.2 connections, and one M.2 Socket 3 that supports both SATA and PCIe-based SSDs. There are also two USB 3.1 ports (one Type-A and one Type-C), six USB 3.0 ports (two on back panel), six USB 2.0 ports (two on back panel), and one Thunderbolt 3 port (Type-C) on the back panel.

Maximus-VIII-Hero-Alpha U.2-s

The back panel also plays host to a DisplayPort 1.3 connector that has a maximum resolution of 4096x2304 at 60Hz, and an HDMI port that has a maximum resolution of 4096x2160 at 24Hz. Networking is handled by Intel's 1219-V gigabit Ethernet module, a dual-band MU-MIMO Wireless AC component, and Bluetooth 4.1.

"Maximus VIII Hero Alpha benefits from 5-Way Optimization technology with automated overclocking and unrivaled fan control for instant, highly controllable performance boosts," the company says. "This exclusive technology dynamically optimizes essential system aspects based on real-time use for superb CPU performance, everyday energy savings, ultra-stable digital power, cool and quiet fans, and even includes networking and audio settings tailored for favorite games and apps."

The company says the board can reach DDR4 memory speeds of up to 3,800MHz thanks to the on-board Asus T-Topology technology, which features a customized trace layout for reduced crosstalk and coupling noise. The board also comes packed with fan and water-pump controls, and a dedicated onboard water-pump header.

Asus reveals the full specifications and details, including lots of eye candy, here.

Newegg Daily Deals: CyberPower 1350VA UPS, Refurb Corsair K70 Keyboard, and More!

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 12:36 PM PST

CyberPower UPS

Top Deal:

Want to know the key to happiness? It's backups! The same is true for stress free living -- backups, backups, backups! Having a backup power source will save your bacon if the power goes out, giving you time to save your work and perform a proper shutdown. Do you have a UPS? If not, check out today's top deal for a CyberPower 1350 VA / 810 W PFC Pure Sine Wave UPS w/ USB Charging Ports for $145 with free shipping (normally $180). It's what stands between your PC and a power outage, plus it will deliver 'cleaner' power to your parts.

Other Deals:

Asus Gaming Laptop Intel 4th Generation Core i7 4720HQ 2.60 GHz 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD GTX 950M 2 GB Windows 8.1 64-bit for $699 with free shipping (normally $799; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Intel Core i3-4170 3M Haswell Dual-Core 3.7 GHz LGA 1150 54W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4400 for $105 with free shipping (normally $120)

Asus VN248H-P Slim Bezel Black 23.8-inch 5ms (GTG) HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor for $180 with free shipping (normally $220; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Corsair K70 Gaming Keyboard with Red LED, Cherry MX Red (refurbished) for $78 with free shipping (normally $110)

Amazon Resets Passwords of Some Customers

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 12:14 PM PST

Amazon

ZDNet reports that many readers have contacted the site stating that Amazon is distributing an email saying that it has reset their passwords. While the email sounds fishy at best, these readers have also stated that their account message centers located on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk also provide a copy of the message, verifying the email.

In an email retrieved by ZDNet, Amazon states that it recently discovered that the user's password may have been improperly stored on a device, or that the password was transmitted to Amazon in such a way that it could be retrieved by a third party. The company says that it has corrected the issue to prevent password exposure.

Amazon is being cautious; the email states that it doesn't believe that passwords have fallen into the wrong hands. However, the company is resetting passwords of affected customers just in case. ZDNet says that Amazon has yet to provide a statement regarding the password reset.

The news arrives during Amazon's busiest time of the year: the holiday season. Although the company offers deals all week, the company will begin its "Lightning Deals" on Thursday at 3 p.m. until December 9. According to CNET, there will also be 10 special deals published at midnight on Thanksgiving and another 10 at midnight on Black Friday. Amazon is even offering special deals that can only be obtained through its smartphone and tablet apps.

To better protect users during this busy season, Amazon introduced a two-step verification system last week, following Google, Apple, Facebook and other high-profile services. That means users will be required to provide a second form of identification—typically, a time-sensitive code—in addition to the typical email and password requirement.

To enable two-step authentication, simply click on "Your Account" in the drop-down menu under your name, then select "Change Account Settings" in the "Settings" section. After that, you'll see "Advanced Security Settings" and an edit button. The next section will launched the two-step verification setup process.

"When you enable Two-Step Verification, you will need your mobile phone as well as your password to sign in to your account," the page reads. "After entering your password, you'll need to provide a security code which will come from your phone (either through SMS or an authenticator app). This means that no one can access your account if your password alone is compromised."

So far, there's no indication of how many Amazon customers have been affected by the password resetting. However, with two-step verification, customers can rest assured that their account is better protected against hackers during the holiday season and beyond.

Cougar Uncages Splash Proof Keyboard and 5,000 DPI Mouse for Gamers

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 12:03 PM PST

Upgrade your arsenal

Cougar 450K Keyboard

Cougar's adding some new peripherals to its line of gaming goodies today, including a hybrid mechanical keyboard with a splash proof design and an ambidextrous mouse.

Starting with the former, the 450K Hybrid Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is a plank that uses membrane keys but offers "accurate tactile feedback" that Cougar claims is similar to mechanical key switches. It's also supposedly more durable than your average membrane plank while offering less finger strain, Cougar says.

The 450K keyboard features a three-color backlight, a 1,000Hz polling rate (1ms response time), macro and remapping capabilities through Cougar's UIX software, six-key anti-ghosting, onboard memory to save up to three configuration profiles, 10 programmable keys, and a splash proof design in case you spill your Red Bull in the heat of battle.

Cougar 450M Mouse

As for Cougar's new rodent, the 450M Optical Gaming Mouse is equally suited for both left- and right-handed gamers. It has a 5,000 DPI sensor, 1,000Hz polling rate, eight fully configurable buttons (including two on each side), and onboard memory to save up to three profiles.

Cougar's using Omron micro switches that it says are good for 5 million clicks, along with a "gaming grade" scroll wheel with tactile feedback. There's also a multi-color backlight system for the logo and to indicate the DPI setting (the mouse supports on-the-fly adjustments) and a braided cable.

Both the 450K keyboard and 450M mouse will be available in the U.K. next month, followed by a global launch (including the U.S.) in the first quarter of 2016. We've reached out to Cougar for information about pricing and will update when/if we hear back.

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Dell Responds to Root Certificate Concerns

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 10:20 AM PST

Confirmation and a fix

Dell Inspiron 15 5000

Dell has issued an apology for the presence of a root level certificate that some laptop owners discovered it was installing on new systems, along with an explanation of why it was there in the first place.

As it turns out, it's not another Superfish situation in which Dell is trading security for third-party ads. Instead, the certificate is part of a support tool that provides the system service tag to Dell's online support team. That in turn allows support reps to quickly and easily identify the computer model.

"Customer security and privacy is a top concern and priority for Dell; we deeply regret that this has happened and are taking steps to address it," Dell stated in a blog post.

The certificate, called eDellRoot, left systems vulnerable to what are called HTTPS man-in-the-middle attacks. One of the primary issues is that the private key for the certificate is the same on all PCs. In theory, an attacker could use the key to direct browser traffic to a forged website, like a banking site, to steal a person's login information and/or install malware. There are other security risks as well.

Unlike how Superfish initially played out on Lenovo PCs, eDellRoot isn't a persistent certificate that reinstalls itself once it's "properly removed." It also refrains from collecting personal information, Dell says.

Dell is working on an update that will automatically remove the certificate on all affected PCs. In the meantime, you can remove it manually by following Dell's instructions here (PDF).

"Your trust is important to us and we are actively working to address this issue. We thank customers such as Hanno Böck, Joe Nord, and Kevin Hicks, aka rotorcowboy, who brought this to our attention. If you ever find a potential security vulnerability in any Dell product or software, we encourage you to visit this site to contact us immediately, Dell said.

Dell didn't say how many PCs contain the eDellRoot certificate.

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AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Tested

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 05:01 AM PST

Introducing Radeon Software Crimson

Taking the Red Pill

The past few months have seen some interesting happenings over in the AMD camp. First up was the creation of the Radeon Technologies Group, tasked with focusing on graphics to create better experiences for the end users. Coinciding with the RTG announcement was the launch of the R9 Nano, a graphics card that aimed to cram as much performance as possible into mini-ITX form factors. About two months later, AMD announced that their Catalyst branding for graphics drivers was coming to an end, to be replaced by a new and improved set of software. The new software is called Radeon Software, and starting today and going throughout 2016, the branding will be Crimson.

The biggest news is the end of using .NET for the user interface. We questioned AMD's sanity back in 2002 when Catalyst first launched and required the installation of the Microsoft .NET Framework, the chief problem being the painfully slow startup time for the driver UI. Over the years, things have certainly been streamlined, but AMD Catalyst has never felt particularly responsive when it comes to launch times. With Crimson, AMD is switching to the Qt library and claims up to a 10x improvement in UI launch times. That's probably an edge case, as AMD used an older AMD E1-based APU and quoted an eight second start time vs. 0.5s using Qt, but one thing we can immediately confirm is that Crimson launches fast. On our GPU test bed, right-clicking the desktop and choosing "AMD Radeon Settings" brings up the control panel virtually instantly. To be fair, Catalyst only took a second or two to launch on the same system, but Crimson is certainly faster.

But start times aren't the only thing to improve. We didn't time the initial installation process, but even on a speedy i7-5930K running at 4.2GHz with an SSD, we've noticed in the past that installing AMD driver updates can take a bit of time. With Crimson, the installation finished so quickly it was a shock—AMD quotes a 40 percent improvement in installation time vs. Catalyst. We decided to go back and test, so we installed the last 15.11.1 beta and found it took 54 seconds on our test system. After uninstalling and cleaning out Catalyst—there's a new AMD clean uninstall tool, incidentally, which takes about as long as the Catalyst installation to complete—we installed Crimson again: 45 seconds. So, yeah, it installs faster, though we should also note that the unpacking process isn't included in the timing, and that does take a while.

AMD touts some other improvements with Crimson as well, though we weren't able to test all of these. Displays will now initialize up to 3x faster, according to AMD; LiquidVR is now publicly available; and AMD has made some improvements to the way FreeSync operates to help when FPS falls below the minimum supported variable refresh rate. There are also frame pacing improvements for DX9 titles now (previously, these were only on DX10 and DX11 titles), and there's a new adaptive directional scaling algorithm for scaling 1080p content to fit a 4K display. AMD quotes performance improvements for gaming up to 20 percent (we'll test that later), and that includes some performance improvements for Linux users. (And there was much rejoicing from Alex.) Finally, AMD has made some efficiency improvements both with and without their Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC) active, as well as when viewing videos, leading to lower power use. In short, there's a long list of updates and improvements coming, thanks to Crimson.

Crimson UI Overview

Radeon Software Crimson Main

Getting into the particulars of the new drivers, just about everything looks different, though if you're familiar with the old Catalyst interface it's not too hard to figure out what you're doing. One thing that's immediately noticeable is the large banner advertisements that show up as the background images. Some people might dislike these, and they can be disabled, but it's actually a nice change of pace and the backgrounds look a lot more interesting than the old smaller images in Catalyst. The Home page provides access to driver updates, preferences (which is where you turn off the advertisements), notifications, and social media options—there's also a handy "Restore Factory Defaults" should your tweaking go awry.

Radeon Software Crimson Gaming

Radeon Software Crimson Gaming Global

Radeon Software Crimson Gaming Global Overdrive

Most of your time will likely be spent in the Gaming section, where you can set global options as well as tweak individual gaming profiles. Digging a little deeper, the core graphics settings are grouped into a single page, including a new "shader cache" feature that's supposed to help smooth out performance in some games. Perhaps more interesting is the OverDrive section, which is where you can overclock your GPU. We've always appreciated the ease with which you can overclock AMD's GPUs, as you don't necessarily need a separate utility (though we still usually turn to MSI Afterburner if we're serious about overclocking). AMD's Crimson takes things to a new level with the option to specify overclocks on a per-game basis. So if Star Wars: Battlefront happens to pound the GPU hardware and has stability problems using your normal overclocks, you can tweak just that title to reduce clocks—or alternatively, maybe some other game isn't that punishing and will allow an extra boost to your clocks.

Radeon Software Crimson Video

Radeon Software Crimson Display

The Video section offers the ability to customize video output (colors, contrast, etc.), should you prefer something other than the defaults. Meanwhile, the Display section allows you to change settings for FreeSync (if supported), VSR, and GPU scaling. Eyefinity, of course, requires multiple displays, which we weren't using, so we'll skip that.

Radeon Software Crimson System

Radeon Software Crimson System Software

Radeon Software Crimson System Hardware

Wrapping up the UI, the System section shows information about your hardware and software, and you can dig into additional details if you want. Overall, the UI is responsive and easy to get around, and it certainly feels a lot snappier than the old Catalyst interface. Maybe it's just a new shade of lipstick in some ways, but it's GPU accelerated and looks nice, so kudos to AMD.

Crimson vs. Catalyst Gaming Performance

But what we really want to know is how Crimson performs. Sure, the UI works better, but are there any changes to the underlying drivers? AMD says they addressed some of the top issues identified by users, similar to what they did with last year's Omega driver, and that's all well and good… but our preview drivers did crash during our benchmarking—twice. There was also some UI corruption within Windows, including problems in Photoshop, so there are still areas that need work. As for performance, we grabbed our usual suite of seven games, added in Fallout 4 for good measure (since it's supposed to have received some driver optimizations), and ran through our usual gaming tests. Here are the results, for the Fury X and R9 390 with the launch drivers for the Fury X and 300 series going up against Crimson. We've included the GTX 980 Ti and GTX 970 as comparison points (using older 353.30 drivers, except for Fallout 4, which used 358.91), since those two cards are priced similarly to the AMD offerings.

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 01 Aggregate Performance

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 02 Batman Arkham Origins

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 03 Fallout 4

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 04 GTAV

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 05 Hitman Absolution

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 06 Metro Last Light

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 07 Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 08 Tomb Raider 2013

AMD Radeon Software Crimson 09 The Witcher 3

Overall, Crimson shows improved performance compared to Catalyst, but there are some qualifications. First off, and somewhat concerning: our overall 97 percentile frame rates are actually slightly lower with Crimson than Catalyst at all tested resolutions. That could be the shader cache (which is on by default) causing some hitching, or it could be something else, but there were a few clear stutters in a few of our gaming tests. Most of the results don't change dramatically, but the exceptions are enough to skew the overall numbers.

Looking at the individual games, Batman: Arkham Origin runs slightly better with Crimson, and Fallout 4 shows a massive jump in performance (which likely would be present in the 15.11.1 Catalyst beta). The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V are fence sitters, boasting higher average frame rates but lower 97 percentile FPS, which we rate as a net loss due to the stuttering. The remaining four titles—Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Tomb Raider (2013)—all performed slightly worse with Crimson, and Shadow of Mordor in particular shows some real issues with minimum frame rates, with results that are 10–30 percent lower than on Catalyst. Outside of Fallout 4 and Shadow of Mordor, however, the gains/losses are generally pretty small.

Radeon Software Crimson LiquidVR

Change is sometimes hard, but at least in the case of Radeon Software Crimson, we're generally pleased with the UI updates. Catalyst already went through a few major UI overhauls during its 13 years of life, but unifying the graphics branding around Radeon makes sense from a marketing standpoint, and the Crimson name ties in nicely with AMD's colors. Performance in games hasn't radically changed that we can see, but hopefully the coming year will prove there's more untapped performance waiting to be had from AMD's driver team. Perhaps more importantly, AMD is committing to six WHQL drivers for 2016 (they only released three in 2015), along with periodic beta releases as needed.

Considering it's the drivers that allow a GPU to sink or swim, it's good to see AMD renewing a commitment to regular driver updates. Nvidia has done some good work with releasing regular Game Ready WHQL drivers for most major launches during the past year and more, and they've had some killer hardware as well with the likes of the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X. 2016, however, is shaping up to be a true battle royale, with 14/16nm FinFET slated to come out and push transistor counts and performance to new highs. You certainly don't want your drivers holding you back, and even if the only changes in Crimson end up being in the new UI and launch/install performance, that's a good place to start.

Addendum, 11/30/2015: AMD sent along this note today regarding some bugs in the initial release of Crimson. "We're aware of isolated reports of low fan states following the installation of Radeon Software 'Crimson Edition' on select Radeon GPUs. Our engineering teams have identified and addressed this issue, and we intend to release a hotfix on amd.com this coming Monday, November 30." The fan speed issue didn't seem to affect our test GPUs, but it's good to see a fix. Like all drivers, this is a work in progress and we can expect future releases to improve performance, stability, features, and more.

The Fall 2015 Turbo Build

Posted: 24 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

Blueprints Fall 2015 Turbo Beauty

A build we can covet like a Red Ryder BB gun

Here it comes, in all its consumer-economy glory: Black Friday. The name alone evokes visions of the plague, demons, and the apocalypse. What horrors await unsuspecting holiday shoppers.

If you've been following our Fall builds, we've already listed our Budget Gamer and Midrange builds. Now, hold on to your hot chocolate, it's the Turbo's turn.

The Turbo is a build enthusiasts can aspire to. With a budget of $3,000, the Turbo skirts the territory inhabited by the parts you'd find in boutique builds. All the power, without the coordinated colorful paint schemes and gorgeous cable management. (We do try, but there's only so much we can do under deadline.) For perspective, the Turbo costs about the same as a semester's in-state tuition at at a California State University campus.

Screw sugar plums; here's the kind of stuff that runs through our heads:

MPC newegg header v4

Product Price
CPU Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E $385
GPU 2x Zotac GeForce GTX 980Ti (reference) $1,260
($630 ea.)
Mobo Asus X99-M WS mATX $276
Case Fractal Design Node 804 $110
Memory 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 (Blue) $200
SSD 500GB Samsung 850 Evo M.2 SATA $178
HDD 4x 1TB WD Black 7200 RPM $280
($70 ea.)
CPU Cooler Corsair H80i GT $90
PSU EVGA 120-G1-1000-VR 1000W 80 Plus Gold $135
Fans 2x Fractal Design Silent Series R2 $20
($10 ea.)
Total $2,934

Note: All prices reflect in-cart price at time of procurement. This includes instant rebates and sale pricing, but does not include tax or mail-in rebates. Prices vary all the time.

Great things come in small packages

Normally, when we build a Turbo, we look to big honkin' military-looking towers that strike fear into the hearts of children and anyone who gives a damn about interior design. This time, we wanted something smaller, nicer, and classy. When we laid eyes on the Fractal Design Node 804, we had to have it.

The Node 804 has an interesting two-bay layout, each with its own cooling options. The front of the case supports up to four intake fans, while the rear supports up to two (one for each bay). The top of the case allows for more fans, or cooling radiators. Fractal Design says that the top racks can support 240mm radiators, but we'll talk about that in a bit.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Turbo Gutshot

The rear bay of the case holds up to eight 3.25-inch HDDs in removable vertical cages of four each. Those cages sit above the mount point for the PSU, which offered only a little clearance for the SATA power cables. In fact, we actually broke one of the connectors (on the cable, not the drive, thankfully) when we slid in the hard drive cage above our PSU. A word of caution: If you're installing drives above the PSU in this case, tuck those cables away and be very, very careful.

The other gotcha in this case has to do with cooling. We originally wanted to go with an NZXT Kraken X61 CPU cooler. However, there's a fan controller at the back of the motherboard bay, which just doesn't let you put in the X61 without removing it. On top of that, our RAM modules were in the way of the radiator, which kept us from mounting it in the motherboard bay. These weren't big modules, mind you; they were just a few sticks of DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX (which have quite modest heat sinks).

If you want to mount the radiator in the hard drive and PSU bay, you have to remove the hard drive cages and their mounts, which kind of killed it for us. Additionally, the alternative mounting position was denied by our 1,000W PSU (the cables connectors pushed the cage out of the way).

We tried, we really did, but we couldn't get that ful-size radiator in the case with our choice of components. Luckily, we had a spare Corsair H80i GT we had on standby for just such an occasion. The H80i fit splendidly into the front of the motherboard bay, and helped hide some of our cable mess, too.

The heart of the matter

When we started out this build, we wanted to make sure we kept up with our small form factor theme. We also wanted to make sure we bumped up our game to the X99 platform. In those pursuits, we succeeded.

We went with the Asus X99-M WS micro-ATX motherboard as a base to build on. The board's form factor fit nicely in the Node 804, and offered a layout that complimented the case.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Turbo - Timed Benchmark Chart

We dropped an Intel Core i7-5820K into the 2011-v3 socket with pleasure. We eyed the 5930K before we made our decision, but we opted for fewer PCIe lanes so we could spend some cash on storage and memory. Had we been willing to go over budget or with three-way SLI, we would have jumped on the 5930K to get the most out of our video cards. The choice to stay with a SATA M.2 SSD instead of NVMe kept the demand for PCIe lanes low as well. With only two video cards in our SLI setup, going with the 5820K was perfectly acceptable, even if it meant using the second card at 8x. (The small delta in performance between 8x and 16x for the second card didn't warrant the price jump to the 5930K in this build.) 

Blueprints Fall 2015 Turbo - X264 Chart

The 5820K shone when we put it through our multi-threaded x264 benchmark. A total of 12 logical CPUs with Hyper-Threading really punched through the encoding task. When it comes to single-threaded tasks, the Devil's Canyon is still the hottest CPU of the bunch, however. Cores aren't everything, and a quad-core with high clocks will do very well for most tasks and games.

Memories of holidays past

We've experimented with a couple of storage solutions in the Turbo. We've gone with NVMe storage over SLI, while other times we've opted for SSDs in RAID. This time, we changed it up again.

We've been trending toward building with SATA M.2 SSDs for a while, for their small form and lack of cabling. Since this is a micro-ATX build we felt this was a prime place to use an M.2 SSD as our primary storage. The Samsung 850 Evo M.2 has identical specs to the 2.5-inch version, but has a tiny footprint. In fact, you can't even see it under our 980Tis.

We saved RAID for our hard drives, and got four 1TB WD Blacks to build our array. While a set of four 1TB drives isn't much, having the physical redundancy of RAID 10 netted us 2TB of total storage and peace of mind. The 2TB of total HDD space is enough to back up our SSD four times over. If more storage is needed for movies, music, and photos, we'd recommend a NAS.

Making the most of those Steam gift cards

When it comes to graphics, it's hard to beat two GTX 980Tis in SLI. Besides dominating games at 1440p, two 980Tis can really let you crank up the settings in 4K.

We put these reference 980Tis through the ringer with Fire Strike Ultra and our three games, Tomb Raider, Batman: Arkham City, and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Turbo - Game Benchmarks Chart

As we expected, the duo ate the game benchmarks for lunch. The rig didn't score as high as our Rocket Science Build It, which we built to complement the 2015 Dream Machine. But to be fair, Rocket Science had an overclocked 5930K and a pair of factory overclocked EVGA 980Tis that we overclocked some more. In comparison, this Turbo build is running at stock clocks. There's plenty of overclocking gains to be made with the headroom our beefy 1kW PSU gives us.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Turbo - 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra Chart

In Fire Strike Ultra, the Turbo scored significantly lower than the Rocket Science build did. (But as we said before, the Rocket Science Build It was overclocked and had a 5930K CPU.) That said, it sailed over the VR gaming score (2,596) and passed the 4K gaming score (5,552) as well, with a total score of 6,910.

At the end of the day, we feel that this rig can really keep those holiday woes away. You'll be able to play pretty much any recent game at 4K, even with anti-aliasing cranked up. (You don't really need 8xFSAA at 4K, though. What are you, crazy?)

We'd like to think it's a gift someone could give to themselves. The kids won't touch that Tickle-Me-Elmo after January anyway.

Syber Slashes $200 Off Select Steam Machines (Today Only)

Posted: 23 Nov 2015 12:52 PM PST

Steam Machine sale

Syber Steam Machines

There's going to be a lot sales this week and next as Black Friday and Cyber Monday commence, though if you're looking for a new living room console, you don't have to wait. For today only, Syber, a division of CyberPower PC, is offering a $200 discount on three different Steam Machine configurations.

The least expensive of the three is the Syber Steam Machine I. It's normally priced at $499, but as part of today's sale, it's available for $399 after instant rebate plus you get another $100 back via mail-in-rebate. That brings the total down to $299, or 40 percent off its normal selling price.

Syber's Steam Machine I configuration comes with an Intel Core i3-4160 processor, ASRock H81m-ITX motherboard with built-in Wi-Fi, 4GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 graphics card (1GB), 500GB hard drive (7200 RPM), GbE LAN, onboard 7.1 audio, 250W power supply, and SteamOS stuffed into a console-sized chassis. A Steam Controller is included for no additional cost.

That's not a power house by any means, but serviceable for 1080p gaming on your big screen TV (or computer monitor), especially at the sale price. You can also upgrade certain components for added oomph out of the box.

Second up is the Syber Steam Machine P. It typically goes for $789 but is now available for $589 after instant and mail-in-rebates.

The configuration uses the same console-size chassis and ASRock H81m motherboard, but is upgraded with a Core i5-4460 processor, 8GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 graphics card (2GB), 1TB HDD, and 450W PSU with 80 Plus Bronze certification.

Finally, there's the Syber Steam Machine X. It's normally priced at $1,479 but is now going for $1,279 after the same rebates as the other two.

The "X" configuration gets a different motherboard -- Gigabyte GA-Z97N-WIFI -- plus an Intel Core i7-4790K processor, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPU (4GB), and a 600W PSU with 80 Plus Gold certification. It's very similar to the Syber Vapor we reviewed earlier this year, which earned a 95 verdict and Kick Ass award.

You can hit the above links to configure and purchase any of Syber's marked down Steam Machines, or go here to compare all three.

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Vote on Which Casual Game Microsoft Should Make Next

Posted: 23 Nov 2015 10:31 AM PST

The next Minesweeper

Microsoft SOlitaire

Any thirty-something and older can probably remember wasting countless work hours playing classic games in Windows like Minesweeper, Solitaire, and my personal favorite from that era, SkiFree. What will be the time killers for this generation?

You can help decide. The Microsoft Casual Games team has five game concepts in mind, and while sadly a modern take on SkiFree isn't included, there are others that you might find intriguing.

Here are the options, along with Microsoft's description for each one:

  • Chess: Microsoft Chess is back and better than ever! Play against the computer, against a friend, or use the matchmaker to find someone to play in a rated or casual game. You can have multiple games going at the same time and there are new Daily Challenges every day to exercise your brain.
  • Bubble: Do you enjoy shooting bubbles upward and bouncing them off walls to try to make a match of 3 or more so they all pop and fall down? Classic bubble shooter games have been around for years and if you like this style of game, you will love Microsoft Bubble. With multiple game modes, powerups and daily challenges, you can try to pop past your friends or just relax and see how far you can get on your own!
  • Casino: Take a gamble and let it ride in Microsoft Casino. A common bankroll across multiple games- including Video Poker, Blackjack, Slots, Craps, and Roulette. The most beautiful Casino title, optimized for Windows 10! Play for free and collect good luck charms to up your odds of winning!
  • Hearts: Microsoft Hearts has been a staple in Windows for many years, and it's coming back! With single player, multiplayer and Daily Challenges, this game is sure to capture the hearts of everyone from the first time player to the true master.
  • Word: With several word games, multiplayer tournament modes, and new Daily Challenges every day, Microsoft Ultimate Word Games is the best collection of word games you'll find.

Microsoft is asking people to vote on their top three selections, so it's likely planning on offering than one title from the above list. None of them get me particularly excited (Bubble looks like it could be fun), but if you see any that tickle your fancy, you have until December 17 to cast your vote.

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Root Level Certificates Found Preinstalled on Dell Laptops

Posted: 23 Nov 2015 09:19 AM PST

Superfish all over again?

Dell XPS 15

After Lenovo was raked over the coals for including hidden adware software that worked its magic through a root certificate, which left systems vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, you'd think other OEMs would be extra cautious to avoid similar situations. Be that as it may, Dell is now on the hot seat for a similar situation.

Over on Reddit, a user who goes by rotorcowboy says he discovered a pre-loaded root CA (Certificate Autihority) named eDellRoot on his "shiny new XPS 15 laptop" (credit to The Inquirer for bringing this to attention).

"With it came its private key, marked as non-exportable. However, it is still possible to obtain a raw copy of the private key by using several tools available (I used NCC Group's Jailbreak tool)," rotorcowboy said. "After briefly discussing this with someone else who had discovered this too, we determined that they are shipping every laptop they distribute with the exact same root certificate and private key, very similar to what Superfish did on Lenovo computers. For those that aren't familiar, this is a major security vulnerability that endangers all recent Dell customers."

Rotorcowboy used Italics and bolded text to emphasize his concern about certain aspects of the root certificate, which appears to belong to Dell rather than a third-party application. For what purpose remains to be seen, as Dell has yet to offer up an explanation on the issue.

There's been some skepticism from other Reddit users that this is anything to be concerned about, though in an update to his post, rotorcowboy says that after doing some research, he discovered that eDellRoot is able to sign server certificates.

"For those that are unfamiliar with how this works, a network attacker could use this CA do sign his or her own fake certificates for use on real websites and an affected Dell user would be none the wiser unless they happened to check the website's certificate chain," rotorcowboy added. "This CA could also be used to sign code to run on people's machines, but I haven't tested this out yet."

Joe Nord, a product manager for Citrix Systems, found the same CA on his recently purchased Dell Inspiron 5000 series notebook.

"Setting things up, I was surprised to see a trusted root certificate pre-installed on the machine labeled 'eDellRoot'. I'm having a tough time coming up with a good reason that Dell Computer Corporation needs to be a trusted root CA on my computer," Nord stated in a blog post.

According to Nord, the CA is setup to expire in 2039 and is intended for "All" purposes, making it more powerful than a "clearly legitimate DigiCert certificate" that appears just above it.

What's concerning about the CA is that it includes a private key. It's marked non-exportable, but is still accessible and appears to be the same on all Dell laptops that have the certificate.

"Anyone possessing the private key which is on my computer is capable of minting certificates for any site, for any purpose and the computer will programmatically and falsely conclude the issued certificate to be valid. This is the same action that existed with Superfish," Nord added.

The issue was brought to attention to Dell's social media team on Twitter, @DellCares, which is looking into the issue.

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Microsoft’s Mobile Phone Share Shrinks in Half, Windows 10 Mobile to the Rescue?

Posted: 23 Nov 2015 06:00 AM PST

Feast or famine in the mobile market

Lumia 950

Demand in emerging markets helped boost smartphone sales to 353 million units in the third quarter of 2015, which represents a 15.5 percent growth rate from the same quarter a year ago, according to the latest data by market research firm Gartner. Unfortunately for Microsoft, a fairly significant rise in overall phone sales hasn't translated into a bump in market share for Windows-based handsets.

Actually, it's been just the opposite. There were less than 5.9 million Windows Phone shipments in the third quarter, down from over 9 million a year ago. As a result, Microsoft's measly share of the mobile phone market was cut in half from 3 percent a year ago to 1.7 percent at the end of Q3.

It continues to be a two horse race with Android way out in front of iOS. Out of the 353 million smartphone sales in Q3, around 298.8 million were Android devices and another 46 million were iPhones, putting Android and iOS's market share figures at 84.7 percent and 13.1 percent, respectively. Or put another way, Android and iOS combined for 97.8 percent of all smartphone sales.

What's surprising about all this isn't that Android and iOS continue to dominate -- that's par for course -- but that Microsoft's share fell off a tiny cliff after holding steady at 3 percent for several quarters. So how did it happen?

It's probably the result of a perfect storm of events, those being the impending widespread launch of Windows 10 Mobile, new handsets from Apple (iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus) with a "Rose Gold" color option, and updated phones from Samsung (Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, and Galaxy Note 5).

The good news for Microsoft is that the current market share data is based on its old Windows Phone platforms, not Windows 10 Mobile, which just became official with the launch of the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL (both exclusive to AT&T). A release to the general public for installation on other phones isn't far off, either. The question is, will it make a difference? Gartner is skeptical.

"Despite the announcement of Windows 10, we expect Windows smartphone market share will continue to be a small portion of the overall smartphone OS market as consumers remain attracted by competing ecosystems," said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner. "Microsoft smartphones will mainly focus on driving value for enterprise users."

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Microsoft isn't necessarily chasing market share, but focusing on making its Windows 10 ecosystem available across a variety of devices. The release of Windows 10 Mobile is part of that mission. Once all the pieces are in place, Microsoft can focus on selling business and home users on the idea of going all-in with Windows 10. Obsessing over market share data at this point would be putting the cart before the horse.

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Newegg Daily Deals: SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD, Corsiar 750W PSU, and More!

Posted: 23 Nov 2015 05:00 AM PST

SanDisk Ultra II SSD

Top Deal:

If you can only choose one drive for your system -- maybe due to budget constraints -- which do you opt for, speed or capacity? The correct answer is C, both. You can have both by taking advantage of today's top deal for a SanDisk Ultra II 2.5-inch 960GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive for $200 with free shipping (normally $300; 24-Hours ONLY). That works out to less than 21 cents per gigabyte, and we're not talking about a pokey drive, either -- this thing boasts sequential read and write ratings of up to 550MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively.

Other Deals:

Intel 730 Series 2.5-inch 240GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive for $130 with free shipping (normally $173 - use coupon code: [EMCKKNA24])

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model for $100 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [EMCKKNA22])

MSI Radeon R9 380 DirectX 12 R9 380 GAMING 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card for $210 with free shipping (normally $249; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Corsair CX750 750W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply for $60 with free shipping (normally $70 - use coupon code: [EMCKKNA32]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

The Fall 2015 Midrange Rig

Posted: 23 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

Blueprints Fall 2015 Midrange Beauty

Packing power in a small package

Holiday shopping is coming, and there's the stress to buy the right thing for the right person, all within a tight holiday deadline. It sucks. It's stressful. And it probably makes you want to kick an elf right in its stupid elfy face. For some of us, building a new PC can be the perfect escape, especially with titles like Star Wars: Battlefront and Fallout 4 to keep us busy while the bird is in the oven.

It's worth saying again, because we hear it all the time: We know that a build with a budget of $1,500 (without peripherals) can seem mighty steep for the title "Midrange." But this is Maximum PC. We busy ourselves with reviewing systems that can cost as much as $10,000. With those systems to compare to, $1,500 isn't so bad.

Our Midrange build is for those who are looking for a solid upgrade, without having to go all-out on a hexa-core system. It'll power through most games with ease. This season's build is no exception.

For those of you who've been setting aside money for an upgrade to Skylake, this is the system we'd want for ourselves. We took a nice long time perusing Newegg for the parts that would make any gamer happy.

Here's what we found:

MPC newegg header v4

Product Price
CPU Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake $375
GPU PNY GeForce GTX 980 (reference) $500
Mobo Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 $135
Case Phanteks Enthoo Evolv $70
Memory 8GB (2x 4GB) G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2133 $60
SSD 250GB Samsung 850 Evo M.2 SATA $90
HDD 1TB WD Black 7,200 RPM $70
CPU Cooler Corsair H80i GT $90
PSU EVGA G1-0650-XR 650W 80 Plus Gold $86
Total $1,476

Note: All prices reflect in-cart price at time of procurement. This means prices include sale prices and instant rebates. It also means tax and mail-in rebates are not included. Prices aren't fixed and change all the time.

Big power, small form

After we went shopping for our Budget Gamer rig, we decided that the small form factor would be a challenging and interesting way to go with the Midrange build. However, since mini-ITX precludes the use of SLI, we had to find a way to seat a beefy (preferably full-size) GPU into the motherboard's single PCIe slot. The Phanteks Enthoo Evolv turned out to be a great case for this purpose. 

Since we had good results with our magazine's Holiday issue Build It, we placed Gigabyte's Z170N-Gaming 5 into this case, too. The red-and-white theme of the board created a nice look that didn't clash with the black steel and plastic of the case.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Midrange Gutshot

The fact that we could install a full-sized reference GTX 980 was nice, but it did require a little forethought. There's a partition shield (you can see it with the Phanteks logo in the photo above) that covers the power connections to the video card. While it's nice to be able to have a cleaner look, it also means that you have to remember to attach your PCIe power cables before inserting the video card. That shield also required a little finesse in order to ensure a gentle mating of the card and PCIe slot.

Finally, when we first mounted our H80i GT, we mounted it at the rear in an exhaust configuration. While this worked fairly well, it made the build look cramped. We decided to move it toward the front of the case, where it would push air up and out of the top, and allow us to see the motherboard and components better.

Hidden storage

The Enthoo Evolv has several spots where you can mount a 2.5-inch SSD, but we opted to go with an M.2 model. While the M.2 850 Evo we used is just a SATA model, the M.2 port on the backside of the mobo saved on cabling mess. 

The downside to using this SSD is that if anything goes wrong with the it, we'd have to take the whole mobo out of the case to remove the drive. While that's pretty unlikely, it is more of a pain in the rear than simply removing a 2.5-inch drive. Sometimes, beauty can be pain.

Unlike our Budget Gamer, we felt that a small spinning storage drive would be warranted, especially given the size of the SSD. We went with just 1TB of storage, which isn't the biggest drive available. However, that 1TB is still enough to back up the SSD four times over. It's also plenty in terms of storing a few games. It isn't a whole lot if you've got a ton of photos, videos, or music to store, however. For that, we'd recommend getting a larger drive, or pushing that data to a NAS.

Of course, one upside to using just 1TB in a drive is that it has just one 1TB platter in the casing. That's fewer moving parts, and less weight. That's not all bad in our book.

Pixel power

If there's one GPU that we've used as our benchmark, it's the GTX 980. We found a reference model for $500, and jumped on the chance to put it in this little beast. 

The GTX 980 isn't quite up to task when it comes to 4K, but it dominates most games at 1440p and eats 1080p graphics for lunch. The reference card's blower design is plenty efficient for the build, and kept the card cool enough during our testing.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Midrange 3DMark Chart

In our gaming benchmarks, this Fall's build stays on par with the Summer's build, which also used a GTX 980 to push pixels. As a wise man used to say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The 980 still keeps us happy when it comes to gaming.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Midrange Gaming Benchmarks

Sky-high-lake

If there was one thing we set out to do with this build, it was to seat a sexy i7-6700K Skylake in the motherboard. While there is some argument to go for the i5-6600K in terms of price, the i7 didn't disappoint us when it came to raw performance. It didn't blow back our hair, either.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Midrange Timed CPU Benchmarks

In terms of single-core performance, the Skylake only finished the Stitch benchmark 20 seconds faster than the Devil's Canyon before it. In the X.264 multi-core test, the Skylake delivered 19.5 frames per second compared with the Devil's 19.21. That's not a huge jump, and is holding true to what we found in our Skylake review back in August.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Midrange X264 Benchmark

The i7-6700K can offer up to a 17 percent boost when overclocked, so we made sure to include enough extra power headroom when choosing our PSU. A 650W PSU may not look like a lot to some, but when you're taking it easy on the size and number of hard drives and are rolling with just a single Nvidia GPU, 650W offers enough headroom to play. And the PSU's 10-year warranty helps us sleep well at night, too.

We feel pretty damned good about this build. Besides being a solid build, we think it will be future-resistant (nothing is future-proof) and provide several years of enjoyable gaming for most titles as long as you don't try to court 4K. The looks, the power and the price are all right where we'd like them to be. And this build goes to show: Never underestimate the power of the dark side mini-ITX machines.

Microsoft Kicks Off Ten Days of Dime-Priced Deals in the Windows Store

Posted: 20 Nov 2015 10:47 AM PST

Let the deals begin

Windows Store Deals

Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, is right around the corner. As we do every year, we'll be posting links to several tech related deals, but in the meantime, Microsoft is kicking off the fall savings festivities by offering over 1,000 items for just 10 cents each over the next 10 days.

The "10 Days of 10 Cent Deals" promotion will feature the "latest Hollywood movies, blockbuster music, must-have apps, and addictive games," Microsoft says. You'll see a new batch of them marked down to 10 cents in the Windows Store, some of which "may go fast."

It all starts today. Here's a look at some of the deals being offered (each are $0.10):

  • Jurassic World (movie rental)
  • Terminator Genisys (movie rental)
  • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (movie rental)
  • Pitbull: Timber (music track)
  • Pharell Williams: Happy (music track)
  • Miranda Lambert: Platinum (music album, 10 cents for each track)
  • Hitman GO (video game)
  • Assassin's Creed Pirates (video game)
  • 7z ZIP RAR (app)
  • Pharell Williams: Happy (music track)

As you can imagine, there's a wide range of items available, some of which are a steal at 10 cents (Hitman GO) while others are priced 10 cents too high.

You can check them out for yourself in the Windows Store, and remember to visit daily to see a new list of items over the next 10 days.

More Deals

In addition to dime priced deals in the Windows Store, Microsoft announced some upcoming bargains. One of them is for the Xbox One console. From November 26 through November 30, select Xbox One console bundles will be listed at $299. You'll find these bundles at the Microsoft Store and at select retail partner locations.

Some other upcoming Black Friday deals include:

Stay tuned as we'll have a lot more deal links to share next week.

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Newegg Daily Deals: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB, Corsair 600W PSU, and More!

Posted: 20 Nov 2015 10:21 AM PST

EVGA GTX 980 Ti

Top Deal:

Feeling bummed because your ancient graphics card isn't able to play Fallout 4? You can pound sand (please don't), or you can grab your wallet and take advantage of today's top deal (now we're talking!) for an EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB SC Gaming w/ACX 2.0+ Graphics Card for $590 with free shipping (normally $650; Free Rainbow Six Siege or Assassin's Creed Syndicate, limited offer). Consider it a holiday gift for yourself, one that will ensure you won't have to fret about frame rates for a long, long time.

Other Deals:

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) Desktop Memory for $65 with free shipping (normally $82)

AMD A10-6800K Richland 4.1 GHz (4.4GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop Processor - Black Edition AMD Radeon HD 8670D for $100 with free shipping (normally $110 - use coupon code: [EMCKBKX23])

MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard for $101 with free shipping (normally $130; additional $15 Mail-in rebate)

Corsair 600W 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply for $65 with free shipping (normally $75; additional $20 Mail-in rebate)

Yahoo Mail Locks Some Users Out for Having Ad Blocking Software

Posted: 20 Nov 2015 10:06 AM PST

Blocked for blocking

Yahoo Eyeball

A "small number" of Yahoo Mail users running ad-blocking software on their computers are being denied access to their email. It's part of a test Yahoo is running in order to improve its service, or so that's Yahoo's official stance.

"At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences. This is a test we're running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S.," a spokesperson for Yahoo told Engadget.

Ad-blocking software has become a hot and controversial topic lately. Many websites rely on advertising revenue to operate, but on the flip side, overly aggressive and annoying adds can be a major distraction and annoyance for visitors. There's also the concern that ads could be infected with malware, hence another reason why ad-blocking software is so popular.

Some websites splash visitors with a message about ad-blocking software, while others restrict access altogether. However, to the best of my knowledge (and feel free to correct me in the comments sections if this is wrong), Yahoo is the only major webmail provider denying access to email for some of its ad-blocking users. Those affected will see a message that reads:

Uh oh... We are unable to display Yahoo Mail. Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail.

There are a couple of workarounds posted on Adblock Plus' forum. One of them (tested in Chrome) involves loading Yahoo Mail, hitting Compose, typing gibberish into the body, and then waiting. When Chrome pops up a message asking "Do you want to leave this page?," click Stay on Page.

Another user reported getting around the ad-blocking wall in Firefox by loading up Yahoo Mail in IE, going to Settings > Viewing mail, and changing the option from "Full featured" to "Basic." After doing so, he said Yahoo Mail loaded fine in Firefox whether Adblocker Plus was loaded or not.

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G.Skill Puts DDR4 in Overdrive, Now Offers 8GB Modules at 4133MHz

Posted: 20 Nov 2015 09:25 AM PST

Satisfying a need for speed

GSkill Trident Z RAM

At what point does having higher frequency RAM no longer matter? G.Skill might answer "never" to that question as it continues to crank out increasingly faster DDR4 memory kits, the newest of which are rated at 4133MHz and 4266MHz.

The memory maker demoed both kits at IDF earlier this year, followed by today's announcement that it's now offering "a series of ultra high performance DDR4 kits based on 8GB modules, from 3600MHz CL16 32GB (4x8GB) all the way up to the extreme speed of 4133MHz 16GB (2x8GB), featuring ultra-high quality Samsung ICs."

Actually, G.Skill seems to be selling itself a little short. We popped over to Newegg to see what kind of speed ceiling competing vendors are running into and discovered that G.Skill's 4266MHz kit is also in-stock and available to purchase. The reason G.Skill isn't bringing that up is because it's highlighting the fact that it's now able to offer ultra-high speed 8GB modules (the 4266MHz kit consists of two 4GB modules).

"Seeing the growing demand for high capacity memory kits, G.Skill continually dedicated itself to develop faster memory speeds with 8GB DDR4 modules. And all the hard work has finally paid off. Now enthusiasts can experience faster transfer memory speed without compromising capacity," G.Skill says. "These new high speed DDR4 8GB module-based memory kits will join G.Skill's latest extreme performance Trident Z family and come with the latest XMP 2.0 overclocking profiles, allowing simple overclocking on compatible systems."

The new 16GB (2x8GB) memory kit requires a bit more voltage at 1.4V compared to other Trident Z kits, the rest of which need 1.35V. Timings are also a little looser at 19-25-25-45. Here's a look at how the kits compare:

GSkill Trident Z

Unfortunately G.Skill didn't say when the new 8GB modules will be available or how much it will cost to bring home a 16GB kit. As a point of reference, an 8GB kit (2x4GB) of Trident Z DDR4-4133 RAM streets for $350.

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Origin PC Packs Desktop Class Performance into EON17-SLX Laptop

Posted: 20 Nov 2015 09:00 AM PST

Take no prisioners

Origin PC EON17-SLX

Origin PC isn't concerning itself with Ultrabook and ultra-thin form factors. Instead, the company's newest laptop, the EON17-SLX, is an unabashed desktop replacement that it claims is the world's most powerful of its kind.

Key to that claim is giving buyers the ability to configure the EON17-SLX with actual desktop components. It starts with the processor -- the EON17-SLX supports up to an Intel Core i7 6700K CPU, which is a socket LGA 1151 chip that was never intended to take residence inside a mobile system.

For graphics duties, buyers can opt for up to Nvidia's new desktop class GeForce GTX 980 GPU, which is intended for laptops, or up to dual GeForce GTX 980M (8GB) GPUs. Either way, there's enough pixel pushing muscle to handle the 17.3-inch Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) IPS display with G-Sync technology.

"For the first time ever, we've managed to offer a laptop that is capable of not only just supporting an actual desktop CPU, but also offer the real power and performance of a desktop 980 GPU inside a notebook form factor." said Kevin Wasielewski Origin PC CEO and co-founder. "Add to that our professional CPU and GPU overclocking and you literally have a laptop that is just as powerful as any modern high-performance gaming desktop today. The EON17-SLX will have enthusiasts and gamers dominating their competition!"

Gamers who needn't worry about things like a budget can go all out by equipping the EON17-SLX with up to 64GB of DDR4-2400 RAM and up to four storage drives, including M.2 PCIe SSDs in RAID 0 (RAID 1 is also available).

A USB 3.1 Type-C port, dual Killer Ethernet E2400 ports, and a multi-color backlit keyboard round out the notable set of features.

We don't have one of these in the lab to test at the moment, though on paper, the only real buzzkill is the pedestrian resolution. However, you could hook this thing up to an external monitor with a higher resolution; depending on the title and amount of eye candy, the EON17-SLX should be able to handle some 4K gaming.

As a bona fide desktop replacement, this isn't a thin and light laptop by any means. It measures 16.8 inches (W) by 12 inches (D) by 1.7 inches (H) and weighs a hefty 10.5 pounds (including a single GPU and 89 Wh battery). Therein lies the trade off for true desktop class performance in a laptop.

The EON17-SLX will be available today at Origin PC starting at $1,999.

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The Fall 2015 Budget Gamer

Posted: 20 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

Blueprints Fall 2015 Budget Gamer Beauty

Respectable power and performance on a budget

Believe it or not, it's that time of year again. Red frills and decorations are everywhere, and holiday music fills every conceivable retail space. Love them or hate them, the holidays are just around the bend. At least there are some deals to be had.

When we went looking on Newegg to find parts for our Fall builds, we had a few goals in mind: take advantage of pricing and make sure that we include the latest Skylake CPUs wherever possible. With this guiding principle, we were able to put together a great gaming build that will get players up and running with most titles at 1080p.

To start off, we went with a locked Skylake CPU and a motherboard without unneeded overclocking heft. We chose a quad-core Core i5-6500 and stuck it in a ASRock H170M mini-ITX mobo. While the H170 isn't as sexy as the Z170, we saved a little money by going with the H-model. The CPU, while not a K-model unlocked SKU, is still plenty powerful, and offers i5 speeds and features at a reasonable price. It also let us go with a cheaper H170 without hesitation or fear of missing out.

One thing we did run into problems with was the stock drivers in Windows 8.1. We kept getting blue screens until we were able to install the motherboard memory driver from ASRock. If you go with this motherboard, be sure to do that first (and don't discard the DVD that came with the mobo). The only other oversight was that this model did not have built-in Wi-Fi. While adding a USB dongle is a simple and cheap upgrade, not grabbing Wi-Fi on the mobo was a small oversight on our part.

Here's what we put together.

Newegg

Product Price
CPU Intel Core i5-6500 Skylake $195
Mobo ASRock H170M-ITX/DL $90
GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 960 04G-P4-1962-KR 4GB SC $215
Case Xigmatek Nebula $60
Memory 8GB (2x4GB) G.Skill Ripjaws 4 Series DDR4-2133 $50
SSD 250GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5-inch SATA $90
PSU Corsair CS450M $70
Total $770

Note: All prices reflect in-cart price at time of procurement. Sale prices and instant rebates are included. Tax and mail-in rebates are not included.

Good things come in small packages

We decided to take the little board and mount it into the cube-shaped Xigmatek Nebula. The Nebula is a handsome little case, which would look right at home next to a TV or a small desk. The turned-up corner features an orange power LED, and is so similar to how a Steam Machine might look, we almost expected the Steam logo to adorn the light's face.

Three of the Nebula's four metal side panels come off easily, which allowed us to work on your build from nearly every side. However, this configuration was a mixed blessing: we couldn't figure out how to get the top off, which made for some interesting modifications to our build process.

There are a couple of main schools of thought when it comes to mounting your CPU: lne says you should mount it before mounting the motherboard; the other says it's better to mount the mobo first. This case pretty much forces you into the first school, since there really isn't a whole lot of room to safely mount the CPU once the board is mounted.

Blueprints Fall 2015 Budget Gamer Gutshot

The other thing that makes this case a bit different is the lack of cable management options. When building into a small mini-ITX case, we highly recommend using a modular power supply to cut down on clutter. We went with the 450W Corsair CS450M to get the job done.

The cable management wasn't the only thing to worry about. We noticed this case came with only one exhaust fan. This means that the case is built to create negative pressure, which will suck in dust from every crevice. Luckily, it's so easy to open that cleaning should be a cinch compared to having to open up a tower. Just remember to clean your case regularly (like you should be doing anyway), and everything should be kosher.

Pixel pushing on a budget

When building a gaming machine on a budget, it is usually a good idea to sacrifice smaller features for the best CPU you can reasonably afford. We really tried to squeeze a shorty Asus GTX 970 into the build, but the sacrifices were simply too great. Instead, we went with an old favorite workhorse: the GTX 960.

The GTX 960 model we got from EVGA comes with a small factory overclock, and was plenty short enough for our needs. The GPU can handle most games at 1080p at max settings, and will perform admirably even at 1440p. However, don't try to play in 4K with this card; it just doesn't have the muscle, even if texture quality and anti-aliasing are turned way down.

Blueprints Fall 2015 - Budget Gamer - Game Benchmarks

Our tests with this build revealed just what we expected in this realm: decent FPS at the lower resolution, but sluggish performance at 4K.

Blueprints Fall 2015 - Budget Gamer - 3DMark

Little box, little storage

One big thing we omitted with this build was a hard drive. Some may gasp and choke in alarm, but we felt that spending a little more on a larger SSD would yield a better return on investment. The 250GB 850 EVO is able to hold your OS and a respectable library of games. The 850 EVO is also one of our favorite SSDs for its price-to-performance ratio.

For those who need more storage, a 1TB HDD can be as little as $70, so adding a hard drive after-the-fact is a cheap upgrade. External hard drives are cheap, too.

High in the Skylake

If there's one good thing that stands out about the guts of this build, it's the Skylake core. Even with the new core, a locked CPU and a lower clock speed of its K-SKU cousins means that this little i5 can't compete when it comes to number-crunching tasks.

Blueprints Fall 2015 - Timed Benchmarks

When it came to our multithreaded benchmark, the quad-core i5 performed similarly to its Haswell cousin we used in the Summer build.

Blueprints Fall 2015 - X.264

At the end of the day, we're really happy with this build and feel like it would make a great entry-level build for those who want to get into PC gaming, want to play the latest games in 1080p, or want a homebrewed HTPC/Steam Machine for the living room.

Newegg Daily Deals: Liva X Mini PC, Dell Inspiron 15.6-Inch Laptop, and More!

Posted: 19 Nov 2015 10:45 AM PST

Liva X Mini PC

Top Deal:

As much as Johnny might want a gaming PC for his dorm room at college, all he really needs is something capable of accessing the web and banging out term papers. If you've already spent a fortune on tuition, an inexpensive pint-sized PC might be just the ticket. They're everywhere these days, and one of them is the topic of today's top deal - a LIVA X 2GB/32GB Mini PC for $105 with free shipping (normally $149; additional $35 Mail-in rebate). This tiny machine sports an Intel Bay Trail-M SoC, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, mSATA SSD slot, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GbE LAN, USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and HDMI and VGA output.

Other Deals:

Dell Laptop Inspiron i5558-4287BLK Intel Core i3 5015U (2.10 GHz) 4 GB Memory 500 GB HDD Intel HD Graphics 5500 15.6-inch Touchscreen Windows 10 Home 64-Bit for $390 with free shipping (normally $400 - use coupon code: [BTEKKBW22])

Crucial BX200 2.5-inch 480GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive for $140 with free shipping (normally $150 - use coupon code: [ESCKBKV27])

WD Blue 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5-inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive for $40 with free shipping (normally $46 - use coupon code: [ESCKBKV44])

XFX Radeon R7 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Video Card for $150 with free shipping (normally $151; additional $15 Mail-in rebate)

Grab Every Fallout Game (Minus Fallout 4) for $20

Posted: 19 Nov 2015 10:20 AM PST

A post-apocalyptic deal

Fallout Bundle

Longtime fans of the Fallout franchise are basking in the glory of another title in the series, Fallout 4, and if the only thing holding you back from joining them is having missed out on prior titles, good news. The entire backlog of Fallout games is currently available for just $20 (and 39 cents).

The bundle includes Steam keys for the following titles:

  • Fallout
  • Fallout 2
  • Fallout Tactics
  • Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition
  • Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition

It also includes every bit of DLC, including:

  • Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta
  • Fallout 3: Point Lookout
  • Fallout 3: Broken Steel
  • Fallout 3: The Pitt
  • Fallout 3: Operating Anchorage
  • Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road
  • Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues
  • Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts
  • Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money

That's a lot of classic gaming goodness that would normally run around $95 if purchased separately. The bundle itself usually sells for $60 through Bundle Stars, but it's currently marked down 66 percent until Tuesday, November 24.

If this deal tickles your fancy, go here and enjoy!

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Microsoft Revises Windows 10 Privacy Statement to Ease Spying Concerns

Posted: 19 Nov 2015 09:52 AM PST

The fine print

Windows 10

With over 110 million devices now running Windows 10, it's safe to say that Microsoft's newest operating system is off to a fast start. It's also being fairly well received, though one of the lingering criticisms is that Windows 10 affords Microsoft too much opportunity to collect personal information from users and spy on its customers. Microsoft is hoping to bury those concerns with new language added to its Privacy Statement.

The folks at ZDNet noticed that Microsoft altered its Privacy Statement just ahead of the recent Windows 10 version 1511 update. Compared to the previous version, which was dated July 2015, there are some key changes and additions that attempt to justify the data Microsoft collects.

Two examples of why Microsoft feels the need to collect certain data now appear in the Content section.

"For example, if you receive an email using Outlook.com, we need to collect the content of that email in order to deliver it to your inbox, display it to you, enable you to reply to it, and store it for your until you choose to delete it," Microsoft states.

Microsoft goes on to provide examples of the data it collects for the purposes outlined, including the content of your documents, photos, music, or video that you upload to a Microsoft-owned service such as OneDrive.

Another concern among privacy advocates is that Microsoft automatically backs up BitLocker encryption keys to OneDrive so that users' can recover them on personal devices. Microsoft added a statement to its privacy policy insisting that it "doesn't use your individual recovery keys for any purpose."

One of the biggest concerns with Windows 10 is that Microsoft seemingly gives itself permission to scan users storage drives and peeks at "files in private folders." Microsoft didn't remove that tidbit, but did add that it only looks at files in private folders "on OneDrive." The section also includes a link to its Law Enforcement Transparency Report for users wanting more information about the data Microsoft discloses in responses to requests from law enforcement and other government agencies.

The revised Privacy Statement also expands on the use of Cortana, which "regularly collects and uses your current location history, and other location signals (such as locations tagged on photos you upload to OneDrive)." Microsoft says "this location data is used to give you the most relevant notices and results and to make suggestions that help save you time, such as traffic and location based on reminders."

So, what's the verdict? Does Microsoft's revisions give you warm fuzzies, or do you think the Redmond outfit is still overstepping its bounds with Windows 10?

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BitFenix Builds a Bigger Pandora Case for Standard ATX Setups

Posted: 19 Nov 2015 09:14 AM PST

Building a bigger Pandora box

BitFenix Pandora ATX

Case builder BitFenix originally had the small form factor crowd in mind when launching the Pandora, a relatively compact case for micro ATX and mini-ITX systems. Now just over a year later, BitFenix is back with its Pandora design, only this newer version is bigger and can accommodate standard ATX motherboards.

The new Pandora ATX is only offered in black at the moment. Like its smaller sized predecessor, the Pandora ATX flaunts a 2.8-inch LCD on the front, which you can load up with custom logo or graphic. If that's too gaudy for your tastes, BitFenix offers a version of the case called Pandora ATX Core that skips the LCD.

BitFenix includes a 140mm fan up front in the Pandora ATX (it supports up to two of them, or three 120mm fans) and a 120mm in the rear of both the Pandora ATX and Pandora ATX Core. There's also room to add up to three 120 fans or two 140mm fans up top.

"Internally, the Pandora ATX stays true to the BitFenix DNA of innovation – this time mainly evident in the one-piece power cover design, effectively creating a separate bottom chamber for the PSU and HDDs at the bottom," BitFenix explains. "This solution gives added space for exposure of hardware for modding projects, improves case rigidity and shields HDD and PSU noise."

The Pandora ATX supports up to four 3.5-inch drives (up to three in the Pandora ATX Core) along with four 2.5-inch drives (two in the Pandora ATX Core). Both cases can fit graphics cards up to 440mm (around 17.3 inches) in length, PSUs up to 220mm (~8.6 inches), and CPU coolers up to 160mm (~6.29 inches) high.

We've reached out to BitFenix for information on pricing and availability and will update when we hear back.

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AMD R9 380X Review Featuring Sapphire

Posted: 19 Nov 2015 06:00 AM PST

Let's do the Time Warp again

At a Glance

(+) Time Travel: Great price-to-performance ratio; runs quiet; faster than the competition.

(-) DeLorean: Less efficient than the competition; not much different from R9 380.

Flashback: The date is December 11, 2011, and AMD has just launched their latest and greatest graphics processor, the HD 7970, aka Tahiti. It delivered awesome performance and was the pinnacle of 28nm GPUs at the time, besting Nvidia's then-best GTX 580 by a decent margin of 15-20 percent. That might seem like ages ago in the world of computer graphics, but it was an important milestone for AMD, and the HD 7970 remains with us even now—with a few tweaks to clock speeds and such—as the R9 280X.

Flashback #2: This one is more recent, dating back to just over a year ago on September 10, 2014, when AMD released their first-ever GCN1.2 (the unofficial designation) graphics chip, Tonga. Tonga was initially launched as the R9 285, generally available with 2GB GDDR5, though 4GB models now exist. Tonga undoubtedly contained new architectural enhancements, chief of which was the use of lossless delta color compression. This allowed AMD to cut the memory bus down from 384-bit to 256-bit without a major loss of performance, though it also reduced the standard configuration from 3GB to 2GB VRAM. Other architectural enhancements included improved tessellation performance, an optimized instruction set, a new video scaler, and an improved multimedia engine (UVD 5.0).

An old AMD HD 7970 (including Dust)
An old AMD HD 7970 (dusty fan included)

The net result of the changes is that Tonga is a less expensive graphics card to manufacture compared to Tahiti, and it offers similar overall performance—the GPU itself is roughly the same size, despite having an additional 700 million transistors. The catch with the earlier launch of Tonga in the form of the R9 285 is that it featured the same 1792 graphics cores as R9 280 (aka HD 7950), with a couple functional units disabled. The rumored R9 285X never happened, but one year later we're now getting the fully enabled release of Tonga with the R9 380X, complete with 2048 graphics cores. Here's a quick look at specs for the major Tonga and Tahiti GPUs:

AMD Tonga and Tahiti GPUs
Card R9 380X R9 380 R9 280X R9 280
GPU Tonga Tonga Tahiti Tahiti
Architecture GCN 1.2 GCN 1.2 GCN 1.0 GCN 1.0
Lithography 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm
Transistor Count (Billions) 5.0 5.0 4.3 4.3
Compute Units 32 28 32 28
Shaders 2048 1792 2048 1792
Texture Units 128 128 112 112
ROPs 32 32 32 32
Core Clock (MHz) 970 970 1000 933
Memory Capacity 4GB 4GB/2GB 3GB 3GB
Memory Clock (GT/s) 5700 5700 6000 5000
Bus Width (bits) 256 256 384 384
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) 182.4 182.4 288 240
TDP (Watts) 190 190 250 250
Launch Price $229 $199 $299 $279
Current Price $229+ $220 $230 $280

Note that we're not including the HD 7970/7950 in the above table, which had slightly lower clocks than the R9 280X/280 along with substantially higher launch prices ($549/$449). The pricing reflected their positioning as the at-the-time fastest GPUs; when they were refreshed as the 280X/280, they were repositioned as mainstream offerings, the top-tier R9 290X/290 having displaced them. Needless to say, the drop in prices has certainly been appreciated, though it hasn't helped AMD's bottom line.

Checking out the specs, the key takeaway is that the R9 380X is fundamentally the same as the R9 380, only with more cores enabled. It has the same (official, at least) clock speeds for the GPU core and GDDR5 memory, so the only advantage is having 14 percent more cores. That means at best, 14 percent better performance, and in many cases it will fall short of that mark. The MSRP for the standard card reflects these facts, with a price only 15 percent higher than the R9 380. AMD notes that add-in board partners may charge slightly more for custom coolers, which is the case for our review sample, a Sapphire R9 380X Nitro.

The Sapphire R9 380X Nitro isn't a stock card, naturally. Along with the custom cooler, the core and memory are overclocked. The GPU runs at 1040MHz from the factory, a mild seven percent overclock. The GDDR5 also gets a moderate bump, running at 6000 GT/s, a five percent overclock. Our R9 380 sample is likewise a Sapphire Nitro card, this time without a backplate, and it runs at 983/5800MHz, so as far as clock speeds go the 380X has a five percent advantage.

Maximum PC 2015 GPU Test Bed
CPU Intel Core i7-5930K (4.2GHz Overclock)
Mobo Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4
GPUs Asus Strix GTX 950
Asus Strix R9 Fury 4GB
EVGA GTX 960 2GB ACX2.0
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB
Sapphire R9 285 2GB
Sapphire R9 380 4GB
Sapphire R9 380X 4GB
Sapphire R9 390 8GB
Sapphire R9 390X 8GB
Zotac GeForce GTX 970 3.5/0.5GB
SSD Samsung 850 EVO 1TB
PSU EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB DDR4-2666
Cooler Cooler Master Nepton 280L
Case Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper

Our test bed is the same as usual, now upgraded to Windows 10. We have not yet retested all of the GPUs with new drivers on the new OS, though prior testing suggests things won't change much. We're using custom AMD drivers for the R9 380X, based off the Catalyst 15.11 Beta tree. The Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers are as yet unavailable, though we're certainly eager to see what they do for performance. For our testing here, we're highlighting the R9 380X and the R9 380, but keep an eye on the similarly priced GTX 960—and for added fun, tack on a few years and check out the HD 7970 performance.

Take Me Back in Time

Doc and Marty might be feeling like this time traveling business is a bit of a rip off. Nearly four years later and this mainstream part sporting a new architecture barely outpaces the HD 7970. On the surface, that might not seem very impressive, but there's a reason AMD positions the 380X as an upgrade path for owners of the HD 7850. When the 7970 launched 2011, it was a monster card, but it carried an equally monstrous price tag. Now you can get nearly the same performance, using less power, for less than half the price. Or put another way, the R9 380X costs a bit less than the original $250 asking price of the 7850, and it should be about twice as fast. Something else to note is that our old 7970 with a blower fan gets extremely loud, which is something we didn't experience with the 380X, and power use is a healthy 50W or more lower.

Overall, the R9 380X outperforms the R9 380 by eight percent, though drivers seem to be a bit iffy in a couple of tests; it's basically right in line with the 15 percent price increase. Meanwhile, Nvidia's chief competition for the R9 380X comes in the form of the GTX 960, which is available in either 2GB or 4GB variants. The 2GB model is what we have for testing, and there are certainly games where the limited VRAM is a factor. Considering the 2GB cards are priced closer to the 380, while the 4GB cards are priced roughly equal to the 380X MSRP, drawing a final conclusion is difficult. (Look at the 2GB R9 285 vs. the 4GB R9 380 for an example of what the additional VRAM can do.)

What we can say is that 380X wins the battle at 1080p Ultra and 1440p Ultra by nearly 20 percent against the 2GB card. The gap at 4K is even larger, but it's not really a target resolution for either GPU. Sure, AMD's 380X consumes about 50W more power under load, but over the course of a year of very heavy use (eight hours per day, seven days a week), that 50W difference amounts to $15-$30 (depending on your price for electricity, naturally), and you're still getting better performance.

1.21 Gigawatts

Looking at the big picture, the R9 380X is a good GPU that's able to handle 1080p gaming at maxed out settings in most titles, and when it falls short (e.g., GTAV and The Witcher 3) it's usually not too difficult to drop to high quality or disable anti-aliasing to get back to playable frame rates. It will even do 1440p at High settings in most titles without struggling too much, though you'll probably want to pair it with a FreeSync panel in that case as sub-60 FPS will be more of a problem. The 380X is where GPUs start becoming truly potent, but without the higher price tags—it's half the price of the R9 390X and 66 percent of the performance, which is a fair compromise. Moore's Law has many facets, and while the focus is often on increasing performance and transistor counts, reducing price and power requirements is equally acceptable. Of course we're far off the pace of Moore's original observation, since it took four years to cut the price in half, but it's better than standing still.

R9 380X Vendors Slide

AMD sent us the Sapphire R9 380X Nitro for this review, but the R9 380X will be available from a variety of other partners. Looking at the above designs, all of them are open air coolers with dual fans, so barring any serious missteps they should all work well. Pricing and factory overclocks will be important, as will manufacturer warranties, so keep your eyes peeled for any good deals.

Where do we go from here? Having time traveled back to the launch of the HD 7970 four years ago, it's only fitting to wrap things up by looking forward. We know 14/16nm FinFET process technology is coming online, and the first GPUs using the smaller manufacturing node should arrive next year. R9 380X in that sense is one of the last "new" GPUs we're likely to see before the switch, and it doesn't do a whole lot to shake up the market. Considering R9 380 is only 5-10 percent slower and has been around for several months now, it's difficult to imagine many people have been waiting for R9 380X. If you happen to be building a new PC and are in the market for a $200-$250 graphics card, the R9 380 and 380X have that market locked up for now.

Our next stop will be 2016, and we expect things will get far more interesting—maybe not hoverboard and flying car interesting, but close. It took several years for performance at the $200-$250 price point to double, but we might just see the next doubling in the coming year.

Benchmarked: Fallout 4

Posted: 19 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

FPS encounters in the post-apocalypse

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've no doubt heard about Fallout 4, the latest entry in the acclaimed post-apocalyptic RPG series. And if you missed it, you might also want to check out the awesome case mod in our latest Rig of the Month! Fallout 4 uses an updated version of the Creation Engine that powered Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, which itself is an updated version of the Gamebryo engine that powered the previous two Fallout games as well as Oblivion. The game is receiving good reviews, but worries about system requirements are sure to cause anxiety among those sporting lesser hardware. No one wants to go out and spend $60 on a new game only to find that their PC isn't up to snuff! Have no fear, gentle wasteland explorer; Maximum PC has you covered with some in-depth benchmarking.

Considering the Creation Engine pedigree, you might think requirements and performance will be similar to the now somewhat old Skyrim. Let's just disabuse you of that notion right now: Fallout 4 is more demanding game by a large margin… or at least, it can be. Which isn't to say that the graphics look cutting-edge, because frankly they don't; Fallout 4 looks quite a bit like Fallout 3, in setting and tone. It's full of a new story, new characters, and plenty of other things to keep you busy, but if you were hoping for a graphical upgrade to rival the likes of GTA V or The Witcher 3, Bethesda apparently isn't interested in such things. The game doesn't look bad, though; it's just not a graphical tour de force.

Fallout 4 Image Quality - Ultra
Fallout 4 Image Quality - Ultra
Fallout4 Image Quality - High
Fallout 4 Image Quality - High
Fallout4 Image Quality - Medium
Fallout 4 Image Quality - Medium
Fallout4 Image Quality - Low
Fallout 4 Image Quality - Low

What's interesting is how little the quality settings affect the general appearance of the game world. If you're the type that requires all settings be cranked to maximum, you can certainly do that, and you'll be greeted with wide expanses and shadows that extend out a fair distance. In motion and even standing still, however, going from Ultra to High quality will at best produce only minor differences in appearance. Ultra has a longer view distance for scenery and improved shadow quality, but it certainly isn't required to enjoy the game. Even going from High to Medium quality isn't a horrible compromise, again with a moderate drop in distant scenery and shadow quality. The drop from Medium to Low, on the other hand, is quite a cliff; textures get a clear downgrade, shadows begin to look very blocky, and anti-aliasing drops from a higher quality TAA mode to FXAA, which is full of jaggies.

We're testing with mainstream to ultra-high-end GPUs, which means there's little point in benchmarking the Low setting. In fact, without editing the INI file to remove the default frame rate limiter, for most people there's hardly any need to test below the High setting on our collection of graphics cards. All of them are able to exceed 60 FPS at 1080p Medium, though in some cases it's a close call, but let's get back to that frame rate limiter for a moment.

Yes, Bethesda has decided it's in their best interest to put a cap on frame rates. Back in the days of Fallout 3 and even Skyrim, you could at least make something of an intelligent argument for an FPS cap; today, such design decisions border on the ludicrous. But it's a bit more complex than that; you see, this isn't a strict 60fps cap, but instead it's limited by your refresh rate. If you happen to have a 120Hz or 144Hz refresh rate display, the game will happily run at more than 60 FPS. Plus, you can remove the frame rate limiter, though there are potential consequences.

First, to do so, just open your Fallout4Prefs.ini file (in your Documents\My Games\Fallout4 folder) and set iPresentInterval=0 (instead of 1)—and note that any time you adjust the setting using the game launcher or change your graphics card, you'll need to change the setting again, as there's no global override. This fixes the frame rate cap issue, but just like Skyrim, some things can get a bit wonky after the removal of the FPS cap. In Skyrim, high frame rates could cause dragons to warp around and made the game effectively unplayable on faster systems; we didn't see character/creature warping in our limited testing, but we did notice other problems.

One clear side effect: If your frame rates get above 120fps, the game speeds up. Our benchmark sequence is 34 seconds long by default, and that tends to be true up until 120fps (give or take). But when our average reached 137fps, the time for our benchmark run had decreased to 31 seconds—not a huge difference, but you could feel it. Where it really got fun, though, was with our Medium settings on the fastest GPUs, which averaged 168fps. Walking through the benchmark path was down to 25 seconds, a very palpable 35 percent increase in walking speed, and at 200fps we finished in 21.5 seconds (at which point we appear to be hitting a CPU bottleneck). Everything speeds up, however, including the menus and loading scenes—without the frame rate limiter, tapping the up or down arrow shoots the menu selection up/down the list (which can be nice if you have a ton of junk in your inventory), and you likely won't be able to read through all the text on a loading screen before it changes.

Fallout 4 - Diamond City
Welcome to Diamond City, aka Fenway Park circa 2287.

The bigger issue is the number of things that seem to break at higher FPS. For example, I couldn't move after using a terminal screen—sometimes. Others have reported being unable to use Power Armor with iPresentInterval off. Basically, things break, and unless you happen to have a system that stays in the "sweet spot" of sub-100fps (maybe even sub-90), it's probably best to just leave the frame limiter enabled. And for those of you who happen to be running 144Hz displays, we ran into issues on those as well. The problems seem to occur less frequently, but the same "stuck after using a terminal" problem occurred on occasion. This, frankly, sucks. "Sorry, 144Hz display—no soup for you!"

It's a dumb design decision to tie the functioning of the game world to frame rates, and it needs to stop—not just from Bethesda, but from other developers as well. VR headsets are targeting 90Hz refresh rates, and five years from now, who knows what we'll consider ideal? The fact that problems occur even without hacking the INI files on high refresh rate displays is a bug at best that needs to be fixed. Hopefully, Bethesda will do so, and ideally all future games using the Creation Engine (or its descendants) will work at arbitrary frame rates. Don't even get us started on the silliness of 24fps movies with lots of motion blur.

Despite the potential issues with higher frame rates (anecdotally, staying under 90fps seems to avoid most issues), we're still going to benchmark the game—for science!

Test Hardware and Settings

Our test system for Fallout 4 is the same as our standard GPU test bed (now upgraded to Windows 10). We wanted to check CPU requirements along with GPU performance, however, so we also conducted additional testing with two and four CPU cores active, at CPU clocks of 2.1GHz and 3.2GHz. For the CPU testing, we selected the fastest Nvidia and AMD GPUs available, in this case the GTX 980 Ti and the R9 Fury X. Going with a slower GPU will potentially further limit performance, but provided the CPU isn't the bottleneck, you should be fine. We tested at five settings: 3840x2160 Ultra (aka "4K"), 2560x1440 Ultra (QHD), and 1920x1080 Ultra/High/Medium.

Maximum PC 2015 GPU Test Bed
CPU Intel Core i7-5930K @ 4.2GHz
Mobo Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4
GPUs AMD R9 Fury X (Reference)
AMD R9 390 (Sapphire)
AMD R9 380 (Sapphire)
AMD R9 285 (Sapphire)
Nvidia GTX Titan X (Reference)
Nvidia GTX 980 Ti (Reference)
Nvidia GTX 980 (Reference)
Nvidia GTX 970 (Asus)
Nvidia GTX 960 2GB (EVGA)
Nvidia GTX 950 (Asus)
SSD Samsung 850 EVO 2TB
PSU EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB DDR4-2666
Cooler Cooler Master Nepton 280L
Case Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper
OS Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Drivers AMD Catalyst 15.11 Beta
Nvidia 358.91

Now, first things first, we have more Nvidia GPUs than AMD GPUs. The vagaries of life meant that we didn't have the R9 390X available, and our R9 Fury card is currently in a different state. Also note that not all of the cards are reference models; we used those where available, but about half of our cards come direct from manufacturers, and several of these have factory overclocks. The R9 285 vs. R9 380 comparison incidentally is our one chance to look at two similar GPUs with 2GB vs. 4GB VRAM; unfortunately, the two are not clocked the same—the 285 is clocked at 928MHz while the 380 is clocked at 985MHz, plus the RAM is running at 5,800MHz vs. 5,500MHz. That means the R9 380 should be about five percent faster thanks to clock speeds; anything more than that we can attribute to the increased VRAM.

We are running the latest drivers for both GPU vendors at the time of writing. In the case of Nvidia, the driver is "Game Ready" for Fallout 4, while AMD makes no mention of the game. As we'll see in a moment, there's a good chance AMD has plenty of room left to improve performance in the wasteland, though at least there were no rendering issues noted with either GPU brand.

Nightfall
Nightfall
Choosing Your GPU

Frequently, games are promoted by either AMD ("Gaming Evolved") or Nvidia ("The Way It's Meant To Be Played"); Fallout 4 happens to be vendor agnostic, at least insofar as any company logos are concerned. There has been talk of certain features favoring Nvidia (specifically, the "Godrays"), but we didn't see any noteworthy advantage—and the difference between "Low" and "Ultra" quality Godrays looks to be insignificant, unless that's just a poor example screenshot. But just because a game isn't directly promoted by AMD or Nvidia doesn't mean it won't favor one brand of GPU; far from it.

Let's start with the GPU benchmarks at our five quality settings. Obviously, anything beyond 60fps means you need a display that can hit higher refresh rates, but we'd still like to see minimum frame rates above 60fps.

Fallout 4 Performance - 2160p Ultra

Starting at our 4K Ultra settings, Nvidia jumps out to a commanding lead. The GTX 980 Ti is over 20 percent faster than the Fury X. This is a bit of a pyrrhic victory, however, as neither card is able to push high frame rates—in fact, Nvidia's best GPU is just barely breaking 30fps! Interestingly, the Titan X actually underperforms compared to the 980 Ti here, which either means the GPU isn't boosting as high or some other oddity, but this will be a consistent pattern. Given the Titan X has double the VRAM and we're running at stock BIOS settings, the added power draw from the memory may be dropping the maximum Boost clock a notch or two—though it's hardly anything to worry about, and tweaking can certainly make up the difference.

Moving to lower tier cards, the 390 beats the 970 by a small margin, though the unplayable frame rates make this a mostly meaningless win. GTX 980 is 15 percent faster than the 390, and given the price premium that's not really great price-performance scaling. Finally, at the bottom of our performance charts, AMD's 380 holds a clear lead over the GTX 960 and 950—it's 10 percent faster than the 960, which in turn is 10 percent faster than the 950. Interestingly, the added VRAM might be the difference, considering the 380 is a full 20 percent faster than the 2GB 285. But let's move to more reasonable settings before drawing any firm conclusions.

Fallout 4 Performance - 1440p UltraDropping down to 2560x1440 tends to be more advantageous to Nvidia than AMD, with all of the margins shifting toward the green team. 980 Ti is now more than 30 percent faster than the Fury X, the 980 holds a 25 percent lead over the 390, and even the 970 is able to outperform the 390 by five percent. Nvidia also takes a small win with the 960 over the 380, with better minimum frame rates being the major consideration. 4GB vs. 2GB VRAM becomes less critical as well, as we'd expect, and the 380 lead over the 285 drops to 10 percent—still measurable, and there's no sense in purchasing the older card now considering their similar pricing, but the gap has narrowed.

Fallout 4 Performance - 1080p Ultra

At 1080p Ultra, things really start to look bad for AMD—even the lowly GTX 970 is currently able to post better performance than the Fury X. This is almost certainly a case of unoptimized drivers, and it's a problem that has persistently plagued AMD over the past few years. DirectX 12 and Mantle (and the upcoming OpenGL Vulkan) look to shift responsibility for game optimizations back to the developers, but when a game chooses to eschew the new hotness in favor of a well understood API… well, we get the above. At these settings, the only real win that AMD can claim is the R9 380 over the GTX 950, but even that is a close call, particularly when factoring in the lower price of the 950. But none of our sub-$250 cards are coming anywhere near 60fps, so the battle is not yet over.

Fallout 4 Performance - 1080p High

After pummeling AMD at 1080p Ultra, the gap between AMD and Nvidia narrows quite a bit at 1080p High. Fury X is still losing to the 980 Ti by 25 percent, and the 980 beats the 390 by a similar 25 percent, but we're now at the point where most of the cards are hitting higher frame rates—and occasionally game-breaking bugs. Interestingly, the lower-tier GPUs (960/950 and 380/285) actually start clumping together, though the 960 remains the best buy of the four.

We should pause for a moment to discuss frame rates in more detail, however. As an RPG—and one that can be pseudo-paused thanks to VATS if you so desire—high frame rates are certainly not the be-all, end-all for Fallout 4. Yes, the game feels a lot smoother running at 60+fps than at 30fps, but you can definitely get around the game world at 30–40fps. And if you happen to have a variable refresh rate display, we'd suggest 40+fps is perfectly acceptable. By that token, everything from GTX 950 and R9 285 and above is now well suited to handling the game.

Fallout 4 Performance - 1080p Medium

Our final data point doesn't show any changes in positioning among the GPUs, only higher frame rates. Again, keeping in mind that the visual difference even between Medium and Ultra quality is relatively minor, these settings are still very good—and in fact, they're arguably better than the default quality level on the console version of the game.

The short summary is that Nvidia currently holds a commanding lead at the top and middle performance and pricing tiers, while AMD is able to do reasonably well at the $200 price point. Considering the driver situation, however, things could change if AMD were to spend some time on optimizations—perhaps the upcoming Radeon Software Crimson Edition will even be part of the story. We'll have to wait and see.

Checking CPU Requirements

The second area we want to investigate is CPU requirements. For this testing, we've grabbed the fastest AMD and Nvidia GPUs and then run our 1080p Ultra/High/Medium settings with a variety of different CPU configurations. We're "simulating" performance in all cases—which is specifically noteworthy in that we can't actually disable appropriate amounts of L3 cache—and most of the CPU clocks/core settings don't even directly correspond with an actual CPU. The question we're trying to answer isn't, "Which CPU should you buy for Fallout 4," since most people already have a system that they're planning to use. Rather, we want to see how performance scales—or doesn't scale—with CPU clock speeds and core counts.

We've run nine test configurations, including the above results that were all at 4.2GHz with six cores (and Hyper-Threading). We're now disabling two or four of the CPU cores, giving us dual-core and quad-core performance results. We've left Hyper-Threading enabled in all test scenarios, mostly due to time constraints and the fact that it likely doesn't matter much. For each of the core configurations (dual/quad/hex), we've also tested at three clock speeds: 2.1GHz, 3.2GHz, and 4.2GHz. Here are the three charts, and please keep in mind that we're not looking at AMD vs. Nvidia this round, as we already know Nvidia won this fight. Instead, we're interested in seeing how each vendor's top GPU scales with the CPU.

Fallout 4 CPU Scaling - 1080p Ultra

Fallout 4 CPU Scaling - 1080p High

Fallout 4 CPU Scaling - 1080p Medium

One look at the charts should be enough to let you know that the two GPUs scale quite differently. On the Nvidia side, there's not much of a difference between four and six cores at higher clock speeds, at least at Ultra quality, but once we drop to High or Medium we see a clear progression. Core count helps quite a bit, even when going from four to six cores, but clock speeds are equally important. Two cores at 4.2GHz ends up beating six cores at 2.1GHz, but at 3.2GHz the dual-core configuration starts to get a lot more dips in frame rate, which leads to the six-core 2.1GHz results placing higher on the charts, and the 2C@3.2 and 4C@2.1 results are mostly tied.

AMD's scaling with core counts is far less impressive, and clock speeds don't seem to help as much either. Other than the 2C@2.1 results, which are way off the pace set by the 980 Ti (since we should be CPU limited at this point), increasing CPU clock speed is beneficial but not a game changer. Having four or six cores at 3.2GHz or 4.2GHz results in relatively similar performance, but even at high clock speeds the two cores generally create some issues (stuttering and low minimum FPS).

Closing Thoughts

The short summary is that for most single GPUs, any Core i3 (or suitably clocked AMD quad-core) or better CPU should be sufficient to hit playable frame rates. Granted, we didn't test midrange GPUs with the lower-spec CPUs, but the GPU will typically be the bigger bottleneck on most gaming systems.

And speaking of the GPU, given the frame cap and the issues with disabling it, for now we have a few recommendations. Those who want a smooth 60fps at 4K Ultra are going to need more than any single GPU can offer—and SLI/CrossFire isn't something we tested. Dropping from Ultra to High is good for almost 50 percent higher performance, so if you have a FreeSync/G-SYNC display, a single 980 Ti/Titan X or Fury X should get you to 40+fps averages, which is generally sufficient.

Boom! Headshot.
Boom! Headshot.

At QHD, the options open up quite a bit: Titan X and 980 Ti can hit 60fps at Ultra settings, while the 980 and 970 can break 40fps (and dropping to High quality should get close to 60fps). For AMD, the 390/390X also break 40fps at Ultra. QHD at High quality should be achievable with 40+fps on nearly all of the GPUs we tested, though the 285 and 950 are borderline. Those with 144Hz QHD displays should find the game is playable at High or Ultra settings, and since the frame rates don't get too high you should be safe from the glitches we've discussed.

Finally, 1080p Ultra at 40+fps is doable with all of the GPUs we tested, and 1080p High hits 60+fps on everything except the GTX 950. We did some additional testing (not shown) of 1080p Low, and found that we hit a CPU bottleneck of around 200fps, but with lower-performance cards you can still get well above 60fps.

As for the game itself, having now spent the better part of several days benchmarking and testing, I for one am ready to put the frame rate question behind me and begin exploring the wastes in earnest. If it's anything like the previous games, it might be a while before I actually finish. There are quirks as usual (sneaking in Power Armor—really?), but the game world is rich and fans of the post-apocalyptic genre are sure to find plenty of exploring fun.

Newegg Daily Deals: Toshiba 3TB HDD, Corsair 850 Pro 256GB SSD, and More!

Posted: 18 Nov 2015 01:35 PM PST

Toshiba 3TB Retail Box

Top Deal:

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Samsung 850 Pro 2.5-inch 256GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive for $120 with free shipping (normally $130 - use coupon code: [ESCKBKV26])

Patriot Strikes at Skylake with Viper Elite DDR4 Memory

Posted: 18 Nov 2015 12:26 PM PST

A colorful RAM upgrade

Patriot Viper Elite DDR4

If you're building a high-end system around Skylake, then you're probably eyeballing a motherboard based on Intel's Z170 Express chipset with DDR4 DIMM slots. That means trading in your trusty DDR3 kit for new RAM, and with the release of Patriot's new Viper Elite DDR4 series, your options just widened a bit.

The Viper Elite DDR4 series joins Patriot's Viper 4 and Viper Xtreme DDR4 memory lines. Frequencies range from 2,400MHz to 3,200MHz with 16GB (2x8GB) and 8GB (2x4GB) dual-channel kits and a 64GB (4x16GB) quad-channel kit available in red, blue, and gray color options, plus a 32GB (2x16GB) dual-channel kit in gray only.

Patriot's aim is to offer system builders a relatively affordable line of high-performance RAM, with MSRPs ranging from $52.99 to $499.

"Patriot strives to deliver excellent price per performance when launching a new product," said Les Henry, VP of Engineering at Patriot. "The Viper Elite dual kit is no exception. We want to enable our customers to have the latest and greatest technology at an affordable price and we've done that here; top speeds at an excellent market price."

Memory timings depend on which kit you choose. For lower frequency kits, you're looking at 15-15-15-35, whereas the 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4-3200 kit we peeked at on Patriot's website advertised 16-16-16-36 timings.

Between the different speeds, capacities, and color options, there are about two dozen kits to choose from, all of which are supposed to be available to purchase today in stores and online.

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AVG Brings Tor and VPN Enabled Chime Router to Indiegogo

Posted: 18 Nov 2015 10:35 AM PST

Meshing with Wi-Fi

AVG Chime Router

There are two themes playing out in the wireless router space at the moment. One is the advent of smart routers designed to sit out in plain site, like Google's OnHub router series, and the other is mesh networking, which the recently announced Luma router specializes in.

Now security outfit AVG is entering the wireless router fray through its Innovation Labs arm, and like Luma, its Chime router aims to revive Wi-Fi dead spots by creating a mesh network. What is a mesh network?

It's a Wi-Fi technology commonly found in large places like airports and malls. In a mesh network, the wireless connection is spread out through multiple nodes. In this case, AVG's pitch is that by installing two or three Chime routers throughout your home, you'll have fast, reliable Wi-Fi wherever you go.

"All Chimes are connected to each other. This creates a reliable wireless network, as the network does not depend on any single node," AVG explains on Chime's Indiegogo page. "Unlike many Wi-Fi extenders, Chime will not decrease the speed of your home Wi-Fi. Extenders may reduce the speed of your internet connection by up to 50 percent, because they use a single radio to send data between routers and extenders, and to connect to your devices. Chime uses separate and dedicated radios for these tasks, so your internet speed stays as fast as it can be."

In addition to covering your home in a mesh network, AVG's other selling point is that its Chime routers also take advantage of VPN and Tor for added security and privacy. If you go the VPN route, AVG says it maintains hundreds of VPN servers to hide your IP address and makes the process easy by creating a dedicated hotspot for your connected devices to router through.

AVG is seeking $650,000 in funding through Indiegogo. At present, it has $35,345 from 127 backers with 23 days remaining to reach its goal.

Should AVG reach its goal, it will sell Chime for $200, which would be suitable for a small apartment. For larger dwellings that could benefit from a mesh network, a bundle of two Chime routers will run $350 and three will cost $500.

All of those prices are reduced on Indiegogo for early bird backers.

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Eidos Montreal Delays Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to August 2016

Posted: 18 Nov 2015 09:59 AM PST

Feeling the pressure

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

If you've been eagerly anticipating the next Deus Ex installment, you'll have to wait a little longer than originally planned. Instead of releasing to PC and consoles in February, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is now slated to come out in August 23, 2016, which will be exactly five years since the release of Deux Ex: Human Revolution.

Eidos Montreal's Head of Studio, David Anfossi, made the announcement in a blog post today. Reading through it, you get the sense that the developer is feeling the pressure to deliver a blockbuster hit, and in its current state, the game is not up to par.

"Our aim is for [Deus Ex: Mankind Divided] to be a worthy successor to Human Revolution, and to improve upon that game in every way possible," Anfossi said. "I know that expectations are extremely high, and we not only want to meet those expectations, but exceed them."

Anfossi went on to say that a play through of the game in full in its current state makes it clear that more time is needed in "post-production for tuning, iterations, and refinements to meet our high standards." Hence why the developer is giving itself an additional six months to tweak the game.

"We are sorry to disappoint you with this news, and also thank you for all of your support and comments," Anfossi added. "This game is a huge part of our lives, and we don't want to compromise on its quality."

It's understandable that Eidos Montreal is feeling the pressure, considering the excellent job it did with Human Revolution, a game we scored a 9/10 (90/100 with our current scoring system) in our review. Despite some "silly writing" and "terrible boss fights," we scored the game high for its "absurd degree of freedom" within the bounds of linear missions and the amount of awesome augmentations at your disposal.

We'll happily wait a few more months for a worthy followup, especially after witnessing the train wreck launch that was Batman: Arkham Knight.

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Technolust: Studio Monitors, Headphones, and a Battery

Posted: 18 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

You can never have enough when it comes to gear and tech; there's always something coming out that's going to be better. When does it ever end? Hopefully, never. Here are my choices for this week.

Balanced and neutral audio

There are "PC speakers" and then there are speakers. I've used plenty of PC-oriented speakers over the past 20 years, everything from Altec Lansing, to Cambridge Soundworks, to Klipsch, to Logitech to even Bose and Yamaha systems. Granted, they're all relatively good and monumentally better than throwaway systems that get bundled with some low-cost PCs, but I feel like I'm ready for something more.

Right now, my home PC is connected to a set of Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers. They're awesome. In fact, they are fully deserving of their cult-like status with enthusiasts. Klipsch has essentially turned away from producing desktop speakers, but you can still find the company's ProMedia 2.1 system at your local BestBuy. As good as they are though, I feel like the amp inside the subwoofer is going to go out any day now. The ProMedia Ultra 5.1 sub has a tendency to overheat and a search on Google will give you lots of DIY solutions to remedy the problem. 

What I really want instead is a new set of high-end speakers for use on my PC. I did my due diligence in research and concluded that  Yamaha's HS series studio monitors are the perfect set of speakers to replace the Klipsches.

Yamaha Hs Family Image 04

The HS series from Yamaha are considered by many in the professional audio industry as the crème de la crème of studio monitors. They are the standard for neutral, balanced sound, and are found in many a professional studio around the world. Before the HS series came out, Yamaha was already renowned for its NS-10 monitors, bringing in both memorable audio performance and the now distinctive white cone.

Here are the specs of the HS8 monitors:

  • two-way bass-reflex bi-amplified nearfield with 8-inch cone woofer an one-inch dome tweeter
  • 38Hz to 30kHz frequency response
  • 2kHz crossover
  • 75W low-frequency and 45 high-frequency bi-amp
  • Room control, and high trim response control
  • XLR and TRS balanced or unbalanced inputs

And the HS8S subwoofer:

  • eight-inch bass-reflex down firing subwoofer
  • 22Hz to 150Hz frequency response
  • 150W amplifier
  • Low cut switch, low cut control (80–120Hz), high cut (80–120Hz)
  • Phase switch
  • XLR and TRS inputs and outputs

What can I do with the Yamaha HS8 monitors that I can't do now?

Well, for starters, audio is a subjective topic. But I'm seeking speakers that can produce balanced and neutral audio, and studio monitors are designed for just that. They don't color the sound in any way—there's no bass or treble emphasis. Also, because they're near-field speakers, they don't have a wide sweet spot area, but that doesn't really matter because they'd be in a PC setting, right in front of me. And the sub, the sweet sub, producing tight, accurate bass notes all the way down to a belly trembling 22Hz, is a dream. Together, the entire HS8 system is definitely my logical next step.

I've been wanting these cans for years

While we're on the subject of audio nirvana, I might as well say that my quest for audio eargasms would be wholly satisfied by  Sennheiser's HD800 headphones. Sure, Sennheiser recently announced its new Orpheus electrostatic-planar headphones that would require me to take out a big car loan to buy at $55,000, but that's quite a reach, even for my technolusting. 

Sennheiser Hd800 Headphones

Sennheiser's name is synonymous with high-quality headphones, and the HD800 is essentially the company's flagship that can be attainable by mere mortals. Several years ago I had a pair of Sennheisers that sounded great, but it was long ago enough that I have actually forgotten the model name. The company has been busy keeping up with the times, however, and has more mainstream offerings now for several different uses: exercise, gaming, and cans focused mainly on style. But for my needs, fidelity comes first.

At $1,500, the HD800 is not cheap. This is substantially more than most people would consider spending on a pair of headphones.

What can I do with the Sennheiser HD800 headphones that I can't do now?

Well, right now I don't have any cans for my ears. I don't even have earbuds. It'd be nice to get a really good pair of headphones, and while many will argue that better headphones exist, I've had enough listening time with the HD800 that I know it's definitely what I want. Besides, better audio is totally subjective. I've had a pair of Grado headphones in the past too, and while they were exceptional, the ear pads felt like I had two cement blocks on my lobes.

Everyone needs a UPS

Despite living in the modern world, you can never really be sure that your power won't go out. It may happen while you're typing up that very important document, or when you're in the middle of an intense gaming session. Having back-up power is almost like having some basic insurance for whatever you're doing on your PC, and in some cases, even the PC itself.

Apc Smartups 1500va

A good UPS will protect you from blackouts, brownouts, and dips and spikes in your power source. Losing power could mean losing data, and when power suddenly returns, the sudden surge could be more than your PC can handle, causing damage. Surges can happen even if you don't lose power. 

My current setup calls for three APC Smart-UPS units. One unit handles the networking gear. The router, switch, cable modem, and wireless access point are all plugged into one UPS. Some of my NASes are also plugged into the same unit. My PC has its own UPS reserved just for it. The last UPS is outside in my living room protecting my HTPC. This setup ensures that even if I lose power to the house, I can still remain connected and online. Most importantly, I know I won't lose my work.

So, I actually have an uninterruptable power supply already (well, three, as mentioned). I prefer to get my UPS devices from APC, as the company is known to make some of the best on the market. The one I  really want is the APC Smart-UPS 1500VA.

If you do end up getting a UPS, keep in mind that their batteries need to be replaced somewhere between three and five years. The "on-line" UPS units that I use actually run the equipment off the battery directly at all times. The benefit is there's never a physical switch that occurs. Essentially, the UPS is constantly charging its batteries as long as there is power.

So, what can I do with the APC Smart-UPS 1500VA that I can't do already?

For starters, the 1500VA unit can handle a larger load than my current 1000 unit. I also recently built myself an entirely new gaming PC comprised of an Intel 5960X, ASUS X99 E-WS motherboard, NVIDIA Titan X, and the works. It's a decently power-hungry system that requires a UPS to sustain uninterrupted gameplay.

So, what's on your Technolust list? Tell us in the comments!

ISIS Calls Anonymous "Idiots"

Posted: 17 Nov 2015 11:49 AM PST

FBI Investigating 4chan "Anonymous" DDoS Attacks

The tragic terrorist attack on Paris Friday night left at least 129 people dead and hundreds more injured. In response, the vigilante hacktivist group Anonymous threatened the Islamic State militant group of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) over the weekend, vowing that it would gather its virtual troops from around the world to hunt ISIS down.

"We will launch the biggest operation ever against you," a masked French Anonymous representative said in a video. "Expect massive cyberattacks. War is declared. Get prepared."

For starters, Anonymous claims that it has knocked out more than 5,500 Twitter accounts that are affiliated with ISIS. A representative told RT that Anonymous has people very close to the militant group, making gathering intelligence about ISIS and "related activities" extremely easy. The representative also seems confident that Anonymous can defend itself against an ISIS-led response.

"They picked a fight with Anonymous when they attacked Paris, and now they should expect us," he said. "[The collective] will not sit by and watch these terror attacks unfold around the world."

Meanwhile, the Islamic Cyber Army is calling Anonymous idiots, pointing out that all Anonymous can do is hack Twitter accounts, email accounts, and so on. According to Newsweek, the group is telling supporters not to open suspicious emails, avoid contact with strangers on phones and computers, change their email addresses, and change their locations using workaround technology on phones and computers.

"Do not talk to people u don't know on telegram and block them if u have to cause there are many glitches in telegram and they can hack you by it," the Islamic Cyber Army stresses via Telegram. "Don't talk to people on twitter DM cause they can hack u too. Do not make your email same as your username on twitter this mistake cost many Ansar (helpers) their accounts and the kuffar published their IP so be careful."

After the attack on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo back in January, Anonymous began attacking extremists by identifying ISIS-linked social media accounts and related websites, according to Business Insider.

"The French people are stronger than you and will come out of this atrocity even stronger," the French Anonymous representative said in this weekend's video.

So what can Anonymous actually do in its war against ISIS? Cyberwarfare expert David Gewirtz told CBS News that cyber attacks can't be used to take terrorists out of the field, but they can be used to disrupt "structural components" of a terrorist operation. For example, Anonymous could go after the money ISIS has stored away to fund terrorist attacks, and the funding sources. Damage the money flow and the normal operations could be disrupted.

Unfortunately, some say that an Anonymous attack could have a negative impact on the overall war against ISIS. "Anonymous, while itself something of a vigilante organization, can pick enemies we also see as enemies, but they tend to knee-jerk reactions that might have unintended consequences," Gewirtz said.

Newegg Daily Deals: Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD, APC 8-Outlet UPS, and More!

Posted: 17 Nov 2015 10:17 AM PST

Samsung 850 Pro

Top Deal:

By now you've probably graduated from a mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD), but do you find yourself uninstalling games to make room for new ones? Thanks to the plummeting price of NAND flash memory, it's now feasible to rock a larger size SSD, and with the holiday season approaching, it's the perfect time to treat yourself to an upgrade. If you agree, check out today's top deal for a Samsung 850 Pro 2.5-inch 1TB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive for $387 with free shipping (normally $430 - use coupon code: [BTEKKBT59]; Free Assassin's Creed Syndicate Game Code w/ purchase, limited offer). It'll provide some breathing room over your 128GB or 256GB SSD, and with up to 550MB/s read and up to 520MB/s write performance, you're likely to see a speed boost, too.

Other Deals:

APC P8T3 6 feet 8 Outlets 1750 Joules Home/Office SurgeArrest 8 Outlets with tel2/splitter Jacks for $23 with free shipping (normally $27 - use coupon code: [BTEKKBT26])

APC BE550G Back-UPS 550 VA 8-outlet Uninterruptible Power Supply for $45 with free shipping (normally $49 - use coupon code: [BTEKKBT27])

Seagate Barracuda STBD2000101 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive -Retail Kit for $81 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [BTEKKBT44])

Rosewill Apollo - RK-9100xRBR - Mechanical Keyboard with Red Backlit for $85 with free shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [BTEKKBT34])

Kingston Adds USB Flash Drives to HyperX Savage Line

Posted: 17 Nov 2015 10:06 AM PST

A Savage offering

Kinsgton HyperX Savage USB

Kingston saves its HyperX Savage branding for some of its fastest products, including system memory (DRAM) and solid state drives. Now it includes USB flash drives as well.

Kingston's new HyperX Savage USB flash drives come in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities. They're USB 3.1 parts, though it's the Gen 1 spec, which is just the newfangled way of saying USB 3.0. Confused?

USB 3.1 Gen 1 is essentially the new name for USB 3.0, which still feature a theoretical data rate of up 5Gbps. It's the USB 3.1 Gen 2 spec that ups the ante to a theoretical ceiling of 10Gbps.

USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 primer out of the way, here's what you're looking at with the new HyperX Savage USB flash drives:

  • Kingston HyperX Savage 64GB: 350MB/s read, 180MB/s write
  • Kingston HyperX Savage 128GB: 350MB/s read, 250MB/s write
  • Kingston HyperX Savage 256GB: 350MB/s read, 250MB/s write

Not too shabby, especially compared to Kingston's previous flagship USB flash drive family, the Predator, which offered read and write speeds of up to 240MB/s and 160MB/s, respectively.

"We are excited to offer this USB drive for gamers and enthusiasts to take advantage of the emerging USB 3.1 Gen. 1 standard, also commonly referred to as USB 3.0," said Lawrence Yang, business manager, HyperX. "This is our fastest USB Flash drive and the combination of high performance and great looks with its aggressive design make it a perfect solution for PCs and consoles."

The HyperX Savage USB flash drives are available direct from Kingston for $73 (64GB), $131 (128GB), and $246 (256GB), each backed by a five-year warranty.

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Clean Installing a Free Windows 10 Upgrade Just Got Easier

Posted: 17 Nov 2015 09:35 AM PST

Removing the hoops

Windows 10 Wallpaper

Microsoft wants everyone who uses a PC to run Windows 10. The desire is so strong that Microsoft continues to offer free upgrades to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1, though the process of doing so wasn't friendly for people wanting to perform a clean install. That is, until now.

You won't find anything about this on Microsoft's support page for activating Windows (not at the time of this writing, anyway), but according to Forbes, the latest Windows 10 Threshold 2 release eases up on the rules for upgrading to Windows 10.

Once updated, users can search "Activate" in Cortana and punch in their Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 key on the Activation page that comes up to register Windows 10. The other way to get there is through Settings > Update & Security > Activation > Change Product Key.

You can also enter your Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 product key during the setup process when clean installing Windows 10 and it will now be accepted/activated.

Prior to the new rules, performing a clean install and upgrading for free was an unnecessarily lengthy process that involved upgrading your copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1, which would create what's called a digital entitlement, then format your PC and install Windows 10 all over again.

Tip of the hat to you, Microsoft.

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Asus Plops Chrome OS onto $85 Chromebit CS10 HDMI Dongle

Posted: 17 Nov 2015 09:11 AM PST

Turning your HDTV into a Chrome OS PC

Asus Chromebit CS10

Streaming sticks and PC dongles that plug into your TV's HDMI port are a thing now, but where's the love for Chrome OS? It's in the Chromebit CS10 from Asus, that's where.

Asus today announced the Chromebit CS10 as the "world's smallest Chrome device," which presumably refers to Chrome OS (otherwise Google might have something to say about that claim with its Chromecast dongle).

It's a "candy bar sized" stick that measures 123 x 31 x 17 millimeters and weighs 75 grams. In case it's too unwieldy to fit in your HDTV or monitor's HDMI port, Asus includes an extension cable that will help you maneuver around varying angles and positions, as required for your setup. Adhesive hook-and-loop fasteners for mounting the dongle come in the box, too.

Asus Chromebit CS10 Extension

An ARM-based Rockchip RK3288-C System-on-Chip (SoC) with a quad-core Cortex A17 processor (1.8GHz) and Mali-T764 GPU powers the Chromebit CS10. It also brings to the PC dongle party 2GB of LPDDR3L RAM, 16GB of eMMC storage + 100GB of free Google Drive space, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a full-size USB 2.0 ports.

The Chromebit CS10 is essentially a cheap Chrome OS PC that supports Full HD 1080p video. It offers access to apps in the Chrome Web Store, and if you add a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, you have an inexpensive alternative to the crop of Chromebooks out there.

Asus also envisions a handful of professional uses for the Chromebit CS10.

"The versatile Chromebit CS10, along with Chrome Device Management, works as a manageable plug-and-play media player for in-store displays or digital signage — for example, turning a standard display into a digital menu at a restaurant," Asus says. "It can also be configured as a single-purpose employee kiosk for checkout counters, retail stores, fast food chains, and restaurants."

The Chromebit CS10 is supposed to be available today for $85.

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Logitech G633 Artemis Spectrum Gaming Headset Review

Posted: 17 Nov 2015 12:00 AM PST

A top-tier wired headset to satisfy your aural fixation

We've had the G633 on hand here at Maximum PC for quite some time, but we've wanted to hold off on reviewing the unit for a few reasons. Now that we've had it and used it to its full potential, we can confidently say that this is one badass headset.

The G633 is a 7.1 surround headset, a designation that has left us a bit unimpressed by other headphones. However, this surround is worth the $150 price tag. That is, if you're on Windows.

The headset only uses surround when plugged in via USB, and uses a software driver to essentially emulate 7.1 surround. Logitech includes the driver with their Logitech Gaming Software, which is only available on Windows and Mac. While the headset does show up as a stereo USB audio device in Linux, penguin-loving users don't get the full surround experience. As such, Linux users looking for a surround headset might be better off with Kingston's HyperX Cloud II (which uses an inline USB 7.1 sound card), or the Roccat Kave (which plugs into your PC's 3.5mm surround jacks).

The Logitech G633 can take either USB or 3.5mm analog inputs.
The Logitech G633 can take either USB or 3.5mm analog inputs.

For Windows users, however, the 7.1 surround really delivers in gaming. The Gaming Software driver supports both Dolby 7.1 surround and DTS surround via Headphone:X. From demos and our testing, we found that Headphone:X is what you're really paying for in this headset.

Headphone:X is great... if the game you're playing uses it

During a demo at Logitech's lab in Washington, just a few minutes north of Portland, Oregon, we got to sit in a room custom designed to use DTS surround. If this room, the channel test was the most impressive. The test first played each channel independently over the speakers for reference. When we heard the same test played through the headphones, it sounded identical to the speaker test. Not close, but uncannily identical. We actually took off the headphones off during the test to perform a sanity check, and make sure the Logitech and DTS reps weren't messing with us.

The headset also has very good isolation, so outside sound tends not to bleed through while wearing them. The ear cups are made of a foam that feels more rigid than squishy, but not so much that they become uncomfortable. The foam in a pair of G230s we have in the office is stiffer than the stuff in the G633, so those who haven't liked Logitech's foam ear cups from other models will probably be pleased with the new material.

That aural isolation and accurate surround really blossoms when you play games that support Headphone:X. We know that Alien: Isolation is already scary as hell. With Headphone:X, the sound was so all-encompassing and immersive that we almost didn't want to play. Hearing the alien walking around somewhere down a hallway was thoroughly terrifying. If you're into first-person survival-horror, bring your blood pressure meds because your heart will race when using this tech. We can only imagine how good this will be when coupled with VR. Oh, the possibilities.

To be fair though, Alien: Isolation is one of those games tuned for Headphone:X to work properly. The downside to this awesome sauce is that game developers have to use Headphone:X in their recipe of code for it to be of any worth to the gamer. Without a game that supports DTS and Headphone:X, the headphones can't give you their full flavor.

When DTS surround is used in development, Headphone:X allows you one more cool feature: custom room mixes. Developers can record a reference signal from their audio mixing studio and use it to create a DTS profile of their environment. That profile can then be used with Logitech's Gaming Software, so you can hear the 7.1 mix exactly the same way the audio engineer does. That's a cool feature, and it really got our attention. The Gaming Software driver for the G633 comes with a profile tuned to Logitech's room from Washington, so if you wanted to hear a channel test, you could hear exactly what we heard, the way we heard it.

Not exactly street style

In terms of physical features, the G633 looks and feels like a sturdy gaming headset. The headband feels sturdy, and features some of that nifty new foam padding as well. There are RGB LED features on the headphones too, which can be programmed (or turned off) in Logitech's Gaming Software. But just like mice and keyboards, RGB LEDs are pretty much standard issue for gaming peripherals these days.

One interesting feature is that the sides of the ear cups are secured by a couple of magnets and can be taken off. Logitech said that users will be able to customize these panels. That's an interesting feature, but we wonder just how many people will go and 3D print their own headset parts.

The G633 has three G-keys, a mic mute, volume wheel and input switch all behind the left ear.
The G633 has three G-keys, a mic mute, volume wheel, and input switch, all behind the left ear.

In terms of functionality, all the buttons and switches are on the left ear cup, just behind the ear. Logitech went ahead and included three G-keys, which can be mapped to macros or other game inputs. A volume wheel and a mic mute button sit right below the G-keys.

There's also a switch situated above the G-keys that lets you choose between PC (USB) input and the 3.5mm jack input. This switch is easy to forget about: One time we searched through all of our audio options in Linux to figure out why we weren't getting any audio just to find that we had the switch set to the 3.5mm jack. D'oh.

The G633's mic doesn't detach, but it folds away and hides surprisingly well.
The G633's mic doesn't detach, but it folds away and hides surprisingly well.

For some, having a headset that looks like a gaming headset is a turn-off. That's why we really like headsets with detachable mics, so that come time to get on the commuter train or just listen to music, you don't have a mic in your face (and you don't look like a tool). The G633 doesn't have a detachable mic, but the mic stows away very well, and telescopes out for use. The mic boom mutes on up as well, like other Logitech headsets. While the mic stowing is clever and effective, the shape of the headset still screams "gaming" to us, so we wouldn't be inclined to have this headset pull double duty as our commute-time music and podcast cans.

It's what's inside that counts

Finally, we come to sound. After all, that's what matters, right? This headset sounds great, and is top-tier for a gaming headset. At $150, these cans are in the same price range as midrange Sennheisers and AKGs. A pair of AKG K-181DJs cost about $160, and these cans sound just as good, and in some situations, better. Many headphones (including the K-181DJs) tend to be bass-heavy, but the G633s are pretty flat. That doesn't mean the bass suffers, though—it still feels deep and powerful, but the highs are crisp and defined, too. You can get better sound out of a headset, but it'll cost you more than $150. And unless you're an audiophile who's used to listening to FLACs and vinyl every day, you probably won't notice the extra sound quality you spent the money on.

All in all, the G633 is a great headset. If you have the cash to spend, then the surround features, sound quality, and build of this headset makes it worth the money. That said, the G633 is expensive for a headset that we wouldn't wear when we part from the keyboard and chair.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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